September 28th, 2009

The basis of each computer operation is binary logic. Zeros and ones are transformed with simple operations into zeros and ones again. FileMaker is hiding its binary roots very successfully. Only now and then the user can catch a glimpse of it. Some custom functions use binary elements, e. g. Get( ActiveModifierKeys ). And of course you can build logical expressions for If and Case functions, using and/or/not operators, but every value is used as a single logical value. Every number different from 0 is taken as the logical value 1 (True). There is no difference between 1 and 999, for FileMaker both values are a logical 1.

Bitwise operation

I need bitwise opertion for my projects. You might run into the same situation, perhaps managing a collection of flags. Each bit represents a flag. To set flags or ready the status of one or more flags requires binary calculations. In that case you have to take whatever FileMaker has to offer and build the missing parts yourself.

I wrote some custom functions to provide basic logical operations: bit.not, bit.and, bit.or, and bit.xor. Two more functions complete the package; bit.isSet for bit testing and bit.bitset to display decimal numbers in their binary representation.
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September 7th, 2009

It is time for a fresh, new look. At first I liked the Carrington Blog theme I used before. But after a couple of months I had more and more problems with it. For example, the comment column becomes very crowded.

I was always looking for a WordPress theme with a liquid design. Columns should adjust with the window size. I found some themes on the Internet, but was not too happy with the overall look. That is why I started to create my own theme. Not knowing to much about the internal structure of WordPress, I started reading and learning the documentation.

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