StephenPhilbin.com - Web Development, Science and related waffle

Web Development, Science and Related Waffle

Most Recent Entries

Juno Reaches Jupiter

The Juno Mission has reached Jupiter and is preparing to begin the first of its 37 orbits of our solar system's largest planet where it will collect more detailed images and data from the gas giant than ever before.

Readability Restored

The highly ornate font I had until recently looked very nice, but was almost impossible to read. While fixing some other bugs I've now replaced the font with something less pretty, but it is at least readable.

Cosmology Course Complete!

The course actually finished a month or two ago, but I just got my official results confirmation in the post this morning. Weirdly enough though, the actual University Certificate itself still hasn't arrived yet.

A Note About Trying To Use Exceptions To Handle Errors From MySQLi In PHP

As anyone that's spent a while using PHP will know, things aren't always as staightforward as the documentation would have you believe. In fact somethimes you can read the documentation, try out an implementation and your implementation will do the exact opposite of what's in the documentation. MySQLi is no exception.

Category Creation & Editing Component Complete

I really should have done it <em>before</em> I started work on the entry management components, but the category management component is now finished. At least until I decide it needs improving in some way or another, anyway.

Stephen Philbin.com: Now In Full (24 bit) Colour

It's long overdue, but this place finally has has not just colour, but even graphics too! It still needs work, but at least it doesn't look <em>quite</em> so much like a newspaper from the 1920's with an allergy to Serif fonts.

This Place Needs Some Pizzazz

After finishing my Astronomy/Astrophysics course and getting back a lot of my free time, the obvious thing to do would be to start posting about the course and to spruce this place up a bit. However, common sense really isn't my strong point.

I Passed!

Well I finally got the results for the Astronomy course that I took and I have my confirmation. I passed... properly. Not a 40%—<i>thanks for taking part</i>—kind of pass, but an actual, proper pass.

Astrophysics: Tougher Than It Looks

Back in October last year I said that I was <q>Finally Ready To Start Posting</q>, so why have I only made one post since then? Simple; an update broke Apache and I didn't have time to fix it because my Astronomy course turned out to be rather difficult.

The Return Of Colourcoder

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I made my first ever Java program: Colourcoder. It's intended to help junior Web Developers learn about how computers represent colours, but it's also handy for other things too; like being lazy, for example.

Toys and Tools

A small selection of tools and files I've made for quick-reference purposes.

A List of a few of the less exotic UTF8 characters and their code points (in both hexadecimal and decimal notation)
A very simple tool for converting numbers and (UTF-8 encoded) characters back and forth between their decimal, hexadecimal, binary, and character representations. (Incomplete do not assume characters are properly converted yet.)
Colourcoder. A tiny and highly portable colour selection tool. Ideal for learning about how computers represent colours or, if you're already familiar with the format, being lazy and finding just the right colour the fast way.

Other Places Worth a Peek

Links to other sites that are well worth visiting if you have an interest in their subject matter or need a service they offer.

Study Astronomy.com. This is the place to go want to feed any interest in Astronomy or Astrophysics that you may have. You'll learn quite a bit and have something to show for it at the end.
John Hogan Web Development. A designer of beautiful websites. It's very rare that I take commissions, but John often accepts a variety of commissions; assuming he isn't already fully booked, of course.