It's been an interesting evening. Back at my parents home tonight (will leave back to Evora tomorrow), I've been trying to get the information system framework to run in the new Mac Mini that currently lives in my bedroom. So this entry goes some way towards documenting this evening's trip.

Leopard ships with a fully functional Apache 2.2 copy and getting PHP5 to play along with it is a simple matter of uncommenting one line in httpd.conf. Installing PostgreSQL is a breeze using Marc Liyanage's PostgreSQL package, not forgetting to set the cluster creation encoding to Latin1. This is because everything in the information system is Latin1 and it saves a lot of headaches.

The trouble began when I noticed that Leopard didn't really ship with PostgreSQL bindings in its PHP5 installation. So basically there was no choice other than recompiling PHP from scratch. I tried Marc's PHP5 package which includes PostgreSQL support but alas it all went well until the installation process bombed out in the end with a cryptic error.

So, off to compiling PHP's source which had me searching for the Leopard DVDs so I could install XCode's tools, namely gcc. Once that was done, compiling PHP was a breeze. Problem was that once it got installed, Apache complained that the PHP module had the wrong architecture. One minute of Googling told me that Leopard's Apache comes pre-configured for all 4 archs and so I need to do that for whatever I install that interfaces with it. This is a prospect that clearly sucked.

Miraculously, someone came up with a much better and hassle free choice: stripping the httpd binary of the surplus architectures and leaving 32-bit only. Here's the magic sauce:

$ cd /usr/sbin
$ sudo cp httpd httpd-fat
$ sudo lipo httpd -thin i386 -output httpd

Works like a charm.

Et voila'. It's up and running!

Now I'm spent, I better crawl to bed.

Adapting to development under CakePHP and the university's information system architecture has been slow but steady and really picked up today. Now I see that whatever I developed in the past under MVC frameworks has really been scarce. It obviously helped to understand the foundations of what models, views and controllers are but I guess I still hadn't grasped what they really are. That, alas (or not), only comes with extensive exposure to somewhat complex system that use them.

In any case, it's been a really interesting trip so far and the best side effect has been learning a lot of simple but neat Emacs tricks with Gonçalo, my supervisor on this particular project. Another important thing is that I'll probably be developing another information system, with different subject matter entirely, and the knowledge I've been acquiring will surely prove invaluable later on. Today has been somewhat of a breakthrough, as I've been implementing from scratch a lot of functionality which, despite simple at the core, were nothing but a major headache less than a week ago.

And when it comes to database design, I may not come up with the best relational designs in the world but I surely understand them much more clearly. Proof is how different (and may I add worse) a schema for a side project of mine was before I got to work on this stuff here and now that I learned a couple of things.

Oh and I've been carrying the Macbook along to work again. I simply cannot live without this baby and I guess using a shitty keyboard on the desktop also prevents me from really feeling comfortable. Other than that I just miss the comfort I find in Mac OS, regardless of my everlasting love for Linux, which I've used for over a decade now.

It's also been two months since I started working and the truth is that I've done little else on the side. Football Manager 2008 Portuguese translation has kicked off and there's a web app I'd like to take a stab on but both are on the backburner until I get back on my feet, so to speak. The translation, however, I need to start as soon as possible.

More to come. Interesting, albeit difficult tiresome and sometimes nerve-wrecking, times.

Database engineering has always been an hassle for me and now I have to deal with quite a bit of it. Now I kinda like it and have been learning a lot. Helps to work directly below someone who's proficient and oozes experience. In the process I've also been picking up a lot of emacs tricks which are a huge help for productivity. This, in fact, is a direct result of leaving my Macbook at home now and using the desktop that's been assigned to me at work.

model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E4500 @ 2.20GHz

So, what I'm developing at work is an information system to manage the performance evaluation of public administration workers and their superiors. In Portugal, this is called SIADAP. I need to deliver the first part of the system, up and running, by the end of next week and not being entirely too productive using CakePHP yet is a bit of a problem.

In the meantime, my back is killing me again. I always predicted I'd have back problems but not when I'm bloody 24 going on 25. I'm hoping I won't need to pay a visit to the osteopath this time around, but it all depends on how I feel later today.

Forgot the damn Pattern Recognition book back in my parents' home. Meaning I'll have to start reading something else for the next couple of weeks. Strongest candidates are "Quantico" by Greg Bear and "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. I think Quantico will win by a nose, for now.

Hitting a wall at work, I can't seem to get the information system codebase checkout to properly run in my development machine's Apache. Something's up either with the Apache config or the CakePHP config itself. Either way, it's worrying me because I need to get up to speed as soon as possible and here I am wasting time not able to get things even running, let alone write some code.

More on this later...

Hard to believe it's been this long.

Doing the lazy lazy thing for the whole weekend, not giving a damn about any work. Finally finished "Neuromancer" which was both interesting and confusing in places. I guess reading about technology from 1985 with over 20 years of real world hindisight on that same technology explains my confusion. SF authors are right a lot of the time, but not always. Nevertheless, I feel better having finally read it and it amazes me how much "The Matrix" actually resembles this. Now I'm reading "Pattern Recognition" by the very same William Gibson and enjoying it quite a lot more, about 100 pages into it.

Work has picked up and writing information systems for important things in CakePHP is a mystery that slowly unfolds. I better get proficient writing web apps with this framework and that right soon.

Yesterday, made a detour in Lisbon to get D. to the bus station so she could get home for the weekend and decided to go to Colombo's FNAC while I was at it in order to buy Porcupine Tree tickets for the October gig in Almada. While doing so, couldn't resist the fresh money in my wallet, so to speak, and got myself a couple of treats: Portishead's "Third" and Black Mountain "In The Future". Both are sublime and will surely feature in my Top 10 come the end of the year. Unless the second half of the year is absolutely crazy in terms of sheer quality.

But, alas or not, the weekend is coming to an end and I need to pack, shower, dine and get my ass moving back to Evora. Work resumes tomorrow at 9am and I never thought I'd be happy to have a 9-5 job, but I do. I needed the stability for a while.