Arty Ziff

I've been working a lot with time calculations, and have a few that require sunrise / sunset. All of the online sources such as the Navy Observatory and just Googling consistently produce the same numbers. However, using the PHP sunrise sunset functions, I can never reproduce what I'm seeing from other sources. One of the variables is the Zenith. 90 is often used as a "ball-park", but usually it's more accurate around 90.833. In any case, even adjusting the Zenith, I'm unable to get anything closer than a few minutes to online sources consistently. My neck of the woods is Seattle / Tacoma, specifically the Lakewood area around McChord Air Force Base. Here's a sample of the code from a class I wrote to test the PHP function... public function sunrise() { $sunriseL = date_sunrise(time(),SUNFUNCS_RET_STRING,47.2529,-122.4443,90.833,-($z_offset)); $sunrise[0] = $sunriseL; $sunrise_array = explode(":",$sunriseL); $sunriseZ_hr = $sunrise_array[0] + $z_offset; // Add Z offset to local time... if ($sunriseZ_hr >= 24) { $sunriseZ_hr = $sunriseZ_hr - 24; } if (strlen($sunriseZ_hr) == 1) {$sunriseZ_hr = str_pad($sunriseZ_hr,2,"0",STR_PAD_LEFT); } $sunrise[1] = $sunriseZ_hr . ":" . $sunrise_array[1]; return $sunrise; // Return local and Z in an array... } Any ideas why PHP sunrise / sunset don't reproduce what other sources say? In the end, the sunrise / sunset algorithm is available and not all that complex, I can write my own function and get better accuracy. But that really astonishes me that the PHP functions are inconsistent with *everyone* else.

Simple question: A row of data, one column of which is a large block of text. To store the text in the DB directly, or associate the row with a file that contains the text

Each record has a fairly large block of text. Should I store the text block as a file and not in the DB?

Well, that's something I'm questioning. Sure, "back in the day" when people might have to remember a URL, but I wonder if that's how people manage their "favorites". Does it? I'm wondering because I think that search engine spiders and search engine ranking are more complex than that these days. I guess I'm wondering if the URL makes any difference at all in the context of modern SEO technology as well as how visitors really manage their surfing...

I am using a CMS to manage site content. First, this is a "general interest" web site with a particular theme, but it is *NOT* a "reference" web site where users will be inclined to return to the same page over and over. Think of my web site as a "magazine" web site. Given these perimeters, what are the pros and cons and general opinions about URL re-writing verses the URL with a query string as the address? From an SEO perspective, does it matter anymore, what with very intelligent indexing spiders? How do users feel about it, do they even care anymore? In the past, I might have considered URL re-writing from a human interaction standpoint, and perhaps ease of indexing. But things have changed since the late 90's, I think most *people* are no longer really influenced by the physical structure of the URL, and possibly the same thing applies to search index spiders. Opinions?

The Proletariat hit it on the head: RTFM... It does answer the questions. Although I kind of like tutorials with copious examples... But I guess TM does cover the *basics* of my question...

I'm looking for a php class tutorial that talks about some very basic things that don't seem to get talked about in begaining php class tutorials. Such as declaring variables within a class and when you should do that. And within a class what is the difference between a pubic and private function? The function thing I can guess at: private functions are only available for use within the class, but public functions can be called from outside the class, yes? Just a guess. But also I am confused about when I should declare variables within a class. For example I recently saw: class something { private $this, $that, $theOtherThing; public function someFunction { ... } } Isn't there some PHP Classes For Idiots that covers this stuff?

It works out to 40 grams per day per cat. About the size and weight of a Tootsie Roll (for cats who take their dumps au naturel), or a couple of pieces of Almond Roca (for cats who use a litter box).

The Seattle Animal Control folks have done a study and determined that last year: 174,000 cats in Seattle produced 5.6 million pounds of cat shit (32 pounds a year per cat). I would have thought it would be more...

I'm looking for suggestions / recommendations for php classes that interact with Skype. It's a bit difficult to fully describe what I want to do, but think in terms of a internal customer support application leverages the functionality of Skype. We will need to do things like open Skype progamatically, monitor the elapse time and acquire that data for statistical analysis, things like that... I know Skype has an API, so I'm thinking someone has probably already written some classes that work with it... Naturally, I'm trying to avoid "reinventing the wheel". Anyone know about this sort of thing?

My mom, who is quite computer savvy, that is to say not your normal mom/grandma - she ain't no Luddite, used an Apple ][ for her word processing well past when most people had moved on to a Mac or PC, simply because so much of her writing was in that format, and she was proficient on the word processor. I think the main thing that sealed the purchase of a PC was that it became hard to find working peripherals and of course the death of the floppy... I wrote a program to convert her files to Word (this was before Open Office). I played quite a few games on the Apple, my favorite being The Bilestoad. And, I'm DEEPLY sorry for inflicting the Fresh Prince on this board, please do not ban me...

Somewhere in West Philadelphia, you will find an old basketball court with a single ball lying in the middle. Pick it up and start shooting hoops. After a while, a small group of hooligans will approach you and challenge you to a fight, which you must accept. After the fight, you must go home and relay the events to your mother. She will then inform you that you have an aunt and uncle living in one of the districts of Los Angeles, and out of fear, she will sned you there for an indefinite period of time. With your bags packed, go to the street corner, and whistle for a cab. The cab that will pull up will bear the word FRESH on the license plate, and upon closer inspection, novelty fuzzy dice will be hanging in the mirror. Although you will suddenly realize that cabs like these are extreamly hard to find, do not bear any thought to it. At this point, you MUST point in front of the car and say "Yo homes, to Bel Air". You will stop in front of a mansion, and it will be something between 7 and 8 o'clock, even though it will feel like you've been traveling mere seconds. Get your luggage out and say "Yo homes, smell ya later!", but do NOT turn back to face the cabby. Walk up to the door, look over your shoulder once, and then knock on the door three times. If you follow these instructions, your life will get flip-turned upside-down.

Yes, but the Joomla forums seem to be particularly "mind numbing". I'm not kidding when I say they are flooded with posts like this: "I just downloaded this, can you tell me how to make a Web site?" and "How can I make a MMORPG with this?" I mean, come on! It's a CMS... And if you can't figure out "how to make a Web site with this", well, I just don't know... Forget serious questions with serious answers.

It's annoying not to be able to edit posts (too short a time-out)... However, I wanted to say the above problem is probably the result of some misconfig on my part, but it may not be Joomla. I've considered maybe it's some other configuration relating to xcache...

A lot of "hard core types" bad mouth Joomla. I guess it's too "commercial", doesn't have the crunchy long-hair organic goodness of Drupal... That's my opinionated biased speculation... But version 1.7 is *VERY* smooth, much of the criticism about the code quality that stretches back to version 1.0 is no longer valid. Version 1.5 marked an almost complete rewrite, and the latest version 1.7 has squashed even more bugs and really done amazing things with the Admin UI. A lot of the criticism about the menu / category structure and design are the result of not understanding it (menus are completely customization, and can be built to almost unlimited depths). Joomla is a complicated CMS, but it is also extremely flexible. Having said that, you need to pick the right tool for the job, and maybe both Drupal and Joompla are both over-kill for what you need. There is a working demo at Joomla.org, and it's not too hard to install and set up yourself just to play around with. The latest version of WordPress is said to be very slick and powerful, it may be what you need.