Enjoy: http://daltonx.net/hacks/yearcal.html

Click the “2010″ at the top-left of the table to render a different year.

Yahoo! Messenger 10 beta (windows download) was released yesterday. It is a major milestone for the instant messaging team, and for me in particular because it means the new insider page is now live! This is the project I have been working on for the past few months. It is essentially a mini version of the Yahoo! homepage built with YQL cloud technology, complete with mail, news, weather, search assist, a high-revenue ad position, alternate stylesheets (skins!), a location picker, and there’s even an easter egg or two. Go find them if you can.

The page is intended to run “inside the IM client” but it works just fine in any modern browser window, too. Check it out here (you will need a Yahoo! id).

Assume the following XML snippet:

<tv>
  <show name="Family Guy">
    <dog>Brian</dog>
    <kid>Chris</kid>
    <kid>Meg</kid>
  </show>
</tv>

There’s a quick and dirty way to do convert such a document to an array, using type casting and the JSON functions to ensure there are no exotic values that would cause problems when unserializing:

<?php
  $a = json_decode(json_encode((array) simplexml_load_string($s)),1);
?>

Here is the result for our sample XML, eg if we print_r($a):

Array
(
    [show] => Array
        (
            [@attributes] => Array
                (
                    [name] => Family Guy
                )
            [dog] => Brian
            [kid] => Array
                (
                    [0] => Chris
                    [1] => Meg
                )
        )
)

Pretty nifty, eh? But maybe we want to embed some HTML tags or something crazy along those lines. then we need a CDATA node…

<tv>
  <show name="Family Guy">
    <dog>Brian</dog>
    <kid>Chris</kid>
    <kid>Meg</kid>
    <kid><![CDATA[<em>Stewie</em>]]></kid>
  </show>
</tv>

The snippet of XML above would yield the following:

Array
(
    [show] => Array
        (
            [@attributes] => Array
                (
                    [name] => Family Guy
                )
            [dog] => Brian
            [kid] => Array
                (
                    [0] => Chris
                    [1] => Meg
                    [2] => Array
                        (
                        )
                )
        )
)

That’s not very useful. We got in trouble because the CDATA node, a SimpleXMLElement, is being cast to an array instead of a string. To handle this case while still keeping the nice @attributes notation, we need a slightly more verbose conversion function. Here is my version, hereby released under a do-whatever-but-dont-sue-me license.

<?php
/**
 * convert xml string to php array - useful to get a serializable value
 *
 * @param string $xmlstr
 * @return array
 * @author Adrien aka Gaarf
 */
function xmlstr_to_array($xmlstr) {
  $doc = new DOMDocument();
  $doc->loadXML($xmlstr);
  return domnode_to_array($doc->documentElement);
}
function domnode_to_array($node) {
  $output = array();
  switch ($node->nodeType) {
   case XML_CDATA_SECTION_NODE:
   case XML_TEXT_NODE:
    $output = trim($node->textContent);
   break;
   case XML_ELEMENT_NODE:
    for ($i=0, $m=$node->childNodes->length; $i<$m; $i++) {
     $child = $node->childNodes->item($i);
     $v = domnode_to_array($child);
     if(isset($child->tagName)) {
       $t = $child->tagName;
       if(!isset($output[$t])) {
        $output[$t] = array();
       }
       $output[$t][] = $v;
     }
     elseif($v) {
      $output = (string) $v;
     }
    }
    if(is_array($output)) {
     if($node->attributes->length) {
      $a = array();
      foreach($node->attributes as $attrName => $attrNode) {
       $a[$attrName] = (string) $attrNode->value;
      }
      $output['@attributes'] = $a;
     }
     foreach ($output as $t => $v) {
      if(is_array($v) && count($v)==1 && $t!='@attributes') {
       $output[$t] = $v[0];
      }
     }
    }
   break;
  }
  return $output;
}
?>

and the result, for our Stewie snippet:

Array
(
    [show] => Array
        (
            [@attributes] => Array
                (
                    [name] => Family Guy
                )
            [dog] => Brian
            [kid] => Array
                (
                    [0] => Chris
                    [1] => Meg
                    [2] => <em>Stewie</em>
                )
        )
)

Victory is mine!

Growing tired of the constant WordPress updating! Sigh…

See the changelog for details on what is new in this release. Honestly I didn’t even read it. Instead I chose to fall asleep while watching the jazzy intro video.

This time, we intend to take the northern route, via Oklahoma and Salt Lake City. As usual, stay tuned to the Twitter for updates!

We have decided to move back to Austin, TX. Our appartement lease is up, all the stuff is in boxes, and I’m getting ready for the transition from too much Sushi to too much Mexican food.

I’ll still be working (remotely) for Yahoo!.

The dot in the middle of the map is Roswell, NM – where we will obviously stop for some dorky tourist trap. For realtime updates during the roadtrip follow the Twitter.

Because of Twitter, I rarely post anything anymore… so I went from two-posts on the homepage to just one. The header was also changed, hiding the description so that focus is now completely on the latest tweet block and it’s awesomely mind-blowing font-size animation.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

The upgrade process was smooth as usual.

Growing tired of H20. I think I’m going to tweak a theme again. This time I’ll base it on YUI AutoGrid minimal and have support for widgets.

Then again, why mess with what works already ?

Yahoo began laying off 1,500 workers on Wednesday as part of a plan, announced in October, to slash expenses by $400 million a year. The cost cutting, however, may have to go deeper in the coming year.

“There could be additional staff reductions next year,” said Brad Williams, a Yahoo spokesman. “It depends on the decisions we make about prioritization, and on things we can’t predict in the economy.” Mr. Williams added: “We are trying to instill a culture of cost-discipline in our business.” [He] also said that the job cuts today will affect most parts of the company, but that Yahoo executives are still evaluating which projects will be de-emphasized or cut altogether. “This is more of a cost reduction rather than business prioritization,” he said about the layoffs. “Business prioritization will continue going forward. We are looking at businesses we may put into maintenance mode.”

Yahoo’s chief executive, Jerry Yang, penned a farewell note to laid-off employees on the company’s blog. If you want to know how managers are supposed to notify employees whose jobs are being cut, check out Valleywag.

Sad day.

Mr. Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo!, assumed control of the company a year and a half ago from Terry Semel, a Hollywood studio boss that he hand-picked for the job. His tenure has been a tumultuous period during which Yahoo! rejected a $47.5 billion takeover offer from Microsoft and failed to cement an advertising partnership with Google.

• Jerry Yang, Yahoo Chief, Plans to Step Down – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com
• Yahoo’s CEO Choices | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD
• Yodel Anecdotal – Stepping down (Jerry Yang)