Messed up the end of my previous one. Corrected version here:
a simple work around to non-blocking working with normal read is like so:
$read = array($socket);
$write = NULL;
$except = NULL;
while(1) {
$num_changed_sockets = socket_select($read, $write, $except, 0, 1);
if ( $num_changed_sockets > '0' ) {
socket_read($socket,10000,PHP_NORMAL_READ);
}
}