Catching up for the week.

I have been really busy over the last week, so I have not had a chance to post here until now.

Work is going great! I am settling in and I am making good progress and learning a lot. I would like to say I have been making the same progress with my HTML studies, but just haven't had time to sit down with the Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML book lately. I am hoping get in so study time over this weekend. Even though I have a job, I still want to develop and improve my skill set, and I definitely need to clean up my web sites. I also will continue to develop my interest in web accessibility.

I am going to drop the Apache, PHP, and MySQL studies for now, and start up with C# shortly. Studying C# will not only help me at work, but also may be beneficial with my robotics work using Microsoft Robotics Studio (MRS) from what I have been told. I will be using the Lego NXT system to start with because it can be used with MRS and it's easy to work with.

Given that it's now "that season" in the Seattle (cloudy, rainy, dreary) I'll be taking my astonomy interest inside and play with some of the free astronomy programs that come with Ubuntu as well as working with the Astro Link Blog and the Cloudymidnights Blog. I'll also be playing around with my CoCo, though I'll be posting more about that on the 8-Bit Retro Computing Blog.

I think I'll be busy for quite some time. Cheers! :)

It's hump day, and I am tying to get over some humps

The brand new printer that I got to print out cover letters and customized resumes died yesterday. I have solutions to work around the problem until a replacement printer arrives, so I am not completely stuck and I am moving forward (albeit a bit hobbled).

What was left of my time yesterday was spent working on my job search, so didn't get in any time for my studies. It looks like today will be focused exclusively on the job search, but hopefully tonight I will be able to get in some time and learn more about XHTML.

I know what I want to do with the knowledge I will get from Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML, but I am not sure if I should move forward with the PHP studies, or shift my focus to C#. I would like to learn both because both interest me and I see the demand for those skills, but I only have so much time.

While I know what my long term goals are, I am struggling to find the right path to get to where I want to go. There are so many pathes that present opportunities that I lose my focus at times. Keeping my focus and continuing to stay hopeful are are just two more humps in the road ahead for me, but I will get over them.

I am still here and still plugging away.

I have been very busy the last few days working on my job search, so much so that I have had to put the books down for a bit and just crank away at the job search.

I have made enough headway and have gotten organized enough to where my schedule will allow for more study time starting today (or at least I hope)

While my goals and purpose haven't changed, I do need to meet the requirements as required by the Employment Security Department, and so I have to balance my energies and priorities.

I have taken some time to gloss over Chapter Five of Head First book, and the perused the Crash Course book a bit, and once I clear a few things off my plate I am back to work at reading those two books.

The one thing that I am trying not to do is get down too hard on myself about the situation, and I am working hard at staying positive. I will say though I am putting in a lot of walks to help with the stress and keep me motivated.

That's it for now, and thanks for reading. Please feel free to comment. It would be nice to know that someone is reading this blog.

Cheers! ~ Jim

Making progress and a slight course change.

The weekend Apache/MySQL/PHP crash course is turning into a week long or longer crash course, and actually that is a good thing.

Given the issues with the book being out of date, I have decided to slow down the pace with this course of study, but keep at it. I am not moving it to the back burner, but instead turning down the heat. I have a new book on order: Head First PHP & MySQL. This book is due in mid-September, and I should have the first book done by then and what I learned will help move forward with the new book. I should have read the reviews on Amazon before diving into the first book. If I had I would have started my studies with HTML a lot sooner.

Having said that, I now plan to refocus my efforts on learning HTML, XHTML, and CSS with the Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML from O'Reilly. This is where I should have started in the first place, but as they say - "you live and learn".

I thought that diving into PHP and MySQL with a crash course book would be give me some additional momentum towards my end goal, but unfortunately there were some issues. Fortunately the issues I encountered I was able to turn into good learning experiences.

Staying with it.

I decided to take a break after the late night session on Monday night / Tuesday Morning otherwise my efforts with the crash course book may have resulted in my crashing and burning.

The one thing I have learned from the reading this book so far is always make certain that the material you are reading about is up-to-date. Having said that, I will say that I did learn from my efforts, so I am staying with it. It will just take more than a weekend to finish this book though.

helloworld.php

It may not be a major milestone for many, but it is for me!

Considering I am using a book that references older versions of Apache, PHP, and MySQL, and all the changes that have taken place, I think getting the words "hello world" to appear in my browser by way of a PHP script is pretty good progress especially since that is several chapters down the road. Yeah, I just had to stumble ahead, but it was fun.

There seems to be some issues with getting the PHP CLI to work, though I think I just need to tweak some environment variables. A major change with MySQL is that winmysqladmin.exe is no longer available, and this will require some improvsation on my part, but I will manage.

(It's really late, so please excuse any typos.)

Read the documentation Jim!

I finally was able to get PHP up and running with Apache, but the version of PHP I am using is not what the Crash Course book says to use. Instead of completing a manual installation with PHP 4.4.9, I ended up using the installer package for PHP 5.2.6

The book is based PHP 4.X.X. and Apache 2.0, and not Apache 2.2. If I had paid attention to what version of Apache I installed, and this note on the PHP site, I wouldn't have taken so much time to get PHP installed:

"Note: Apache 2.2.x Support
Users of Apache 2.2.x may use the documentation below except the appropriate DLL file is named php5apache2_2.dll and it only exists as of PHP 5.2.0. See also » http://snaps.php.net/"

Trying to install php 4.4.9 using the php4apache2.dll in the httpd.conf Apache config file, just isn't going to work.

Was this a waste of time. No! I am certain I can do a manual install of PHP 4.4.9 on another system, but I have to make sure I am using Apache 2.0.x and not Apache 2.2 I may end up doing this if I have some spare cycles later on.

Several notes to anyone else trying this.

1. Only print out the PHP installation readme if you want to kill off a forest. (35 pages!)
2. Try to have two systems running when you do this. One system to install PHP on, and the other to read the install instructions on the PHP.net site (since the book is a little out of date with regards to the latest version of Apache). This luxery may not be available to everyone, but it sure helps to be able to access PHP.net site on one monitor while you are installing on another system. This can be done with a single system single or dual monitors, but it saves time if you have reboot the system you are installing PHP on.
3. Check the errata on the book. There was also a typo regarding the php4apache2.dll. The book has phpapache2.dll not php4apache2.dll.

Well now I move on to installing MySQL. This little delay cost me some time, but it was a learning experience.