Number 1: As beautiful as Arkansas is, there is no tech industry here.  Arkansas tends to move at a little slower pace then the rest of the world.  That's not a problem if you grow rice or make potato chips but for technology, it's like shooting yourself in the foot.  I have already peaked in this area.  I don't want to be a big fish in a small pond with no room to grow.  I want to learn and grow at my own pace be it fast or slow.  I want to control my destiny.

Number 2: My wife's parents will live minutes away from us.  Amara is very close to her mom and I am too.  I couldn't have hoped for better in-laws.  This isn't one of those "honey, get your mom to stop nagging me" kind of situations.  I really do love her parents and I feel closer to them then I do to my own family.  I mean no offence to my family but we just aren't close.  My family fits Arkansas.  They will probably be buried within 50 miles of the place where they were born.  I feel the need to carve my own path through life and my family doesn't.

There are some negatives to moving.  My son will probably not know much of his grandmother (would he have anyway?)  I have gotten very close with some of my friends here in Arkansas.  I will miss them greatly.  I do feel that we will be able to maintain a close friendship across any distance but you always loose something with distance.  We are techie so we will make sure that we stay in contact.  I'm not worried about that.  It's just that when your whole family starts to become friends with another whole family, you're going to miss just having dinner together.  The same goes for my wife's sister's family.  We have grown very close to the O'neils and we will be very sad to leave them.  My son and his cousins are very close in age and I wish that he could grow up knowing them.  Maybe he still will.  Only time will tell.

I am excited about this specific job.  I will be making more, have more room for growth, less upfront responsibility, and the people running this company actually know what is going on.  My old job was not a bad job.  I actually enjoyed the work.  It was the management that was the problem.  They had no clue how to successfully run a company.  This was a creative environment, not a factory.  Programmers and Designers are not "Resources".  The company will be nothing without them.  They will understand that very clearly when they have no "Resources" left.  When your employees are so afraid that their checks will bounce that they all race to see who can get to your bank first to make sure that they can get cash to go deposit into their bank you obviously have a problem.  I may be the only one moving across the country but I will not be the last to leave.  I am just glad that I got out when I did.  Do you remember Roosevelt's proposed second bill of rights?  Well, that's what I'm shooting for.

Viva la Revolution!

Joins simply relate rows in one table with rows in another table.

Take these tables for example:

Books
+---------+-----------+
| book_id | author    |
+---------+-----------+
|   1     |     joseph|
|   2     |     john  |
|   3     |      sue  |
|   4     |     NULL  |
|   5     |     john  |
|   6     |     sam   |
+---------+-----------+

Authors
+---------+-----------+
| author  | sex       |
+---------+-----------+
|   joseph|     male  |
|   john  |     male  |
|   sue   |     female|
|   lucy  |     female|
|   sam   |     NULL  | <- lets just pretend we don't know
+---------+-----------+

In MySQL, there are three important types of joins.  There are:

1. Inner Joins
2. Left Joins
3. Right Joins

Inner Joins

Inner joins combine rows that have matches in both tables.  There will be no nulls left in the resulting table at all.  This query would be written like:

• select * from Books, Authors where Books.author = Authors.author
• or
• select * from Books inner join Authors on (Books.author = Authors.author)

You will get back:

+---------+---------+-----------+
| book_id | author  | sex       |
+---------+---------+-----------+
|    1    |   joseph|     male  |
|    2    |   john  |     male  |
|    3    |   sue   |     female|
|    5    |   john  |     male  |
+---------+---------+-----------+

Left Joins

Left joins take all results from the left table and combine the matching results from the right table. This query would be written like:

• select * from Books left join Authors on (Books.author = Authors.author)

You will get back:

+---------+---------+-----------+
| book_id | author  | sex       |
+---------+---------+-----------+
|    1    |   joseph|     male  |
|    2    |   john  |     male  |
|    3    |   sue   |     female|
|    4    |   NULL  |     NULL  | <- because there isn't an author to match
|    5    |   john  |     male  |
|    6    |   sam   |     NULL  | <- because we don't know sam's sex
+---------+---------+-----------+

Right Joins

Right joins are exactly like left joins but they will give all results from the right table while matching the left table to it. This query would be written like:

• select * from Books right join Authors on (Books.author = Authors.author)

You will get back:

+---------+---------+-----------+
| book_id | author  | sex       |
+---------+---------+-----------+
|    1    |   joseph|     male  |
|    2    |   john  |     male  |
|    5    |   john  |     male  | <- john is here twice because there are 2 matches in the left table
|    3    |   sue   |     female|
|    NULL |   lucy  |     female| <- because this is a right join and lucy is in the right table
|    6    |   sam   |     NULL  |
+---------+---------+-----------+

That code should be very easy to understand.

If you notice, this function will retry 5 times before it gives up.  That is because bitly will only allow 3 concurrent requests per IP.  My function also will only make the request to bit.ly once per page per session.

reCAPTCHA is a system that solves two problems in one.  Optical Character Recognition has always had the issue of hard to read words.  Computers simply can not read quite like humans.  This is precisely why captchas work so well.  To defeat a captcha and spread spam, a bot would have to be great at OCR.  reCAPTCHA takes scans of old books and presents them to users.  One of the words presented is known and the other is unknown.  When a certain number of people answer the same on the unknown word, it is considered known.  Using the reCAPTCHA system, we are digitising books one word at a time.

The number that I am talking about here is the ABA Routing Number.

We'll start with a routing number like 231381116. Here's how the algorithm works. First, strip out any non-numeric characters (like dashes or spaces) and makes sure the resulting string's length is nine digits,

2 3 1 3 8 1 1 1 6

Then we multiply the first digit by 3, the second by 7, the third by 1, the fourth by 3, the fifth by 7, the sixth by 1, etc., and add them all up.

(2 x 3) + (3 x 7) + (1 x 1) +
(3x 3) + (8 x 7) + (1 x 1) +
(1 x 3) + (1 x 7) + (6 x 1) = 110

If the resulting number is an integer multiple of 10, then the number is valid. To calculate what the checksum digit should be, follow the above algorithm for the first 8 digits. In the case above, you would come up with 104. Thus, to make the total number an integer multiple of 10, the final check digit must be 6.

Enough with the details, on with the algorithm!

PHP5

Those of us that use Gmail know that adding an HTML signature can be a pain in the behind.  Typically, Gmail only allows standard plain text signatures.  I have discovered a  great Firefox plugin named Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures.  This plugin allows you to easily add signatures to each sending address within your account.

Simply compose a message and click "Create Signature".  Once you have done that for the sending account that you want, your screen will look something like the image on the right.  From now on out, any email that you send from Gmail on that computer will have whatever HTML signature you want.

After some quick research, I discovered that I am not the first to have this thought.  Many freelance designers, programmers, architects, anyone else that works from home sit at home in their den or at the kitchen table.  These creatives need a space to be creative in.  Along comes the "Office Shed"!  They can be as fancy or simple as you want.  They range from $5,000 for the standard shed to $15,000 for the office fit for a king.  Gone are the days of fighting with kids for the space on the table, or working away after everyone is in bed just to have some peace and quiet.  Now a creative simply has to take 10 steps out of the house into their custom, personal office.  Feel free to ditch the tie and don the slippers.

Here are some of the offices that I liked:

Just spoke to the wife... She says that when we finally buy a house, I can build a "Back Office".  As long as it matches the house.  Score one for me!