Dr Josh Pollard, of Bristol University, who is co-director of the dig, said: ‘The construction must have taken a lot of manpower … The palisade is an open structure which would not have been defensive and was too high to be practical for controlling livestock … It certainly wasn’t for hunting herded animals and so, like everything else in this ceremonial landscape, we have to believe it must have had a religious significance.’

‘The most plausible explanation is that it was built at huge cost to the community to screen the environs of Stonehenge from view. Basically, we think it was to keep the lower classes from seeing what exactly their rulers and the priestly class were doing.’

Read this news Courtesy of Moss on TMA

Assigning complete module output to a variable

sfContext::getInstance()->getController()->»
getPresentationFor(’module’,'action’);

This is pretty useful, dropped into your Action this retrieves the fully rendered (layout, template, content) output of another Action/Module. Many of the email examples recommend putting the content you wish to send out into a partial or component and show how to grab it for variable assignment, but this will take a whole page you might want to email ‘as is’. I use it retrieve a current newsletter page as it is would be rendered for the web so I can drop it into an email.

Flexible but full Absolute URLs to assets

mymodule:
  stylesheets:    [main , 'http://mysiteDotCoDotUK/path/to/this.css']
  javascripts:    ['http://mysiteDotCoDotUK/path/to/that.js']

The books don’t seem to mention it, but you can use absolute URLs in your view.yml for embedding stylesheets and javascripts. So you can set granular stylesheet and script settings down to the module while still producing absolute links to them. When your assets also use the absolute=>true boolean options in Link and Asset Helpers, then you have dynamically generated fully standalone output. I’ll be using this to make sure email newsletters find their supporting content.

With this, I can provide the editor interface, management and preview options, a live copy of the current newsletter and archive of old ones on the web, and share the very same content in mails to subscribers.

The Object form helpers looked particularly useful, so for my first production development I aim to use them wherever possible. These helpers allow you edit objects directly, simplifying the update process back in your actions.

sample form in editformSuccess.php template:

<?php echo form_tag('editform/updatetitle'); ?>
<?php echo object_input_hidden_tag($newsletter, 'getID') ;?>
Title: <?php echo object_input_tag($newsletter, 'getTitle') ;?>
<?php echo submit_tag('update'); ?>

and in actions.class.php:

<?php
public function executeEditform($request)
{
$this->newsletter = »
NewsletterPeer::retrieveByPk($request->getParameter(’id’));
$this->forward404Unless($this->newsletter);
}

public function executeUpdatetitle($request)
{
$nltoupdate = NewsletterPeer::retrieveByPk($request->getParameter(’id’));
$this->forward404Unless($nltoupdate );
$nltoupdate->fromArray(»
$this->getRequest()->getParameterHolder()->getAll(),BasePeer::TYPE_FIELDNAME);
$nltoupdate->save();
return $this->redirect(»
‘newsletters/view?id=’.$request->getParameter(’id’));
}

The update code uses the fromArray method to update any properties of your object it holds data for, received from your form. Adding fields to your form doesn’t require changes to the action.

I got into difficulties when it came to setting a boolean field for my object, called “IsPublished”. Wishing to stick with the Object form helpers I investigated the Object_select_tag, however this has a different use altogether - allowing you to grab properties of other objects to match with your current object. The classic example being choosing an author from the authors object to match up to a post object.

I still wanted to save a property for my object, but I didn’t want to have it select from the object, or grab values from other objects. Further searches revealed I wasn’t alone in wondering how to set default selected values and generally get to grips with object_select_tag.

Mixing Object and Form helpers seemed the best solution, using select_tag for my boolean field. However this meant I wasn’t using the Object helper exclusively, so would it still work with fromArray?

The form code generated looked promisingly simple, so I tried a mix of object_input_tag and select_tag in my editformSuccess.php template:

<?php
$defaultOption = »
$newsletter->getIsPublished() == 1?1:0; # get current, set default
echo select_tag(’in_published‘, options_for_select(array(»
0, 1),
$defaultOption));
?>


Note the highlighted property in select_tag. My Object Property is called “IsPublished”. To object-generate a plain text input field I’d have used:

<?php
Published: <?php echo object_input_tag($newsletter, 'getIsPublished') ;
?>

So my current field value would be retrieved, and the Object helper generates form fields using BasePeer::TYPE_FIELDNAME which in turn is used in my fromArray method to update the Db.

Normally one would use select_tag with internal field names (BasePeer:: TYPE:PHP_NAME) and write more action code to marry them up before a save(), however here I have to add my database field name into my view code.

Tethering your templates to your database schema is a route no-one should go down. So the internal name should be converted to the Db name on-the-fly in your template. The Peer classes have a function for this, and its public. The following call converts your usual internal field name for you, ready to drop into your select_tag:


<?php
$IsPublished_translated = BaseNewsletterPeer::translateFieldName(»‘IsPublished’,BasePeer::TYPE_PHPNAME, BasePeer::TYPE_FIELDNAME )
?>

You could assign this in your action, but it works just as well in the template:

<?php
echo select_tag(»
‘BaseNewsletterPeer::translateFieldName(»
‘IsPublished’,BasePeer::TYPE_PHPNAME, BasePeer::TYPE_FIELDNAME‘,»
options_for_select(array(»
0, 1),
$defaultOption));
?>


A final step would be to migrate this into a function higher up that so as to make templates a little prettier when editing.

An outbreak of transient SLB’s outside the Walker.

I’m not sure if there’s a bad guy in this, or if this just shows how social networking doesn’t have the power to sweep traditional business aside after all. That Twitter didn’t come up with a premium service to address this earlier probably means they’re hoping that user outcry will force some sort of reinstatement, a full or partial climbdown on the part of the operators.

We’ll see, but we’ll probably have to log on to see.

Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service, so our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies (more on this later). Your search history is your business, not ours.

Right now though I’m waiting a long time for the first few of the 1,682,519,994 results promised on a search of this blog’s title to appear. The first time I tried it I got a rapid response - saying there were no results. But I’m optimistic that this could be my search engine of choice when things settle down. Their claim to examine the context of search queries in order to refine results is interesting and I wonder what it means in practice.

While a good tactic for a launch I don’t imagine the black homepage with centred box will last, not least when they quickly revert to convention for the results; but the results page layout of boxed up summaries is pleasant and readable - not unlike a good news site.

Now I’m waiting for page 2, and the features, privacy and management pages have all gone missing. I’ll come back tomorrow.

Former winner and Juror Graham Crowley notes:

“There’s no art for airports or corporate foyers in this show. There is a great range in subject matter and context, and an urgency to the exhibition that I hadn’t anticipated”

The article includes a slideshow of some shortlisted entries, and the full shortlist’s here: http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/

and the show opens in… 57 days.

I was convinced that these characters were immutably spiteful.

Looks like the thin grasp they had on the plot has also slipped through their fingers. I doubt Boudicca’s lips and eyelids would’ve survived long enough to be set in stone. Can’t wait for next week, as usual I’m addicted to questionable telly.

I would love to think they’ll tackle something proper far back, prehistoric, before straight roads and taxes, but as the whole thing’s geared to this sword business it seems strictly this side of the Christian Epoch.

On day one we heard from Merseyside High Tech Crimes (HTC) Unit, about their day to day challenges and how they’re overcome. We also heard from a career digital forensic analyst about recovering data from all makes and models of mobile devices: handhelds, phones and the like, and the ways and means of recovering data from the removable media they commonly use.

On day two there was a practitioner talk from Henrik Kiertzner, about the technology’s propensity to nurture self-selecting constituencies, groups of like minded (though possibly geographically dispersed) individuals with ideologies in accelerated development - and how we’re unlikely to even notice them until they make their move.

We heard from Mark Taylor about scoping corporate forensic investigations, which gave me additional avenues of inquiry for my own research.

The keynote speaker Jim Gamble from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre brought us insights - with wit and wisdom - from a truly difficult field and a call to developers to understand the difference their expertise can make to young individuals. Many of the techniques they use in the kind of cybercrime they combat are traditional. Knowing your enemy being one of them.

I’d assumed this would be a dry and technical conference, so its surprising how far social concerns pervaded the discussion sessions and the conference as a whole.

Positive so far.