WAMP -> LAMP
Posted by Nazly on Wednesday, 28th September 2005 21:20:11 (GMT +0530)I have been quiet in my blog in the past week as I have been seriously involved in putting up a Web Server at office. I easily got the approval when I wanted to put up LAMP (Linux - Apache - MySQL - PHP) on that. It has been a good experience as it was sorta a Linux comeback for me. Learnt few stuff as I had to configure this behind the router with a dynamic IP. I setup a domain to it using the free dynamic DNS service provided by ZoneEdit.com. Got a good picture of port forwarding and NAT. So now I have a LAMP development environment at office.
![[Wink]](/smiles/icon_wink.gif){kind=icon}
I have been using WAMP (Windows - Apache - MySQL - PHP) in my developement environment till now though the place I host the Web sites and Web Applications are powered by LAMP. The reason I couldn't switch to Linux is simply unforgivable. At home I have this stupid Broadband Modem that doesn't have a Linux Driver. So I cannot get online with Linux and that kept me away from using Linux though I have a dual boot system with Linux installed. Also the laziness to backup the data and the busy schedules avoided the swith over. But this comeback has made some effect. I have already started looking for a router and planning for a complete switch over to Linux in the near future. Counting the days for it...
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Beyond port 80
Posted by Nazly on Wednesday, 28th September 2005 20:30:19 (GMT +0530)I should say that I have broken the port 80 barrier lately as I wrote a basic socket server using PHP. Its the first time ever I have written something else like this coz till now I have been more keen on developing Web Applications and was stuck on port 80 and Apache Web Server. I have been teased few times by my collegues that I don't have a world beyond port 80. Atlast I broke that barrier
![:D[BigGrin]](/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif){kind=icon}
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Socket programming in PHP can be done using the socket communication functions that provides the fascility to act as a socket server and as well as a client. I will try to post some sample codes when I complete them.
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Opera is now FREE
Posted by Nazly on Wednesday, 21st September 2005 09:36:04 (GMT +0530)The Opera Browser has become free as the ad banner and licensing fee has been removed. Earlier it was free to download with an ad banner and users had to pay a licensing fee to get rid of the ad. This prevented most users from using Opera. This step taken by Opera will make users to explore the features of Opera and feel comfortable with using it for Web browsing.
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MySQL GUI tools
Posted by Nazly on Tuesday, 20th September 2005 23:09:45 (GMT +0530)I have been playing around with the MySQL GUI tools lately specially with the MySQL Query Browser and its really easy to play around with SQL queries. I did use PHPMyAdmin effectively though I simply like the Query Browser. MySQL Migration Toolkit and MySQL Administrator are the other two GUI tools available. If you haven't started on it, go get 'em
. You can download them from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/
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Older ears on younger bodies
Posted by Nazly on Wednesday, 14th September 2005 20:52:52 (GMT +0530)Portable Music players are everywhere now. Most of the people have an ear bud attached to their ears either as MP3players or Mobile phones which have become a part of their day to day lives. Its excessive use can lead to hearing loss. Following is an imporatnt news to read on whether Headphones are linked with hearing loss?
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Google Sitemaps
Posted by Nazly on Tuesday, 13th September 2005 22:21:08 (GMT +0530)Google Sitemaps helps Webmasters to index their pages in the Google Search engine. The web crawling process is not really an updated process where the crawlers or AKA 'spiders' visit the sites and follow the links to gather information about the updated contents on a site. Using Google Sitemaps the Webmasters have more control where they can direct the crawlers what to crawl. This is very important when it comes to websites with dynamic content. Its indeed a new experiment by Google when it comes to crawling the Web.
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England regain Ashes
Posted by Nazly on Tuesday, 13th September 2005 06:29:11 (GMT +0530)England have regained the Ashes after 16 years by winning the series 2-1. England required a draw of the last Test at the Oval to make sure that they win the series.
England scored 373 in their first innings where Andrew Strauss scored 129 and Flintoff scored 72. Warne ripped through the top order of the England lineup though Strauss and Flintoff made sure they got runs on the board. In reply the Aussies made rock solid start where Hayden and Langer put up a 185 run partnership for the first wicket. Langer scored 105 while Hayden got 138. Aussies were moving along nicely at 281 for 2 but lost their way in the middle losing 8 wickets for less than 90 runs. Flintoff and Hoggard did most of the damage capturing 5 and 4 wickets respectively. Aussies were all out for 367. England were threatend in their reply when Warne and McGrath got regular breakthroughs. But Kevin Pieterson smashed the ball all around the park and scored a magnificent 158 in 187 balls to ensure that Ashes is coming back home.
This series win is a great win for English Cricket. Their performance has been exceptional for the last couple of years. Flintoff has been the man to watch this whole series as he is reckoned as the 'New Botham' of the England camp. Kevin Pieterson's inclusion to the Test arena has made a lot of difference. Each and every player in the England line up has put their level best to regain the Ashes.
Jubilant England team after regaining the Ashes
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How small can it get?
Posted by Nazly on Sunday, 11th September 2005 09:27:14 (GMT +0530)The new pencil-thin Apple - iPod nano with the storages between 2GB-4GB has been the talk amongst the guys here lately. Its simply amazing..
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Rasmus @ FOSSSL 05
Posted by Nazly on Saturday, 10th September 2005 22:03:02 (GMT +0530)Here are the links to Rasmus's presentation @ FOSSSL 05
PHP 5 Tutorial - Rasmus Lerdorf (7th of Sep 2005)
"PHP - Scripting the Web" - Rasmus Lerdorf (9th of Sep 2005 - At the Conference)
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Last day of FOSSSL 05
Posted by Nazly on Saturday, 10th September 2005 21:20:52 (GMT +0530)It came to the last day of the FOSSSL 05 where David Axmark did a tutorial on 'MySQL 5.0' and Greg Stein did a tutorial on 'Programming Google'. Both session helped me in a great deal. David introduced all those new features in MySQL 5.0 and gave a good overview of MySQL Cluster.
Greg who works for Google covered all the cool Google APIs and feeds that can be used in our applications. I had a chat with Greg after the session and discussed few things on the Google Search API and the Google Map API. I did some experiments with the Search API sometime back using PHP with NuSOAP. But that was a long time ago. Lately I have been playing around with the Map API, still more time has be put into that. The short discussion with Greg helped me a lot. He gave a short presentation on Google Earth and showed how KML can be used to store geographic features. I was really impressed with that. I did check with Google Earth within the couple of days it was released. But KML, I learnt about it today, thanks to Greg.
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Day 2 of FOSSSL 05 Conf.
Posted by Nazly on Friday, 9th September 2005 21:38:07 (GMT +0530)Day 2 of FOSSSL started off with David Axmark addressing on Past, Present and Future of MySQL. Bruce Momjian, Rasmus Lerdorf and Sam Ruby presented their talks today. Rasmus did somewhat an overview of PHP in a quick one hour which covered more of what he did on the Tutorial session the other day. He was quickly going through the latest stuff in PHP5 like better XML support, SQLite and the stuff that Rasmus plays around with. Rasmus's 30 second AJAX tutorial was quite interesting as I did play around with AJAX in PHP using the SAJAX sometime back. This 90 seconds really explained me the basics behind AJAX.
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All at Once
Posted by Nazly on Thursday, 8th September 2005 22:47:59 (GMT +0530)It was awesome to see all of the drivers and the creators of OpenSource at one place on the first day of FOSSSL 05 Conference. Michael Tiemann (President of OSI and Father of G++), David Axmark (Co Founder of MySQL), Martin Michlmayr (Former Debian Project Leader), Bruce Momjian (Lead contributer to PostgreSQL), Greg Stein (Chairman, Apache Software Foundation), Rasmus Lerdorf (Father of PHP), Sam Ruby (Member of Apache Board and Hacker Extraordinaire) and Sanjiva Weerawarana (Member of OSI Board and Apache Web Services Leader) were present at the Conference. Its a great opportunity to meet them all.
Today there were main talks by Michael Tiemann, Martin Michlmayr, Greg Stein, Sanjiva Weerawarana. Also short sessions were done by the guys @ LKLUG and LSF. Bud Siddhisena AKA Bud of LKLUG did a presentation on "Virtualization: The Future of Computing". Bud is the one who pushed me into PHP/MySQL around the year 2001 when I was messing around with a bunch of crap at the early stages of my career. Day2 of the conference will be tomorrow where my interesting topics will be spoken
I made sure to pinch myself to check that I'm not really dreamin'. Yeah I'm still in Sri Lanka
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This is something that happens to most of us and happened to Rasmus too when he was Teaching Arthur C. Clarke PHP
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Father of PHP @ FOSSSL 05
Posted by Nazly on Wednesday, 7th September 2005 22:01:27 (GMT +0530)The first day of FOSSSL 05 kicked off with the PHP5 Tutorial by Rasmus Lerdorf AKA the father of PHP. I was so excited to see him and was very quietly and keenly listening to his session he did on PHP5. He was going through all the new stuff in PHP5 and it was really great to get it out from the mouth of the creator him self
The most interesting part was that he was sharing his own experience and explained the DO's and DONT's in PHP in his own view. Of course he is the creator. That was really important to me as I have this real worry at times when I write some new stuff in PHP. I tend to think whether my code is clean, efficient, is there any way to write this in a better way blah blah.. I post the code to Codewalkers forums and get the suggestions from the guys there. They help me a lot to do this task. Apart from that the PHP Manual has been simply the best around. Rasmus's session helped me realise what I should do and should not in PHP. He talked a lot about templating and caching. Caching is something I still havent got hold of. Today's tutorial opened the doors to the world of caching in PHP which will be key to my future developments.
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Beyond our control
Posted by Nazly on Sunday, 4th September 2005 21:22:43 (GMT +0530)The weather here in Sri Lanka has changed quite dramatically as its raining quite heavily here and there and the wind is quite strong and the forecast for the next five days suggest that it will continue to rain. This is opposite for what we experienced in the past few weeks as it was very hot and sunny.
Around the world there are few hurricanes and typhoons forming and has created quite a disaster. Hurricane Katrina has created a lot of disaster in Lousiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Typhoon Talim has hit Southern China where more than 600,000 people have been evacuted.
These do remind us there are things in this world that are beyond our control.
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The decider
Posted by Nazly on Sunday, 4th September 2005 19:03:38 (GMT +0530)The decider of the Ashes Series will kick off on the 8th of Sepetember 2005 at the Oval. This test will be an important one for both teams as Aussies need to win this one to draw the series and retain the Ashes for the 9th time in a row. While a draw for the Englishmen will be enough to bring Ashes back home.
When the tour started the Aussies were dominating the World of Test Cricket. The performance put up by the England outfit has created massive amount of pressure among the Aussie camp, specially the four pace attack which worries most of their batsmen. England in fact made Aussies to follow-on in the fourth test, as the last time they were made to follow-on was 18 years back. Mc Grath's injury worry, poor form of Gillespie and Hayden are big worries for Australia. Gillespie was left out on the fourth test and was replaced by Shaun Tait while Hayden's position is under threat in the fifth Test. Katich might open with Langer in the fifth Test. Shane Watson's performance for Hampshire gets him closer to be included in the Aussie squad while Sturat MacGill too is an option. The good news is that McGrath has made him self available for the fifth Test. England want him to play as we all want this World Class Fast Bowler to be back in action.
Meanwhile England have one worry facing the upcoming test. The Welsh Swinger, Simon Jones was injured during the fourth test and still in the recovering stages. Jones, a key in the four pace English attack captured 18 Aussies wickets this series. In this Ashes series England named the same team for all four matches. If Jones plays and if England remain unchanged it will be the first time in 120 years the same England team go through an entire Ashes series. James Anderson and Paul Collingwood are included in the squad for the fifth test.
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National FOSS Week 05
Posted by Nazly on Saturday, 3rd September 2005 19:45:01 (GMT +0530)5th to 11th September 2005 will be the National Free And Open Source Software Week here in Sri Lanka. There are loads of events lined up on this upcoming week. FOSSSL seems to be the highlight among the other events as top names of Open Souce will be part of it.
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