Zend DB Config.ini for Oracle DB options

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Anyone who has worked much with the Zend framework much will be familiar with the framework’s reliance on config files. I recently worked on a project where I needed to set some database configurations in a Zend config file and it took me some time to figure out the correct syntax for them. 

How to Tell When a Meeting is Pointless

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Lame Meeting

Meetings. When used correctly, they lead to synchronized teams, informed stakeholders, and better requirements. They help to identify issues affecting an organization. They’re great for resource planning, sharing vision, and all kinds of useful stuff.

A clear, focused meeting energizes the participants. These meetings are a force for good. These meetings make the office smile.

Then there are those other meetings. 

CSS3 Media Queries: Making Your Site Mobile-Friendly, Now With 50% Fewer Excuses!

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If you’re like me, you probably do an increasing amount of your personal business on your mobile device, such as paying bills and conducting transactions with your banking accounts.  And why not?  It’s been five years now since the first iPhone came out, and since then mobile Internet use has become a part of everyday life.  What’s more, major institutions such as Wells Fargo, Citibank and AT&T have their own mobile apps.  So taking care of your financial business on your smartphone should be a complete breeze, right?

Wrong!

Where my docs at? (A smattering of pointers on AngularJS, one of which at least is difficult if not impossible to find on the Internet)

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AngularJS is a young framework, still so downy-soft that much of the advice you’ll find on support forums refers to an earlier and almost completely incompatible minor version.

So long as you don’t hit a blind spot in the documentation or the community support, it’s a great framework for rapid development, but as soon as you try to do something that isn’t public knowledge, you’ll be scratching your head for hours.

iOS: Creating a Spin Animation using Transitions

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Card Spinning Animation Example

Animations are one of the cornerstones of the iOS platform. Animations can add polish and visual interest to any application.

iOS comes with many default animations and effects. An animation between two views is referred to as a transition.

On a recent project, we needed to create an animation of a card to make it appear spinning. Creating this effect from scratch would involve a fair amount of code, but leveraging transitions made it easy.

UIWebView JavaScript to Objective-C communication

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When building an iOS application there are times when the best solution for a particular view or screen is to build it as a webpage and then embed it into the app using a UIWebView. There are certain things a webview can do really well that are otherwise hard to replicate, and while not as sexy, web development can be much quicker than native iOS development. The specifics of when to use a webview and when to go native I won’t dive into, but if you decide to use a webview, the first major question you’ll probably wonder is how to communicate between the native app and the webview. For full integration into the app, being able to send messages from the JavaScript to Objective-C and back is critical, and luckily it’s quite easy.