First off this morning, Zend.com has a new Code Gallery Contest posted. Like the last one, this one involves a pretty simple puzzle - to make a crossword puzzle out of any word list that is given to you. For more details, see the CodeWalkers contest page. I love that these things are still around and that people really are participating in them. Not only does it bring other people more into PHP that might have been just on the outside, hacking at O.P.C. (other people's code), and it almost forces people out there to work with PHP and define the limitations of the langauage daily. There's always a way to do something - and, if there's not, then you can bet the PHP developers know about it and are working on it for the next version. PHP is growing by leaps and bounds, with more and more people "seeing the light" of this elegant, easy-to-use language.

Lo and behold, the mighty PHPBuilder.com has decided to grace us with a new article this morning (it's only been a few months). Their latest, Resizing Images with PHP and Mogrify talks about using PHP to change uploaded images with the Mogrify tool (part of ImageMagik) that were uploaded by the user for their site. The example case that they give for it is from the Modwest website, where users were uploading images/logos that were way too large for what the developers expected. It's a pretty simple little script really, with not much content to it (the article's only two pages anyway). This isn't anything you can't do with PHP and GD, but it's nice that you wouldn't have to recompile and get GD working for this "image resize" functionality.

And, finally today, there's an interesting little piece over on Builder.com that talks about some good tips on how to make the most out of your developer experience. For example, the tip of "Have a mentor, be a mentor" is a *very* good one that several people forget. Most of the developers I know out there just assume that they'll learn all they need to know about a job as they go along and they they can stick it out and figure it all out alone. But,m trust me, it makes a world of difference when that one other developer that's been there "forever" comes and helps you figure out a system that was giving you problems. There's several other tips in this article, but there could be tons more that I'm sure you guys could think of. But, it is nice that some one out there is thinking more of the "human" aspect of being a developer, rather than just the "skillset" or the best structure for an application.