Installing the LAMP stack and Joomla!

As I want to be able to develop web based application I need to install the LAMP Stack. The term “LAMP” refers to a collection of applications that are required to run dynamic websites on a Linux system.

• Linux : Operating System (in this case Ubuntu)
• Apache : Web Server
• MySql : Database
• PHP (or PERL, Python etc) : Programming Language.

There are a number of methods for doing this but most use that I found required interaction at the command line which can be a bit daunting for new users (like me) and also turns the process into something of a Black Art. Coming from a Windows background I feel more comfortable with a graphical user interface (GUI). Having said that, when I initially installed the LAMP stack on my spare Hard Drive I had used the command line approach and all went well.

Dual Booting Vista and Ubuntu

In a previous post I stated that have installed Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) alongside Vista on my Toshiba laptop but this was not as straightforward as I had hoped. I had upgraded the laptop with a 160GB hard drive and Vista was reporting that there was about 90GB free. Great, I only want about 20-30GB for Ubuntu so I should have no problems at all – should I?

The problem is that when i installed Vista I clicked on the ‘Use Entire Drive’ option – which is what I wanted at the time. Now Vista has the ability to shrink a volume so I thought this would come to my rescue – I was wrong! Even though I had 90GB free the shrink tool would only reclaim about 200MB of it!

New Years Resolution 2008/9

Like many other people around the world I have made numerous New Years resolutions over the years and come March they are all but forgotten. Now I don’t smoke and I don’t drink (to excess anyway) but I do carry a few extra pounds around with me – and they have been there for a few years now despite numerous “I will eat less/better this year” resolutions.

The fact of the matter is this; If you don’t want to do something, you won’t. Simple as that. So this year I thought that I would think of something that I would want to do (and not something that other people think I should do!) I currently work as a developer for a company using the Microsoft .NET 2.0 technologies and consider myself to be competant in VB.NET and C# for the development of ASP.NET applications. However, the technologies never stand still and I have still to look at the advances in .NET 3.5 such as LINQ so maybe I should resolve to dig into 3.5 even though the company does not yet implement it. I mean, I may not be working here forever and in the current climate it is wise to keep yourself as up to date as possible.