I’ve got a PHP script that sometimes just dies with no errors to the browser and no messages in the error log. I’ve seen this in the past with scripts that consumed too much memory (yeah, it should have issued an error, but it didn’t, and increasing the memory limit fixed it), but now the memory limit is set pretty high and I’m not sure I want to increase it further. I certainly don’t want to increase it without seeing where it’s going wrong, anyway.

To do that, IBM developerWorks says the memory_get_usage() and memory_get_peak_usage() functions are for me. And they offer some other interesting tips as well.

I’ve been thinking about it since Troy mentioned to me that he thought Google was ruining his memory. And I thought I found confirmation of it when I read Gladwell’s description of Daniel Wegner, et al’s Transactive Memory in Close Relationships:

When we talk about memory, we aren’t just talking about ideas and impressions and facts stored inside our heads. An awful lot of what we remember is actually stored outside our brains. Most of us deliberately don’t memorize most of the phone numbers we need. But we do memorize where to find them — in a phone book, or in our personal Rolodex.

You’d think this is where I say Google fits, but I’d argue it goes deeper. Gladwell continues:

Perhaps more important, though, we store information with other people. Couples do this automatically. …Wegner argues that when people know each other well, they create an implicit joint memory system — a transactive memory system — which is based on an understanding about who is best suited to remember what kinds of things.

This joint memory, claim Gladwell and Wegner argue, is part of what intimacy means.

So, perhaps there’s a continuum between phonebooks and life-partners. Not withstanding reports that 24% of Americans say the web can replace a significant other, where does today’s internet fit?

Before you answer that, consider eBay Fever and Anne Muxel’s Family Memory, a Sociology of Intimacy:

Family memory is also and above all a presence inside us which recalls itself to us on the basis of images, impressions, and sensations. When it opens up its doors, it lets out, as if by magic, a burst of odors, sounds, an anecdote, a familiar joke, an object, a photo, the voices of familiar characters, the memory of their bodies, of their gestures, like an image of a childhood place, a recipe, etc., all of these evocations working as cues to bring the past back into the present.

memory, intimacy, search engines, google, transactive memory, shared memory

In remembering James Henry Smith, a zealous Pittsburgh Steelers fan who died of prostate cancer in early July, his family asked the Samuel E. Coston Funeral Home to do things “as he would have wanted them to be.” For the viewing, the funeral home arranged a living room ensemble with the TV and recliner just as Smith liked it on game day. An AP article describes it:

Smith’s body was on the recliner, his feet crossed and a remote in his hand. He wore black and gold silk pajamas, slippers and a robe. A pack of cigarettes and a beer were at his side, while a high-definition TV played a continuous loop of Steelers highlights.

The article quotes tearful friends and family pleased with the unusual viewing.

Thanks to Church of the Customer for the heads up.

Photo (above right): this is not a recliner, it has nothing to do with Smith. Maybe this image would have been better?

tags: family, football fan, football, funeral home, game day, gold silk, james henry smith, memory, pittsburgh, pittsburgh steelers, pittsburgh steelers fan, prostate cancer, recliner, remeberance, silk pajamas, steelers, team colors, zeal, zealous fan