Monthly Archives: February 2009

Famous websites that use PHP and/or MySQL

Posted by David Hurst on February 25, 2009 31 comments

Ever wondered how many of the big boys are coding in PHP, or how many use MySQL?

I have found that some people have a rather warped perception that PHP is somehow amateur, or not suitable for large scale projects. Again, I have heard (often from Microsoft junkies) that MySQL somehow can’t cut it alongside SQL Server and Oracle. I don’t know where this nonsense originates from.

The simple way to answer this is to list some of the websites that use each technology (correct at time of writing)…

PHP

Facebook – yep, the world’s biggest social networking platform is written in PHP. 150 million users and counting, and in my experience, significantly faster and more stable than competing platforms written in other languages (e.g. MySpace).

Yahoo! – formerly the world’s largest search engine. Yahoo! makes use of PHP.

YouTube – the world’s biggest video sharing website uses PHP technology.

Wikipedia – the pre-eminent user contributed web encyclopaedia has PHP elements.

MySQL

Google – the world’s most used search engine relies on MySQL.

Yahoo! – the world’s second most used search engine also relies on MySQL.

YouTube – and yes, these guys also trust MySQL.

I migrated to PHP/MySQL from ASP/SQL Server and I’ve never looked back. For me PHP is faster to code, in my experience is more stable, has a much wider user support, is platform agnostic and has a very low total cost of ownership. Similarly, MySQL is the business when it comes to databasing, plus it has the backing of UNIX giants Sun. UNIX you say? Doesn’t most of the world use Windows? True for end users, but not for web servers. The vast majority of the Internet runs on UNIX and Linux servers and, whilst PHP and MySQL can run perfectly happy on Windows servers, they are designed with Linux/UNIX in mind. It’s the most popular solution by far and that makes it the perfect choice as a development platform, regardless of the size of your web project.

And just to clarify, before I get flamed by hordes of foaming-at-the-mouth Microsoft zealots, what I’m saying here is not that PHP/MySQL is necessarily better, faster, more reliable etc. than any other system (although many do believe that), but that it is clearly capable of running some of the world’s biggest websites, and therefore should be worth consideration for your project too.

Tesco – every litre helps. Apparently.

Posted by David Hurst on February 16, 2009 None comments

Who does it help? Tesco? Definitely! The customer? Not so much.

For those that don’t know, this is Tesco’s little twist on their slogan used to advertise their 5p off per litre on petrol and diesel (providing you have bought £50 worth of groceries). If you shop at Tesco anyway, and would spend that much anyway, then any petrol saving is very nice. If you use it as a reason to shop at Tesco, think again.

If your Tesco is not in a major town, you can pretty much guarantee that the price of their petrol is much higher than everywhere else. It was always the way with the Tesco in Chard, and now it would seem they are doing the same thing at the Tesco petrol station in Ilminster. It’s normally 3p – 4p more expensive than the local Shell forecourt, so actually, you save 1p – 2p per litre. And if, like me, you already have a Shell Mastercard (with a 3% fuel cashback), then it’s still cheaper to buy your fuel from Shell – and you don’t have to spend £50 on shopping first or put supermarket grade fuel in your car.

For residents in smaller towns, this is not the great deal that Tesco claim it to be. There’s no reason why they have to be more expensive at the pump than everyone else. There’s no reason why Tesco petrol in Ilminster should cost more than Tesco petrol in Yeovil. They will claim that it’s down to delivery costs, but as Ilminster is closer to the A303 arterial route than Yeovil, this argument won’t fly.

The Tesco petrol station in Ilminster was originally an Esso station. Tesco closed the forecourt, whacked up a temporary fence for several months and put up signs boasting a new and improved petrol station for us lucky residents. When the hoarding finally comes down, we find that the Esso signs have been swapped for Tesco and everything else is as is. Same pumps. Same car wash. Same shop. They did add a new, very annoying and ugly one way entry/exit system, and of course they whacked the prices up, but otherwise, nothing has changed.

Bennetts Motorcyle Insurance – bleeding me dry

Posted by David Hurst on February 7, 2009 3 comments

I think I made a mistake in choosing Bennetts to insure my motorcycles. Whilst their premium initially seemed low, I am now paying for that in spades with their incessant £25 “admin” charge. Every time I make a change to my policy, no matter how minor, they bang on £25.

Today I phoned to change my address and update the details of how the bike is stored, and guess what? Yep. Another £25 please. And here’s the real scam: if you pay by monthly installments, the only way you can pay the £25 is by adding it to your direct debit, which means you get charged interest on the admin fee too!!!

And how is it that there is no refund in premium due to the fact the bike is now parked in a secure garage as opposed to being left on the street?

No other insurance company has ever charged me for a change of address, unless the new address impacted the premium. Bennetts, you are a complete joke – you may have my £25 (plus interest), but you have lost my business. When renewal time comes I shall be deserting you like the proverbial sinking ship.

Is Carole Thatcher a racist for likening someone to a golliwog?

Posted by David Hurst on February 4, 2009 2 comments

Probably not, but she is being vilified as one. For those that don’t know, she was having a private conversation – off air – with fellow presenter Adrian Chiles and some guests, when she said that a certain tennis player looked like a “golliwog”.

Firstly, and before I get loads of abuse from PC obsessed morons, I understand that the term “golliwog” has historical racist overtones and is found offensive by some people. However, the term is a name for a specific product, and as far as I’m aware, there are no other names to refer to golliwog dolls. Now, I think many people will know which tennis player Carole was talking about (Gael Monfils) and it is his hair-do which more than likely elicited the remark. When one has grown up with the dolls (which were given away and made more popular by Robertson’s jam), and then someone’s hair reminds you of one, it would be awfully easy for the word “golliwog” to come rolling off the tongue would it not?

Who is actually offended by this? Listening to Radio Five Live Breakfast Phone-In this morning, it would seem that it’s predominantly PC white people, presumably trying to assuage their own natural racist tendencies by arguing so vehemently against racism. When a black woman did phone in, she pointed out that it was all a load of nonsense, not at all offensive, and that she had used the exact same term herself to describe the exact same tennis player. Nicky Campbell gave her the short shrift and cut her off for the usual ridiculous journalistic reason that no argument or on-air conflict can be had with someone talking sense.

Racism is alive and well in this world. It’s completely fine for black people to ridicule white people. It’s also fine for black people to be racist towards other black people. How many times do you see black comedians doing a set full of racist jokes, and how many black rappers/singers do you hear using the term “nigger” in their music? Does anyone complain? No.

In this country there is massive sensitivity to any comments made about non-white or non-British people. Another example is the use of the word “Paki”, a short form of “Pakistani” in much the same way as “Aussie” is a short form of “Australian” – it is the way and the context in which the word is used that makes it offensive, not the word itself. What about religion? Woe betide anyone who should dare to offend a muslim, but as for Christians, anything goes. Basically, if you are a white Christian, expect to be offended daily and be extremely careful about what you say, because the PC brigade (aka The Return of the Stasi) will be watching.

Anyway, for her slip of the tongue, Carole Thatcher will pay with her job. Yes, she’s been sacked. For something she said in a private conversation off air. Presumably, if she had been a chat show host on 6 million per year, the BBC would have instead given her a suspension and made her apologise.

This is ludicrous! We the licence payer are forced to contribute to the obscene salary of the offensive lout Jonathan Ross, who can act with virtual impunity regardless of the filth that comes out of his mouth, and yet other presenters are made examples of the BBC’s pandering to the PC nutjobs that roam our land.

The BBC consistently broadcasts foul language, obscene comedy programmes, allows the use of Jesus Christ’s name as a swear word, and is perfectly happy for idiot comedians to offend Christians everywhere with some of the most disgraceful blasphemy ever heard. All of that is just fine, apparently. Jonathan Ross can use the F word as the punchline to every one of his jokes, but we must on no account ever liken the appearance of someone to a childhood toy – unless it’s a white or Christian toy of course, in which case you can say whatever the hell you like.

4 inches of snow and everything grinds to a halt… welcome to Britain!

Posted by David Hurst on February 4, 2009 None comments

What a bunch of sad acts we British are. Can you imagine what a Scandinavian might think of yesterday’s snowy antics?

I went to the Post Office in Yeovil yesterday afternoon, only to find it closed with a notice on the door that read: “Due to adverse weather conditions, we have closed today at 12.30…”! Give me a break! The snow had mostly melted by then anyway – there was hardly any around the Post Office. The sign should have read: “We don’t care if you have important business to attend to, we’ve all gone to play in the snow.”

The car park behind our office in the centre of Yeovil was virtually empty yesterday. Presumably, everyone woke up, saw a few inches of snow, and figured it was as good excuse as any to skive off work for a day. “Oooh I can’t possibly drive my car on snow – far too dangerous”. Learn how to drive then.

All the main roads have been gritted in any case. All that’s required is a bit of careful driving to the main road. And if there’s a snowy hill by your house, consider throwing down a little salt or warm water… but, then I guess most people would rather just blag a day off work and go build a snowman.

Why exactly do we pay so much for petrol???

Posted by David Hurst on February 3, 2009 None comments

I heard today that BP have announced their annual profits. £18,000,000,000!

I know that most of our petrol bill is the greedy government, but it’s perfectly clear that the oil companies are making huge amounts of money off it too – money that could be handed back to us the consumer in the form of cheaper petrol and energy bills.

18 billion is nothing short of scandalous. Nobody needs that much money. Surely these companies have a moral responsibility to pay back to society?

How to run Football Manager 2009 in a window on Mac OS X

Posted by David Hurst on February 2, 2009 4 comments

I was very frustrated to find that you cannot set Football Manager 2009 to run in a window from the in-game preferences as you could with previous versions. I’ve figured out a quick fix using Terminal (which you will find in your /Applications/Utilities folder). Type (or copy and paste) the following command into Terminal to launch Football Manager 2009 in a window:

/Applications/Sports\ Interactive/Football\ Manager\ 2009/fm.app/Contents/MacOS/fm -windowed -small_screen

There’s a more user friendly way of doing this, which I’ll explain at another time. For now, I’ve got teams to manage…