This guide aims to go through installation of PEAR modules using XAMPP. The module to install is MDB2.
I use XAMPP Lite instead of the full XAMPP but I imagine it to be the similar. My platform is Windows Vista.
To install PEAR module, MDB2, using a XAMPP set up. Also install the MySQL, MySQLi and PostgreSQL drivers.
It’s the first Python User Group meeting in Singapore. It’s interesting to see that the number of people using Python in Singapore (we’re a population of 4.5 million when I last counted with my fingers).
Let me first say I’m not really a Python programmer developer. I work with PHP more but Python has always been interesting for me mainly because of the beauty in the syntax. I probably would blog more about it in future (not near).
Anyhow, the Singapore Python User Group is organized by several Republic Polytechnic lecturers, mainly teaching Diploma in Interactive & Digital Media. Two of the courses that in the diploma actually uses Python - Multimedia Programming I and II. I think Temasek Polytechnic has a little bit of Python in this shell scripting course too.
The first meetup is mainly a sharing session, the later part of the meetup broke in lightning talks ala Barcamp. There is also mention of PyCon Singapore 2010. I hope things would work out right. Things should be interesting.
I figured I should too mentioned that there are women present in this meetup and they are not PR people.
The meetup finished at 7 where I rush home for dinner. Met Jonathan on my way out of SMU and we chatted a little. And yeah, he didn’t know what’s Python.
Interestingly, there actually are people interested in Python in Singapore. Most Singaporeans are Java or .NET language programmers due to the things they teach in school. Java and .NET languages are great but alternate languages won’t hurt.
The Python User Group is on coming Thursday, i.e. October 9, 2008.
Venue: SMU, SIS (School of Information System) NSR 2.1
Time: 5:00pm - 7:00pm
Of course you know I probably be there for the tea since Singapore Institute of Management have no more free tea breaks and we now have to pay a dollar seventy cents to get our own bun and coffee. To think Irene and I spend one whole semester complaining that the coffee sucked, the tea sucked, the plain water sucked and the flatten bun did not look at all appetizing. Now there’s no more. We only appreciate things when we miss it.
Rants aside, anybody going to the Python User Group meeting?
Good news for people who develop in the Microsoft development environments, jQuery is to be adopted in Microsoft’s official development platform. I’m surprised by the announcement as Microsoft has shown preference in developing their own products rather than reusing what is out there.
Adopting jQuery is an excellent choice and Microsoft probably would drop their existing ASP.NET Ajax Framework in time to come since so many people are using jQuery already.
What excites me more is the possibility of implementing jQuery IntelliSense into Visual Studio. I love to see how that would work out.
On slight note, Nokia also adopted jQuery in their widget development platform.
Today I went for the Zend PHP 5 Certification and passed. Uzyn did it an hour half earlier and he passed too. I slept so little this morning just so I can read this PHP exam study guide. And before I enter the test all I can claim is that I finished the book.
Before we took this PHP 5 cert exam, there was one other guy who did it in this center. I reach there on time:
Me: Afternoon, I have a test at 3 for PHP.
Front desk: PHP?
Me: Exam 200-500.
FD: You taking CCNA?
Me: Nah… The one by Zend.
I tell you she was absolutely clueless. I almost fell asleep doing the questions. I found myself sinking lower and lower into my seat. There was no one in the room, just me and seventy questions.
I probably can’t discuss the PHP exam questions but let’s just say the questions are kinda strange. It’s just not what you would expect. I expected the test to be more about explaining the code kinda thing but that almost didn’t appear at all. CCNA questions are a lot better and open internet (open book) too.
I finished the 70 questions and thinking I would fail. I clicked on the End Exam button, closed my eyes and all that my mind could think about is this red-colored ‘Fail’ word to be displayed.
It didn’t.
(Yahoo!)
The certificate would come next month. Congrats to Uzyn!
Listed on PHP Yellow Pages already, that was fast!
It was a little sluggish yesterday and I had to do a hard reboot ’cause a soft reboot just hung there. I am running on very limited resources. I have only 256 MB of RAM and every little bit counts. I am on Slicehost by the way.
Previously there wasn’t any problems. It was until recently my friend Daryl have his new blog in my VPS and my new little personal project that’s a little database intensive.
I logged into the web console only to find error messages with MySQL processes. They’re out of memory. I hard rebooted it and tweaked MySQL settings to reduce table caching. Honestly I have no idea what I was doing. People said it worked and I just followed.
That sort of fixed the MySQL problems, but this evening my site become inaccessible again. This time, it was Apache. After reducing the number of Apache servers running, things seem to be doing better.
Here’s my Apache settings, it’s reduced to work on 256 MB RAM:
Then the super cache plugin in WordPress started to misbehave. It just refuse to load anything in the cache after I upgrade super cache. I spent an hour on this one. And I learnt something - when in doubt, just reboot.
PHP4 support ends. It’s time to move on to PHP5. I quite sure some hosts are still using PHP4 and there is a certain host I come across still using 2005 version of PHP4.
See Chris Shiflet’s blog for more information.