It’s amazing what happens when you don’t spend any time writing new articles.

-Absolutely nothing!

I am on my last year of my computer programming degree and my class loads have lightened up a bit. Along the way I’ve purchased a new house with my wife, had a meager 3 week Christmas break (not nearly long enough), and managed to acquire 2 internships doing web development.

Those are just a few of the things I’ve done.

Upon reflection of where I started this journey and where I am now I’ve learned that what I want to do MORE THAN ANYTHING is web development. I love designing websites, helping people put their brand out, and along the way learning more about myself, and my capabilities. This doesn’t mean I don’t like application development, but certainly with web design/development, I have more creative freedom and it’s that freedom I enjoy most.

My computer programming degree hasn’t covered (in my opinion) 2/3rds of what I believe I need to know to become a good web developer as far as web technologies go. I’ve covered html, javascript, xml, php and mysql. Those languages are a good basis for most sites, but in reviewing what other web developers out there are covering (thinks like JSON, JQuery, MooTools, CSS) I think I am not as prepared to handle all of the requests that might come to me.

So what can I do?

My wife was amazing in that for Christmas she got me a copy of the Smashing Book which has been a good start.

The Smashing Book is chocked full of tips and ideas about good site design and characteristics that I believe will help me be a better Web Developer. But while learning this, I have this deep sense that I need to learn more.

So, this is where you come in (if you even read this): I need to find out what current market trends are in web development and determine if those tools/skills are something I can acquire by reading, or if I should continue my education and find a school geared for Web Development.

I am so fried on education that I want to suppress the college route for awhile and see what I can do before that. I realize that this market is BLEAK, but certainly some one some where can use a developer (let alone pay one)

This is what I want to do for the rest of my life, so the question is, how to insure that happens.

Recently one of my Twitter “reads” mentioned using a plug in for FireFox called Stylish to kill all of the spam on the right hand side of FaceBook.

If you are a frequent user of FaceBook, you know that it’s pretty annoying to constantly see a list of whatever “applications” your friends are using. (I.E.: List 5 things you hate, blah blah blah)

What Stylish is, is an add-on for FireFox that essentially modifies a websites formatting, and lays over the top of what ever site you’re viewing. So if something particular annoys you with a site, Stylish will allow you to remove the offending piece of code, thus making the site more enjoyable for your tastes.

Using Stylish for FaceBook turned off the notifications but still left other spam like the suggestions window, and other notifications.

So this is the code that stylish created for facebook:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain("facebook.com") {
.UIHotStream {display:none;}

}

and I added the following line to completely block/hide everything on that right side:

.UITitledBox {display:none;}

and so altogether you have:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain("facebook.com") {
.UIHotStream {display:none;}
.UITitledBox {display:none;}
}

I hope that my tip was helpful if you are as tired of looking at that garbage as I am. Now I am going to see what other sites I can use Stylish for because there is certainly plenty of spam/garbage out there I don’t want to look at.

And you thought you were busy?

Just a quick update to my last post. I completed my spring semester and passed all of my classes. So I’ve successfully navigated through Java 1, Agile Programming Methodology (Using Ruby on Rails), XML (DOM, SAX, XHTML), and PHP/MYSQL!

I am by far not finished learning ANY of these languages as they are all excellent and have their uses. Let’s just say this semester was getting my feet wet.

In retrospect, I certainly have a ton of work to do to master each of these. Along with working them, I also dusted off my HTML, graphics work, javascript, and picked up a new skill (CSS).

I have all of my textbooks for next semester, but I need to also find time to dive into them and get some of that knowledge under my belt before the semester starts. I’d like to do better this semester than I did the last one.

Now, as for this summer and blogging…. Mid June is going to be terrible for me as I am leaving for a 4 day excursion w/family. July is looking slightly better, and August I am taking another trip w/family. That means to you (the few of you there are) that I am going to continue my sporadic blogging.

I did want to pass along a link that I received for an IDE geared for MAC OS X called Coda. For a VERY limited time, Panic Inc (the company that makes Coda) is offering their products for 50% off what they normally sell them for.

If you go here, you’ll find more about it. I am about to download the demo and see for myself what the fuss is all about. I have also recently picked up Komodo Edit and I love their Windows IDE product. It’s worth finding something you like and sticking to it.

May is a great month. Baseball, warmer temps, bugs are not fully aware that humans are outside, AND… school season is wrapping up for the semester!

Before my final exams next Monday and Tuesday, I have to complete 2 projects (1 Java, 1 php) and make sure that I have all of my code handy on a single thumb drive. This is incase we are allowed only 1 for taking our final app tests.

In Java we are working on abstract methods and classes. So we’ll create a driver/main app, which will call upon a parent class, and 2 child classes. This sounds simple enough but the work is tedious and I hope I have time to take care of it.

In PHP, the project is a bit more difficult as we have to completely revamp a website we’ve written, that has SQL functionality, and so not only changing graphics, web pages (which are all in php) but also making sure that every aspect that calls a DB query works.

So, PHP first, and we’ll sweat the small stuff later right?

And that is what I am doing now until next Tuesday. After class is out, then I am hoping to write more frequently over the summer!

Wish me luck!

As school winds down and projects ratchet up a notch (or two) i’ve been trying to get PHP to talk with MYSQL dynamically.

One of the problems I’ve been encountering has been the mysql_connect() command inside my php pages.

Typically I’ve seen errors like so:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function mysql_connect() in “blah blah blah on line “blah blah blah”

Reading all of the google results based on this formula I had to go into my PHP.INI file and insure that the extensions relating to mysql have their “;” (semicolons) removed.

But that didn’t fix my problems. I was still having connectivity issues.

Reading up on another site, they talked about their mysql.dll’s perhaps not loading correctly.

Within your php installation folder there resides a driver called libmysql.dll

This file is the driver that my Apache web server was lacking. The recommendations for where to put libmysql.dll ranged from Windows, to System32. I also found out that it was probably a good idea to drop it into the Apache/bin folder as well.

Then reboot.

This process has taken me over 4 hours to track down as my process basically started by combing through my php syntax to make certain that every “;” was where it needed to be, and every single tick ( ‘ ) had a matching tick, and then I was able to focus on tracking down some MYSQL scripts that would simply test for connectivity.

I even blew out all installations of MYSQL in order to reinstall a fresh DB. Lucky for me I’ve created SQL scripts to recreate the DB’s and populate the data.  This by no means should tell you that I am out of the woods with solving ALL of my problems. I did get to resolve the primary issue which was DB connectivity, and now I have to clean up some non-DB syntax issues. (variables, functions, etc).

But that was a major hurdle and one I wanted to document here. Hope it helps you out too.