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The Positivity Blog published an article about Bruce Lee’s Top 7 Fundamentals for Getting Your Life in Shape. They go into some detail on ecah of the following ideals:

1. What are you really thinking about today?
   “As you think, so shall you become.”
2. Simplify.
   “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”
   “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”
3. Learn about yourself in interactions.
   “To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.”
4. Do not divide.
   “Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.”
5. Avoid a dependency on validation from others.
   “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
   “Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.”
6. Be proactive.
   “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
7. Be you.
   “Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”

Checking for variables before you use them can be a tedious process, and this step is often missed out in PHP code, leading to masses of PHP Notice errors and possibly leaving the application vulnerable. However, there is a simple solution to this problem, something called the ternary conditional operator. This allows you to check for the existence of a variable (or check that the variable has a valid value) and assign a value accordingly. This is very useful when you are dealing with $_GET, $_POST, $_SESSION etc. variables, because you don’t know whether the incoming variable will exist, and if it doesn’t you might want to assign a default value. Here is the format of the ternary conditional operator:

CONDITION ? VALUE IF TRUE : VALUE IF FALSE

Here is an example to hopefully put this into context:

<?php
$id = isset($_GET['id']) ? $_GET['id'] : false;
?>

This one line of code does a surprisingly large amount. Firstly, it uses the isset() function to check if $_GET[’id’] exists. If $_GET[’id’] does exist it simply returns its value. However, if it does not exist the operator returns false. The value that the operator returns is then assigned to the variable $id. So, basically, if $_GET[’id’] exists then $id = $_GET[’id’], however if it does not exist then $id = false
The operator can be useful in a number of applications, and helps you to avoid loads of unnecessary if statements.

If the blossom end (opposite the stem) of your tomato develops a blackened leathery patch the size of a dime or larger, you have it. Make sure you have some calcium (egg shells, crushed oyster shell, etc.) and
you should not have any problem. A handy tip I read about is: put a crushed eggshell into the hole in the soil before setting in the tomato plant and you should have no problems at all.
For more detailed information go here

DIY Life has a reminder article about getting your air conditioner condenser ready for the new season. Around here, it’s a bit early for that, but it won’t be long before the list below will be on the corkboard todo list

• Straighten the evaporator fins. These form the sides of the unit. Are some of the fins bent from bumping them with the mower or Frisbee? Straighten them out using a fin comb. (Yes, such things do exist! I knew you were going to ask.)
• Clean the fins. Use a soft brush and soapy water to clean them.
• Clean the drain pan. Don’t let it get full of leaves. Finally, pour in a half cup of bleach or use algaecide tablets to stop the funky stuff.
• Level the condenser. Use a two or a four foot level. If it’s out of level in any direction, across the top of the unit, shim it up. This will keep the refrigerant flowing the way it was designed.
• And finally, start the summer off with a new air return filter. Change it monthly.

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• Random Quote

  It’s better to keep your mouth shut and give the impression that you’re stupid than to open it and remove all doubt — Mark Twain

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