A common usage, at least for extract(), has been to allow an associative array to be passed to a function to use as named optional parameters, however, there is a lot wrong with dumping an array into the symbol table and then checking if what you want exists or not.
I have designed a pattern that allows an object to accept and address public level optional named arguments without the problems that could be associated with the compact()/extract() pattern. This pattern does require at least PHP 5.3 (uses late static binding) and overloads __get/__set preventing the child class from doing so.
There are several limitations in this program due to the limits of the underlying GraphicsPath class. Though the code is in place to do so, nodes can not be directly edited once created, for example. Nor can different paths be drawn using different pens.
Boggle.exe is a computerized version of the Hasbro dice game. It’s intended to be played by multiple people infront of the computer using pens and paper, no internet play is supported as it’s ridiculously easy to cheat. The main neat feature of Boggle.exe over it’s physical counterpart is a board solver. Once the game is over, all of the valid words inside of the board are shown and can be highlighted (see picture).
Download (source and executable) — Extract to it’s own directory and run \bin\debug\Boggle.exe. words.txt must be in the same directory as the executable.
The reason why is pretty simple, DVDs are not remotely as fast as any other media, and in 2009, it’s starting to show. Flash drives are larger, faster, and more versatile than DVDs, and they’re costing less and less. But what about an older system that can not boot from USB storage? Well, there is an option, and that’s to use the destination drive as the source. Install the drive into a separate computer (via a usb dongle is fine) and follow these steps. Note that these directions work if you’re trying to make a bootable USB flash drive, too.
This was more of a project than I was originally expecting, Microsoft prevents the Windows XP Powertoy Calculator from running in Vista in 2 separate places, but in the end, it runs perfectly in Vista, all the limitations are false. (Edit: I can confirm that this hacked copy works in Windows 7, too!)
An interesting technology are Google Page Rank Finders. What they do is discover which result and page number a website is in Google’s search results for a given term.
I thought an interesting implementation would be a completely client side one written in Javascript using Google’s search API. To spoil the ending, after creating this I discovered the API only allows 8 results per page and 8 pages, making this useless if the site is beyond the 64th result, but the API is interesting and powerful regardless.
