Web commercials, web-mercials as I like to call them, are becoming very popular with the explosion of video on the web. Today, I finished editing one for a local Greek food service. Here’s a link: (click on Giggling Greek to view just that video)

So today in class our instructor led us in an activity where we group coded a web version of the classic game Rock, Paper, Scissors. It was a very interesting exercise and very educational to work as a team. I kept up with most of what we did, tweaking it a little on the way, and then massively tweaking it when I got home this evening. So, if you want to take a look go play Rock, Paper, Scissors online (WARNING: It’s a little addictive.)

But, I don’t care! I’m stoked I actually could do it! And without copying and mimicking someone else’s code. For those of you who don’t know, I enrolled in a PHP/mySQL course at Front Range Community College this semester. I figured it was time I actually buckled down and learned how to code for real (rather than finding code someone else wrote and using it or modifying it to suit my needs).

Today was our fourth class meeting and we came out with five assignments. I have to say the last one made me a little nervous. Especially when the instructor told us we would really not like him when we got to step 4 and 5 of the fifth assignment. Guess what… I don’t hate him at all. (Of course, it’s yet to be seen if I did it “wrong”)

The fifth assignment was a story problem instructing us to create a PHP script that fictional high school students could use to estimate the time and cost for their jobs mowing lawns around the neighborhood. Here’s the text of the problem:

The students use the following method to estimate the time and cost of their jobs for customers:
1. Calculate the total area of the yard in m² (Multiply the length of the yard in meters by the width of the yard in meters)
2. Calculate the total area of the house in m² (Multiply the length of the house in meters by the width of the house in meters)
3. Subtract the total area of the house from the total area of the yard to find the total area of the lawn that must be mowed.
4. Find the total time it will take to mow the lawn knowing that a high schooler can mow 4.3m² of lawn/minute
5. Find the total cost for mowing the lawn. The high schoolers charge $10 per hour to mow the lawn

Given the following dimenstion for a Customer:
• Length of Yard: 62 meters
• Width of Yard: 93 meters
• Length of House: 27 meters
• Width of House: 20 meters

Write a program which uses PHP to output the following (and then a sample text output that should appear on the page).

So, check out my page (P.S. It looks like the output with the correct calculations… YAY!)
And, here’s a link to my main page I’ll use throughout the semester to link to all my projects/assignments… if anyone cares!

So, here’s the crazy thing. I finally understand the addiction of coding. I’ve had friends for years who were hard core coders. And, though I always appreciated their zeal and passion to just sit and write code… I actually understand and have experienced it myself tonight… whoa! More problems… more code! I’m ready! (I think I’m addicted!) Is there a CWA (Code Writers Anonymous) chapter near me? I may need it!

One of the fun things Kendall Media Group appears to be branching strongly into is all kinds of video work. We got set up with several of the Internet video services who are contracting with local videographers for web commercial and how-to video shooting. TurnHere contracted us recently to produce, shoot, and edit a web-mercial for Citysearch for a local Denver restaurant which we completed on June 8. It went live this week so I’m very excited!

1515 Restaurant in Denver