When I started PHP 4, (which meant moving from the illustrious PERL) my good friend and ZCE Justin Beasley (@justbeez) was all about the single-quoted strings. I pretty much took his word and the documentation seemed to support them as a better go-to, but is it still that way in modern PHP? TL;DR is yes, but not by much. PHP has gotten a lot smarter in recent versions, but there still is overhead to variable embedding.

All of my loads of PHP Bench actually showed double-quoted strings performing slightly better than single (surprising!). Unfortunately he also does not note which version of PHP he is using. But, on the other side of the aisle, Micro Optimization notes that double quoted-strings are slower. Classy Llama (who also does not show which PHP version he's working on) shows a significant performance detriment to actually using an embedded variable over concatenation, and really if you aren't going to embed variables (other than avoiding escaping strings with lots of apostrophes) why would you want to use a double quoted string? As Classy Llama points out, there is a readability benefit as well to using concatenation and Zend.

Now, I'm thinking this is a version issue (yet another one who doesn't list his version), but this guy noticed that if you ever use a dollar sign that is unattached to a variable in a double-quoted string, there is a huge performance penalty. Even though this is an edge case, it's a great reason to use concatenated single-quoted strings. However Jeff Moore is suggesting that all the tests thus far are missing the boat because the actual embedding process will be done on interpretation which is not being considered in these processes. So, perhaps this is all meaningless. When it comes down to it, I think concatenated values are easier to read, and it's quite possible single-quoted strings perform better.

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Staples had a sign with all of the things that were out of stock.

Plywood covered a good deal of the historic Flatiron building.

Workers install plywood on the Flatiron building.

The great majority of stores in lower manhattan were closed for hurrican Irene.

SoHo Apple store closed, covered, and sandbagged. Some helpful individual added what appears to be an Apple friendly hurricane name.

Streets closed in the Battery Park City area--part of evacuation area A.

Very few cars were on the street, so bikers had plenty of space to ride.

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Got to take these photos a few weeks back of a new friend Derek Stusynski for his new book. This was the roof at the building of a friend of a friend of his, and I'll take a NYC roof whenever I can.

A parting shot of the view. Anyone want to sponsor me to live here?

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As Joey enters with the mustard yellow belt, he passes a wall of his past accomplishments.

An 18-year-old member of the trampoline team "The Skywriters" entertains the crowd while they await the hot dog frenzy.

Kids are up first in the best manners contest.

Sonya Thomas won the women's competition with 35 hot dogs eaten.

Thousands of people jockeyed for a good view of the stage.

A member of the bull whip team the petals off the rose held securely in Nathan's CEO's. . . well.

Eaters prepare their beverages.

The Chinese team arrives. Unfortunately, none of them placed.

Joey is ready to begin as the crowd counts down.

Patrick Bertoletti's hands were stained red by his choice of beverage.

George Shea announces Joey Chestnut as winner with 62 hot dogs consumed.

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A few weeks back I gave Gilt (one of my favorite recent startups/companies/websites ever) some feedback on their Chrome Web App (in summary, very good), but the e-mail address included in the app bounced the message back. This gave me a second item of feedback. The customer service rep responded, helpfully suggesting that their website works best in FireFox. . . but in all they're great

Today I was looking for a particular type of suit. A Google result sent me to a site that sent me to "Men's USA." I almost immediately closed the website because I was overwhelmed at the incredibly terrible design.

In addition to making me want to gouge my eyes out, I am highly suspicious of the security considerations that websites that look like this would take. But rather than just passing by, I decided to give them a little hint for why their clicks may not be translating into sales. I really did not have anything positive to say, I mean. . . look at that website. Then they sent me a quick response and went from having just a terrible website to having horrible customer service.

In case I was ever considering returning to purchase something if there is ever a new website I now have my answer. In honor of this feat, I made them a little graphic that they can place next to their nameless reviews and testimonials that are on their own website:

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This particular assignment was to do an editorial spread, with concepting, lookbook, editing and such. My lookbook consisted of some shots by Jeremy Cowart, Erik Almas, Joey Lawrence, Norman Jean Roy, Trever Hoehne, Annie Leibovitz, you know the big guys. I won't publish that here because I'm not sure of the copyright issues.

My idea was to take a well-dressed friend to the laundermat, and get a dramatic image of him looking intense in the ambience of the place.

This is my final image, which is pretty close to what I had in my head.

However, the chairs weren't there. . . I also had to use my superwide lens and later correct the distortion. I also had to climb into a washer to get enough distance between the subject and I.

Then here are the rest of the best from the shoot.

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Today I got a fade from a zombie-hair cutter. . . in Harlem. Now let me explain. I've had this idea for some years now that I needed to get my hair cut and a shave in a traditional barber shop. You know the type, a place with a red, white and blue spinning pole out front. Inside is an old barber who waves at his friends walking by and knows his way around a razor blade. I'm not sure why I've had this idea: perhaps it was an overdose of Sesame Street when I was a kid, but that is probably a story for another time.

So I decided this weekend that my hair had finally gotten completely out of control and I needed a cut. I figured, why not check this item off my "bucket list?" Now, here in NY, there are a lot of barbershops, so I decided to get a real authentic experience. I figured that the most authentic options would be either the Bronx or Harlem. After outlining my plan to Todd at lunch, he heavily encouraged me not to the Bronx, and slightly encouraged me not to go to Harlem. So, Harlem it was.

I caught the A train up to 125th street, up near the classic Apollo Theater, and put in my iPhone "barber." "Big D's Barber Shop" was a sure winner in my mind, but they were closed. Instead I quickly found "Jim's Barber Shop," and took a peek through the glass. Inside there was an older gentleman with no customers. This seemed like just the spot.

I went inside and asked for a haircut and a shave and the gentleman said sure so I sat down in the chair. He asked what I wanted so I said, "kinda spikey, kinda messy." He seemed to know what to do with that so he got out his tools then asked, "how do you want the sides, faded?" My last few haircutters have used words like "blended" when describing the sides, so I figured that it was about the same thing. I also knew that I probably didn't want a fade (although I wasn't exactly sure what a fade was), but I figured this was a different deal.

He threw a guard on a trimmer, and I took off my glasses to let him work. He turned my chair toward the street, and started working on my hair. Everything was going according to plan and I was smiling as my dream came true. Hair was falling all around me and I remembered just how much extra hair I had. I was glad to see it all go and have a clean new cut. I was thinking it was taking a while, but the guy (who called himself the Hair Doctor) let me know that he was taking his time to make it look real good since he didn't have any other customers.

About this time, he excused himself for a quick bathroom break. I threw on my glasses and took a glance at the mirror across from me. Were I a swearing man, I would have I released a string of profanity. I could see skin on the side of my head. I've never seen skin on the side of my head before. I was in the final stages of a fade. Worse than that, I still had a lot of hair on the top and looked like K-Fed.

He came back and I attempted to contain my despair. He began telling me how he had been cutting hair for 30 years and there wasn't anyone's hair he couldn't cut. He had my head and hair all figured out now, and this was a good haircut. "You can just feel it when you have a good haircut, you know?" he said. He reminded me that he came to the right place. Then he said this particular shop had been there since 1945 and was the oldest in Harlem.

Apparently when they filmed I Am Legend out here, they enlisted the help of the Hair Doctor and another guy to cut the zombie actor's hair. He said he got $600 a pop and bagged it all up for Locks of Love just because. About this time, he finished up and styled it up. Shortest hair I have ever had. . . particularly on the sides.

In all, I met a nice guy and had a quality haircut. . . just not what I was looking for. I also learned that sometimes you can safely remove items from your bucket list without doing them. Some things just aren't meant to be done. Luckily, my hair grows fast, and Macy's is having a sale on Ben Sherman hats (those go with a suit for work, right?)

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On Memorial Day I got to go down and explore Coney Island. While it really isn't all that amazing (but is absolutely packed with people), it was worth a picture or 30.

Also, I decided to be a nice guy and give away a desktop background.

Click to download the appropriate size for your monitor. If your size is not listed, try a larger image.

• 1024x768
• 1280x1024
• 1440x900

• 1600x1200
• 1680x1050
• 1920x1200

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He thought I was a little crazy, but I put a flash inside an elevator in the parking garage and triggered it from outside. The flash also triggered the doors to reopen for our next take.

Thank you Trever Hoehne for inventing Bokeh, muted tones and textures.

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Nathan asked me last semester to take his senior portraits before his hair was affected by chemo. I was excited to provide him with great images in this time of his life and I knew that he would be down with making some creative images.

These next photos are before and after Photoshop. I saw this concept while I was out shooting and took it, planning to edit my assistant out later. Now after hours of cloning bricks in, I know realize I should have fixed it in camera. Lesson learned, but I think the photos still came out pretty good.

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Check out more of his work.

Found via Josh Spear. Check out a photo of how he does it after the jump.

Insane, incredible work.

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