Tiffany B. Brown

a mish-mosh of stuff

Archive for March, 2009

Hunch.com: a review after 60 minutes of tinkering
Earlier today, I received an email from Caterina Fake, team inviting me to check out her latest web venture. Fake, as you probably know, was a founding member of the photo-sharing community Flickr. Flickr was sold to Yahoo! in 2005 and last summer Fake left Yahoo!, presumably to start her Next Big Thing. Well that [...] [Posted: 28 Mar 2009]
[PHP quickie] Select a certain number of words from a string
An alternative to subst() that selects entire words rather than a specified number of characters. I used this on a recent project where I needed to create a meta tag description from text and HTML stored in a database. Uses PHP’s native str_word_count() function. function select_number_of_words($input,$number_of_words){ $output = ''; $input = strip_tags($input); $input = str_word_count($input,1); [...] [Posted: 26 Mar 2009]
Twitter, privacy, and informational self-determination
UPDATE: Tweetdeck does, in fact, tell you whether someone’s updates are protected if you click on the user name and view his or her profile. It does not however do this at a glance. If you’re not listening from the CBC‘s Search Engine podcast, shame on you. It’s a kick ass show that looks at [...] [Posted: 23 Mar 2009]
Murs made my mantra
“Don’t let the fact that you can’t be perfect stop you from doing your best.” – Murs, from the intro to “I’m Innocent” from the album, Murs for President [Posted: 23 Mar 2009]
PHP: Sorting arrays randomly with array_randsort()
Or, you know, just use the shuffle() function. Kim points out the drawbacks of shuffle in the comments below. A custom PHP function. This function will return an array that’s been resorted in a random order. Supports both numerically-indexed and associative arrays. Uses PHP’s native array_rand() function. function array_randsort($array,$preserve_keys=false){ /*-------------------------------------/ Preserving the keys works best [...] [Posted: 11 Mar 2009]
Sort of pro-blogging for my massage therapist
I’m dipping my toe in the pro-blogging waters for my massage therapist‘s web site. I’m not (yet) doing it for pay, but I am doing it to gain some real world experience in running and writing for a successful [read: one that generates business] blog on behalf of a client. Below are links to a [...] [Posted: 9 Mar 2009]
Google Tip Jar crowdsources money saving tips
Google, building on its own App Engine and Moderator products, launched Tip Jar today. [Posted: 5 Mar 2009]
6 Things That Make Me Happy
Tagged by Anna M.. I hate being tagged, but I like Anna, so I’ll play along. Plus, since I have been slacking on my “happiness activities,” I figured this would be a good substitute. Rules Link to the person who tagged you. Post six things that make you happy along with these rules. Then tag [...] [Posted: 5 Mar 2009]
Links for 2008-03-04
It would be a Tuesday two-fer, but you know, it’s Wednesday. RiP: a generation of copyright criminals! The 23rd episode of the CBC‘s Search Engine podcast talks about Rip! A Remix Manifesto, a documentary about copyright and remix / mashup culture. It’s screening March 15, 2009 at SXSW in Austin. Why do I blog? I [...] [Posted: 4 Mar 2009]
Why “sassy” just doesn’t go over very well with black folks
In her Newsweek piece “No Apologies,” Raina Kelley asks her white fellow journalists to loosen up a bit and not be so afraid of being perceived as racist when discussing the Obamas. For the most part I agree with Kelley, but I think she misses the mark with this paragraph (emphasis mine): I know there [...] [Posted: 1 Mar 2009]