Symfony2 & Regex Match Attribute

While building on top of Symfony I sometimes struggle with bugs. One such bug is related to the Regex validator's match attribute. No matter how much I tried changing this value, it always came back with an odd result. After some trial and error I managed to patch the problem – albeit not at source. It was due to Symfony expecting a true or false value, but it failed to convert the string (containing that value) into a bool, and as such I had to add some extra lines to carry out that conversion. This article will explain how to alter an existing validator to customise its behaviour, this info can then be useful for fixing other future validator issues.

Spotify & Rdio Rock Covers

Over the years I have created many a playlist on Spotify, from 80s and 90s, to soundtracks and zombies! Two of my most popular ones are dedicated to rock covers (of mostly pop songs). When I say rock, I mean anything from rock bands playing acoustic versions to full on metal. So with this in mind, I have decided to try the Spotify & Rdio web widgets to share two of my playlists.

The first of these rock playlists is Rock Covers 1. This list was originally a huge eighty or ninety-track monster, with a vast range of quality. One day I decided to cut down that number to a more digestible twenties and tried to arrange them so that it was more of a journey.

Symfony2 & Stored Procedures

In recent weeks I have been working with Symfony to create a new web based app. The app requires a location based search that should ideally be done within the database (in this case MySQL); Symfony uses Doctrine, which makes the execution of stored procedures, or user functions as I will call them, overly difficult. This is a quick post to explain how to allow the use of MySQL user functions within Symfony 2.

Growing Peppers Indoors Part 2

Anaheim Flower

In my previous post the pepper plants were placed in the window and endured a freakishly hot final week of March. Since then the weather turned to the usual April affair, that is, mostly rain with a bit of sun and snow thrown in to mix things up a bit.

A few creepy crawlies have made their attempts at the peppers, the subject of paprika has sparked my interest in another area and there were some problems with seeds. So a few weeks on and it is time for an update.

Growing Peppers Indoors

Growing Set-up

One day, several years ago, the BBC website asked its viewers if they wanted free seeds. Having not grown plants for decades (yeesh, that sounds old), I decided to apply… and hey presto, a hobby was born!

Fast forward to the present day and a south-facing window exists in my flat with the sole purpose of growing edible crops, well, it also functions as a window but that should go without saying. This year said window is dedicated to peppers, that is, sweet peppers and chilli peppers.