The Devil Came on Horseback

I just watched The Devil Came on Horseback last night.

It's about Sudan (Dafur), and one American experience (Brian Steidle) over there. He was a UN observer, former marine. Instead of being armed with a rifle, he was armed with a camera. The photos he took have to be among the most horrible things I've seen, and I can't express how it makes me feel.

If you watch the documentary, and then you read things like this:

In May 2006, the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur organized by United Nations "concluded that the Government of the Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide ... [though] international offences such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be no less serious and heinous than genocide."^[1]

... you really get angry about things.

I'd like to think I'm aware that your average person doesn't really care about some remote place in Africa, but having seen what Brian Steidle saw and the complete lack of action taken; it's something that really gets to you.

War of the Birds

I just saw war of the birds on ABC.

If you missed it, you missed some damned good tv.

Did you know:

• Pigeons remember land marks, and do it better than humans?
• The British used messenger pigeons in many significant moments, heavily involving them in espionage?
• There's a famous Pigeon named GI Joe? That he saved lives too?
• That there's plenty more brave animals who've played a part in war?
  

If you didn't, go and find it on DVD.

Unit testing your email...

Problem: I have code which uses PEAR's mail class to send email.

Every now and then, someone breaks something rather important when doing a release. Additionally, the continuously running unit tests keep sending me email. What shall I do?

The answer, most of you are probably crying, is use a stub/mock class.

Take a look at this suggestion.

You could provide a method in the test which checks sent mail against an array of expected mail, or simply fetch the number of sent emails and check its correct.

It's come in handy in a few places on my work project; have a play and see if it comes in handy for you.

Update: this will be available in the next release.