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Push 100,000 elements onto a PHP array() where each element is a four element associative array (a hash in Perl speak). Here’s the data being pushed:

array(
  'owner' => 100,
  'host' => 'www.example.com.co.uk',
  'path' => '/this/is/an/example/path.html',
  'hostkey' => '1111'
)

The memory grows by over 80 megabytes.

Pushing takes less than a second or two but shifting off the first 1000 elements takes over 17 seconds on my machine.

Now take that same data and create a basic FIFO class that has push() and shift() methods. Use pack() and unpack() to store the data in a long string. Total time to push 100,000 and shift the first 1000 elements is around 1 second. Total memory is 7 megabytes which is less than 10% of PHP’s internal array()’s consumption.

PHP’s splFixedArray class which is advertised as mainly having a speed advantage doesn’t fair much better. With a fixed array created of 100,000 elements and loading and unloading the same associative array() it grows by 75 megs but is very fast at half a second. Just for fun I pushed 100,000 elements on an splFixedArray which are simply the values of the test associative array concatenated into a string and it’s still weighs in at 13 megabytes.

Here’s the FIFO class:

class wfArray {
        private $data = "";
        private $shiftPtr = 0;
        public function __construct($keys){
                $this->keys = $keys;
        }
        public function push($val){ //associative array with keys that match those given to constructor
                foreach($this->keys as $key){
                        $this->data .= pack('N', strlen($val[$key])) . $val[$key];
                }
        }
        public function shift(){
                $arr = array();
                if(strlen($this->data) < 1){ return null; }
                foreach($this->keys as $key){
                        $len = unpack('N', substr($this->data, $this->shiftPtr, 4));
                        $len = $len[1];
                        $arr[$key] = substr($this->data, $this->shiftPtr + 4, $len);
                        $this->shiftPtr += 4 + $len;
                }
                return $arr;
        }
}

Here’s the test script using the FIFO class with the array() tests commented out.

require_once('wfArray.php');
error_reporting(E_ALL);
$p1 = memory_get_peak_usage();
$stime = microtime(true);
//$arr = array();
$arr = new wfArray(array('owner', 'host', 'path', 'hostkey'));
for($i = 0; $i < 100000; $i++){
        //array_push($arr, array(
        $arr->push(array(
                'owner' => 100,
                'host' => 'www.example.com.co.uk',
                'path' => '/this/is/an/example/path.html',
                'hostkey' => '1111'
                ));
        if($i % 1000 == 0){ echo $i . "\n"; }
}
$i = 0;
while($elem = $arr->shift()){
//while($elem = array_shift($arr)){
        $i++;
        if($i > 1000){ break; }
        if(! ($elem['owner'] == 100 && $elem['host'] == 'www.example.com.co.uk' && $elem['path'] == '/this/is/an/example/path.html' && $elem['hostkey'] == '1111')){
                die("Problem");
        }
}
echo "\nTotal time: " . sprintf('%.3f', microtime(true) - $stime) . "\n";
$p2 = memory_get_peak_usage();
echo "Grew: " . ($p2 - $p1) . "\n";

Spain has been all over the press this weekend with a 100 Billion euro bailout agreed to by   Eurozone finance ministers. I spent the last three days in Spain and I find the coverage I’m reading somewhat disconnected with reality.

I drove down to Madrid from where I live in Southern France and spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning there, then drove back home and spent Saturday evening in Pamplona where the San Fermin festival starts in a month with the running of the bulls.

Madrid is a shining jewel in Europe. The city is immaculately clean and has a wonderful mix of new buildings like the Cuatro Torres that make for a spectacular modern skyline juxtaposed against gorgeous old buildings like the Royal Palace.

Walking in the Parque del Oeste where the Egyptian temple of Debod was moved to save it from the Aswan Dam, the park is filled with locals who have come out at night for their evening walk. Kids playing, groups of older women or men walking together, lovers in a quiet secluded spot in the park. Everyone is happy and full of life.

Driving around Spain there is an incredible amount of active road construction and the roads that aren’t being worked on are in great condition with many spectacular bridges.

Pamplona was absolutely heaving with party-goers on Saturday night including a huge Spanish rock festival, packed bars and pubs and streets literally filled from wall to wall in the older part of town – and the newer part was full of locals out for their evening walk. I visited a heavy metal bar with an Iron Maiden cover band doing a terrible rendition of Maiden’s older stuff and the standing-room-only crowd loving every second of it.

While in Madrid I got chatting to a local shopkeeper and went out on a limb and asked her about the informal or under-the-table economy in Spain. She explained that many people are employed off the books. I asked why, speculating that the tax in Spain is very high. She explained yes that’s one reason, but taxes are higher in Italy where she’s originally from. Another reason is to keep getting social benefits like a housing benefit. She also said it’s popular to pay someone only 70% of what they’re really paid into their bank account and the rest in cash to avoid tax.

More evidence that there’s a thriving off-the-books economy is that when we stayed in Madrid, we rented self catering accommodation. The proprietor asked that we pay the roughly 200 euros bill in cash.

All the economic indicators used to describe the “Spanish crisis” and provide rationales for bailing out spain or to predict how bad the “coming collapse” will be don’t take the informal economy into account. It also makes it difficult to understand the needs of the Spanish people, what the GDP really is, how dependent they really are on social programs and what Spain’s real ability is to service it’s debt.

To some the informal economy in Spain may seem to be immoral because conventional wisdom holds that one should “pay your taxes” and put your money in a safe place like a bank. But the Spanish people seem to be discovering a way to live without banks and government visibility on how much they earn or what they do with their money. I suspect many of the government assistance programs are over subscribed and do little to serve their intended targets.

It makes one wonder who the Eurozone is really bailing out.

“Everyone has a plan until they get hit.”

~Mike Tyson.

Studying French for 1.5 months and then arriving in France thinking I’m a badass knowing how to sling a few sentences together was a notion rudely trussed, cooked, carved up and served back to me on a giant silver platter called humility by a certain French checkout girl yesterday at Decathlon.

I’d already been to the Bordeaux Apple Store (which is awesome), Animal’s World for pet supplies (also awesome), Orange and Ikea and flattered by people taking my money into thinking that I’m doing OK. Standing at the back of the line at Decathlon at the end of the day a checkout girl hurls a handful of words at me and waits while the entire line turns around and stares at me. I completely froze and couldn’t utter a word of french. I leaned over and in squeaky english said “I don’t speak french” and wanted to die. She gesticulated wildly at the line next to me and I walked over there and she stopped gesticulating. I still have no idea what she said.

I started today screwing up my first verb “parlez” instead of “je parle” after I was sure I’d at least get that right. Learning French and actually speaking it is like going from boxerobics to Mike Tyson swinging at your head.

I’ve moved to South Western France for a year (The Bordeaux region) and will be keeping a few concise notes on my experience getting here and living here. Mostly bullet form and you’re welcome to ask me anything in the comments.

• French embassy in San Francisco is great for visas but make sure you have absolutely all paperwork presented exactly as they ask for it. It took us roughly 4 weeks after our appointment to get a long stay visa granted.
• Getting pets into europe means you need to get a USDA certified rabies vaccination certificate for all of them. It cost us over $1000 to get all this done. We got domestic health certs too even though we didn’t strictly need them.
• The folks at Delta or on the US side didn’t ask for any of the pet certs.
• We transported the two cats in the cabin under the seats in front of us, although putting them under my legs turned out to be more comfy.
• We used this pet carrier for the cats after much research – size large. it’s 12 X 12 by 18, the largest delta takes, and it changes shape so you can smoosh it into place. Here’s a product link.
• Joey travelled in a medium sized crate in the hold. I used ice as usual in his water bowl so it wouldn’t spill during loading. Two absorbent pads, one for pets in the base, his cushions, then adult incontenence pads on top of his mattress.
• None of the pets used the loo on the 10 hour flight from SLC to CDG in Paris.
• On the French side customs didn’t even take a second look at us as we walked into the customs hall with 3 pets. I walked up to the desk. Got completely ignored, so walked onto french soil with my 3 pets and $1000 of documentation not being examined at all.
• Both the Delta, Salt Lake City TSA folks, French Delta and French airline and security staff were really amazing about letting us watch our dog board and deplane, and just being really friendly and helpful.
• We hired a van and drove down to Blaye, a small town outside Bordeaux where we’re spending the next year. Eurocar was unbelievably slow and it’s not because we’re special, they have a reputation with just about anyone who has rented a car at CDG in Paris.
• The GPS in the van caused more trouble than it helped – next time I’ll just use the blue signs.
• French cars are unbelievably fuel efficient, this was a large diesel van and the 5 hour drive from Paris to Bordeaux only used half a tank of gas. Americans take note.
• As far as I can tell there are no photo speed cameras on the A10, they manually pull you over, but I’ll let you know in a few weeks as the tickets arrive.
• As usual the French roll up the sidewalks at 9pm, and small towns are dead off-season after 7pm, so absolutely nothing was open when we rolled into Blaye at around 8pm.

I was in Blaye for 3 weeks about 2 months ago and knew no French. It was really frustrating in the sense that I wasn’t able to really communicate with all the people I met. And in a small town where everyone is really friendly, it’s doubly frustrating.

So I threw myself into learning French starting about 1.5 months ago. I’m using Michel Thomas beginner, advanced and language builder tapes. He’s a former Nazi prisoner of war, then turned interrogator of Nazi guards, then language tutor to Hollywood stars. Towards the end of his life (he died in 2005) he put his lessons on CD’s which are truly amazing for learning a language, particularly French. I’ve worked through all the basic and intermediate material he created and am working on advanced verb forms, grammar etc. Arriving in France this time around and being able to have a basic conversation in my peasant French is an amazing experience.

Here’s an amazon link to a few of his products. There seem to be 10 CD sets that I don’t recognize, but just get the beginner audio program which is at least 8 CD’s. I’ve used the 8 CD beginner/intermediate program and I’m halfway through the 4 CD advanced program. I intend to do the language builder at some point, but I’m building up my vocab on my own time.

If you have doubts about how amazing this program is, check out the BBC documentary on YouTube titled “Michel Thomas, language master”. Here is:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

We need to visit the OFII in the next week or so to register as residents. I’ll keep taking notes that will hopefully help someone else who decides to spend some time here. I’ll also be writing an entry on working remotely including french bandwidth, cell networks, etc.