In attempting to write cross-platform, portable PHP code, I used PHP's DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR constant to write path strings, e.g. "..".DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR."foo", because the "proper" way to do it on Windows would be "..\foo" while on everything else (Linux, UNIX, Mac OS X) it would be "../foo".

Well, as Christian on php.net pointed out and the guys at Web Design Forums confirmed, that's completely unnecessary. As long as you use the forward slash, "/", you'll be OK. Windows doesn't mind it, and it's best for *nix operating systems.

Apple's "Scrolling TrackPads," found in the MacBook and MacBook Pro, are flawless.

Some who have used HP or Dell touchpads may find this hard to believe. Here I respond to common questions and discuss what I love about Apple's touchpads.

Quick tip: Convert your .wma files (Windows media audio) to .mp3 files
on your Mac quickly and easily with Switch, a free download from http://www.nch.com.au/switch/plus.html. It works great and is very customizable; you can output to MP3 in whatever bitrate you choose, or convert to AIFF (.aif), .au, Ogg Vorbis (.ogg), Free Lossless Audio Codec (.flac), or many others.

I just wanted to say that, as of December 2007, I am beginning in earnest the process of giving this site the rehaul it so badly needs. The content here is only a part of what I offer online, and soon, my homepage will provide access to much more.

I know most of you visitors come here from Googling specific problems, which is great, but I'd also like to easily answer your question, “Who are you? What does your site have for me?” To do that, I am going to have a clean and simple home page which categorizes all my content so you can quickly and easily see what may interest you, and I will add a navigation ribbon at the very top of all my content providing quick access to those categories.

The majority of important updates to AlanHogan.com should arrive by January 8, 2008.

When I finish the important site restructuring, I will get back to work on that sexy little project I call Darkboom – work which is also very much overdue. But hey, I’ve been hard at work in school.

For those of you Mac OS X programmers trying to use the Boost C++ library who are confused with all this #include and #include-path nonsense and can't get your program to compile, I have finally figured it out.

Most Mac users seem to know and love Quicksilver, that wonderful little application launcher from Blacktree (and much more, as LifeHacker often points out).

Those of you stuck in the Windows world (or at least sometimes) may finally have an alternative: Enso. The makers of Enso put a lot of thought into their product (and say it's not just a rip-off of Quicksilver). However, Enso, unlike Quicksilver, is not free; it will run you $19.95 after your 30-day trial. You can download Enso here.

Good news for web developers!

Microsoft is now pushing IE7 to all Windows XP users as a high-priority, automatically-delivered (if Automatic Update in Windows XP is on) update. Strangely, they say, "Distribution of Internet Explorer 7 by Automatic Updates will take several months to complete." I am not quite sure what that even means.

More information is available from Microsoft. Previously, you needed to go through the often-rocky Windows Validation program, or whatever, to upgrade to IE7. (Microsoft's site says that "all Windows users" can now upgrade, but in fact they only mean Windows XP SP2 and Server 2003 users. XP SP1, 98, 2000, and Me are still left out in the cold.)

This is important to me because if this move cuts deep enough into MSIE 6's market share (50% currently), we will not have to design our websites for IE 6, the lowest common denominator (and dominator) in the browser world. Hello, real CSS and PNG! (The timing is odd because just last weekend, I wrote a project to turn PNGs into transparency-dithered GIFs using only server-side code. No JavaScript, and it works for CSS backgrounds.)

Something that has bothered me for a very long time is my inability to play FLAC audio files on my Mac. (FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec and does not play in iTunes.) Well, I’ve finally gotten it figured out. Just follow these simple steps.

1. Download xACT, which converts from FLAC to WAV or AIFF, and iLAS, which is an extremely high-quality MP3 encoder, better than iTunes’s built-in one. Install both of them.
2. Open your FLAC files in xACT. Convert them to either WAV or AIFF; it doesn’t matter which.
3. Import your finished WAV or AIFF files into iTunes (I usually just drag them onto Library on the left). If you want completely lossless files, you are done!
4. Most of us will want to save space (and enjoy playback with less of a system resource hit!), so create a playlist with any and all WAV and AIFF files you want to convert to MP3.
5. When you are viewing that playlist, open iLAS and convert to MP3! I use the default settings, which produce extremely high quality MP3s, almost losslessly.
6. Almost done! Now delete the WAV/AIFF files from your iTunes library and move them to the Trash. Manually edit the information on the songs, because unfortunately, WAV and AIFF do not support the ID3 tags that MP3 files have to store information about song title, artist, and album.

Also of note is that iLAS is great for ripping CDs. Instead of making a playlist, just click on the Audio CD and rip away!

Finally, I have joined Technorati, just so I can read Tantek’s blog. Technorati Profile