Tom’s Graphic Design Journal

Before I forget, I had to jot this quick discovery down. While not documented in the CakePHP manual (at least not anywhere I could find), it is possible to sort your associated models by RAND(). Maybe not earth shattering news to some people, but I find it interesting and handy.

So in your model file where you specify your association arrays, under the "order by" field you'll simply put "RAND()" instead of "name ASC" or "id ASC" etc.

Why on earth would you want to randomize the order of your associated models? I had to for a trivia application I was doing for work. I had a list of answers associated with questions.

So now the list of answer choices is in random order rather than by id or alphabetical. This makes it a little different for each user or each time you take the trivia. Makes it more challenging perhaps or not as easy to cheat. Also with the way the answers were originally ordered, the correct answer was showing up in the same spot over and over.

Sometimes the need to randomize is there and this is a very easy (quick) way of doing so in CakePHP.

Update: In case you didn't read the comments in this post, order by rand is not effecient and as I've read not as random as some other methods you can use. So order by rand may only be useful for you in some situtations. As with everything in the programming world there are many many ways to do things, just be sure to weigh out all your options and choose the best one.

So there's a big hype going around lately about the iPhone and among the PDA/Pocket PC/Windows Mobile crowd an equally as big hype about making your PDA/Phone look like an iPhone. Well, it is really easy to do and you can even make your phone look better in my opinion. The sky is the limit with software like Wisbar Advance Desktop. You have complete control over the "desktop" of your Windows Mobile device and can add some really nice features/widgets/shorcuts, etc.

Someone also wrote a program that mimics the slide lock features of the iPhone. Now, I must admit this is a pretty good way of locking your phone. Especially if your phone is annoying to lock like mine.

Then to top it all off, there's a dialer program that changes the way your phone looks. Again, all these modifications don't need to look like an iPhone...they can be anyway you like. Let's see an iPhone compete with that for looks!

The slide lock program is under much debate and heavy fire from Apple as are the themes that make the WM Phones look like iPhones. Of course there are probably hundreds of photos of clown fish in the public domain as well. Still, Apple is swatting down sites that host these files by sending angry letters. Can they really do anything about it? Is it worth taking to court? Probably not. This guy certainly doesn't think so and he's a lawyer.

One thing that I think is shallow is the fact that you can buy an iPhone theme from this guy. Er, I mean he'll send you some files for a "donation." It's not 100% like an iPhone so who knows how Apple feels about it...though it does look slick as hell. Of course with a little graphics skill and $10 you can buy Wisbar Advance Desktop and make your own theme.

My feeling: Apple is really good at branding, marketing, and making things look good. However, Apple is really bad at inventing new technology and making their shit work. There, I said it! Yea, their computers crash all the time. I work on them all day and I have problems. Plus they are restricting at times. A Windows machine also crashes and has issues. I'm frustrated by all computers. If you have a computer that gives you no problems (a few problems is more than none)...you don't use it enough or push it to its limits.

Unlike the Windows Mobile devices, I bet you there won't be nearly as many customizations and modifications for the iPhone. Not to mention its weak processor (update: looks like they went with a stronger processor fortunately) and lack of expansion slot (who cares if you can get 4gb OR 8gb, with a card slot you get unlimited gb). I can also bet there won't be nearly as many programs or games. It may be more stable, but that stability comes at a price. Plus I haven't had many crashing issues with my Windows Mobile device anyway and WM6 is around the corner so you never know.

Microsoft has really been surprising lately and I'm sure the Deep Fish browser is going to be as good or better than the browser on the iPhone without a doubt. I think the Picsel browser is as good or certainly looks the same as the iPhone's. Plus Verizon has something up their sleeve for the end of the summer too apparently. So maybe the iPhone really is too little too late...too expensive. Just like everything else Apple makes.

Thank God we're getting closer to Star Trek. It sure beats chasing a ball around with a stick. There's been some really amazing advances lately and I'd like to say Microsoft is getting on my better side. Well, except for opening up a limited beta test of their new mobile web browser, Deep Fish. That is just wrong. Completely wrong. You don't tease the public. Especially not after having your ass handed to you by Apple for the past few years in terms of "wow factor" and branding. Of course I'm sure many people still don't use Windows Mobile so maybe I'm over reacting and by the time there's a larger percentage of the population using Windows Mobile, Deep Fish will be complete. However, I can't wait for it to be finished as I'm sure it'll be as good if not better than iPhone's web browser. Afterall, it's leveraging some pretty amazing technology.

I believe it may even be using PhotoSynth to render/load images faster than other browsers of similar nature. If it isn't, it certainly should...and I think PhotoSynth will be very important in the near future. See an amazing demo of PhotoSynth. Of course you'll need a PC to view that, but don't worry, I know there's some videos out there that you can find on YouTube or something.

The other interesting piece of technology that I found out about the other week was again by (or bought by) Microsoft. I'm sure everyone has seen on the news, the coffee table computer.

Phew, and I was starting to get bored with all this Flash and "Web" stuff. I won't say something point something. I hate that word.

I stumbled upon a really cool plugin for WordPress that I think deserves a special notation. I found it listed on wordpress.org along with many other plugins to highlight code, but I found this one very easy to install and use. We'll see how it works for various languages, but it looks great. It doesn't seem to have basic HTML language support (perhaps I can write an xml definition file for that), but it does have support for ActionScript (2 not 3, but that should be ok), JavaScript, PHP, and Perl which I'll probably never use.

The other nice thing is it will allow you to copy and paste code. Expect more code snippets from me (which I've been meaning to get to). You can download the plugin yourself by visiting the Flash Text Formatter web site.