If you’re thinking of getting started with MySQL and PHP, here are some resources that I have found useful:

• Marc Liyanage: Activating the latest PHP module on OS X
• Marc Liyanage: Installing the latest version of MySQL Database Server on OS X
• Devshed: Beginning MySQL Tutorial
• Devshed: Setting Up Database Driven Websites
• PHPMyAdmin (makes working with MySQL much less of a headache)
• PHP Complete: A tutorial on installing and using PHPMyAdmin

If anyone knows of any other good resources aimed at beginners, please add them.

I’m feeling a little under-nourished of audio / visual stimuli at the moment. All our stuff is still boxed up in the new flat, waiting until the place is sorted out a bit before we can enjoy the home comforts of television, hi-fi and somewhere to sit down. I suppose it’s all part of moving house and I can’t expect things to be sorted straight away. I’m grateful for the slightly longer journey to work that living out of town has necessitated as it allows me more time to read; at the moment, I’m reading Paul Auster’s latest ‘The Book of Illusions’. Expect a review of sorts when I finish it.

There are a few scripts that log site referrers around now, but none are as easy to implement as Dean Allen’s Refer. Here it is in action.

The Register has published a list of banks whose web developers seem to have missed about 4 years of advancement in web browser technology. I bank with Natwest and would like to use their online banking service from home on my Mac running OS X. When I attempt to log in, I’m told that I have to use Netscape 4.x in order to access the site. It’s unfortunate that the complex programming involved in making Natwest Online Banking secure requires it to be only accessible using very specific browsers; in this case, browsers that are now defunct on the Mac platform. I say, if you can’t make an online banking service accessible to all web users then don’t bother in the first place.

I’m thinking of getting a permanent web connection to my new place and I need some advice on negotiating the minefield that is ADSL vs. Cable etc. Who offers the best deals and service? If I choose ADSL, is it best to buy an ADSL modem seperately, or get everything through a BT package? Are there any known problems with setting up ADSL modems on OS X? What are the advantages of Cable apart from more choice of bad television?

I’d forgotten how much of a headache moving house is. Three years at the same place has allowed me to accumulate more junk than I know what to do with. Multiple van loads later, most of our stuff has now been transported to our new abode; a place by the sea to be more precise and I fully intend on a fitness regime of a sea-front jog every morning. This, of course, will never happen.

The extraordinary properties of mayonnaise.

Cocoa Gestures allows you to control OS X Cocoa apps with gestures of the mouse. Here’s some information on how to set it up with a tablet [the documentation currently doesn’t mention this] as well as some general tips:

1. After downloading the Cocoa Gestures disk image, copy the InputManagers folder to your Library.
2. Open your tablet’s preferences panel; if you’re using a Wacom tablet, this will be in your Applications folder under ‘Wacom’.
3. Select Tool Button options and choose one of your pen’s side buttons to be a modifier [shift, option, control or command]. For this example, we’ll choose ‘shift’.
4. Open a Cocoa Application like Chimera Navigator and from the menu, select ‘Navigator > Cocoa Gestures’.
5. Configure the preferences to make mouse gestures with the left mouse button [remember that by default, pressing the pen against the tablet corresponds as a left mouse button click] and select ‘shift’ as the modifier.
6. Cocoa Gestures has a number of in-built gestures for different Cocoa apps, but you’ll have to configure your own if you want really useful and intuitive gestures for each app.

Here are some useful gestures I have configured for Navigator:

• rdlur [right, down, left, up, right] – reload page.
• l – go back
• r – go forward
• ru – make text bigger
• rd – make text smaller
• ld – find in page

The gestures allow for a certain amount of fluidity, so ‘right, down, left, up, right’ is really just a circular motion with the pen / mouse.
Cocoa gestures may seem a little unnecessary at first, but as you as you configure it with commands you use regularly, it becomes invaluable.

To celebrate roughly two years of nonsense at this site, I’ve decided to use the PHP style switcher at this weeks ALA to throw this site back in time to how it looked in October 2000 [over there, in the sidebar, see?]. It’s been a rewarding couple of years; my knowledge of web design and programming has increased immeasurably and I’ve made some great friends. So… thank you!

Incidentally, the actual birth of this site was probably in September of 2000, but I don’t think I published it until October. Anyway, I’m terrible at remembering birthdays!

Try as I might to make this site accessible to everyone using a web enabled device, there are over 1.26 billion people on the planet who can’t access it. It’s easy to believe, here in the western world, that the web as a whole has brought down barriers between nations. In reality, there seems to be many fractured webs, each only accessible to a particular audience depending on the restrictions enforced by their government.

Instead of pointing it at himself, John Locker points his webcam at orbiting spacestations. Neat.

Wired.com have made the transition to a tableless design using CSS to control layout. A high-profile site adhering to web standards in this way is something of a rarity; let’s hope it will spur other big names to do the same.

You’re sitting at a table in a restaurant and the waiter, placing a dinner plate in front of you, says ‘This plate is very hot sir/madam, be careful’. As soon as the waiter leaves, you touch the plate. You know it’s hot, you know you might burn yourself, but you give it a quick tap anyway, just to check how intense the heat really is. Despite our highly evolved brains, we humans are stupid; we take risks like this all the time and unfortunately, the consequences can be worse than a brief feeling of heat on the fingertips. What follows is a similar story of stupidity on my part and while you can rest assured that your narrator is well on the way to recovery, be warned that it’s a bit nasty in places.

I was on my way to an early morning meeting with a client. The morning traffic was at a stand-still, and I was sitting in my car; engine idling…. brain idling. It was then that I noticed steam billowing up from beneath the bonnet; I looked down at the temperature gauge on the dash to see that the needle had gone past the red ‘danger’ mark. I pulled the car over, the wheels straddling the kerb as the rush hour traffic passed me by. It was clear that the engine’s cooling fan had stopped working; a result of either a broken motor, a blown fuse or some other less obvious electrical problem. After letting the engine cool a little, I drove it home, and there it sat for the better part of a week before I got time to work out what I was going to do about it. Deciding that I’d have a go at fixing it myself, the following Saturday, I dug out my socket set and SAAB 99 Haynes Manual and lifted the bonnet. After reading the chapter about the engine’s cooling system – in particular the bit about the thermostatic switch that activates the cooling fan – I examined the switch to see that one of its electrical terminals had completely corroded, thus breaking the circuit and causing the fan to cease working. So, in the end, it was an easy fix; I replaced the switch with a new one and the fan worked again. Now, the fact that the problem was easily rectified doesn’t mean I was any less proud of fixing the car myself. I’m far from practical-minded when it comes to this sort of thing, and when I could hear that fan kicking in whilst driving around later that evening, a grin of satisfaction appeared on my face.

I wish I could say that this was the end of my story, but alas, it does not end there. The next day, the engine began to overheat again; yes, the fan had stopped working once more. Perplexed, I opened the bonnet and stood staring for a while; the shiny new themostatic switch beaming out from the oily grime of the engine bay. It occured to me that as I replaced the switch the previous day, the radiator was briefly unplugged, allowing water to gush out for a few seconds. I thought nothing of this at the time, but then I realised that this could have created an air block in the system, causing the thermostatic switch to be temporarily out of the water, which would in turn stop the fan from working. I moved round to the water expansion tank [the compartment used to refill the water] for a closer look. Now at this stage, you may want to recall [or even re-read] the first paragraph of this story, because ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at the stupid nasty bit.

I decided to open the water expansion tank. A harmless, benign looking plastic tank which, at this particular moment in time, contained harmful, hot, high pressure water. I was fully aware of these facts; the engine had been running and heating up for some time and I knew the potential danger involved in unscrewing the cap. Past experience told me that these caps allow a certain amount of pressure out before they open fully; give it half a turn and steam should start to billow out, releasing the pressure so that the tank can be opened safely. I gave the cap half a turn… nothing. I turned it a little bit m… BOOM!

Oh yes, I released the pressure alright. In the time it takes Linford Christie to run a 100 millimetres, I was drenched in very VERY hot water. Thankfully, I somehow managed to avoid getting burned really badly; I suffered second degree [moderate] burns to my arm and 1st degree [mild] burns to the left side of my face and chest. My face and chest sorted themselves out within a matter of days, although the bandage on my arm only came off today, after two weeks of visiting the burns unit of Royal Victoria Infirmary.

A tale of absolute stupidity has been told. I can’t explain my actions; I can only attribute it to a momentary and complete loss off common sense which I’m sure afflicts us all. Accidents happen, so please, be careful out there.

‘With the release of OS X, Mac users can at last build, test, and deploy dynamic Web sites—all from a single machine.’

Build Dynamic Web Sites Without Leaving Your Mac. [via Ranchero]

The new Canon Eos 1DS shoots at a resolution of 11.1 Megapixels, a figure which – according to some – spells the end for photographic film. While large format film may be untouched by CMOS chips, prints from 35mm and Medium Format film seem to be being surpassed in image quality. A friend of mine is a freelance photographer who is lucky enough to own a high-end Canon digital camera. While its output isn’t as high as the 1DS, he’s sure that he will never go back to using film. This was the same person who, as a fellow photography student a few years ago, was sure that he’d never pick up one of those new fangled digital cameras. The traditional photographic process has remained unchanged for almost 200 years, and while it will live on amongst enthusiasts, digital cameras will continue on the path to supremacy.

The Cinematic Orchestra brought their unique blend of jazz, soul and ‘meaty hip hop-funk-swing’ to Newcastle on Saturday night and while I was a little unsure beforehand about how well the recorded material would be performed live, I was very impressed, indeed. Most of the material they played was from their latest album ‘Every Day’ and included some fantastic improvisation from saxophonist Tom Chant and drummer Luke Flowers. Here are their remaining tour dates:

• Tuesday 8th October: The Arches, Glasgow
• Thursay 10th October: Concorde 2, Brighton
• Friday 11th October: Shepherds Bush Empire, London
• Saturday 12th October: Manchester University

On Wednesday, Former President Bill Clinton gave a speech on global peace during the Labour Party annual conference in Blackpool. While much of it was sound bite material, perfect for the Labour Party to make it feel better about itself, there was some truly morale-boosting stuff in there. In fact, it was just the sort of speech you’d like to hear from the most powerful person on the Earth. We can all hope.

Good old web translators, they never fail to amuse. [via Textism]

I was in goal.

I find it quite disappointing that we’re in the 21st Century, we have powerful computers sitting on our desktops and we’re still using the antiquated metaphor of files and folders to help us manipulate information on them. So, I’m always pleased to see people create different, perhaps more suitable metaphors that help us use technology and get things done with computers; Spring is a graphical user-interface for OS X that is not based on files or folders. While it still uses the desktop metaphor, its user interface is concept-centric; it is ‘designed for the way you naturally think’. Like Xanadu is a more complete solution to hypertext than the World Wide Web, Spring is a more holistic solution to the computer desktop we’re familiar with.

Of course, my championing of this software doesn’t mean I quite understand how to use it. Perhaps this is a testament to the fact that the user interface of files and folders is so firmly engrained into my brain after using computers in this way since I first booted up my BBC Micro many moons ago.

I’m sure there is a vast amount of cool stuff being made in HCI (Human Computer Interaction) labs all over the world, but none of it seems to be getting to the computer user. Is innovation is being stifled because people don’t like change? If so, it looks like we’re going to be stuck with the desktop metaphor, files, folders and trash cans for a long time yet.