Mark Foster's Blog

Misadventures in Technology

Entries for January, 2009

How to setup and use the Xdebug Extension for PHP Profiling

A profiling tool can provide valuable information about bottlenecks in your code. I believe profiling is a critical aspect of optimizing because it will tell you about your real code bottlenecks as opposed to your perceived bottlenecks. This enables you to focus your resources on areas that will provide the most performance benefit for your [...]

Review: RC Wall Climber/Clamber Remote Control Mini Car (Updated)

Update: Warning I have received at least one report of a non-working car and the manufacturer has does not seem to have a web site that I can find to get a replacement. I have downgraded my rating to 2 stars accordingly. If you buy one of these make sure you get it from some [...]

Review: Senario NRG MicroFly RC Hovering UFO

In a previous post I talked about the Senario Alien Microfly a bit and in this post I will provide a full review. I gave a few units to some of my family for Christmas so I have flight reports from them as well. The Senario Alien Microfly kit comes with a transmitter and the [...]

How to use the file_get_contents() function to make an HTTP request from PHP

In a previous post I talked about using the HttpRequest object and functions in the PECL_HTTP extension to make HTTP requests from PHP. In some cases you may be limited to using functionality built into the PHP core. The file_get_contents() function has less features than the PECL_HTTP extension but it is built into PHP 4.3 [...]

How to make your PHP application check for its dependencies

The very informative phpinfo() function The phpinfo() function displays just about everything you want to know about your PHP installation. It includes info on all your PECL and PEAR modules so it is a quick way to check what’s installed. It will also tell you useful web server information including any query strings you pass. [...]