Holiday thoughts; high-tech items of the (very near) future

There are four items that I want to purchase.  All of them, I feel the future; with the advancement of technology, or rather, the availability of it.  So much can be accomplished with the right idea, better concepts, and better management. 

One is, Raspberry Pi, a small Linux box that costs $25, or $35 with network connection.  Just at those prices, the full fledged net book equivalent machine power will be offered to so many people in the world.  The 'charitable' organizations offer them 'for educational purposes' -- never a Windows machine.  With its graphics chip that can connect to TV screens, however, this can be a game changer. 

Another is, Craft ROBO, a cutting plotter.  There are numerous other machines that cuts paper, plastic, vinyl sheets, and other materials, but this machine, cuts items that are drawn on your PC.  No cartridges, no nonsense about those black-boxes to set cut patterns.  Its software takes a figure, calculate the outline, and the machine cuts it out for you.  Unfortunately, the latest model is out of stock.  Its manufacturer, Graphtech Inc, says the new model would be coming in March 2012. 

The other is, iPad3 or Windows 8 tablet PC.  App-wise, the share number one is the Android machines, however.  The Windows 8 tablet PC on ARM is yet to come, reportedly in March. 

Lastly, it is the 3D printer.  There are many types of them; stacking shaped plastic lump, cutting out a shape from a resin block, or even binding composite powder layer by layer.  iModela might be the one, but I need more research on these.  Taking out a plastic material, shape them in the way that you like as in printing figures on paper, and use them as in any way that you like, in modeling for fun and for any other useful purposes in research and engineering, replaceable parts of an equipment anywhere, etc.

PHP's overload: __call()

In my last blog, I wrote about PHP's get/set "overload", or hooking those methods for private members. There are more overloading method in PHP. The __call() method overload methods. This method "overloads" hidden member functions; including those methods that are non-existent. That is, you can create on the spot a brand new method just by calling __call().

class Test
{
  function __call($name,$parameter)
  {
    $value=$parameter[0];
    switch($name)
      {
      case "round":
        $value=round($value);
        break;
      case "floor":
        $value=floor($value);
        break;
      case "ceil":
        $value=ceil($value);
        break;
      }
    return $value;
  }
}

$test=new Test;
echo "Rounding: round(16.4) = ".$test->round(16.4);
echo "<br />";
echo "Floor: floor(16.4) = ".$test->floor(16.4);
echo "<br />";
echo "Ceiling: ceil(16.4) = ".$test->ceil(16.4);
echo "<br />";

This actually is a potential technological breakthrough -- in that the methods bears arbitrary names that are pseudo-defined and typed not dynamically then at programming time. This is a conceptual revolution in the programming. Remember, OOP is just a different form of C's structure.

Rounding: round(16.4) = 16
Floor: floor(16.4) = 16
Ceiling: ceil(16.4) = 17

"Overload"? or hooking get/set in PHP

In PHP, there are a set of functions that hooks getting and setting private member variables.  When the variable is set, __set() method will be called.  When the variable is accessed, __get() method is called.  In PHP's terminology, hooking variable definition and retrieval are called overloading. 

class HookTest
{
private $a=1;

public function __get($name)
{
  echo "$name is being retrieved<br />";
  return $this->$name;
}

public function __set($name,$value)
{
  echo "$name is being set<br />";
  $this->$name=3;
}
}

echo "<pre>";

$test=new HookTest;
$test->a=2;
echo $test->a;

Newline in select-option tags

Our site had a list of fonts available for our clients. The list included, European and Cyrillic fonts. We put them in a drop-down list.

List of fonts:
     European
     Cyrillic

Then, it turned out to be that Cyrillic fonts were included in European fonts. We had to select/deselect both at the same time. The trouble is, the HTML's select's option does not take br tags, or new lines. All lines have to be in a single line. Here is a jQuery code that select/deselect European and Cyrillic fonts at the same time. The code hooks any click on the European fonts to a handler that select/deselect Cyrillic fonts.

    $('#European').live("click",function(){
     var selected=$('#European').attr("selected");
     if(selected=="selected") 
  {
      $('#Cyrillic').attr("selected","selected");      
  }
     else
  {
      $('#Cyrillic').attr("selected",false);      
  }    
 });

Here is a word of caution; we had yet another problem with the Cyrillic option with the reset operation. The Cyrillic option has to be deselected manually.

    // de-selects the Cyrillic option.
    $("#reset").click(function(){
         $('#Cyrillic').attr("selected",false);      
 });