Phosphorus and Lime

In the course of human events, to paraphrase a famous document, it is sometimes necessary to say goodbye. And I'm saying goodbye to Blogger. For this blog anyway. I'm finally moving to WordPress.

Blogger is a solid platform with many user-friendly (not to mention, spammer-friendly) features. It has continued to improve steadily since Google acquired it. But you're still at the mercy of Google's sometimes inconsistent censorship policies.

Beyond the control it affords the blogging developer, WordPress is a really impressive platform. It has rich features and, in spite of this, an easy intuitive interface.

This blog will continue to exist as an archive, so long as Google is gracious enough to host it. But beginning with the New Year, all futures posts will be posted to my new Klenwell blog. Hope to see you there.

My goal seemed pretty simple: put PHP4 and PHP5 on my local Apache server so that I can easily test a couple applications that still need to work with PHP4. This is for Ubuntu.

I found a pretty good guide here:
http://www.howtoforge.com/apache2_with_php5_and_php4

The only problem is that php4-cgi is no longer in the Ubuntu repositories.

The solution turned out to be pretty easy in the end. Just add one of the old repositories that still has it to your sources list. But it took me the better part of an evening to hunt down that solution.

So here's my step-by-step guide to installing PHP4 to run along side PHP5 on my Apache server on Ubuntu 7.10:



If you need to deviate from this, I probably won't be much help. But I hope it saves someone a little precious time.

Labels: apache, php, ubuntu

Once every few months, my internet connection disappears. I don't have a lot of interest in networking, so it's one of those things I just want to work without thinking about too much and without having to call tech support and go through one of those god-damned automated phone trees.

Anyway, today was one of those morning. There was a big thunderstorm last night (rare around here) and the power went out briefly. So maybe it was connected to that. Whatever the case, the modem (a Speedstream 4100B) was on, but the internet light was out, like this:



So after calling tech support and taking care notes, this is my new recommended guide to fixing your internet connection yourself.

1. Login to Modem
This is what ultimately solved the problem for me this time. So try this first. Open a browser, connect to the modem at http://192.168.0.1/. And login with your AT&T or SBC or Yahoo account, or whatever it is.

According to what the tech told me, when the internet light is out, it means the modem can't connect out to the AT&T upstream node (i.e., the internet) and the likely cause, if the network is up, is that the modem is not providing the proper credential. Doing this may fix that.

2. Power Cycle (Reboot)
Turn off modem
Unplug router*
Turn off computer
-- Wait 30s --
Start modem -> wait 10s
Start router -> wait 10s*
Turn on computer
*If you have a router

If either of the above succeeds, your modem should now look like this:



If not, proceed to step 3:
3. Call AT&T Tech Support
1-877-722-3755

Good luck!

The CakePHP manual leaves a lot to be desired on this topic. Here's one important tip that I couldn't find mentioned on the site:

Every method in your behavior class must have a reference to the model passed as its first argument.

Another tip:

If calling another method from within your behavior class, you must include the model reference as your first argument.

I've added a gratuitous example to the test method below.

A simple behavior class that can be used as a template:



If I discover any other noteworthy tips, I'll add them here.

Labels: cakephp