The thing I don’t like about serial commas is trying to automate their formatting. I can’t find examples anywhere, so here’s my PHP code to do it. The way I use it is a while() loop after querying a database, but it will work with any loop (i.e. a foreach’d array). $num_authors is the total number of records. $count_authors is set to 1 before the loop.

The code

if ($num_authors == 1)
{
	echo $author;
}
else
{
	if ($num_authors > $count_authors)
	{
		if (($count_authors + 1) == $num_authors)
		{
			if ($num_authors == 2)
			{
				echo "$author and ";
			}
			else
			{
				echo "$author, and ";
			}
		}
		else
		{
			echo "$author, ";
		}
	}
	elseif ($num_authors == $count_authors)
	{
		echo $author;
	}
      	else
	{
		// error message
	}
	$count_authors++;
}

I finally put up a portfolio!

The above code, where the ‘$datetime’ variable is a MySQL datetime stamp, will output a humanized date use PHP’s date(); function.

function birthday ($birthday)
{
list($year,$month,$day) = explode("-",$birthday);
$year_diff = date("Y") - $year;
$month_diff = date("m") - $month;
$day_diff = date("d") - $day;
if ($month_diff < 0) $year_diff--;
elseif (($month_diff==0) && ($day_diff < 0)) $year_diff--;
return $year_diff;
}

You can activate it with:

echo birthday("YYYY-MM-DD");

A couple weekends ago, Travis and I got a little too obsessed with GiggleSugar’s “Who’s Douchier?” quiz. Travis ended up registering an account and we set about trying to get on the top 10 list.

Matthew: This is going nowhere. I think I know a way to figure out the actual rankings so we can cheat.
Travis: Yeah, I was thinking about writing them down and trying to figure it out, too.
Matthew: Write down? Like with paper and pencil? No no no, I mean I’m pretty sure I can make a little application that’ll do all that for us.
Travis: …what?
Matthew: Give me a few minutes and I’ll show you.

So I went about creating this:

The Application

The person on the left is the douchier one. So in this example, the battle was between Carlos Mencia and Chuck Norris. Mencia, obviously, is the douchier of the two so you put him on the left. Put Norris on the right, hit go, and it switches their positions on the list below. Theoretically, with enough input, the list will be exactly the same as the one from the quiz.

Even now, at it’s incomplete state, you can consistently score 20+. I was about to start writing an algorithm that actually saves the matches to prevent some colossally bad switches but, well, it’s a douche bag quiz. I wasn’t exactly motivated to go beyond the initial five minutes. But, here it is. Please feel free to use it and contribute to the cause.

Spencer Pratt

My money is on Spencer taking the crown.

I defined the randomPost() function in wp-includes/functions.php because I knew it was being included already. You can put it anywhere, or just dump the code directly onto your page.

Random Post Code

function randomPost() {
<div class="side-sec pages">
<h3>Random Post</h3>
<?php
// Get ID, Title, Post, and Date from WordPress DB
$query = "SELECT ID, post_title, post_content, post_date FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type='post' ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1";
$result = mysql_query($query);
// Use $row for grabbed content
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
// Take only the first 150 characters and get rid of HTML from post
$content = substr(strip_tags($row[2]), 0, 150);
// Display using relative dates
echo '<p><a href="?p='.$row[0].'">'.$row[1].'</a> '.lastfm_relative($row[3]).'</p>
<p>'.$content.' [...]</p>';
?>
</div>
}

Since I already use the Last.fm for WordPress plugin, I used their relative time function: lastfm_relative(). If you don’t have/want that plugin, here is the code for the function.

Relative Time Function

function lastfm_relative($time) {
$time_orig = strtotime($time);
$diff = $just = time()-$time_orig;
$months = floor($diff/2592000);
$diff -= $months*2419200;
$weeks = floor($diff/604800);
$diff -= $weeks*604800;
$days = floor($diff/86400);
$diff -= $days*86400;
$hours = floor($diff/3600);
$diff -= $hours*3600;
$minutes = floor($diff/60);
$diff -= $minutes*60;
$seconds = $diff;
// Variables defined
if ($just<=0) {
return 'Just Now!';
} else {
if ($months>0) {
// over a month old, just show date (yyyy/mm/dd format)
return 'on '.date('Y/m/d', $time_orig);
} else {
if ($weeks>0) {
// weeks and days
$relative_date .= ($relative_date?', ':'').$weeks.' '.__('week').($weeks>1?'s':'');
$relative_date .= $days>0?($relative_date?', ':'').$days.' '.__('day').($days>1?'s':''):'';
} elseif ($days>0) {
// days and hours
$relative_date .= ($relative_date?', ':'').$days.' '.__('day').($days>1?'s':'');
$relative_date .= $hours>0?($relative_date?', ':'').$hours.' '.__('hour').($hours>1?'s':''):'';
} elseif ($hours>0) {
// hours and minutes
$relative_date .= ($relative_date?', ':'').$hours.' '.__('hour').($hours>1?'s':'');
$relative_date .= $minutes>0?($relative_date?', ':'').$minutes.' '.__('minute').($minutes>1?'s':''):'';
} elseif ($minutes>0) {
// minutes only
$relative_date .= ($relative_date?', ':'').$minutes.' '.__('minute').($minutes>1?'s':'');
} else {
// seconds only
$relative_date .= ($relative_date?', ':'').$seconds.' '.__('second').($seconds>1?'s':'');
}
}
}
// show relative date and add proper verbiage
return $relative_date.' ago';
}

And that’s it. The relative time function is by far the most complex part of this whole operation. There’s no validation or verification — it assumes that there are posts ready to be grabbed, that your database is accessible, etc. You can see it working on the right side of this page.

It’s rare for me to do any kind of digital work without a paper/pencil or whiteboard next to me for jot notes, drafts, and calculations. I’ve been redeveloping the entry system for a dictionary that’s going to be used by hundreds of students around the world for the next seven years, and eventually as the public digital front end. It’s very important to me that I get this right.

Draft 1 was just a quicky to make sure I could get everything I wanted, so there was no drawing. Now that is IS working, it’s time to think about usability and aesthetics — the two most important aspects, to me, of any website — and that means it’s time to grab a marker.

Draft 2

Draft 2 was an attempt to streamline the dictionary’s entry system, but failed when it came down to semantics. The back-end was ridiculously elaborate and difficult. A system does not work when the person who created it can’t figure out how to use it properly.

Draft 3

Draft 3 looks a little cramped from the wire frame, but it’s very intuitive and slick — this is it for now. Also, it has big ass Submit and Cancel buttons. Failing something awful, the final product will probably be very similar.

If anyone remembers and wants it, send me an email. It’s simple PHP and MySQL.