Matt, M.S.

Mr.Belvedere’s JamThis is the greatest thing ever.

Anyone notice that Leopard’s instruction booklet image of BootCamp shows Windows XP, not Vista? Nice subtle dig Apple!

I love FedEx. I’m three hours ahead of the game! Leopard is already installed and all is very smooth. First impressions?

1. I dig the new dock; of course I hide mine anyway

2. Coverflow on the documents is kind of neat, but not as cool as they make it out to be. If you’re browsing a billion images it is pretty great

3. I like Finder’s new sidebar layout, and really like that all of my servers are just a click away (no more Command + K!)

4. I really want to use Time Machine, but it really sucks that you cannot backup to a SMB share on the network. A let down in my opinion

5. The translucent menubar is a really weird ‘feature’, and one that I’m already attempting to turn off. The transparancy just doesn’t fit.

6. The new iCal layout is slightly nicer; the sidebar update is slick

7. Mail finally grouped my multiple IMAP account folders into separate menus!

8. I’m not sure how much usage I’ll get out of the notes feature in Mail.

9. The Stacks feature on the Dock is kind of odd. The idea only works well for folders that have a ton of files.

10. Is it just me, or am I weird for prefering a web-based RSS reader (Google Reader)? I’ll import my OPML feed into Mail for testing though.

The packaging is simple, elegant, and gorgeous of course! On a side note, when I answered the door for the delivery, the FedEx guy looked at me and smiled at the package, winked, and said ‘Have fun this weekend!’. We are everywhere.

My wife just informed me that she wants a pig for her birthday. Nothing like a weeks notice.

Here is a quick and easy function written in PHP that will allow you to sort a multidimensional array.

 
function orderBy(&$data, $field, $direction){
//Provide the anonymous recursive functionality
  $code = “return strnatcmp(\$a[’$field’], \$b[’$field’]);”;
	<p>//Figure out which way to sort the comparision function parameters<br />
$whichWay = (strtoupper($direction) == &#8220;ASC&#8221;) ? &#8217;$a,$b&#8217; : &#8217;$b,$a&#8217;;</p>
	<p>//Recursively call the anonymous function
  usort($data, create_function($whichWay, $code));<br />
}<br />
 

This function assumes that your array looks something like the following:

 
$arr = array();
	<p>$arr<sup><a href="#fn714297106486d59c9e1a3e">0</a></sup> = array(<br />
&#8220;First Element&#8221;  => 1,<br />
&#8220;Second Element&#8221; => 2,<br />
&#8220;Third Element&#8221;  => 3<br />
);</p>
	<p>$arr<sup><a href="#fn814303482486d59c9e6862">1</a></sup> = array(<br />
&#8220;First Element&#8221;  => 4,<br />
&#8220;Second Element&#8221; => 5,<br />
&#8220;Third Element&#8221;  => 6<br />
);</p>
	<p>$arr<sup><a href="#fn578066135486d59c9e8f6d">2</a></sup> = array(<br />
&#8220;First Element&#8221;  => 7,<br />
&#8220;Second Element&#8221; => 8,<br />
&#8220;Third Element&#8221;  => 9<br />
);<br />
 

With this we can easily sort by the array key name:

 
orderBy($arr, ‘Second Element’, ‘DESC’);
 

Output:

<br />
Array<br />
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [First Element] => 7
            [Second Element] => 8
            [Third Element] => 9
        )</p>
    [1] => Array
        (
            [First Element] => 4
            [Second Element] => 5
            [Third Element] => 6
        )
    [2] => Array
        (
            [First Element] => 1
            [Second Element] => 2
            [Third Element] => 3
        )
	<p>)<br />
 

As you can see, the $arr array has been sorted by the ‘Second Element’ key in descending order. Quick and easy.

Man, I can barely make it through classes anymore; I don’t know how it did it before I had a laptop. Shit is sincerely boring. I guess that’s what I get for teaching myself this shit years ago. Jumping through hoops for The Paper. Five weeks left and slowly counting.

I flirted with Ruby on Rails for a bit. I’ve learned my lesson. Back to good ‘ole PHP :)

I broke down and bought an XBox 360 yesterday. Since I've turned into a Mac guy, the gaming thing is really no longer viable on my computer, so I grabbed a console. This is the first console I've owned since the original Playstation. Before that? Super Nintendo. I guess I'm not much of a gamer, though I do need a distraction from work sometimes. 

Once again, I setup a new blog and post at least once a day until I get bored with the new blog. Then I dont post for an increasing number of days, then weeks…