If you are a thinker, a mad scientist in the making or just a curious ADD person like me, the Arduino boards are just what you are missing in life.

Arduino is an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple micro controller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board.

Arduino can be used to develop interactive objects, taking inputs from a variety of switches or sensors, and controlling a variety of lights, motors, and other physical outputs. Arduino projects can be stand-alone, or they can be communicate with software running on your computer .

Arduino hardware can be used in Windows, Mac or Linux. The boards can be assembled by hand or purchased pre-assembled and the open-source IDE (programming environment) can be downloaded for free.

There’s a great starting guide at http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage, but I have also been recommended this book:

30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius

This guide shows you how to program and build a variety of projects with the Arduino microcontroller development system. Covering Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms, it gets you up to speed with the simplified C programming you need to know–no prior programming experience necessary.

You can find more books and arduino boards and components on here.

Examples of what one can accomplish with Arduino:

Technorati Tags: Arduino, arduino projects, C Programming, DIY geek, geek gifts, IDE, Linux, Mac, muti platform, Open Source, Programming, robbots, Windows

Related Posts

• March 11, 2010 -- The future of gaming is OpenGL
• June 20, 2009 -- OpenSuse Factory
• May 12, 2009 -- Offline Blogging Tools
• January 28, 2009 -- Synergy – share mouse and keyboard cross platform
• December 14, 2011 -- Show Desktop icons in Gnome 3 on Open SUSE 12.1

Why has no one thought of it before….. ? You may ask. But someone now has.  The XMLVM project was created by Arno Puder and his team at San Francisco State University.  What it does is provide a bridge between disparate compile-time and run-time environments — in a word cross-compiling, as described by  Frank Ableson on the Linux Magazine website. 

XMLVM serves as an umbrella for several projects. For all projects, a Java class file or a .NET executable is first translated to an XML-document. Based on the XML-document generated by the front-end, various transformations are possible. (extracted)

The possibilities are immense, but I think it will really take off in the mobile market with Applications being able to run cross-platform from Android to iPhone and so on.

Technorati Tags: Android, Development, iPhone, Mobile, Programming, XML, XMLVM

Related Posts

• October 25, 2010 -- Laptop, mobile and Firefox security
• May 24, 2010 -- Mobile Apps overload?
• June 20, 2009 -- OpenSuse Factory
• November 7, 2011 -- Arduino the Open Source hardware
• March 11, 2010 -- Request the Audible.com books application for Android

On June 18th 2009 The OpenSuse Project announced that its development factory has been made more accessible to package contributors.  Joe Brockmeier’s post at opensuseNews states…

 ”we’re making it easier for contributors to take responsibility for packages and to contribute directly to openSUSE. This means contributors will be able to be directly responsible for packages, without having to go through a Novell employee to make changes.“

Read more on OpenSuse News site.

Technorati Tags: Development, Linux, Novell, Open Source, OpenSuse Factory, Programming, Suse Linux

Related Posts

• November 7, 2011 -- Arduino the Open Source hardware
• December 14, 2011 -- Show Desktop icons in Gnome 3 on Open SUSE 12.1
• April 8, 2011 -- Linux turns 20
• July 25, 2009 -- PHP-GTK is still live
• July 8, 2009 -- Android to iPhone Apps with XML

This is a simple PHP  script to automatically display (dump output)  data submited from a html form.

The form setup

• all inputs (form fields) need to have the same name with [] at the end to turn it into an array,  e.g <input type=text name=formdata[]>

formq.html content

<form method=post action=showme.php>
Name: <input type=text name=formdata[]><br>
Email: <input type=text name=formdata[]><br>

<input type=submit value=ok>
</form>

The Script setup

showme.php content

<?php
$data = $_POST['formdata']; # get value from the form fields

foreach ( $data as $key => $value ) { # loop through array collecting the results

echo  “$value<br>”;  # output the data  – print to page
}
?>

Technorati Tags: $_POST, foreach(), html form, PHP, Programming

Related Posts

• December 4, 2008 -- Search Engine Optimization SEO in PHP (Book)
• November 7, 2011 -- Arduino the Open Source hardware
• August 10, 2011 -- Cardsave error “transaction date/time expired”
• January 31, 2011 -- It is not safe to rely on the system’s timezone settings
• July 8, 2009 -- Android to iPhone Apps with XML

the PHP version 5.2.7 was removed from distribution due to a bug that caused a security hole in some configurations. The bug was related to the magic_quotes_gpc which will be deprecated in version 2.6.

The PHP development team has officially announced the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.8. This release addresses a regression introduced by 5.2.7 in regard to the magic_quotes functionality, that was broken by an incorrect fix to the filter extension. All users who have upgraded to 5.2.7 are encouraged to upgrade to this release, alternatively you can apply a work-around for the bug by changing “filter.default_flags=0″ in php.ini.

Technorati Tags: PHP 5.2.7, PHP 5.2.8, Programming, Security, Web Programming

Related Posts

• November 7, 2011 -- Arduino the Open Source hardware
• August 22, 2011 -- TrueCrypt tutorial
• October 25, 2010 -- Laptop, mobile and Firefox security
• March 26, 2010 -- Books for sale – Linux Shell, Qmail Handbook and SSL/TLS
• July 8, 2009 -- Android to iPhone Apps with XML

Python is a dynamic object-oriented programming language that can be used for many kinds of software development. It offers strong support for integration with other languages and tools, comes with extensive standard libraries.

The Python developers have released the final version of Python
3.0, a major reworking of the programming language. It’s said to be intentionally incompatible
with the Python 2 series.

According to Guido van Rossum (Project Founder)

“… the new features in Python 3.0, compared to 2.6.
Python 3.0, also known as “Python 3000” or “Py3K”, is the first ever
intentionally backwards incompatible Python release. There are more
changes than in a typical release, and more that are important for all
Python users. Nevertheless, after digesting the changes, you’ll find
that Python really hasn’t changed all that much – by and large, we’re
mostly fixing well-known annoyances and warts, and removing a lot of
old cruft.”

read the official “What’s New in Python 3.0” release.

Technorati Tags: 2to3, Programming, Py3K, Python 3.0

Related Posts

• November 7, 2011 -- Arduino the Open Source hardware
• July 8, 2009 -- Android to iPhone Apps with XML
• June 20, 2009 -- OpenSuse Factory
• May 13, 2009 -- Automatically display form data with PHP
• December 9, 2008 -- PHP 5.2.8 Avaliable fixed the security bug on 5.2.7

The term SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has become a new phenomenon with marketeers.  As a programmer/developer it’s very hard to find a good book on such a broad subject but recently I found this great book. The authors go about explaining and guiding you through exercises that are relevant for both programmers and marketeers.  It contains detailed chapters on Website Content, Links, Webmaster tools and MOD_REWRITE. The code snipets found in this book can be used as a good reference guide to any SEO project.  This book is for PHP Programmers but they have also published a .NET version.

If  you develop with WordPress.org this releted post can also be very helpfull:  SEO and WordPress

Technorati Tags: Books, MOD_REWRITE, PHP, Programming, Search, SEO

Related Posts

• June 5, 2009 -- Keyword search and website ranking tools
• May 13, 2009 -- Automatically display form data with PHP
• March 27, 2009 -- .htaccess 301 Redirect
• December 13, 2008 -- SEO and Wordpress
• January 10, 2012 -- Google search goes social