The latest episode of the /Dev/Hell podcast, hosted by PHP community members Ed Finkler and Chris Hartjes, has been released - Episode 39: "Animal Style".

This was recorded the night before SkiPHP started, which was an awesome PHP conference in Salt Lake City. We ramble about a lot of stuff, including our first conferences, America’s first serial killer, our approaches for giving talks, and Chris’ secret identity.

You can check out this latest episode either through the in-page player or by downloading the mp3 directly. If you like what you hear, consider subscribing to their feed to get this and future episodes.

The SitePoint PHP Blog has a new tutorial posted today showing an interesting combination of technologies to create a simple Animal Guesssing Game - using Dart as the frontend and PHP as the backend.

Back when I was learning programming on Apple II using BASIC, there was an Animal Guess Game. This game was a very primitive AI game: the computer tries to ask a few YES/NO questions and receives the answer from the user. Based on the answer, it may ask more Y/N questions until it tries to guess the animal. In this tutorial, we will learn how to re-vitalize this program using PHP as backend and Dart as frontend. Of course, a database will be used to store all the questions and guesses of animals.

He walks you through the database setup (including table definitions) and provides some simple PDO-based code to connect and fetch results. Then comes the Dart frontend. He goes through the installation and configuration and how to make a new Polymer application, also including the markup and Dart code to make the backend connection.

The team that has brought you the infamous PHP ElePHPants in the past is back with another round - the 6th generation of the cuddly PHP mascot in both traditional blue and pink.

April 19, 2011 PHPère is happy to show you the first pictures of two premature elePHPant the 6th generation of PHP. As you can see ... ElePHPant the blue, is in great shape and has found its new home very pleasant

These are shots of the first turnouts of this latest batch and the rest will follow in June/July of this year. Those that have already ordered them will be contacted soon and, if you're interested in picking up some of your own, send them an email for complete instructions.

If you've been trying to get your hands on one of the cuddly little mascots for PHP (the elePHPant) but haven't managed to yet, there's some good news! Another run of the fuzzy little animals is being done (the 6th) and this time they're offering something new - pink elePHPants.

As we are now out of every of the 5 first generation of the elephpants, it is time to start a 6th. You'll find here all information to include yourself. [...] Fill in your elephpants wishes. We do not need any payement now. We will contact you directly before starting the generation for the actual payement.

Their schedule hopes to end the pre-order process on December 20th (just three days away) and to strat production on these pre-orders by January 10th. The end results would be shipped out for delivery in April 2011. If you'd like to lay claim to some of your own, go over to the order form and select the size (large/small) and the color (blue/pink) and fill in the contact info. Unfortunately, because of production restrictions, single elePHPants cannot be ordered, so consider getting together with a local user group and all chipping in for a box!

So you've seen all of the pictures of the elePHPants floating around and want to get your hands on one of your very own? Good news! Damien Seguy and crew have another fresh batch of huggable blue PHPness on the way and you can place your order now:

If you have missed the boat of the first generation of elePHPants, now is the right time to catchup up and participate to the 2008 generation! As for the first generation, this project is open to every PHP User group and aficionados, that want to adopt elePHPants, small or big.

Pricing is 4 Euros per elephant (in a 50 count box only) or 50 Euro for one of the larger elephants. They're even open to having company logos ("your own brood") added to the other side of his back. You can find more details on getting your hands on one at this page on the Nexen.net website or just head right to the order form to get a little blue PHPer to call your own.