Tim's Wee Part of the World » Notes to myself http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog Come along and join in. Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:20:01 +0000 en hourly 1 More on Problem Solving. http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/more-on-problem-solving http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/more-on-problem-solving#comments Sat, 27 Mar 2010 11:45:53 +0000 Tim Brownlaw http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/?p=360

This post has come about – again – due to being in the middle of  creating a brand new Website using CodeIgniter ( A PHP Framework) , MySQL and Stored Procedures.

Don’t worry about what they are, but what happened is I went out on a limb and started delving into Stored Procedures that return multiple DataSets. Something I’ve not had to deal with up till now. And a long story Short – CodeIgniter was a bit short on letting me do that. I like CodeIgniter and once you get your head around it, it does let you create your wonderful masterpiece of a Script without having to worry about all the housekeeping code.

Anyway, retrieving the multiple Datasets just wasn’t happening. A shortfall of CodeIgniter.

So I had a problem on my hands.

What did I do to solve it?

Simple, I opened up my trusty Open Office Writer – created a new document called – “Using MySQL Stored Procedures -A .odt” and started writing out the problem.

It’s very  important to actually State the problem. Then you can start writing out what isn’t happening. What you think should happen and you’ll eventually get somewhere. The reason being you are writing down what you need to do and you’ll be writing down what you have done… That’s where this works wonderfully well.

Yes, it takes a little bit longer to do than just blast away. But guess what! Taking your time actually helps. Plus you’ll more than likely create yourself a guide on the problem and how you solved it.

Any light bulbs going off yet? If you know of others who might be having the same problem….you’ve just written an Ebook about it, or the makings of one.

Actually with my particular problem, I noted that it would be beneficial to go back to basics and I documented everything… The PHP Code I created. That Database Tables, The Stored procedures. I even came up with a way to automatically install my Database from a Script loaded with all my SQL statements. That got included so I don’t forget….

So I got the main script working and tinkered till I got it right and wrote it all down.

Guess What?

I ended up discovering all the right ways to do what I wanted then I got into the guts of the CodeIgniter Framework and after a bit of headscratching I got it all working.

So now I have sample Scripts, The Ebook on what I did, and a working CodeIgniter Framework that has come up pretty swish ( which means Fantastic ). Now I can get back onto my project and keep going…

The whole point of this is to remember. When you have a problem. Write it out!!!!

I’ve still got a little tidying up of the Ebook before I unleash it upon the world. But for now – it’s a good guide for me for tomorrow. Hmm yes, that’s about how long my whatever that kind of memory is called… I forget..But at least I know where to find the info I’ve written down.

Find or create the problem, Solve it Once, Write it down Once and if it pops up again – you just re-read what you did last time. Absolutely Brilliant!

It does take some commitment to do this. But ask yourself, how important is it to you – to solve the problem you have.

If you do have any Techy Website or other kind of problems. Give me a shout. I’ll work it out – write it out and send you the result. I’ve done it before for others and I’ll do it again.

Are you thinking….”This is a great way to create Content”? You should be!

Ok well I had best get into documenting up the CI changes in another document…. That’s a bit too much for any poor soul to have to read through in the one book and it’s another problem.

Happy Problem Solving.

“If you aint having any problems with anything, you aint doing anything new OR you forgot how you solved it last time”

Till next time

Cheers

Tim Brownlaw… Now where did  I put those files………

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]]> http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/more-on-problem-solving/feed 0 I’m in a temporary Ubuntu Black Hole http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/im-in-a-temporary-ubuntu-black-hole http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/im-in-a-temporary-ubuntu-black-hole#comments Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:00:42 +0000 Tim Brownlaw http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/?p=264

This is not a detailed version of events – unfortunately.  I’ll add those after things settle down and I get some work done. More has since been added – [ update - see resources below ]

Now I have been running Kubuntu 8.04 ( the KDE3.x version of Ubuntu ) for sometime. It’s been upgraded from 7.04 and had a bit of “stuff” kicking about.

Windows 7 and No Printer Drivers

Anyway, my wife went and upgraded from XP to Windows 7. Which by sheer misfortune, there ain’t any drivers available for our Canon Laser Printer LBP5000 ( there was for XP!).

So I’ve raised my hand and said, well Linux can talk to it, let me set it up on mine….. Well that was a mistake. Linux and Ubuntu don’t play nice with setting up printers. As nice as Kubuntu is, it still has some serious issues which Windows has had solved for a very long time…( yes I did just say that!).

Printer Setup on Linux

So here I was, trying to remember how to setup a laser printer… It’s certainly not for the feint hearted when the system doesn’t know about “Your Printer” and I’m figuring those who are not patient or just don’t have the time to bash their heads against a brickwall for a long time.. will promptly run back to Windows…Because – most times – it works. Linux will work – but be prepared to do lots of forum reading… and lots of downloading and command line bashing.

Setting up for a Canon LBP5000 – https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CanonCaptDrv190 (This worked for 9.04)

For 9.10 I followed these destructions and got it up and running real quick smart. I’m guessing it’s all the practice I’ve had..If you need help with this, let me know. Ubuntu 9.10 LBP5xxxx setup can be found at http://www.unixmen.com/linux-distributions/ubuntu/229-installation-canon-lbp2900-on-linux

Continuing on….

I had tried to upgrade my version from 8.04 to the latest 9.10. It’d get so far along then complain about incompatible packages that might break things…. It’s certainly not an easy task to discover and rectify those packages “in dispute”. I must admit though, being under the pump to get somethings done can lead to the dreaded “Sexy Fingers” Syndrome and I’m certain I fell victim to that.u

It’s the old rule  – get what you have to get done, done and don’t get sidetracked fixing other things… Like up-grading Apache etc….And I’m thinking I had a few packages I tried to update that were left over from the attempted update to 9.10 and of course I’ve tried to install some of those…

After messing about a little too much. I attempted a system reboot and my fears were realized…. It wouldn’t.

Error 15: File Not Found

It was very trashed, hosed, cactus, not working, take your pick…. But this particular incarnation of strife was new to me so more learning time coming up…

I’d gone and removed too much of that “old stuff” that removed some vital bits. A bit like if you pull out a nose hair and your brains come out… (I’m tired – give me a break!) How about plucking an eyelash and your eyeball comes out! It’s got to be something painful cause this sure was. Anyway, that’s kind of what can happen and it did!

Just Install Kubuntu 9.10

So my 8.04 System was trashed. No Problem – I’ll just do an install of Kubuntu 9.10….After all, I’ve never had a problem before….

Umm yeah! Famous last words. Instead I did a fresh install of Kubuntu 9.04 and it ran a treat. I had a quick play with it and rather liked it. I found this neat little package called envyNG which correctly and quickly installs your NVidia Drivers and I had my Dual Screens set up in seconds. In the past, that was one of those loooong sessions to get it setup.

Great, how wonderful. That works! So I upgraded straight to 9.10…. EnvyNG wont work in this version, so after a lot of reading etc I ended up installing the NVidia Drivers and the Dual Screen the ole tried and tested way. So that worked…I can’t quite remember what else happened but it was bad enough that I decided to go back to Kubuntu 9.04.

Where did the Steering Wheel Go?

There was lots about it I just didn’t like.I’m not sure why but alot of the functionality I was so used to on 8.04 (KED3.x) just wasn’t there. It was a bit like sitting in a new car and looking for the steering wheel but instead you had to lean in the seat to make it turn. You do that on a motor bike, don’t you? I was thinking some M$ guys had snuck in on the project and added their brilliance on these “Changes”….. Hmmm! I’m sure they had their reasons for leaving them out….

So I went back to Kubuntu 9.04. After which I found the magic guide to installing my Canon LBP5000 and got it working….

I plonked my thunderbird and Firefox back on and had it up and running in minutes…. That’s one of the many things I love about Linux. You can copy and paste most things from the old to the new. Oh, I used to have a Raid1 System so all my “Old Stuff” was backed up on the 2nd drive – Plus I’d copied my home folder onto another Hard disk for safety. I’m not worried about the MySql Databases etc.

I also found that konqueror/dolphin didn’t have the “Right Click” Action -> Edit as Root. This is very useful to make system changes for instance , updating your xorg.conf file once the NVidia Setup tool has done it’s stuff, not to mention udpating your Apache2 virtual hosts file and the systems hosts file….

It seems this feature is not included in Gnomes -  Nautilus 2.28.1. It may have been chopped across all Distros! I’ve not run Gnome for years so can’t remember if it was in earlier versions.

Then came VMWare Server 2.0

Then I tried to reinstall my VMware Server. It used to be painless…… But now – No joy, it bitched and wouldn’t compile and carried on like a bear with a sore head!

In the meantime I thought I’d check out Ubuntu 9.10 which is the Gnome Desktop ( not as fancy… but very solid..) So I re partitioned the Hard Drive (adding a separate / partition and forgetting to partition  my /var/usr separately. I had made the / partition way too small). In the meantime, I’d discovered how to install the latest version of VMware Server 2.0 on 9.10 and it worked straight out of the box – well it did for me….

I installed it off the Live CD and it went through it’s paces and I made those silly diddles to the Disk Partitions .. .and on reboot, the X Server ( The graphical bit ) wouldn’t run… In fact it sat at the text login and with the screen flashing madly. So bad in fact, it wouldn’t accept keystrokes to login…. I’m got in with an F8 on reboot and used the recovery mode.

The problem was the NVidia Driver – I got into the /etc/X11/xorg.conf and renamed the driver from NVidia to NV. (Something I learned from my setting up in 8.04 days)

So here I am – sitting in front of Ubuntu 9.10 with my VMWare Server 2.0 running and was just putting back the VMware files for one of my Windows Installs ( 20Gig HD = 10 x 2Gig Files) and I’d run out of space…. I’d gone and set /usr to be a whopping 10Gigs not considering my VMware OS Files were going to be bigger… Whoops. Isn’t this how you learn stuff?

No VMware running – I’ve since missed two of my Classes this week – two run on consecutive days…Friday and Saturday afternoons Australian time.

This being another lesson in getting distracted and running off doing other things…. which will stop you dead in your tracks in what you were hoping to get done!

“I’ll just do a quick upgrade and get straight back onto my Schedule…” Never more famous words mispoken. It’s now Saturday Afternoon and now I’m trying to decide which version to settle with… I’m going to be doing a fresh install of something. I’m guessing Kubuntu 9.04 at this stage.

It’ll be interesting what happens from now till I get back here up and running again. Well I’m excited! Who knows what will happen.

Cheers

Tim

I still love Ubuntu/Kubuntu. I won’t be going back to Windows as my development system anytime soon ( read – never!)

Resources I found useful through all this….

Printer Setup – https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CanonCaptDrv190 for 9.04. (this worked but the link below is probably much better)

Printer Setup – http://www.unixmen.com/linux-distributions/ubuntu/229-installation-canon-lbp2900-on-linux for 9.04, 9.10 and other flavors.

VMWare Server Setup – how to install the latest version of VMware Server 2.0 on 9.10 (It’s a good idea to set the default /var/lib/vmware folder somewhere where there is a ton of room for your Virtual Machines. – another drive would be good due to their size. That’s if you have them big >20G like I tend to. )

Getting Root Actions back into Konqueror missing in 9.xx (KDE4.x) – https://launchpad.net/~samrog131/+archive/ppa/+files/servicemenu-rootactions_2.4.7.1~karmic~ppa1_all.deb

[UPDATE] I’m running Ubuntu 9.10 – totally repartioned the world – read as done correctly… and I put on Kate, Konqueror and Kwrite. Why? Well because I like them. So I’m running a mix of Gnome and KDE Apps which is pretty neat! Who said this wasn’t fun!

All I really had to do…

Was just get the old drive back up and running on Kubuntu 8.04, do my classes and then attempt an upgrade when I had time. But it was meant to be quick in the first place…..

Conclusion

All Roads lead to Gnome!

Now that I’ve had a baptism of fire with these various distributions, the one that came out on top as to ease of installation and up and running for anyone wanting to use a Liunx based system had to be Ubuntu 9.10. Remember that’s the Gnome Desktop version and not my much favored Kubuntu with the Fancy KDE desktop. There is a very large support base for the Gnome Version and I can see why.

Hmm I might get my VMWare problems sorted out another way – just specify a new folder somewhere else….I was trying to install Gparted but one of the aussie servers seems to have gone offline… It never rains…. I’ll get there through shear determination ( some might call stupidity).

Oh and there is an educational release which I’d like to try out. It’s bundled with all the stuff a student/kid would need…. It’s called Edubuntu.

To check out all the Ubuntu Flavors goto http://www.ubuntu.com/

Time to go and do some more stuff….

Cheers

Tim

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]]> http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/im-in-a-temporary-ubuntu-black-hole/feed 0 Hello WordPress! http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/hello-wordpress http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/hello-wordpress#comments Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:36:24 +0000 Tim Brownlaw http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/?p=43

Ahh it feels good!. It’s finally come around on my big list of things to do, to get this website transferred over from Textpattern to WordPress.

I’ve been doing quite a few installs now on various sites for myself and others of late. There is still lots to learn. I’m now in a comfy position where I can get very “experimental” with wordpress and mold it to do my bidding. Now I just got to get the design “thought” processes flowing….

There may be some links about on the site that are still in the “Textile” format used in Textpattern. The next task is to fix those up. So off I go to do that.

In the meantime, I’ve come across a number of very good products which may help you. Of course it depends on what it is you want to do. The problem is, there are too many “ways to go” which causes many people, including myself, to check them all out but never get time to properly implement any of them. I believe the term is Not Having “Focus”. We need to get the blinkers out, focus on something and go for it with avengence! Then go onto the next thing….

Anyway, for now, my next thing is to get this site tidied up and add in a few more things I need to have on here… So till next post. Take care and have fun

Tim

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]]> http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/hello-wordpress/feed 3 Can we use TextPattern for a Gallery http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/can-we-use-textpattern-for-a-gallery http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/can-we-use-textpattern-for-a-gallery#comments Sun, 01 Jul 2007 15:02:47 +0000 Tim Brownlaw http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog/?p=20

I’ve been having a quick read about implementing a photo gallery using textpattern.

It appears that the only way is to do this is to setup a new page for the piccys and post single articles with a picture in each.

This then begs the question, how to we navigate to these pictures.

Galleries have Catagories and Sections.
Navigation would be something like:

# Your Stories
# Display Links for all families
# Have a series of photos for each family

Need to look into how to implement this.
Textpattern as such is a more flat level kind of structure and it may lend to looking at alternatives.

One Suggestion to use is Expression Engine ( a paid CMS System)

It has a lot more scope and the ability to manage a bunch of sites from the one admin.

Plus it has a lot of user restrictions for access control. Interesting!

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