http://benbalbo.com PHP Trainer, Security Consultant, Open Source Developer, Open Source Advocate Wed, 18 Jun 2008 06:28:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Meaning: We come from dust; we return to dust. Except we don't really, do we? Sure, people who get cremated turn back to ash, but that's hardly environmentally friendly. The act of cremation is an energy inefficient CO2 spewing act - the last chance for members of our modern society ... http://benbalbo.com/2008/06/18/ashes-to-ashes-dust-to-dust/ When he was 11, he drew a perfect aerial view of London after only one helicopter ride. Watch Stephen Wiltshire draw a 5 foot panorama of Rome: http://benbalbo.com/2008/05/14/the-living-camera/ For the past three weeks I've been getting calls on my mobile from 02 8986 3000 at least once per week day, sometimes twice or thrice. Every time I answer the call I hear "I'm sorry, all operators are currently bu" and get cut off. Rather annoying! So they quickly ... http://benbalbo.com/2008/05/02/why-allphones-pissed-me-off/ SOLD! As my other half correctly mentioned in the comments, we've now sold this house. We did it without the use of an agent and saved ourselves an estimated AU$10,000 in commission alone. If you're looking to sell your house with the help of an agent though, look for one that follows ... http://benbalbo.com/2008/04/20/live-in-edwardian-luxury-home-for-sale/ The Password Strength Checker uses a number of metrics to determine how strong a given password is, including the number of characters in total, uppercase and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. It also deducts points in the event you have numbers only, repeated characters, consecutive same-case letters, sequential letters ... http://benbalbo.com/2008/04/04/how-strong-is-your-password/ The event was brilliant. I loved it. Everyone says they got a lot out of it. The after party drinks were definitely needed, and tasted so much better for being on Microsoft's tab. I sat down on Sunday afternoon after getting up at 1pm, had a coffee and reflected on ... http://benbalbo.com/2008/03/06/barcampmelbourne2008-was-a-huge-success/ I wrote an article on Installing PHP 5.3 in order to look at the newest features that have been back-ported from PHP 6. The result of this is my What's new in PHP 5.3 article that was published by SitePoint yesterday. I won't go in to the nitty-gritty here, but suffice ... http://benbalbo.com/2008/02/14/whats-new-in-php-53/ Job interviews can be hard work. I've had quite a few in my time, and you need to do at least a little homework before submitting yourself to the scrutiny of others. Most of my interviews have been quite ordinary, with someone asking questions and someone else interjecting occasionally trying ... http://benbalbo.com/2008/02/04/my-most-memorable-job-interview/ BarCamp Melbourne is on for the 23rd of February 2008 in Melbourne CBD. This will be the first BarCamp held in Melbourne itself, and hopefully this will make it more accessible than last year's (there are rumours that two participants got lost and never made the event!!). While this is a ... http://benbalbo.com/2008/01/28/barcamp-melbourne-2008-is-go/ I recently installed PHP 5.3 in order to play with some of the new features and thought I'd share the steps I took with you. While it's based on a clean installation of Ubuntu 7.10 Server, you might find this useful on existing systems too. As ever, this guide is for ... http://benbalbo.com/2008/01/28/installing-php53/