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.

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.

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.