Mikko Koppanen has a quick post today showing how to use PHP and Imagick to create an image of text filled with another image layer behind it:

The fill pattern is used to annotate text but the named pattern could also be used to fill any shapes that allow fill to be specified (include circles, ellipses, rectangles, polygons etc etc).

His example is pretty simple (with a "Hello World!" output) that pulls in the background image, creates the composite layer over it, adds the text to it and sets the fill to the background image's layer. The whole this is wrapped up and output as a PNG file.

One of the more elusive concepts of programming can be working with regular expressions. Now, there's lots of places to learn them and to get a handle on what they can do (such as this book), but what if you don't need the full-blown reference and just want a quick and dirty reference source? ILoveJackDaniels.com is happy to be of service with their latest cheat sheet divided up into the different formats (anchors, character classes, assertions, escape characters, etc).

The Regular Expressions cheat sheet is designed to be printed on an A4 sheet of paper and live by a designer or developer's desk, to make life a bit easier. A description of what is on the cheat sheet follows, or if you are impatient, you can go straight to the full size Regular Expressions cheat sheet.

This time, they've posted it in a few different formats, including a torrent file to make for faster/easier download. They still have the usual methods (PDF and PNG) but you'll need to visit the page for those links - it's been requested not to directly link to them.