Trying out alternatives

This started as a comment on Martin’s post about problems with Vista but grew a bit too long so I have put it here.

I have too many machines (can you have too many ) the one I use most is the MacBook (especially now I have discovered it is Unix really), then the little Linux Asus which is an amazing blend of very easy to use and versatility, last my Vaio with XP (in a cupboard at work for the last month). There are a few applications that are handy for the PC but otherwise somehow it isn’t the best to use. The best free stuff is in the Unix world – Mac and Linux give you access. The advantage of the the PC used to be that you didn’t need to think about how it works – but with online updates and validations then it looks like you do. I am also looking at alternatives for Word at the moment so MS is becoming less important for me – because things do not interoperate fully rather than down on the applications themselves. If Word had an uncluttered export of HTML or XML then I would be happy sticking stuff in it, but it doesn’t so that generates a whole new job of reformatting, cutting and pasting, and general fiddling with documents that should not be there. This really hits me in my role as a journal editor.

So at the moment I feel my world may be in transition and I have been trying out some alternatives – XML editors, LaTeX, Google Docs, etc. I will try to write more later but i am feeling a pull away from the institutional preferences towards alternative application mixes – and just if you are like Martin and your Vista machine refuses to let you do anything!

Drupal on a Mac – not quite as easy as I hoped

For a couple of reasons I decided to install Drupal on my Macbook: it seems to have become the prototyping tool of choice in the OU; I am thinking about using the ejournal module for the journal I edit JIME; and, I had too much real work to do so a distraction was in order. I did succeed in installing it after a couple of days but with some strange problems on the way. As usual Google searches supplied the answer but it took a few places so I thought it worth gathering the information here. To be precise what I did on 1st May 2008 was:

• On an Intel Macbook (2GHz/1Gb/120Gb) running OS X 10.4.11 Tiger.
• Using Mac supplied Apache 1.3.33 and PHP 4.4.7
• Install Drupal 6.2
• Which needed mysql 5.0.51b
• And also I need phpMyAdmin 2.11.6

I followed the instructions at MacZealots on Installing Drupal on Tiger which starts by enabling Apache then getting the software, I installed the latest version of Drupal (6.2) and mysql (5.0.51b) rather than the older versions in the tutorial. It went fine upto this line:

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -u root -p drupal </Library/WebServer/Documents/drupal/database/database.mysql

The skeleton database.mysql does not exist – so ignore the error message and carry on with the next part to enable PHP on the Mac.

But the php does not talk properly to the mysql – this is explained in an Apple support message. But a variant is needed of the steps described there – I did

1. In Terminal: sudo cp /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini
2. Open /etc/php.ini in your preferred text editor.
3. Find the [MySQL] section, and change the mysql.default_socket directive:

        mysql.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock

When it came to configuring Drupal though things also went a bit wrong. The manual configuration in the macZealots page seems to have been replaced with configuration via the browser so can be skipped. But accessing drupal as http://localhost/drupal gave some error messages. Most of these refer to permissions which can be fixed by changing permissions on files – page at drupal.org suggested chmod to give access, I preferred chown -R www – but in each case be wary of security issues (minimal on my laptop). I then hit failure with an error message referring to:

ORDER BY fit DESC LIMIT 0, 1′ at line 1 query: SELECT * FROM menu_router

Googling for this phrase took me to this forum discussion at drupal.org which has some good suggestions but did not spell out the solution which for me was to:

1. stop using Safari and use Firefox instead for the setup (may not be vital but it is what I did)
2. install phpMyAdmin (note instructions there are a bit vague as well but I managed)
3. use phpMyAdmin to inspect the drupal database created earlier following the MacZealots instructions
4. select all tables in this database and drop them
5. open http://localhost/drupal/install.php to restart the configuration

After that things got better – a few more directories needed permission changed and I haven’t worked out how to enable the GD graphics library but I am now away and happy. Just need to work out what to do with Drupal.

I hope listing this might help someone (or me when I come to do it again). Some bits are from memory so I hope they are right.

Let down by Flickr!

I am at a conference making some blog entries across at my OCHRE OpenLearn blog. I was taking pictures to illustrate by blog about Marsha Lovett’s presentation and it was not working. Strange error messages resulted asking me to “checktickets”. Looking at the Flickr blog they know about it as their “farm1″ is down. I am sure they will fix it soon but it does seem strange to have one of the major Web2.0 sites not working. I could of course find other solutions but for the moment I will wait it out and add the pictures a bit later.

Asus eee arrival

The Asus eee PC that I ordered yesterday arrrived almost exactly 24 hours later – so I now have it. It seems a very neat device with a lot of useful software installed. It looks like it could be an ideal child’s computer or as Marc has suggested perhaps a ‘third computer’ to go along with desktop and laptop. The only problem is in my case I think it is probably my seventh computer so I am not too sure why I bought it – maybe I got caught up in the launch fever and spotting that they were not so hard to buy after all. It has a built in camera so here is a picture of it taken with it.

Linux meltdown

Waiting for the Asus eee (ordered a couple of hours ago) makes me realise that edging towards Linux has been a background activity for me over the last year or so. However my first attempt took a bit of a set back. I checked out an old laptop from the cupboard of abandoned machines at work and install Fedora Core on it (I think it was when Core 5 was just released). After that I spent quite a lot of time getting my obscure wireless card to work. (That card was actually a prize from the AusWeb 2004 conference for guessing that I was mean to be Steve Irwin in a line-up – so some excuses for being obscure.) So I spent a happy time getting and compiling source code, installing apache, php etc. Got to the point where I had quite a nice set up with everything working… and then the computer melted! You can see the result in the picture – is this revenge of Microsoft for daring to remove their OS?

Not sure about that – maybe there is something needed to keep the fan working properly that I had removed in the process. I did persist after that and got another old laptop out of stock. This time (about April 2007) I found that the distributions had really moved on – PCLinux installed amazingly quickly but I settled on Ubuntu as a combination of slickness and facilities. The laptop is up and running – but I never did get the wireless card working again. In contrast to my first attempt when I knew that I would have to mess around tracking down drivers and modifying the kernel to get it to work, I felt that the plug and play interface should just work. I have found the same feeling when working with Macs – they are great when they work but can be hard to probe when they don’t. Here is hoping that the Asus both works straight away and lets me mess around under its bonnet and do a bit of tinkering!

Asus eee notebook – on order

I have been thinking about the way in which we work together and how we can set up an environment which is not dominated by desktop machines. So my plan was to see how we could set ourselves up to use laptops – or other devices that meant we were not tied to the desk. Two options have both become available at about the same time. The Apple iTouch and the Asus eee notebook. My colleague Mark Gaved beat me to it in actually getting one as I have seen Grainne’s pictures and I know Marc Eisenstadt has also placed an order. Anyway today I joined in and have just ordered from what claims to be available stock at eBuyer – we will see if it turns up tomorrow as promised!