samuellevy.com

BlogFile is a simple, very light weight blog system which is entirely housed in a single PHP file. It provides basic templating, a simple markdown format, simple comment spam protection, an automatic karma system, and the ability to add both blog posts and static pages.

Date: Released on May 7, 2012
Time: Development ~30 hours
Technology: PHP/MySQL
Licence: WTFPL
Github URL: https://github.com/samlev/blogfile

MICO (formerly Mantis) is a simple application for taking down and tracking phone calls. I designed it out of a need for a simple way to take down phone calls at work. Using email and instant messaging made following up calls difficult, but using a full blown task tracker lacked flexibility. Mantis is designed to make taking a call as painless as possible, while giving the users the ability to easily track and follow up on calls.

Date: Started September 2010, First Release on October 31, 2010
Time: Development ~100-150 hours
Technology: ExtJS/Sencha user interface, talking to a PHP/MySQL server side API.
Licence: GNU Lesser General Public Licence version 3.0
Download: Home page

Password security is always a hot topic of conversation. Passwords are often your first line of defense against intruders, attackers, and all sorts of nasties. What is involved in ensuring password security, though? With something so essential, so vital, why don't we have standards about the correct length, strength, and storage to ensure that passwords are kept secure?

Yesterday I attended day one of the 2009 Open Source Developer's Conference. There was good company, some great talks, and a nice setting. I'm a little sad that I can't attend today and tomorrow, also, but I'm back to work today.

PHP has pretty flexible types. This is (usually) a good thing. It also has some rather handy functions to force types. Arguably the most useful of these is intval. When it comes to working with AJAX (in particular), or user generated input (in general), these functions are a godsend. The only one that seems to mysteriously be missing, though, is 'boolval'.

The scrabble assistant is a simple tool to help someone to find new words when playing scrabble. It performs a search based on the letters that the user enters, and provides them with a list of 10 valid scrabble words.

Date: November, 2007
Time: approximately 2 hours initially, and another 2-3 hours in improvements.

PHP is a popular programming language. Much of the web is running on it, and many Open Source projects use it. This is because PHP is a very easy language to use. Everything about the language is designed to make life easier for the developer. It lets you make quick applications without having to sweat about syntax, or compiler errors. For an inexperienced developer, or a small project, this is great. If you have to maintain the code, however, this can cause problems.

Flies is a time-tracking system I built for use within Mooball IT. It allows us to run comprehensive reports across users for specific clients or projects. We can see our profit/loss on a project, track our progress, and invoice clients.

Date: Started late 2007
Time: Initial Development ~150h, but many upgrades and new features have been added since, adding ~450 hours since release
For: Mooball IT
Technology: ExtJS user interface, talking to a PHP/MySQL server side API.