ASDF Jack

Install LAMP in ElementaryOS

2016-01-28T06:50:00.002-08:00

Just found this tutorial on trying out LAMP in ElementaryOS here. Might as well be blogged here so I can get back at it when trying it in the future.

Elementary Tweaks

2016-01-28T05:59:00.002-08:00

Well, I like smaller fonts and I've tried Elementary OS Luna. I like it and I'm searching a way to make the default fonts smaller. Just so I have more spaces to work on, especially when I code and read. Luckily I found a solution to download the tweak and make the fonts/icons custom sizes in Elementary Luna.

This is how I did it. Hope you guys find it useful. Run this in your terminal.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:versable/elementary-update
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install elementary-tweaks

And if anyone is interested in my setting, here's my screenshot. You can find it in System Settings/Tweaks btw.

Thanks everyone!

USB Driver for Samsung Phones

2015-05-28T21:51:00.003-07:00

Recently I tried Android Development and my phone is Samsung Galaxy. When I download Android Studio I can't seem to see my phone connected to the IDE. I just found out I haven't installed the Android USB driver for Samsung Phones. This is the link to download the driver and it works, at least for me. Please comment below on your experiences on setting up Android Studio with your Samsung Phone.

Hosting FTP server in your local machine

2015-04-28T03:03:00.003-07:00

I use this method to share some files with my friends across the internet that is too large for Dropbox to handle. I tried hosting SQL data that's around 3G in size so I wanted to try FTP approach.

I installed XAMPP and it has useful stuffs for HTTP and FTP projects. I use it once with my PHP development, but that's it -- nothing FTP related. This is a tutorial on how to basically set-up FTP server locally to host data to be shared by friends, etc.

Once XAMPP is installed, we can directly go to the Control Panel.

Clicking the Admin for FileZilla FTP Server administration might alert you with Security Warning, just allow access to it. Click OK to Connect to Server. We are now presented with the FileZilla server Administration interface. Go to Edit->Users to add users. I usually just add temporary users who can access specific files to be shared periodically, that means I'll disable it once I'm done with the file share and also I don't usually leave FTP server running. Turning it off after use is a good practice.

Adding user is at the right side of the Dialog with Users group box. Click Add and type any user you want, I'm fond of having "test/tset" credentials so we'll use it here. Now check the Password check box to add password to the user. Type in "tset", as in reverse of test. That way it's easy to remember. :D You can of course choose your own username and password. To share file(s) or folder(s) to this user click Shared Folder. Add Shared Folder by clicking Add and browsing for the directory. I normally leave Read permission by default, at least the user can't do damage to the directory. Click OK and we are done!

Now type the credentials we created (test/tset) and you will be redirected to the shared directory we configured. Sample image below for confirmation. Of course, I didn't share my 3G SQL data, lol.

That's it! Have fun everyone!

Can't access IIS 7 from another Computer, not anymore!

2015-04-20T16:51:00.000-07:00

Upon fresh installation of my Windows 7 box, I tried to install IIS so I can play with ASP.NET web and web setup project. One problem I encountered after the installation is, although I can access it locally via localhost or the IP Address (192.168.1.32, ie), I can't access it from my other boxes. I had 2 machines and other VMWare installed so I wanted to see from outside of the machine which IIS is installed. Failed miserably.

Not quite though. The simple solution is just to enable the port 80 on my Firewall. For Windows 7 it's in the Control Panel->System and Security->Windows Firewall and clicking the "Allow a program or feature through Windows Firewall". Click the Change settings and check "World Wide Web Services (HTTP)". That's it, brilliant! :)

Unhiding file extensions and display full directory path in Explorer (Windows 7)

2015-02-13T03:17:00.001-08:00

This maybe odd and simple but I just want to put this on the net for me to remember. Thing is, there's no menu bar for the explorer in Windows 7 until you accidentally hit Alt button.

The folder options can be seen when hitting the Alt button and going to Tools->Folder options... Also we can find it in the Control Panel and search for Folder options.

Checking the display the full path in the title bar will show the full directory path of the explorer window. This helps me remember what directory is this explorer currently on. Unchecking Hide extensions on the other hand helps me know the file extensions and possibly rename it. Right clicking in explorer and clicking New Text Document is what I usually do when creating a script such as PHP or Python. This way I can rename the new document to be of PHP or Python extension.

Guess that's it, until then. Ciao!

Port forwarding with Zyxel router and XAMPP

2013-08-08T05:53:00.003-07:00

Better late than never. I really planned to have a home-based web server so that I can explore a little bit of systems administration, just simply. I'm not really much of an administrator but it would be cool if I know a bit about this stuff. I had a little background with PHP and web development so I think I can handle it. Gladly it's not that difficult. With a little bit of installations and configuration, and we're done.

First off, install XAMPP. Download the application from their website and install. Just accept the default options and we're good to go. I got a little info with XAMPP and Lithium for further exploration here. So accessing the host where you install the XAMPP will get you the web server's default page. In my case, it's localhost and it displays the XAMPP default page. Things are looking good.

I'll give details on installation of XAMPP later in my other blog post.

And now for the port forwarding bit. Port forwarding means you forward a port to a specific server hosting whatever you want. Be it a web server or an SMTP or anything you want. This can be done in the router. I use Zyxel as this is a fee package from my ISP so I'll be dealing with it. I must say if you have a different router than I am, I cannot guarantee a reply (or any help at all). Adding a new server to forward a port to can be done in NAT section under Network. You can login and go to Advanced Wizard to view the configuration. Go to Port Forwarding tab and add the server you want to host. In my case I added 192.168.1.35 (my dev PC) and I'm hosting port 8080 for my Apache Web Server.

That's it, ask a friend to access you public IP and share info with them.

Thunderbird, the awesome emailer

2013-08-06T08:29:00.002-07:00

I tried Thunderbird as my email application at home. When I'm at work, usually companies uses Exchange as their email server and Outlook as the client (or email application). I must say, Thunderbird is as useful as outlook (I don't really mean to offend someone here). The installation is easy and the configuration to connect to SMTP server is also very easy. With a few click, you can then use the application. For installation process, see images below.

Download the installer from their site.

When done, click the download application to run the installer. Just select the default values and hit finish when done. When launch Thunderbird option is checked, it should start after the installation.

Creating a new account is just simply clicking the "Create new account" like the image below. I have a gmail account so I don't have any problems just by entere my gmail credentials. Please check on Thunderbird's documentation for further information.

And you're done. You can now get your emails by clicking Get Mail.

Restoring .dat data to MSSQL

2013-08-06T08:07:00.000-07:00

This is just a document in case I forgot to restore data files to MSSQL. I had this problem before when a colleague gave me a .dat files to be restored to SQL server. I had a 2008 version of the server and had no trouble restoring it. The problem is, I forgot how I did it when I had a new PC and I upgraded it to 2012 SQL server.

But this is a simple task (although I had a full day remembering how I did it and I had no luck finding the solution from google). First off, click restore, like so

I had trouble with the database whether or not to add a new database and restore the file to it, or not. Simple answer is no need. With the next image you can see that the configuration is very simple.

Just set it to device as the source and find the .dat file. It automatically displays a suggestion for the database name and you're done. Click OK and wait a couple of minutes for SQL server to restore the data.

Lithium First Glimpse

2013-05-15T02:52:00.000-07:00

I decided to review my PHP and now I’m interested with the Lithium project. I wanted to get my hands on it just to see what it can do and what are the good stuff in it. Lithium by the way is a PHP web framework, it’s RAD. If you don’t know what a PHP web framework is, I don’t think I can help you. But a Google with the topic can result to many useful resources.

I almost forgot most of my PHP background because it’s been 2 years since I coded it. And it was with 4.3 and Oracle. I’m not too sure about what to do next. Instead of installing everything from scratch, I decided to install XAMPP. It’s easy and good stuff (I think). Unlike before, installing PHP and Apache, make Apache recorgnized PHP, add a module to it, install MySQL… You know what I mean. It’s a hassle. But with XAMPP, it’s just a single install and everything is in there. Of course, this doesn’t help if you’re a geek and pretend to know everything and installing everything by hand makes you happy. But for me, it’s fine. For now.

When I got Lithium source, I just pasted it in the htdocs directory and there it goes. It’s slick. It also has some good tutorial in their site. Everything is good. Until I decided to check on Contribution. Not that I can contribute but who knows. I bumped into an error with the coverage. I never knew PHP has coverage. That’s interesting. So I Google a bit and read a few statements in lithium’s wiki about xdebug. There it is. XDebug is actually and extension for PHP and has good stuff. It has code coverage and everything useful for developing PHP applications. God, I never knew this is coming. The more I surf the net, the more I know things I don't know.

So back with the error, it has something to do with xdebug_start_code_coverage method not found. I ran into xdebug installation and it’s just adding the extension to the Apache. That’s simple, I think I can do that. But when I look into the XAMPP’s PHP installation, I noticed php.ini has the extension but commented. Ha! That’s even simpler. I uncommented it and voila. When running lithium test cases it fetched off the call stack with information I found some useful. Although I’m not too sure I’m too familiar with it. :)

Learning Python Hydrology

2013-05-15T02:50:00.000-07:00

Recently I'm learning Python and encountered the Hydrology book. Had to upgrade some of python packages and some libraries needed to get working with the book. There is an instruction though about mostly using pip install packages need for the book. The problem is I can't get it work. It's missing some things so I did a little google and hopefully this is a compilation of the things I need to work with the examples of the book.

First off, I updated the apt-get

$ sudo apt-get update

Next is I installed the pip package manager. I'm not too sure but I have Ubuntu 10 and it doesn't have the pip installed. So I installed using the command below.

$ sudo apt-get install python-pip

Now the development packages for python.

$ sudo apt-get install python-dev

Most of the examples uses the scientific number packages so I installed numpy and other packages I'm not quite aware of. It's just that some of the examples probably in the later part of the book uses the other two packages aside from numpy.

$ sudo pip install numpy
$ sudo pip install xlrd
$ sudo pip install xlwt

Scipy needs some compilation and I think it has some packages built on top of fortran and some C++ source so I instlaled the essential and fortran packages with the commands.

$ sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev gfortran
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

After installing these prerequisites, install the scipy with the command below.

$ sudo pip install scipy

For some plotting, installing the plot library is useful. There are also lots of examples using the plot.

$ sudo apt-get install python-matplotlib

This one I found the most useful package. It can be used as good reference to execute plotting some equations. At the very first stage of the book I encountered simple plotting of an array of x with the sin(x) as y coordinates and it's really helpful to visualize the equations with the plotter.

Introduction to CodeIgniter

2013-05-14T21:22:00.000-07:00

Introduction
I've been playing around with CodeIgniter as my PHP web framework for a while now and I would like to share my simple steps in getting started with the tool. I think it's maybe too late to post this one up on the internet as there are lots of articles describing the said tool. But anyway, I'll just post this one so that I have some reference in the future how I did things to work with CodeIgniter.

CodeIgniter is a simple, light and fast web framework.

And web frameworks are encapsulation of the repetitive tasks we do when developing a website. One of the many important issue solved by this framework is maintenance. We get to have our code separated so that we have proper maintenance of our site. When I say separation of code, it's a conceptual thing. Web framework, most if not all, are implementation of the MVC pattern where we separate logic from presentation. It's model and view respectively. And CodeIgniter does that with ease.

Let me demonstrate. Mostly we do have actions as our PHP scripts, i.e. listcustomers.php to list all our customers. And we have code inside like so:

For some simple sites this works but imagine we'll have other scripts that does similar to this like listvendors.php, listitems.php. I'd imagine we'll separate the part where the connection is and include it in all of these scripts. Yes it solves the problem.

Download and Install
You need to have a web server and a PHP interpreter to run PHP and optionally we can install MySQL. I know these are lots but need not to worry. There's XAMPP to help us. Download and install XAMP and we've got all three working and ready to use.

Visit CodeIgniter website to download the said package. Assuming we put XAMPP to C:\xamplite, we can unzip the package to C:\xampp\htdocs\codeigniter and that's it. We can now access the page through our browser. Open up your browser of choice and go to http://localhost/codeigniter/. Voila! We have a codeigniter website up and running.

Reasons why you don't apply to some Companies

2013-05-14T21:13:00.000-07:00

Just a note, this is just a joke. So for some companies, I would ask you to evaluate me first not base your judgement for hiring me in this post. :)

Recently, I planned on getting another job. This time with programming languages I'm not familiar with. Just to get my hands on. Something like Python or Ruby, or JS and NoSQL. You know what I mean.

Then came, job posts at some Ads. Recruiters really think they are smart. They're not even reviewing what they're posting and not getting consultation from experts offering a job. For example

SEO Experts (20k to 30k)

with

GREAT “DAYTIME” CAREER OPPORTUNITIES
A NEW COMPANY soon to expand OPERATIONS in CEBU!!!

I'm sure 30k is not that great. And what's with the DAYTIME? Also

Perfect Worklife Balance: “Daytime Work” and Guaranteed 5 day work week only
Easy to Manage Accounts
Excellent Compensation based on expertise, we are only looking for top talent and pay accordingly
Performance and Attendance bonuses, Leave Benefits (Cash Convertible), HMO, Educational Assistance, Meals, etc.
Fast Regularization of Employment Status (3 months Proba only)
Friday Night Gimmicks
Free “Starbucks Coffee Coupon for Two” hiring bonus
Nice and fun work environment and work culture

Well they have a nice work environment. That's good but Night Gimmicks? And Starbucks? What the hell.

Another company is hiring PHP Developers. Check this out.

Senior PHP Developers ( Object-Oriented PHP )

We'll yeah, PHP supports object-oriented programming. That's good. They require extensive of most stuff. PHP, MySQL but basic on SQL.

Requirements :

Web Application Development Experience
3+ Years of Relevant Work Experience
Extensive experience with in Object-Oriented PHP
Extensive experience with MySQL database programming and optimization
Strong knowledge on CSS, HTML, and Java Script
Basic knowledge on SQL

Extensive of MySQL but basic knowledge of SQL. Now that's contradiction. Also they prefer

Symphony Frame Work is a Plus
JQuery knowledge is a plus

It's Symfony and it's Framework not "Frame" and "Work".

Cop? What the hell did I do wrong?

2011-05-08T18:25:00.000-07:00

This document explains a little introduction on the StyleCop tool to check on code conventions of our .Net projects.

Style convention can be tedious if done manually. For .Net code convention I prefer the one set by Mike Kruger from SharpDevelop team. But as I've said, it is so much for a manual task, especially if you're taking a project previously done by lots of people and with no standards.

Then came StyleCop. I mean I just use StyleCop because I'm on .Net. Java has CheckStyle, so for other platform/languages you might want to check Google or Wiki.

Introduction to StyleCop

Hmmm. I'm not really a type of person that gives lots of introduction so let's move on...

Installation and Configuration

First off, download StyleCop here. Install it and you're done!

Ok you're not. Well, let's move on. Before using StyleCop, we need to have an IDE. Yepey! We're getting to code. Of course, we have that right? I use SharpDevelop and if you don't use it, nevermind, installing StyleCop with VisualStudio automatically gets VS to have Run StyleCop when right clicking on projects. But that's another issue. I'm with SharpDevelop so we're moving to getting started with it. No VisualStudio, please!

Open SharpDevelop and to to Tools->Options and click on Tools. Click on Source Analysis and find your StyleCop installation directory. Now, right click on your project and Check with StyleCop. That's it, you're done. Really, you're done!

But, if you really have to edit the settings. Settings are usually bunch of those configurations set by Microsoft for C# code convention. Oh, didn't I tell you from the time of writing StyleCop only supports C#? Now you know. No VB, who cares? Anyway, you can find your global settings on your StyleCop installation directory. Double click on the Settings.StyleCop (usually in C:\Program Files\Microsoft StyleCop 4.3.3.0) and edit it the way you want it. Have fun!

Early Optimization Syndrome

2011-02-01T23:37:00.000-08:00

I've always wanted to blog about political stuff but never got much time on it. But lately, I kinda observe lots of happenings in our land. Btw, if you don't know I'm a Filipino. We had lots of bad happenings. From the past, we don't have good image from outside the Philippines. Corruption, crime you name it. Anyway, I just notice something about our president. He has this sickness I call "Early Optimization Syndrome".

I'm what they call one of the developers. So basically an IT guy. I know IT guys experienced this kind of stuff. We optimize early in our development. And later on, things get worse because of the complexity. I notice this happens in the management of our administration. They optimize early.

Problems and Solutions

I just want to enumerate some things I notice about their management where they are solving problems (if it is) with optimized solutions.

No Wang-wang Policy

I remember upon taking a nation address speech, he had this. A solution to a non-problem. Maybe he is weird, maybe he is Steve Jobs in disguise. A visionary or some kind. But come on, we know it's never a solution to a problem. There is not even a problem.

Changes to Money

For what? Faking it? Who's faking it? And how? That might be the good questions they should start thinking over. It's like giving a system to a customer and the customer complains because of bugs and all you would do is say, "Nah, nevermind we'll create another one for you." It's expensive process. Instead work on why it doesn't work.

Again, I don't see a problem to the money we previously had. Aside from the people in there to have their pictures taken like they were 30 years old or above. And for Chr**t's sake they look cooler now taken when they were like adolescent ages. I can assure you they'll post it in their facebook accounts if they have that pics.

Receipt Printer for Taxis

I can't see a problem to this. Now, there maybe some kind of stuff like reimbursement by some call center agents having to ride a taxi in the middle of night to go home or office. But I really don't see it a problem, they have taxi allowance anyway. Now of 90 million Filipino people, not a single one of it thought of having a receipt printers for taxi. Again, as I said maybe he's a visionary but I don't see it as changing the world. Might as well have receipt printers or POS for tempura vendors eh?

Conclusion

Maybe I'm just dumb because I don't seem to understand the full of it. But I'm thinking practically. There are lots of problems that needs to be solved. These problems need to be solved immediately, effectively and efficiently. If they can't see it or just pretending to be blind I can at least name poverty as one of the problems. They need to focus to give a good solution. As the saying goes,

"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking".

they need to think over what the problems are and give solutions. They shouldn't waste time on optimizing early.

Again, maybe I just don't know politics and the science of it but in real world, IT guys act and we act fast. We don't optimize early, we tend to solve real problems. Being agile is a good thing in our industry and I think it still applies in politics.

Installing IIS and .Net Framework

2011-01-19T21:40:00.001-08:00

This is a very simple steps in installing IIS and .Net Framework. Why do so? I just find it useful for reference when getting started with ASP.NET. This post will explain installation of the said tools in WinXP Pro.

What's IIS?

It's a web server. From Microsoft and included in the Pro version of Windows (at least from XP). It's used for hosting web services, like web pages/sites and other services. Before it was able to host classic ASP with VBScript on it. And when the dawn of the .Net era, .Net offers registration of the framework to this server. It has actually lots of benefits. You can easily port or create an application based on .Net and run on IIS.

You can easily get this application in your WinXP CD. I'm using WinXP Pro so you might refer to the documentation if you're using other windows operating system.

Open up Control Panel and go to Add/Remove Programs, click Add/Remove Windows Components. There should be a check box there that is unchecked when IIS is not installed. Please verify. Checked it and click next until it finishes installation.

Go to http://localhost/ to confirm if it's running.

.Net Framework

You've probably know how to install this one, but anyway here goes. You can download the framework from here. You must install this after you've installed the IIS. There's a portion of the installation that registers ASP.NET. If you've done this first, you might get annoying errors when trying to run ASPX pages from your IIS.