This is a quick follow up post from Tony Spencers post “cURL with PHP and Apache on Windows.” I’d like to thank him for sharing his knowledge.

The reason i wanted to post this is to clear up any confusion you about getting Curl to work on Windows XP (with PHP 5.2.9-2 and Apache 2.2.11). Most likely this solution will work with all versions of PHP5 and Apache 2.2.x and if you are running XAMPP you can check how easy it is to >> enable << .

Getting Curl to Work!!

1. First thing to do is to have the development environment installed locally on your computer. I have one at the office with installed without the installer and one here at home with the installer. For all intensive purposes lets concentrate on using php/apache installed with the MSI installer. If you got that going thats great, if not head on over to this >> Tutorial to install your local development << (the manual way with the installer) If you got it installed already head on over to the next point
2. Next thing you need to do (after your installation) is to check your phpinfo() file. If you don’t have one make one and load it up on your local web-server. It should look like the screen below:
   

   If you don’t see your Curl extension in phpinfo() after trying to find it I suggest you install php again using the installer. Make sure your ENABLE all extensions/features in your installation as you will get an option to do so. (install all features please) If you explore the extension features in your install dialogue box you will see CURL there. This my friends is the key to the problem. If the installer gives you the option for less headache then use it. Did I mention that you can also rerun the installer and choose “Change”, then add the CURL extension?!

3. Once you have installed properly and find the Curl extension in your phpinfo() screen make sure to copy these files from your PHP root directory (mine was D:\Program Files\PHP) to your c:\windows\system32:
   libeay32.dll
ssleay32.dll
   Also make sure that a copy of php5ts.dll is also in your Apache/bin directory
4. Last step is to uncomment this line curl: extension=php_curl.dll in your php.ini file. That should do it for you and hopefully everything worked out right!
5. To test that Curl is actually working use this snippet of code and drop it in to your server root (usually htdocs):

   <?php
       error_reporting(E_ALL);
       ini_set('display_errors', '1');
       $ch = curl_init();
       curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,
       'http://news.google.com/news?output=rss');
       curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
       $contents = curl_exec ($ch);
       echo $contents;
       curl_close ($ch);
       ?>
       

   Try this as well to display feeds from your blog (where $sXML = show_feeds(’put the url of your blog here/atom’)

   <?php
   function show_feeds($path) {
           $ch = curl_init();
           curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$path);
           curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR,1);
           curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION,1);
           curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
           curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 15);
           $retValue = curl_exec($ch);
           curl_close($ch);
           return $retValue;
   }
   $sXML = show_feeds('http://blogspot.fluidnewmedia.com/atom');
   $oXML = new SimpleXMLElement($sXML);
   <p>foreach($oXML->entry as $oEntry) {
           echo $oEntry->title . "\n";
   }
   ?>
   

6. If you see the the rss feed of Google then you are done! Change the output to ‘html’ and you will see the RSS feed displayed properly in html.

Scripting Twitter with cURL via Command Line

Ok the above explanation shows you how to use Curl and PHP together to build applications based on API’s that you would like to hook into. It doesn’t mean that you have Curl installed in your command like prompt where you can actually see the XML.

To do that is quite simple. Go over to http://curl.haxx.se/download.html and download the the Win32 Generic (7.19.4) by Dirk Paehl. Go ahead and extract it to a local folder (I extracted it to D:\Program Files\Curl).

Next open up the command prompt and cd into the same directory you extracted it into. Now just type in curl at the prompt to make sure the command is recoginized

If you want to easily overcome the shortcomings of Twitter’s API us this command below:

curl --basic --user username:password --data status="Checking out Curl!!" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml
//replace username:password with your user name and password


You should end up with this below:

So by now you should have a good idea of how Curl works with Apache and PHP as well as on the command line. The way i explained above should work straight out of the box. Good Luck!

So you have heard of Linux and one of its most popular flavors (Ubuntu) and want to try it out on your Windows system? (Most people probably don’t know what Linux is and where it came from.) So, if you are new to Linux I just wanted to quickly mention that the name is derived from Linus Torvalds (the creator of Linux) a kick-ass Software Engineer and Computer Scientist from Finland. Learn more about him!

To make a long story short Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. Whether you use it at home, at school or at work Ubuntu contains all the applications you’ll ever need, from word processing and email applications, to web server software and programming tools.

Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge. You do not pay any licensing fees. You can download, use and share Ubuntu with your friends, family, school or business for absolutely nothing.

INSTALLING PORTABLE UBUNTU ON WINDOWS XP

The installation procedure is simple enough. Goto http://portableubuntu.demonccc.com.ar/ and download from the Souce Forge Site.

Next drop that application file into your local hard-drive or on a USB or flash drive (choice is yours). Run the application (Double click on the Portable_Ubuntu.exe icon and it will self extract).

Lets stick to the easiest way to get started. Once you have extracted the files either use your CMD prompt (Command Line Prompt) to run the portable_ubuntu.bat file or double click on portable_ubuntu.bat to start the Operating System. The portable_ubuntu.bat can be found where you extracted the application.

Once you have done that you should see screens similar to the one below of the installation process. Dont worry about any errors at this stage, it should work straight out of the box.

All you have to do after the install is complete is to watch out for the rectangular Ubuntu Dockable Palette on your desktop – it looks just like the screen below. You can drag it around and Portable Ubuntu lets you work with Dual monitors too!

Thats it you are done. Now you can have an Ubuntu Shell right in your Windows operating system. Note that Portable Ubuntu does work on Windows Vista and Seven, however you have to log on as the administrator to prevent security issues.

Check out some of these links as a reference in case you run into problems:

http://lifehacker.com/5195999/portable-ubuntu-runs-ubuntu-inside-windows
http://portableubuntu.demonccc.cloudius.com.ar/documentationhttp://www.pendrivelinux.com/portable-qemu-persistent-ubuntu-linux/
www.howtoforge.com/running-ubuntu-on-windows-xp-with-portable-ubuntu

This is an unforgettable mistake i made today while running some migrations in Rails.

Here is the first migration file. It was generated by using this simple command:

ruby script/generate model Articles

Simple enough right? The output of the generation was:

def self.up
  create_table :articles do |t|
    t.column :user_id, :integer
    t.column :title, :string
    t.column :synopsis, :text, :limit => 1000
    t.column :body, :text, :limit => 20000
    t.column :published, :boolean, :default => false
    t.column :created_at, :datetime
    t.column :updated_at, :datetime
    t.column :published_at, :datetime
    t.column :category_id, :integer
  end

def self.down
  drop_table :categories
 end
end

When i went ahead and tried the rake command to migrate to my database: rake db:migrate I kept getting an error “Uninitialized constant Create Articles” Rake Aborted!!

Having forgot that everything in Rails is Object Orientated (extends from one base class or another) i overlooked two things.

1. I did not declare the class and what base it extended
2. I did not add the schema file name into my migration file

Usually Rails generates the schema and adds the base class (Active Record) but this time it didn’t. Anyhow the fix was easy enough…

#20090106022023_create_articles.rb
class CreateArticles < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :articles do |t|
      t.belongs_to :user, :category
      t.string :title
      t.text :synopsis, :limit => 1000
      t.text :body, :limit => 20000
      t.boolean :published, :default => false
      t.datetime :published_at
      t.timestamps
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :articles
  end
end

So this is a classic mistake of us all having our moments..Thanks again to the users over at Stack Overflow for helping out. Their are some excellent trouble shooters out there.

Since Ruby on Rails was first released, it has become a household name (in developers’ households, anyway). Hundreds of thousands of developers the world over have adopted—and adored—this new framework. Firstly Ruby is a programming language which was written by a Japanese man Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto. Ruby on Rails is the Framework for Ruby and is used to build web based applications.

We will deal with manual installation techniques and use the command-line and installers for specific tasks as well as configure Instant Rails.

MANUAL INSTALLATION OF RUBY ON RAILS:

To start off we need to install some development software on our systems. The packages you can install are here (I will be dealing with ONLY Windows based systems here) :

The Ruby Language Interpreter:  
The Ruby interpreter translates our Ruby code (or any Ruby code, for that matter, including Rails itself) into a form the computer can understand and execute. At the time of writing, Ruby 1.8.6 is recommended for use with Rails, so that’s what I’ve used here.

The Ruby on Rails framework:  
Once we’ve downloaded Ruby, we can install the Rails framework itself. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, Rails is written in Ruby.

The SQLite database engine:
The SQLite database engine is a self-contained software library which provides an SQL database without actually running a separate server process. While Rails supports plenty of other database servers (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle, to name a few), SQLite is easy to install and does not require.

Step One:  Installing Ruby the Programming Language:

The first place you need to look is at the Ruby on Rails website and download Ruby the Language – > http://www.rubyonrails.org .  Simply click on the Get Started icon which will take you into the downloads area.

Ruby on Rails Homepage

On the Downloads Page click on the Windows installer.  

Rubys Windows Installer

 You will be taken to Ruby Forge where you can download the .exe installer of Ruby.  Download that and install it on your local computer.  

Ruby Forge - One click Installer for Windows

I like keeping my C: drive empty so i installed in into D:/Ruby

Step Two: Installing Rails via the Command Prompt:

If you are not insterested in command line prompt then Rails aint for you.  Fire up the command line prompt on your Windows Based PC.  To get to it all you have to do is to navigate to “Accessories” in your Start Menu 
and look for Command Prompt.  Ok now fire up your installer, it should look like this:

Windows Command Prompt

To check what version of Ruby you are running type:
ruby --version

You should get the version number of Ruby on Rails which will be displayed in the command prompt.
Next you need to know what a Gem is. The Ruby Gem is the package manager that comes with Ruby that will help you install Rails and alot of other modules for later use.

To install Rails simply type:
gem install rails --include-dependencies

The gems package manager will take a minute to check the Rails repository to determine if Rails is installed. Obviously if it isn’t it will install it for you. Note that this will take some time as the packages are quite large.

That about does it for Rails. Make sure that Rails is working by creating an application. To do this you type:
rails Hello World
(where rails is the command and “Hello World” is the application that you are generating.)

After giving that command simply navigate to the folder where you ran the command from -> you should notice that Rails has created your skeleton structure for you already!

INSTANT RAILS:

BRIEF HISTORY OF APACHE (As written on Wikipedia)

The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to simply as Apache [??pæt?i], is a web server notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. Apache was the first viable alternative to the Netscape Communications Corporation web server (currently known as Sun Java System Web Server), and has since evolved to rival other Unix-based web servers in terms of functionality and performance.

It is often said that the project’s name was chosen for two reasons: ⁽¹⁾ out of respect for the Native American Indian tribe of Apache (Indé), well-known for their endurance and their skills in warfare, ⁽²⁾ and due to the project’s roots as a set of patches to the codebase of NCSA HTTPd 1.3 – making it “a patchy” server.
Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation. The application is available for a wide variety of operating systems, including Unix, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, Novell NetWare, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, OS/2, and eComStation. Released under the Apache License, Apache is characterized as free software and open source software.

Since April 1996 Apache has been the most popular HTTP server on the World Wide Web. However, since November 2005 it has experienced a steady decline of its market share, lost mostly to Microsoft Internet Information Services. As of April 2008 Apache served 50.42% of all websites.

BRIEF HISTORY OF PHP

The origins of PHP date back to 1995, when an independent software development contractor names Rasmus Lerdorf developed a Perl/CGI script that enabled him to know how many visitors were reading his online resume’. His script performed to tasks: logging visitor information, and displaying the count of visitors to the Web page.

Because the Web as we know it today was still young at that time, tools such as these were nonexistent, and they prompted emails inquiring about Lerdorf’s scripts. Lerdorf thus begun giving away his toolset, dubbed Personal Home Page. The clamor for the PHP toolset prompted Lerdorf to cuntinue developing the language, perhaps the most notable change early change coming when he added a feature for converting data. Ongoing additions to the PHP toolset cuminated in November 1997 with the release of PHP 2.0, or Personal Home Page – Form Interpreter (PHP-FI). As a result PHP’s rising popularity, the 2.0 release was accompanied by a number of enhancements and improvements from programmers worlwide.

The new PHP release was extremely popular, and a core team of developers soon joined Lerdorf. They kept the original concept of incorporating code directly alongside HTML and rewrote the parsing engine, giving birth to PHP 3.0, By the June 1998 release of version 3.0, more than 50,000 users were using PHP to enhance their Web Pages.

Development continued at a hectic pace over the next two years, with hundreds of functions being added and the user count growing in leaps and bounds. At the beginning of 1999, Netcrafts reported a conservative estimate of a user base surpassing 1,000,000, making PHP one of the most popular scripting languages of the world.

INSTALLING APACHE 2.0.6 FOR WINDOWS
Installing the Apache server coupled with PHP 5 can sometimes be a daunting task simply because open source technologies are always changing with newer releases, patches, etc, etc. I would like to take this time to make simplify the process of installing a working server on your local machine.There are numerous ways to install the Apache server on your local machine:

1. Using a bundle software such as XAMPP (Apache Friends).
2. Installing APACHE 2.2 / PHP5 manually.
3. Installing APACHE/PHP 5 through the MSI installer.

We will be focusing on installing APACHE/PHP5 on your local machine (Windows XP) with the MSI installer. Though it is most preferable to manually configure Apache / PHP5 this is a beginner tutorial to get you up and running. Hey i used to be a complete noob too so take it from me, it’s better to start off small and then build your way up. I will post another tutorial on installing manually in the next couple of weeks. Lets begin shall we?

1. STEP 1: Start by getting all the resources for the installation. By resources i mean all the downloads from the APACHE and PHP Websites. Goto the Apache Website (http://httpd.apache.org – ScreenShot 1) – and download the Win32 Binary without crypto (no mod_ssl) (MSI Installer) (http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi – ScreenShot 2).
   
   
2. STEP 2: Double Click on the MSI Installer Icon and you will be taken to the welcome screen . Take a moment to read it and click next.
3. STEP 3: Accept the terms of the license agreement and click next.
   
   
4. STEP 4: You will be prompted for various items pertinent to the server’s operation, including the Network Domain, Server Name, and Administrators Email address. If you know the information fill it in, otherwise just use localhost for the first two items, and put in your email address for the last. Keep for all users on Port 80, as a service Checked. This allows Apache to initialize on startup of your computer.
   
   
   
5. STEP 5: You will be prompted to select a setup type. For right now choose Typical.
   
   
6. STEP 6: Lastly you will be prompted for the destination folder. By default this is C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation, but you may choose install anywhere you like, just make sure you avoid spaces. Click install to complete the installation

Thats it for Apache. Easy wasn’t it? You should see an Apache icon in your system tray (Bottom Right).

Make sure that you stop and restart Apache to make sure it is running properly. If you fail to do so then later when you install PHP5 it won’t work.

1. STEP 1: Just as you did for the Apache Installation obtain all the resources from the PHP website (http://www.php.net). Make sure that you download the latest version of PHP 5 which is PHP 5.2.6.
2. STEP 2: Once downloaded Double Click the PHP-5.2.6 Win-32 Installer and you will see a welcome Screen.
   
   
3. STEP 3: Click Next and Agree to the Terms of the License.
   
   
4. STEP 4: You will be prompted to select the Web Server you wish to setup. Choose Apache 2.2x Module since you have already installed the Apache 2.2+ Server. Click Next.
   
   
5. STEP 5: In the Apache Confiuration Directory choose C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\, or the install directory where you installed Apache. Click Next and in the choose items to install prompt click next and install PHP on your machine.

Thats it for installing PHP 5.2.6 on your local computer using the MSI installer. Now its time to test and see if the installations actually worked.

Locate the directory where you installed Apache 2.2. By default that directory is C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation, but choose the location where you installed it if it was different than the default. Open that folder and look for a folder named htdocs.

Once you have navigated to that folder successfully open up a text editor such as Notepad or Notepad ++ and type in the these lines:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Save the page as phpinfo.php in the htdocs folder where you installed Apache. The phpinfo() function offers a plethora of useful information pertinent to your php installation. Lastly open your browser and type: http://localhost/phpinfo.php and if all went well you should see this webpage appear in the browser.

If you are seeing error messages or nothing at all for the output it is duew to one or more of the following reasons:

• Apache was not started or restarted after the build process was complete.
• A typing error was introduced into the code in the phpinfo.php file. If a parse error message is resulting in the browers input, then this is almost certainly the case.
• Something went wrong during the build process. Consider rebuilding, carefully monitoring for errors.

If you navigate to your start menu, under the Apache HTTP Server 2 menu item you will see that you can test your configuration and monitor the service.

Notes: I have not touched on the php.ini file or the Apache httpd.conf files in this tutorial. In the next tutorial i will help you to understand these two files and how to use them to your advantage.

What is animation…A brief description of animation can be one or more of the following:

• To impart motion or activity to.
• To give life to; fill with life.
• To fill with spirit, courage, or resolution; encourage.
• To impart motion or activity to.
• To inspire or activity to.

Animation basically means motion of some sort. Motion would be the change of someone or somethings position over time. Theoretically, it is also the space between those points but that is another discussion all together. What one should know is that an object doesn’t necessarily need to change is location in order to be considered animated. It could just be changing its shape. What you should remember is that the connection of animation to time is an important. Without any motion or change, there is no animation and of course no sense of time.

TYPES OF ANIMATION:

1. Frames and Motion: Virtually all visual animation media uses frames, which is a series of still images shown very rapidly to simulate motion or change. Anything you see on a computer, television, or movie screen is based on frames. Making frame by frame animations in Flash at a frame rate of 24 fps(frames per second) will keep people happy as they will accept those frames as a single movie. Anything slower than that rate and your animation would get choppy or jumpy breaking the illusion of the movie.
2. Frames and Records: The whole concept of frames makes three things possible: storage, transmission and display. You cannot really store, transmit and display a man walking across a room, but you can store a picture or many pictures, store, transmit and then eventually display them almost anywhere.
3. Programmed Frames: Using a computer helps you calculatig things on the fly, so you dont really need a long list of descriptions for your frames. You may cut it down to a description of the first frame and some rules on how to build the subsequent frames. So the computer is not merely creating an image from a description, its creating the description first, then creating the image based on the description, and finally displaying the image.

ADVANTAGES OF PROGRAMMED OR SCRIPTED ANIMATION:

• Scripted animation file size is much smaller than the other two types of animation discussed above. Imagine having 30 images to a movie on 30 frames of the timeline? Your file size would be very high.
• Most coded animations become dynamic. If you watch a move on a dvd, vcr or cd player you will see the same animation repeatedly. With a coded animation i could using that very code to make it dynamic by determining a random point to place it with random direction and speed to move it. Hence the animation will appear differently on the screen or T.V. or any other medium I had used.

ANIMATING WITH CODE:

Almost all coded animation is contained within some sort of loop. If you consider frame by frame animation and visualize it into a flowchart you will end up with something like this.

If you get into shapes or symbols then it would be a different story. Flash does not create and store a new bitmap image for each frame, even in a frame by frame animation movie. For each frame Flash stores the position, size, color and so on of an object on the stage. The flowchart for this sort of animation would be as follows:

Finally if you consider dynamic or coded animation the flowchart would look something like this:

In the last flowchart (Scripted Animation) there is no concept of frame 1, 2 etc, etc. Actionscripted animation generally can run, and usually does occur all in just one frame. Here is where you can see the loop coming into play. It sounds very daunting but it really isnt if you study it carefully. First you set up an initial state by placing movie clips onto the stage or describe your animation or scene in actionscript only.

Next you apply rules which results in a new state. Which rules and what sort of animation you want is entirely your decision! Whether you want users to interact with the animation or adding different events is also all up to you. By understanding some of the basic concepts in animation you should be well on your way to your own scripted animations.