2nd Place - Ericsson & North Texas Food Bank Hackathon

13 Nov 2012

The “Hackathon” was a programming competition sponsored by Ericsson to solve some of the North Texas Food Bank’s problems.

We made a scheduling system that allows people to see which days need more volunteers, then sign up to volunteer. The coolest part is that it would call people with a prerecorded message reminding them of their appointment.

Calculate Weeks In Sharepoint

13 Nov 2012 =INT((Created-DATE(YEAR(Created),1,6)+(TEXT(WEEKDAY(DATE(YEAR(Created),0,1)),"d")))/7)+1

This is a modified version of this formula which didn't give me the correct week number (maybe due to regional settings?): http://lamahashim.blogspot.com/2009/10/sharepoint-calculated-field-week-number.html

It matches the number of weeks calculated in excel and all the calculators I could find on the internet.

Update: I also needed to add a 0 before the "Week" if the number is less than 10, because it will cause an error in sorting otherwise.

Here's the formula to add a 0 if the number is less than 10:
=IF((INT((Date-DATE(YEAR(Date),1,6)+(TEXT(WEEKDAY(DATE(YEAR(Date),0,1)),"d")))/7)+1)<10,"0"&(INT((Date-DATE(YEAR(Date),1,6)+(TEXT(WEEKDAY(DATE(YEAR(Date),0,1)),"d")))/7)+1),(INT((Date-DATE(YEAR(Date),1,6)+(TEXT(WEEKDAY(DATE(YEAR(Date),0,1)),"d")))/7)+1))&" "

(Note: the &" " part forces it to be a string rather than a floating point value)

Impressive Javascript

01 Nov 2012 https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Gallery

"D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. D3 helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG and CSS. D3’s emphasis on web standards gives you the full capabilities of modern browsers without tying yourself to a proprietary framework, combining powerful visualization components and a data-driven approach to DOM manipulation."

Google Charts - GeoMap vs GeoChart

25 Oct 2012 GeoMap - The map is rendered in the browser using an embedded Flash player.

GeoChart - Rendered using SVG

I noticed the GeoChart loads faster (at least in Chrome).

"Object date(2012,10,4) has no method 'getTimezoneOffset'" Google Charts

24 Oct 2012 This error was caused by not lowercase date in date(2012,10,4). It should be Date(2012,10,4).

Sizeof() vs Count() in PHP

22 Oct 2012 http://php.net/manual/en/function.sizeof.php

They're the same. According to the link above: the sizeof function is an alias of: count().

PHP Date Variables

19 Oct 2012 http://php.about.com/od/learnphp/ss/php_functions_3.htm

That's a helpful post for controlling the output of PHP's date().

Difference Between Echo and Print In PHP

19 Oct 2012 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3615679/what-is-basic-difference-echo-vs-print

"echo can print more than 1 argument, print can only print 1 argument."

Triple Equals Sign In Php

19 Oct 2012 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/80646/how-do-the-equality-double-equals-and-identity-triple-equals-comparis

Since PHP uses $ to declare variables (and not int, etc), one can run into issues with an if statement being unintentionally true.

For example, 0 == null.

The triple equals sign (===) allows you to prevent these cases by only returning true if the two inputs are not the same type.

So, 0 === null is not true. Also, 0 === "0" is not true either.

SQLSRV30.EXE is not a valid Win32 application

15 Oct 2012 If you want to install the PDO drivers for PHP 5.4, you will need to extract SQLSRV30.EXE with Winrar.

Since I was using EasyPHP, I needed to extract the files into the following directory (there's also another php directory in EasyPHP, not sure why, but it's worth adding the files under "ext" there too): C:\Program Files\EasyPHP-12.1\php\php546x120827090829\ext

You will also need to add the following lines to your PHP.ini file under PHPExt:

extension=php_pdo_sqlsrv_54_ts.dll
extension=php_sqlsrv_54_ts.dll

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