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Our new kittens are growing like little weeds! And getting cuter by the day. I think they’ve tripled in size.

Our cat had kittens in our garage last Monday. They are SO cute! There were five of them all together, but one of them died on Wednesday. I read that their little eyes will open between 5 and 14 days, so they could start opening at any time now. I hope to keep you posted as to their growth. And I will take lots of pictures.

I spent several hours last night trying to figure out why my code wasn’t working. I had an array of tags that I wanted to add to my database. But, I only wanted to add the tags if they hadn’t already been added. The API that I was using only had a method to return me an array of the tags that were already on the database. So, I decided to get that array and then merge the two arrays, take out the duplicates with array_unique() and then find the difference (array_diff) between those unique tags and my new tags. The different tags would need to be added to the database.

What I didn’t know was that an empty database, producing an empty array would not work with array_merge(). Instead of just duplicating my new tag array (which is what I thought it would do), it gave a warning and didn’t return anything. So, my tags were never being added to the database.

I spent several hours tracking down that bug (mostly because it was in a SOAP call which ran very slowly for each test). Hopefully, this will help someone else not make the same mistake!

Happy Programming!

Cindy

Installing the Apache2 web server on Ubuntu was easy. I just opened the package manager and chose the apache2 packages that I wanted to install. Ubuntu did the rest.

Once I figured out where everything is, it wasn’t too hard to figure out how to stop and start the web server. It’s changed a bit since I worked with apache a little over the years. Instead of everything being included in the httpd.conf file, that file seems to have been split up. Now there are folders in the apache2 folder that do different things that the httpd.conf file used to do.

To enable modules, instead of loading them inside the config file, I just add them to the mods-enabled folder. For the virtual hosts, I add them to the sites-enabled folder.

Instead of configuring things in the httpd.conf file, I now have to change the apache2.conf file.

So far, so good. I’m setting up some of my virtual hosts now so we’ll see how it goes.

I also installed MySQL and PHP. They seem to be working ok, but I haven’t fully tested everything out yet.

I installed phpmyadmin as well, but I haven’t a clue as to how to start it yet. I’ll have to figure that out when I get Apache set up like I want it. And then it’s on to setting up the mail server.

Things have been crazy around here!

I took a new job with Iostudio, LLC and I love it!

I’m making websites and programming in PHP, MySQL, javascript, and ajax. I really enjoy it and it’s keeping me really busy.

But, my passion is not only programming, but also teaching others. I’ve had some apprentices for several months now and I just haven’t gotten to spend as much time as I’d like teaching them and helping them learn web design, programming, marketing, etc. So, I’ve come up with a new plan that I hope to implement over the next couple of months.

I know that in my job, I often have programming errors or software errors that I just don’t know how to fix. Many times I ‘Google’ the error and find where someone has written about what they did to fix the same problem. It has saved me countless hours. Other times when I couldn’t find anything on Google, I had to spend the countless hours finding a solution.

I want to start writing again in this blog about my technical adventures. Maybe what I learn and what I find answers for will help someone else that runs into the same ‘opportunity’ that I run into.

So, this blog will become a little bit of everything. We still homeschool and I will be discussing things about homeschooling. I will also be talking a lot about the techy stuff. But, I’ll be talking about mentoring, entrepreneurship, web design and hosting, internet marketing, and whatever else happens to come to mind.

For those of you that are subscribed to my blog and don’t care about the techy stuff, I’m sorry But, it’s a BIG part of my life right now and I feel compelled to write about it. I understand if you want to cancel your subscription.

I have a feeling that this blog will evolve a lot as I move forward. I plan to upgrade this version of wordpress and then move this blog to a new server that I set up myself in my living room. I will be discussing the details of setting up this server as I go. So, if that kind of stuff interests you, you are in for a treat! If it doesn’t, prepare to be bored or unsubscribe.

I want to set up my own server so that I can give access to all my students so that I can teach them everything that I want to teach them about programming. It’s cheaper than renting a server somewhere else and a whole lot more fun for me.

I went to Best Buy last weekend (during our tax-free weekend in Tennessee) and bought and open-box computer for about $330 and a nice 19 inch monitor for around $170. I gave the monitor to my son who gave me his little 15 inch monitor. But, his old monitor didn’t want to work with my computer so I ended up buying yet another 19 inch monitor. It works well. I also bought a battery backup while I was there. That should keep my new server from shutting down unless the power happens to be out for quite a while. Hopefully, that won’t happen.

I called my cable company where I have my internet service and told them that I wanted a static IP address. I knew how to use my server with a dynamic address, but I think it’s against Comcast’s policies to run a server on a residential account. So, I went ahead and called them. As it turns out, it’s going to be even better for me with the static IP address because it’s much faster. And they were running a special. It’s only going to cost me about $10-$15 more than I was paying before. And no installation fee. Pretty cool! AND I needed the static IP address to be able to work from home for day time job too. So, it was perfect timing. Now I can work from home when I have those deadlines to meet. Better than staying at the office and being away from the kids.

They came and set up the static ip address - they installed a new modem - this last Thursday and I got everything hooked up so that I can access the servers I’m working on at work. That part is working well. Now, I just need to set up my computer so that I can host the websites and allow my apprentices and students access to the new computer for their lessons.

I went to Borders books and bought a Ubuntu 7.10 book which included the DVD with Ubuntu Linux. I installed Ubuntu with no problems. Then I upgraded to the new version 8.04 Everything went well - except for the problems I had with the old monitor. It would let me access the command line, but not the graphical interface (GUI). The mouse wouldn’t work with that monitor attached either. Now that I have the new monitor hooked up, everything seems to be working fine. It was easy and painless to get Ubuntu up and running on this eMachines with an AMD processor.

Now, I’m off to upgrade this blog to the latest version of wordpress. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Cindy