This was too awesome not to share

Found that on thedailywtf and laughed uncontrollably for some time.

I’ve already talked to a few people in the industry and they seem …unexcited. All they can say is “IE rules the market, users won’t adopt it so what’s the point” and “just another browser to be compatible with” …so suffice to say I’m disappointed with the excitement in our industry. This is new technology, not Firefox version 57, or IE revision 345, this is a brand new product built from the ground up to solve problems and help the industry move forward in smarter ways, not something that’s just putting more and more band aids on an old product-base. And they’ve not asked a penny for all their efforts. They are releasing it free with no ads included.

I don’t see this as anything but a good thing. If we finally have a browser that strictly follows web standards, makes our web lives more secure (thanks to their smart use of tabs and windows processes) and has a heap of usability enhancements over existing technology, I’m on board.

All I can say is sorry to Firefox, because I think they’re going to lose some serious market share, and they’ve done such a good job at keeping us open source fans happy. IE I could care less about. I wish it would go away but I don’t think it will until a new dominant OS hits the scene …which could be never.

So anyway, read the facts yourself here: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/ and learn for yourself why you should make the switch. Your web experience will be faster and more secure and more user friendly, and for us devs, there’s a few things thrown in by default which make our lives easier from what I’ve seen.

Start getting excited about new smarter ways of doing things people!

I’ve recently discovered the importance of several things in my golf swing:

1. Standing the correct distance from the ball, and generally just having a good relaxed address position, providing me with good balance throughout the swing. (More on this later, including a drill to always be the correct distance from the ball)
2. My right leg. All through the swing, my right leg is braced with my right knee pointing inwards towards my left, providing a strong swing foundation. I’ve seen some people mention this as a feeling of the right foot screwed into the ground clockwise, we’re talking about the same thing. This is the pivot point of my backswing. Without this braced at all times, my swing suddenly gets complicated because imagine all the different angles my body can make if I allow the right leg to move in inconsistent ways. Having this braced makes everything feel strong on the backswing. More on that later.
3. My right hand. I feel the club at all stages of the swing with my right hand, very much like the flicking action of throwing a tennis ball, with a slow action followed by a quick release. This combined with a straight left arm and good weight transferring technique gives me ultimate control on working the ball in either direction, and I have learned to control the trajectories of my shots simply by placing the ball forward or back in my stance.

To get used to this ‘right hand’ feeling (which is all very new to me), I started with a simple drill. I picked up a medium range iron (7 iron), stood with my feet very close together (maybe a foot apart) and just took slow half swings, feeling that right hand throughout the whole swing, ensuring I had a good weight transfer (this is very important (as are the position of your elbows which I discuss in detail later), accelerating through the ball, releasing my hands at the ball area, the result of which was a very quick follow through with a crisp impact with the ball.

I knew when I’d hit the ball correctly as I could feel the sweet spot of the club. I know when I was hitting to ball too closely to the hosel or too far on the toe of the club, all thanks to my right hand (and believe me, when you mishit stiff-shafted blades this feeling is amplified to a jolt of pain up your right arm (comparable to hitting a brick wall very hard with a hardwood stick) …hence the reason blades are such a good training aid in getting to know your swing).

I had several thoughts during the swing, which I’ll describe shortly, but for the most part I think about these things:

1. Feeling my right hand controlling the plane I wanted to swing on, ensuring a good ’straight back’ takeaway.
2. Maintaining a good weight transfer, both on the backswing and on the downswing, with the right knee always braced inwards providing a good consistent backswing, and the left knee driving in the direction I want the ball to go on the downswing.
3. My right hand feeling like throwing a tennis ball, releasing my hands at the ball impact area, the result of which for me ends up feeling like a quick reverse C through impact.

That’s really the most simple way I can describe the swing feeling. If I break down that feeling from the top of the backswing, I feel my right elbow guiding my hands in the direction of my target. I don’t allow my weight transfer or hip turn to force my right hand out of position, because when this happens, I end up blocking and slicing the ball to the right (ten meters or more off target). When my tempo is right and I don’t let my hips get too far ahead of the rest of my swing, my hands have time to release correctly through the ball, with every shot landing within meters of the line in which I had aimed. This is something learned only with practice.

I have used this same technique to all shots in the game, and everything seems to just ‘work’, even in putting. So I’m using the same swing technique for full swings, half swings, chipping, bunker shots and putting. I need more practice to get this action ingrained into muscle memory, but I feel I’m on the right track, and using the right hand allows me to get a good feel for distance control in all areas of the game. This is very new to me, after years of having a huge checklist going through my head whenever I was about to hit a golf ball, and that wasn’t just in practice, that was even when I was on course! But those 3 points above are really all I think about now and it has made golf a joy to play.

Swing Breakdown

While the above 3 steps are all I think about when stepping up to hit a golf ball, I’ve developed habits of a lot of other points. These are really the finer details that make up my whole swing, and these are the points I turn to when I feel my swing getting out of balance. Once you practice these things long enough, you don’t need to think about them, they just happen naturally.

• Address the ball. [more info]
• Check I’m standing the correct distance from the ball. [more info]
• The elbow positions at address are very important. The insides of my elbows are pointing up. Combine this with keeping my left arm straight and my right arm bent comfortably down, I find this locks the left arm from moving in inconsistent ways, and allows the right arm to fold in a correct downward motion during the backswing and puts it in a good position to help drive the arms towards the target on the downswing. I have found this to be true even with chipping and more surprisingly even with putting. (more info on putting below)
• I waggle the club and feel how I want the club to impact with the ball with my right hand (all the feeling is in my right hand, I can’t stress the importance of this enough).
• Even at this stage of waggling, I have a feeling of the right hand folding over when I want to draw the ball, guiding the club on an inside-to-out line. I have a feeling of the right hand much like a hinge  when I want to fade the ball, guiding the club on an outside-to-in line.
• I have developed a takeaway habit of having my head back-of-center to encourage a good weight transfer to my back foot. My takeaway is straight back, ensuring a wide takeaway, but the feeling is all very much with my right hand from hereon. Remember the left arm is locked straight, thanks to the elbow pointing up, the left hand and arm can’t move in inconsistent ways.
• All the control and power is in my right hand and wrist. The hands are not gripping the club hard, but are very relaxed. Just like throwing a tennis ball, feel where that right hand is at all times. This will determine where and how you hit the ball. I also make sure during practice that I feel my arms going around my body, ensuring a good shoulder turn.
• At the top of the backswing, I make sure I feel a definite weight transfer to my left side. I do this by firstly feeling my left knee push out towards my target (or more importantly in the direction I want the ball to curve - right of target to draw, left of target to fade). You need a good ‘forward weight transfer’ to ensure a crisp powerful impact with the ball. I’ve found this lesson out through much practice (at times I’d forgotten about the weight transfer forward and you quickly lose the same impact feeling with the ball). Combine this with a slow downswing (maintaining a pendulum like tempo, never rushing), accelerate hard into and through the ball. Just like throwing a tennis ball, the point of impact is where you lay on the power and release the hands.
• All this time my head is ‘relatively’ still. I’m not saying ‘keep your head still’ because depending on the curve of the shot you want to hit, your head will move, I’d just recommend keeping the movement minimal until you have made contact with the ball. I find if I drive my left knee to the left to hit a fade or slice, my head moves slightly forward, but when I drive my left knee right to hit a draw or hook shot I keep my head back behind the ball. This is something to experiment with in practice.
• The ‘tennis ball throwing action’ that I use through the ball very quickly whips the club through the ball, and before I know it my hands are at the top of my follow through and the ball is gone. All my weight is safely on my front side telling me that my weight transfer was good, and if I maintain my posture at the end of the swing, it tells me everything was in balance. You should be able to hold the finishing position and watch the ball fly.

That’s where I’m at currently, will keep this updated as I learn more with practice

Putting

When putting, it’s the same feeling of elbows, with a straight left arm, with the insides of both elbows pointing up. The right hand is then free to just move back and forwards in a pendulum like motion through the ball at the desired speed.

With putting however, there are a couple of other things to focus on:

1. Make sure your head remains still throughout the putt (completely still), and your eyes are square to the ball. (The eyes being square to the ball is a good general tip for all golf shots)
2. Make sure you grip the club with both of your thumbs pointing down (light controlling grip), then throughout the putt feel those thumbs remaining in the same downward position, pointing down the shaft of the putter. This prevents you from pulling or pushing the ball, as these problems occur typically from slight hand rotation (that is usually how I miss the short putts, but when I feel those thumbs pointing straight down the shaft, never rotating, I get a straight putt). By feeling those thumbs pointing straight down the shaft of your club, this minimises the chances of hand rotation on putts.

The final thing I’ve noted with putting is the importance of tempo. When I keep a pendulum-like tempo accelerating through the ball, the putts go where I want them more often than not. So don’t let that right hand push forward too quickly on the putt, and keep your grip light!

Putting Details and My Favourite Putting Drill

The best putting drill I’ve found involves the use of two golf balls, no more no less. This is how I do it:

• I find a relatively straight putting surface (can be a straight lie or if you’re looking for a challenge find a curving lie)
• I drop both balls one club-length from the hole.
• Address the ball so that the putter face is square to the target and square to the ground (so stand as close as you need to to make sure the bottom of your putter sits square to the ground. I don’t want the toe of my putter higher and throwing off a good putting technique)
• Make sure all my address position is correct (read notes above)
• Read the lie, going from the hole back to my ball. If there’s a curve in the lie, read every foot of it and when your eyes come back to your putter head, make sure then putter is square to that target line. This ensures a correct line. (Note: To do this correctly, your eyes should be directly above the ball. If you’re standing correctly and have a correctly sized putter for your height, this should not be a problem …use a mirror to check or get a friend to watch you to make sure your eyes are directly over the ball in your putting stance)
• While reading the line, you should be getting a mental picture of how hard you need to hit this putt with your right hand, remembering that your left arm is straight and your right hand is in control of this putt.
• Also while reading the line, you should get a feel with the right hand of how you want the club to impact with the ball, much like waggling with the full swing. Ideally you are looking for a straight-back, straight-through action, but sometimes on curved shots it may be more comfortable to choose an inside-out/outside-in line to follow the curve of the putt.
• You are now at the point where you can pull the trigger and take your putt, remembering your head is dead still directly over the ball, left arm is straight (elbow pointing up), right hand controlling the tempo of the putt, thumbs pointing straight down the shaft of the putter, hands never rotating, I find it’s as simple as that (elbow pointing up, but bend in towards your body, just like in a full swing). Practice will teach you distance control and the ability to read green angles
• NOTE: If you’ve never putted with your left arm being straight, this will feel really weird, and will force you to stand closer to the ball, but I find that it works for me in putting just like it does in the full swing or chipping.

RULES OF THIS DRILL

• You have two balls to putt from the first one club-length distance.
• If you sink one ball of the two, you are allowed to re-putt from whereever you were.
• If you sink both balls, you proceed another club-length distance from the hole.
• If you do not sink either ball from a location, you must go back to one club-length from the hole and start again.
• The purpose of the drill is to build your confidence from all distances from the hole.
• Your aim is to treat this like a game. See how many club-lengths you can get from the hole. In 30 minutes of putting I got to 5 club-lengths before I missed both putts. (both misses ended up within one foot from the hole however, so I was happy)
• Which brings me to an important point. There is also another purpose to this drill. For the putts you miss, watch how far they miss from the hole. They may have been very close to going in the hole, but if you knock it 2 meters passed the hole, you’re not a good putter. Missed putts in my opinion should be within two feet of the hole. Any further and I’m not satisfied with the putt no matter how close it may have come to dropping. The purpose is to improve putting in general and teach you to make at worst two putts per green.

It got to the point where I just could not hit my 3 iron consistently at all …the offset seemed to drag my shots over to the right badly (the purpose of the offset I guess, but I don’t want to modify my swing to suit one club in my bag because of a huge offset)

So I considered purchasing a second-hand set of blades, but the more I looked into second hand sets, the more I noticed the wear and tear on the faces, and realised that blades are mostly forged metal. So softer metal = less life of clubface. The second hand market was filled with everyone’s old blades that were in poor condition because the clubfaces had massive wear marks. So, being the money conscious person I am, I started to think about the value for money. Even if I found a good set of second hand blades, was paying $400 or so really worth the money if, through practicing every day, I ate through the club faces in 6 months - 1 year? Definitely not, BUT I wanted clubs that did not have the offset and were lighter (and had that good pure traditional look of a golf club, not this ‘lets put as much crap on a golf club we can and make them as thick as possible’ cavity backs.

I came up with several answers:

1. Titleist DCI 962B model: approx $200-$300 second hand. These were a very popular model in the late 90s, as they combined elements of a blade and a cavity back in a cast iron. So you supposedly get all the advantages of a blade, including traditional appearance, but with the more forgiveness and the metal hardness of a cast iron.
2. Mizuno MP33 or MP37 model: approx $300-$400 second hand. Not the latest model of Mizuno blade, but by far the most popular blade to date from my research. And because new models of Mizuno are out, people are trading their old models in for an upgrade, which means the second-hand market is alive with these beauties.
3. Ben Hogan Apex Grind Blades: I was in Golf World on the weekend and happened to notice a set of these in relatively good condition going for $165. On further inspection they were in perfectly good condition for me, standard length, standard lie with good club face condition.

In a second hand market of blades, the Ben Hogan irons seemed a rare find at a good price. I went today and bargained the guy down to an even $150. Took them straight to the range today and love them. Because of the traditional blade appearance, there’s no offset, so whether I’m hitting a 3 iron or a pitching wedge, the appearance is the same (as apposed to my cavity backs where the 3 irons have a massive offset (1cm!) and the pitching wedge has none.) Plus because they are blades, I get more feedback from the club. When I miss hit it, I know straight away because it feels like I’ve whacked a stick up against a cement block But when you hit them pure, the feeling is very rewarding.

I figured these were cheap enough that I could try blades and see if I liked them, and if not, well $150 is pretty damn cheap for a trial where you get to keep the clubs in the end Worst case I continue trialling them and don’t like them, sell them for the same price I bought them on ebay, no harm no foul. Best case, I fall in love and wear out the clubfaces until they’re useless, then I buy another set, or checkout Mizunos.

I’m not sure how long these Hogan’s will last with my practicing every day (60 balls a day in general), but if they wear out quickly I’ll definitely consider the Titleist DCIs I think, or search harder for modern options in cavity backs that looks and feel like blades. I’ll hang on to my cobras for a while longer, and after some training with blades I’ll give them a go again. My problems with long irons may just be all in my head, in which case practice with blades will hone my skills to really nail my cobras in due course.

My thoughts on determining if you are standing the correct distance from the golf ball in more detail:

Address the ball. Let your right arm fall away from your grip, hanging from your body. If your right hard falls away from your grip in line with your target, you are the correct distance from the ball. If your hand falls forward, you are standing too close. If your hand falls towards your body, you are standard too far away.

This same rule applies with all clubs from your wedge to your driver.

You will know if this feels wrong through developing a feel for your clubs (by practicing daily), but if you ever find yourself pulling or pushing your shots, you can quickly check if you are standing the correct distance from the ball using this drill.

My thoughts on stepping up to the golf ball in more detail:

1. With no club in my hand, pick my target.
   Choose the precise spot on the green or fairway where I want my ball to land. (Be sure to take into account the roll you expect for a given landing spot)
2. Select my club, and take my grip.
   Through experience we learn club selections, only practice can tell you what club to select. I will not go into grip specifics but I’m an interlock grip fan. As a general rule, at address you should see two knuckles on your leading hand, with both V’s of your thumb and forefingers of both hands pointing towards your face.
3. Step up to the ball.
   First position the clubface square to the ball (in line with my target), then take my stance, with the ball positioned forward in my stance (forward for standard shots, back in the stance to play a punch shot under the wind).

So to save your ass, I’d like to shed some light on good versus bad methods. You may disagree with some methods because they may not improve readability of code, and that is your choice, but the ultimate aim of this article is to promote the most performance friendly method for a given situation.

Strings on Multiple Lines

If you work with PHP, sooner or later you will need to manage a multiple line string in code (whether it be for outputting text, or creating a SQL statement string). If you need to create a multiple line string, my advice is to use multiple lines within the ONE string.

Eg: Don’t do this:

<?php
$sql_insert_string = 'SELECT id, name';
$sql_insert_string .= 'FROM products';
$sql_insert_string .= 'ORDER BY name ASC';
?>

(performance unfriendly: PHP has to allocate memory for three strings and concatenate them)

Or this:

<?php
$sql_insert_string = 'SELECT id, name'
. 'FROM products'
. 'ORDER BY name ASC';
?>

(performance unfriendly: Even though this looks like one long string, PHP is really dealing with three strings and has to concatenate them to form the one string)

Instead, do this:

<?php
$sql_insert_string = 'SELECT id, name
FROM products
ORDER BY name ASC';
?>

(performance friendly: PHP has one string to deal with, single memory allocation, no concatenation)

Use Single Quoted Strings

I’m sure you know about PHP’s nice and friendly way of allowing you to put variables directly inside double quoted strings like this:

<?php
$years_old = 21;
$one_liner = "Hey good lookin, you must be $years_old this year";
?>

(performance unfriendly: unnecessary overhead)

This seems nice and handy I know, but for PHP, this means that ANY string with double quotes has to be searched for potential variables = unnecessary overhead.

Instead, stick to the single quote method. As I also work with VB.NET (where there is no double quote support for strings) this wasn’t a hard one for me to adjust to, but if you’re starting out, it’s important to not get into the bad habit of using double quoted strings if you can avoid it. You might think the overhead marginal, but add up all the double quoted strings in your ever-growing application, put your application under heavy load with shitloads of users hitting your webserver and you’ll be wishing you had written your strings in the single quote method.

This is the better version:

<?php
$years_old = 21;
$one_liner = 'Hey good lookin, you must be '.$years_old;
?>

(performance friendly: No double quotes here, yay!)

I can attest to this being true. I had a project a year or so ago that dealt with heavy mathematical operations (luckily the mathematical operations were already written and I just had to translate them to PHP). I had the bad habit of always writing variables within double quoted strings for various output. When it came time to analyse the performance, the client wanted every minisecond he could get. I had to find ways to knock a few seconds off execution time. The first thing I did was a mass find-and-replace operation to convert double quoted strings to the single quote method (not an easy operation), but when I was done we shaved a second off. That one second proved to me just how important this method is. Imagine an extra second load time for users when your webserver is under load :-/

Note: This same principle applies to array indexes:

<?php
//if using string indexes, do it like this:
echo $date_array['january'];
//not like this:
echo $date_array["january"];
?>

String Concatenation and Output

This is a pretty cool trick I didn’t know about until recently, but you can use commas to concatenate strings in PHP and it provides a performance benefit.

For example:

<?php
//while this looks like a single line of output:
echo 'SELECT id, name' . ' FROM products' . ' ORDER BY name ASC';
//to PHP it actually translates to:
echo 'SELECT id, name';
echo ' FROM products';
echo ' ORDER BY name ASC';
?>

(performance unfriendly: even though this looks like one long string, PHP is actually dealing with three separate strings here, and sending all three strings to output as shown in the translated section …hence unnecessary overhead)

Instead, use commas:

<?php
//this looks like a single line of output:
echo 'SELECT id, name', ' FROM products', ' ORDER BY name ASC';
//it actually translates to one line of output for PHP:
echo 'SELECT id, name FROM products ORDER BY name ASC';
?>

(performance friendly: PHP has one string to deal with, single memory allocation, no concatenation)

Choice of Functions

Always refer to the official PHP manual when confronted with a choice of potential PHP functions for a given situation. Many functions exist that appear to do the same thing, but if used unnecessarily can lead to unnecessary overhead/confusion in your applications.

For example, you will probably get some advice to look at using preg/ereg functions in PHP whenever you ask about string replacements, but if you need to do a simple string replacement (Eg. replace all ‘http’ with ‘https’) use the str_replace function. Only use the preg/ereg functions when you need to involve regular expressions …that is their purpose. And str_replace is for simple string replacements.

Now I say ’successfully’ because more than half the audience was sold on their little scam. And for big money too. We’re talking upwards of $12,000 for each sale. You might think crazy price, but for a fully product driven website, with the company holding your hand the whole way, that’s probably about the right price. The only problem is they were hinting at guaranteed success, and failed to mention how competitive the search industry is for any common product driven website. Sure, hand over your hard earned cash, get a website developed, but then what? How is anyone going to find your site over the thousands of other sites all similarly produced?

The truth is search engine marketing is a massively important part of the equation, and I’d  say you need to allow more than half of your initial project budget and time to search engine activities for the first year, otherwise you can expect to be getting minimal, if any, traffic to your fancy site. I won’t go into specifics about search engine techniques, because honestly I’m still learning myself (and it is a continuous learning curve), but I will be documenting my progress as I learn and succeed, so keep tuned. My point is simply to make you aware of scams like this one I witnessed, and to be very wary of anyone selling you a website that fails to mention the importance of ‘being found online’. If they don’t mention it, YOU bring it up. It’s your money and your future success. Be smart, ask the questions, analyse the answers. If you’re unsure about the answers you get, take your question and the answers you’ve got to the top search forums (type ’seo forum’ in google) and see what the experts have to say about your situation. You’ll find the nice guys more than happy to comment honestly and openly. Don’t ever be taken for a ride …and always remember that the people you deal with are often professional salesmen

I found this free little tool for generating different types of data online:

(http://www.generatedata.com/#generator).

I just plug in a few options and this generator gives me as much realistic data as I need to properly test my csv import application. Saves me more than a few minutes writing test data myself. Useful for load testing as well. Generate a few thousand lines of csv, import it to your database and test away. Of course, you can use MySQL functions to help generate a heap of INSERT statements as well, but this is another way

The problems come when you leave the small problems and move into medium-large scale problems with lots of interrelated subsystems all talking to each other. Or, more importantly, when you have a system with base classes and you start the coding of the base classes too quickly. End result - disaster! Coding is just like real world construction: If your foundations are crap, guess what? The final product (if you ever make it to a final product) will be flimsy at best. It (your application) will either fall over or will be subject to criticism for the rest of its short life because of what we call incomplete coding preparation.

Still feel like rushing into that programming? If you do you’re a knob (politically correct term for you morons that are giving programmers a bad name by jumping into programming too quickly, then blaming the designers and everyone else when things go to shit)

Being what I consider a good programmer means having the ability to read design documents and being critical of them. Don’t take the attitude that if the coding screws up, we can trace it to the design documents, so the designers will be to blame, not me. That’s the quickest way to failure. Instead, stand up, approach the designers and tell them of the errors or any questions you have. Feel unsure about a section of the design? Ask them! Think of it like this: If you, a professional programmer, cannot understand the design document, then the design is flawed.

A key concept you need to understand early in your programming life is that the overall goal of planning and design is to reduce risk. Asking questions of the design, if you (the programmer) don’t understand something, is all helping to minimise the risk and ensure the project’s success. Your project’s preparation needs to focus heavily on improving the planning and design so that the clear direction follows through to the programming stage. Ensuring good communication between design and programming is imperative to your project’s success and the wellbeing of everyone involved.

I know, I know, some programmers are out there reading this and saying to themselves “but my boss wants things done quickly and we don’t have the time.” Bad attitude and wrong decision.

Firstly, good design might be hard to master at first, but once your designers get in the groove of turning out quality well thought out designs, everything runs smoothly. The programmers can’t stuff anything up if the design is bulletproof, and if they do, they need a boot up the arse so they begin to follow the good direction of the design to a tee. What follows is a well oiled application making group of individuals that respect each others work and produce good results, which in turn gives the company a better reputation for quality work. The point is, good design may take time, but it takes less time than bad design stuffing up the programming stage, which will end up taking a LOT more time to fix and re-test. So if your boss doesn’t understand that, request a meeting and let them know, and if nothing changes, find a new boss because you deserve better