tikiwiki on Oracle -- continued

Hey, someone commented. I'm all excited now.

This morning, I uninstalled Apache and EasyPHP. This also broke my previous lame attempt at installing the Zend Core, so I had to uninstall that.

I was worried that my APEX interface to XE had tapped into one of the Apache installations and was using it as its server. No problem, though, as it had installed with the database web server and was unaffected by all of the uninstalling.

Re-installed Apache 2.2.8. I got a syntax error on line 86 of in http.conf file. Since I don't know what LoadModule anon_auth_module modules/mod_auth_anon.so does, I commented it out.

Now I'm having a problem with something blocking port 80. Probably either something in the firewall here, or one of my virus scanners, filters, etc., so, since this is just a proof of concept anyways, I tried port 88. Apache started.

I re-installed the Zend Core as well, using the new Apache server.

Hmmm...now what?

Tikiwiki on an Oracle Database?

I love Wikis. They rock. I use tiddlywiki for ad-hoc note-taking and for a journal file. In combination with Keybreeze, I can make a journal entry almost as fast as I have the thought.

But, I'm an Oracle database programmer. I work in a place with a documentation problem. To me one of the big obstacles with documentation is Word. As a Developer, the thought Process is something like this:

• I need to document that.
• Open Word
• Where is that documentation template that we agreed on in our Programming Standards.
• What was I doing?
• Oh screw it.

So, I've given myself the challenge of trying to convince management here that a wiki could help with the documentation. The benefits being:

• Consistent, clean output.
• Backup -- happens with the database.
• Fast, simple formatting.
• Easy to get to -- it's just a URL.

Here is what I'm looking at for the initial Proof of Concept:

• Oracle XE on my laptop.
• Tikiwiki
• Oracle's endorsed PHP Zend [NOTE: I forgot -- I have EasyPHP installed from a former attempt -- I'll use that for the proof of concept.]
  
• Apache, of course.

So far, I downloaded Oracle XE -- it went off without a hitch. Very impressive, Oracle. Thank you.

Then, I ran the tiki database install script just to see if it would go. It wants to throw indexes on some of the LOB objects, which isn't supported (at least on XE). I'm worried that may be a problem down the road, but we'll see. I don't know that an Oracle index would really do any good on a LOB, though, since you are probably looking for something in the middle of the LOB, which wouldn't use the index anyways. We'll have to see if it totally messes up searches.

Now, I need to install the PHP and configure Apache. Yuck.

Firefox 3 beta

I'm testing Firefox 3 beta 5. So Far, I'm impressed. Holy crap, this things a screamer. Memory doesn't seem bad, either.

Thank you Google Calendar

Sweet. I received an e-mail agenda from Google Calendar today (as I do every day) and there in small print it said
"To change which calendars you receive daily agendas for, please log in to http://www.google.com/calendar/ and change your notification settings for each calendar."


Woohoo!!! Now I can configure e-mail notifications for all my calendars!!!

--Og

DVD Burner Pain

Since my XP rebuild, I haven't been able to burn DVD's. The drive recognizes CD's, but not DVD's. I booted on my Linux USB drive, and no luck. Still recognized CD's but not DVD's. I've tried re-installing drivers, but the Linux failure seems to indicate that the drivers are not necessarily the problem. I would think that the hardware was toast, except for the fact that it started when I rebuilt the XP.

I'm not even sure what my next step should be.

--Og

linux jukebox -- system upgrade

I spent $6 at a thrift store on some speakers, and $7 at Radio Shack for a cable converting the laptop's audio out jack to a pair of RCA jacks.

Now, the audio runs out from the laptop to the hand-me-down Kenwood amp, then out to the pair of 15 Watt (underpowered, yes, but actually fairly capable) thrift store speakers.

We like. It's been a lot of fun to have around 700ish songs at your fingertips, organized into playlists, etc.

Now, if I get the USB port situation straightened out, then we can start using this thing as a place to download audio onto our MP3 players.

Pretty soon, we are going to want to start sending signals to multiple rooms (heehee).


--Og

Service Pack What?

OK. I'm on my fourth round of updates at windowsupdate.microsoft.com. I know that I need Service Pack 2. It's the first thing I tried to download. There are 50 reminders of it on their site, but do you think I can get it? No. At least not yet. I've probably loaded 100 or so updates, and I've clicked every "Get Service Pack 2" link under the sun, but they all send me back to the 'automatic' update page for another round of Service Pack 1 updates. Right. We've de-supported your release, and you really need to upgrade to the current release, but we won't let you.

These are some of my biggest pet peeves about Microsoft--1) They insist on doing all of your thinking for you, and 2) They won't just give you a full setup--you can't just go get the "latest build" and download everything you need in one shot. And why does it take so long to download these updates? Is it the mass of data that I'm uploading as well? I'm monitoring my upload/download stats. I'm uploading about 60% as much data as I'm downloading. Now that's spyware.



--Og