By Greg Ferrell » August 27, 2012
Laravel uses the __toString method:
To make __() work when sending it a lang line. However, unless whatever you are doing is doing an implied casting, it wont become a string.
This can be a pain when sending lang lines via json_encode.
By Greg Ferrell » October 15, 2011
So, like most people who get excited about new software, I installed the Ubuntu 11.10, Oneiric Ocelot update as soon as it was available this week. I have said it loudly on twitter before, but I really dislike Ubuntu Unity. The sad thing is that 11.10 not only comes with Unity as default, it uninstalls Gnome classic on upgrade, so if you were using classic in 11.04 like I was: Rude awakening.
Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to install Gnome 3 and make it the default booting shell for Ubuntu 11.10. First, you will need to install the Gnome shell in the terminal or through the software sources app. (I prefer to install from the terminal as it gives better information if an install fails.)
By Greg Ferrell » August 12, 2011
Last weekend I went with some friends to GenCon Indy. It was a blast and we got to try out some new board games that we’ve had our eyes on.
My friend Dave picked up a couple of pre-release games like Quarriors (amazing dice deck building game), and some Dominion expansions. One of the games we demoed was Ascension. Ascension is a deck building game like Dominion, but instead of piles of cards, only a few are out at a time and get replaced when purchased or defeated. I wasn’t blown away with it, but it was a cool idea. I just liked Quarriors better and we went home with it.
By Greg Ferrell » June 18, 2011
I use OS X and Ubuntu on a daily basis with my dev machines. One of the things that I like that Ubuntu can do is open folders with applications on right click. Unfortunately, OS X doesn’t do this by default, but we can accomplish it easily with an Automator Workflow. (It would be nice if Binary Age would add this feature to TotalFinder 
) .
One of the options in OS X’s Automator workflow outputs is ‘Service’, which will allow us to put a finished workflow into a right click menu for files and folders.
By Greg Ferrell » April 25, 2011
Have you been promoting JavaScript? Did you even know that you could/should be? It just got easier to help if you are using ExpressionEngine.
At JSConf 2010, Chris Williams started a project called PromoteJS to help get bad JavaScript references off the web. You will know how important a cause this is if you have ever done a Google search for JavaScript documentation or help. The top results are deplorable. (NEVER use w3schools.)
By Greg Ferrell » February 27, 2011
For a personal project, I needed to convert numbers to letters and double letters when greater than 26. This is rather a simple thing in PHP using the chr function.
The short of it is that you divide by 26 and get the letter, then repeat the letter for every multiple of 26. This gives us our double letters accurately. I also added an option for uppercase.