Author Archives: Bradley Holt

I am a software developer, web developer, entrepreneur, and an advocate of free/open source software, open standards, and open content. I am the technical director and co-founder of Found Line—a creative firm located in Burlington, Vermont—where I develop standards-based, accessible, and cross-browser compatible web applications.

Common Good Vermont

The other day we launched the first iteration of the Common Good Vermont website. From the about page: Vermont (pop. 621,000) is a small, tightly knit rural state proud of its independent spirit and high levels of civic engagement. Vermont’s independent sector (3000+ organizations, $4 billion annual revenue) plays a primary role in the delivery […]

Moving On

Today is my last day at Vermont Oxford Network and I will now be working at Found Line full time. This was not a decision I took lightly. Vermont Oxford Network is a great place to work and they’ve got an excellent team. For the last four and half years I’ve been developing software that […]

RedEye Universal Remote Control

Today one of our clients, ThinkFlood, launched their RedEye Universal Remote Control for the iPhone and iPod touch. The device and application combination allows you to “use your iPhone or iPod touch to control your TV, stereo, cable box, DVD player, and many other devices that receive standard (infrared) signals.” The product launch got some […]

Bug Hunting

If you are a PHP developer in the Burlington, Vermont area then you should come to tomorrow (11/19) evening’s PHP Users Group meeting at the newly opened Office Squared coworking space in downtown Burlington. This month we will be learning how to find and fix bugs in free and open source projects. From the meeting […]

Rackspace Cloud Sites

We’ve been a Rackspace Cloud Sites (formerly Mosso) customer for about three years. In fact, I signed up as a beta tester when it was originally called “the system beats the machine.” I doubt many people that work at Rackspace even know that it once had that rather odd name. Honestly, it was very rocky […]

Beginner PHP Code Examples

At last month’s Burlington, VT PHP Users Group meeting I presented a session on beginner PHP. The code examples can be downloaded (or forked) from GitHub. The talk was geared towards complete beginners and covered the basic structure of a PHP script, variables, comments, data types, arrays (enumerative, associative and multi-dimensional), operators, conditionals, iterative constructs, […]

The PHP Community

Last week I was at ZendCon, the largest yearly event of the PHP community. One thing that I’ve been thinking about lately, and something that many other people have talked about, is how unique the PHP community is. People are generally friendly and welcoming. Rarely do you run into someone who thinks he or she […]

Beginner PHP

The Burlington, VT PHP Users group has been going strong for almost two years now. We’ve had lots of great presentations and some really experienced PHP developers at the meetings. However, I’ve been concerned that we might scare away PHP beginners with many of the meetings being on advanced topics. So, our next meeting topic […]

ZendCon Tips

Last year was my first ZendCon experience and I’m happy to say that I’ll be going again this year. Here are some tips based on my experience at last year’s conference. These tips are meant for newcomers, but may be useful to alumni as well. Participate in the backchannel. Last year’s conference attendees generated over […]

Project Retrospective

When Peak Organic Brewing Company started in 2005 they asked us create their website (yes, it’s a table-based layout — this was 2005, get over it). When it launched the website included (and still includes as of this writing) the ability for you to “share your peak experience” with other users of the website by […]