Hello anyone reading, i recently setup my ubuntu 7.10 (Which I’m absoloutley convinced is slower than 7.04) and anyway, here is a few notes from my installation, i hope someone finds some part of it useful. If so.. please comment…

There are 3 main sections:

• Initial Setup
• Look & Feel
• Setting up / configuring the web dev environment

Step 1, initial setup

Hello, this is my guide to setting up my ubuntu dev machine.

Here is my PC setup:

• PC: Dell INSPIRON 530
• Monitor: LG Flatron Wide M228WA

Issues with the INSPIRON 530 from previous ubuntu installations..

I have reinstalled ubuntu many times on the Dell INSPIRON 530, and have encountered a few issues in the past. I will detail them below.

Help, No ethernet !!

Prior to Ubuntu 7.10, if you installed ubuntu on your Dell INSPIRON box, you will find the ethernet on the back is not supported out of the box. To get the ethernet installed, please untar the following archive..

firstly do: wget theatons.com/test/dump/linux-backports-modules_2.6.20-16.tar.gz
then extract: tar xzvf linux-backports-modules_2.6.20-16.tar.gz
then run: sudo dpkg -i linux-backports-modules-generic_2.6.20.16.28.1_i386.deb

You might have to run the other one aswell, in some kind of order, but it makes no harm to just play about running those and then plug in your ethernet, give it 1-2mins to sort it self out, then run ifconfig and you should see your ip having connected via your ethernet.

Incidently the ethernet for the Dell INSPIRON 530 on ubuntu 7.10 works out the box

What about my Dell E228WFP ?

Well i know when i installed with ubuntu 7.04 it only went up to 1024 res out the box, however the correct xorg.conf and guide to getting this to 1680x on my other post here: Setting up the E228WFP with ubuntu.

I don’t know how this is with ubuntu 7.10 as i said i’m now using a LG Flatron Wide M228WA, which incidently is as much more superiour monitor, and works with ubuntu 7.10 out the box at 1680x resolution.

Step 2, personal preferences

Lets get it looking a little better so we can work on it properly..

Big fonts look ugly.

I highly recommend taking down the font-size from the standard ubuntu font-size of 10px to 8’s and 9’s.

Todo this go to ‘System’ -> ‘Preferences’ -> ‘Appearances’ -> ‘Fonts’ and then i use, in this order:

• Application font: 8
• Document font: 8
• Desktop font: 8
• Window title font: 9
• Fixed width font: 9

And keeping the font itself standard feels fine. I also set it to ‘Subpixel smoothing (LCDs)’ but this is all personal preference really.

Getting a start like, ‘windows’ menu…

If your coming from a Windows background, as i’m sure 90% of people are, i recommend a nice easy start style menu, again, all personal preference..

I do the following..

• Add a panel to the top menu, ‘Window list’
• Unlock the top menu and then add into it the ‘Workspace switcher’, ‘Deleted Items’ and ‘Show Desktop’
• Finally ‘Delete’ the bottom pannel, then drag the top pannel to the bottom.

Step 3, Setting up the ultimate webdev environment

What am i talking about ? Just installing the things everyone needs to get along in this web dev mad world !

• Apache 2
• MySQL 5
• PHP 5
• phpmyadmin
• SSL certificate
• mod_rewrite
• PDO and PDO_Mysql
• Imagemagick

Think i’ve missed somthing of the list ? No problem, drop me a comment and i’ll stick it on

Installing the major players, Apache2, MySQL 5, PHP 5, PhpMyAdmin, SSL, Morewrite, PDO and PDO_MYSQL…

I’m not going to bother rewriting all this up, as comprehensive instructions can be found on my previous post, by clicking here

Please note, if you intend on sending requests via CURL from https, when u will need to fix this error: CAfile: /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
Todo this you simply need to type the following: sudo apt-get install ca-certificates

Want to know how to install Imagemagick on ubuntu ?

No problem if you want to install imagemagick on your pc, ubuntu makes this very easy for you with only a few simple commands..

• Make sure u have pear install ( ’sudo apt-get install php-pear’ )
• Then run: sudo apt-get install imagemagick
• And then: sudo pecl install imagick
  **if you get an error which looks like this: configure: error: Cannot locate configuration program Wand-config
  then no problem, simply run the following command: sudo apt-get install libmagick9-dev
  Now re-run sudo pecl install imagick

All sorted ? Good, now simply add extension=imagick.so to your php.ini and your done

Incidently, if you want to get serious about PHP and Imagemagick, i highly recommend you check out mikko’s imagemagick blog which details lots of examples of using imagemagick and pushing it to the limit. cool stuff.

I want my php to send emails aswell

If you need your php - dev environment to also send emails, simply install any kind of mail program, i use postfix.. sudo apt-get install postifx

Simply select ‘internet site’ if your unsure, make sure you put the mail server name NOT as your @domain.com email, as this will be treated as internal, and not sent via the web. a good server name might be: MyDevBox for example.

What about vim ? And syntax highlighting .. etc ?

Simply type: sudo apt-get install vim-full

Then cd ~/ to get to your homedirectory, then vim .vimrc and put in whatever settings you would like, eg: “syntax enable”. .. you may find some idea’s on the net from other peoples .vimrc files.. have fun

I have also put my personal .vimrc file online which can be found here: My .vimrc file / Vim setup file

Not begun hitting the splogs for some backlinks with the keyword link text yet ?

Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft release IE 7, and claim is as a savouir, yet this huge file is an absoloute piece of shit.

Even the most basic CSS and IE 7 decides to just go off on a tangent and do its own thing. What an complete and utter piece of shit.

Why should i bother to make a website for both IE 5.5, IE 6, IE 7 and no doubt, with different rending properties again, IE 8.

I would like Microsoft to pay for my wasted time and wasted life spent trying to come up with solutions to this fucking shit browsers handling of CSS !

How many times have you hit your head and though .. ‘how do i add a user on mysql again?’

Heres how:

mysql> GRANT ALL ON demo.* TO user1@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'mypassword';

Alot of online stores have a ‘discount code’ section, this website lists those discount codes.

Read the rest of this entry »

And Error encountered while sending a curl request from php with ubuntu 7.10, curl installed from apt. Solution.

Read the rest of this entry »

Utterly shocking, protx launch 3D secure checkout system, and yet do not offer full documentation / integration kit. Read the rest of this entry »

Protx (UK Payment Merchant) has some web pages, which only work in IE, and not ff.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hello, This is how i like my .vimrc file

For those of you who are still running vim < 7 i recommend you update purely for the tabs. Although previous versions had a :next and :prev the new tabs along the top just seems to make work much easier.

I also highly recommend checking out the vim documentation, available at this link: Vim Documentation and also check out this for some cool tutorials and links Vim Resources

Google has been latly been on what only can be described as a mad rampage of the interweb.

Page ranks on lots of site slashed, and now, pay per post bloggers, making a humble income to supplement their lives has seen their pagerank cut if not reduced to zero.

But why.. ? 

I think  this is because the google system for measuring links to judge a websites popularity is so flawed at every single level, when people chose to use pay per post as another advertising avenue, google cannot cut these links out, so rather than amending its system to take account of these, google just black lists the lot of them.

This in my opinion is merly forcing people who want to advertise to use googles advertising programs.

Google who does no evil, apart from removing sites it doesn’t like from its index, condeming other avenues of avertising for websites, and censoring results in china and elsewhere, have also removed one of my most favourite sites from their index, www.gotoandlearn.com   - Thanks google.