Again I wasn’t able to expand my roaming range due to the weather. We had another 2 cold spells with snow and temperatures below freezing, and a lot of dark, cloudy, windy, rainy days. Again not a lot of good photo opportunities, but I managed to take some good bird pictures.

Red Knot (l) and Dunlin (r)

This Winter is one of the most severe ones in Belgium for years. We had more days with temperatures below freezing than previous years. How many more will probably be announced when the Winter is officially over. However, it wasn’t a really bad Winter, but the mild Winters of the past years even decade left us unprepared for a real one.

There is plenty of evidence that this Winter was severe that made the headlines in the news: days with snow, days with temperatures below freezing, traffic jams, people spending more on heating, …, but there are other signs as well:

• Blue Tits and Great Tits are usually very shy, but this month I could stand in the garden and take pictures of them hanging on a fat ball.
• The past 2 months I took several pictures of birds gathering on chimneys for some warmth.
• For the first time in probably a decade I saw a Fieldfare in my garden. They usually forage in groups on the fields, but in severe Winters they overcome their shyness for humans and end up, individually, looking for food in gardens.
• For me Spring starts on a nice sunny day in February with temperatures around 10°C and when I hear the first Black-tailed Godwits in the creeks of Ostend. This usually happens around mid February, but I haven’t seen or heard any Black-tailed Godwits yet. Hopefully they will arrive next week. I am really longing for Spring.

Now you know what to expect in the slide show: garden birds and some more Winter pictures, but there is more:

• They are building a new pier in Ostend and they will provide an observation post for birdwatchers. About time. It has been more than 5 years since the previous one became inaccessible.
• Photos of three different species of Stints on the beach of Ostend. Yes, more birds.
• Some landscape pictures of the creeks of Ostend, my favorite place to go birdwatching. The observation post is only 6 minutes from my home by bike. The pictures were taken during the only sunny moments (3 hours) last week. It would have been perfect and the start of Spring if only I would have spotted some Black-tailed Godwits. Did I mention before that I live in a flat country?

All photos were taken with my Canon Powershot S3 IS. For the long distance shots I used the Canon Teleconverter TC-DC58B 1.5x with the Conversion Lens Adapter LA-DC58E.

Do you know that feeling of being completely absorbed by what you are doing? Being on a roll, concentrating so hard that you are no longer aware of your surroundings. Then (part of) the job is done and you kind of wake up from this trance, becoming more aware of your surroundings, realizing that 3-4 hours have passed, and suddenly feeling the pressure in your bladder. Over the years, has it become easier or more difficult for you to enter this zone? Browsers with 5 open tabs, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, word processor, spreadsheet, Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo! or Live messenger, … When was the last time you have experienced this trance like productive state? I am experiencing it now.

Ommwriter

Ommwriter

In the words of the creators: “Ommwriter is a humble attempt to recapture what technology has snatched away from us today: our capacity to concentrate.”
Ommwriter is quite a unique text editor for Mac OS X in the way that it’s aim is at helping you to keep focused on your writing and getting things done. I would indeed file this text editor under GTD (Getting Things Done).

How does Ommwriter create this experience?

• Full-screen text editing. Once activated, Ommwriter becomes the dominant application on your Mac: full-screen, blocking all other applications from view and blocking all notifications.
• Ambient instrumental music that tends to reduce other sounds to background noise, especially with your headphones on. In the current version 7 tunes are available, some with nature sounds like birdsong, crickets and waves. The music can be turned off.
• Keyboard sounds. There are 7 different keyboard sounds: pebbles, water drops, … The keyboard sounds can also be turned off.
• Background. There are 3 different backgrounds to choose from: white, some kind of fabric pattern, and the default one a misty, snow covered field with some lonely looking trees.
• Minimalistic. When you are typing the only thing you see is your text; no buttons, no menus, no toolbars, and no other windows.
• Focus on content. The only thing you can do with Ommwriter is create content. You cannot do any layout; no changing fonts or colors, no graphics, … No messing about, the layout is for later.

Ommwriter menu

When you move the mouse a minimalistic menu appears on the upper right corner where you can:

• switch fonts between serif, sans-serif and script
• change the fontsize from default to large and larger
• change the background
• change the music
• change the keyboard sounds
• open and save files

Moving the mouse also displays the word count. You can change the width and height of the text area. And that’s it.

Drawbacks

• It is (currently) only available for Mac OS X.
• If you don’t like ambient, instrumental music this might not be your cup of tea, but you can turn the sound off.
• If you are a multitasking adrenaline junkie, switching to Ommwriter might feel like going cold turkey.
• If you are writing an article for which you still have to do research and you have a several other windows open (browser, email, PDF viewer, …) you are better of using another text editor. Ommwriter dominates your screen so you have to minimize and afterwards maximize it again every time you want to consult information in another window. A dual monitor setup provides a way around this limitation, because the program only blocks the main screen. You can scroll using the scroll-wheel in windows displayed on the second monitor, but as soon as you click Ommwriter gets minimized.

Conclusion

If you own a Mac (Mac OS X 10.5 or higher) and you write a lot, whether you are a scriptwriter, blogger, journalist, or poet, you should definitely give Ommwriter a try. It provides a unique experience and maybe it will help for you getting things done.
The difference between the common multitasking approach and using Ommwriter is that with the former you look productive and with the latter you are productive.
Did I mention that it is free. No more excuses. Download it. Now.

Resources

• Ommwriter
• YouTube video by 4nitsirk

The third article in the series of pictures from the past month. I wasn’t able to expand my roaming range in January; I am still more or less bound by the city-bounds of my hometown Ostend. Nothing spectacular happened in January. We had two cold spells with frost and snow, making it impossible for me to go out with my bike, and a lot of cloudy days without good photo opportunities.

Red-breasted Merganser

The pictures of this month contain a lot more bird photos than the previous months. You have been warned. As for the photo on the right; the punk look comes natural to the Red-breasted Merganser.
When we moved into this house, some 35 years ago and started feeding the birds in the garden during winter, only 3 species were attracted by a fat ball: Great Tits, Blue Tits and Greenfinches. A decade or more later House Sparrows and Starlings had acquired a taste for the fat balls too. This winter, for the very first time, I also saw a Blackbird and a Robin on the fat balls. I was able to catch the Robin in the act of feeding off the fat ball. It wasn’t easy, hiding behind a plant in the kitchen, taking the shot through the kitchen window. Interspecies copycat behavior among birds in a winter garden. Sounds like a good title for another article.

All photos were taken with my Canon Powershot S3 IS. For the long distance shots I used the Canon Teleconverter TC-DC58B 1.5x with the Conversion Lens Adapter LA-DC58E.
I would love to have better equipment, like the Canon EOS 50D with the Canon EF 500/4.0 L USM IS lens and maybe even an additional 1.5x or 2x converter. Alas, that is way over my budget and I wouldn’t feel comfortable biking around, carrying a backpack stuffed with over 5 kg of camera equipment worth over 6000 EURO. But I can always dream.

I am using the PictoBrowser plugin for Wordpress to access my photos on Flickr. Let me know if you experience any problems viewing the photos.

It was called in as a robbery. So you can imagine Sergeant Sue Smith’s mood as she watches the video footage of the heist being carried out by a band of Orcs and a Dragon, and realizes that the robbery from an online game company is actually a robbery in an online game. Things aren’t to get any better for Sergeant Sue Smith as the consequences of this robbery start affecting the real world outside and bodies start showing up.

Review

Halting State

This is the second time I read this novel, but the first time I gave up after a couple of chapters. After I had read some other novels by Charles Stross from the Bob Howard – Laundry series and the Merchant Princes series, I decided to give Halting State another try. At first it is a bit confusing, because each chapter is told from the point of view of one of the 3 main protagonists, and there are lots of other characters as well. The story takes some time getting into, but it gets better and better as you continue reading. For example, halfway through the book, I decided to rate it 3 stars or 6/10, but I kept reevaluating my rating and by the end of the book I felt it earned an 8/10 or 4 stars.
The attractiveness of this novel lies in the near future setting and the near future technologies:

• the independent Republic of Scotland
• the European Union of 30 with Russia as potential member
• the 3 major powers in the world China, India and the EU; the USA needed a time out
• accessing the web via your glasses and virtual keyboards
• quantum computing
• …

Have you ever considered what could happen when your remotely controlled cab gets hacked? Charles Stross has.

Apparently some people dislike the Scottish accent that crops up in conversations, but I think it is, pardon my French, just couleur locale. Even as a non-native English speaker I had no trouble understanding it.

As this novel and those from the Bob Howard – Laundry series are fast-paced and contain lots of computer jargon (networking, cryptography, video games, virtual worlds, hacking, security, cyberwar, …) they may appeal more to geeks than to the average science-fiction enthusiast.

Conclusion

Rating: 8/10 or . This is science-fiction for geeks.

I have been a discworld fan since I read my first one some 15 years ago. Terry Pratchett is one of the maybe a handful of writers of which I keep on rereading the books, some even for the 5th time. I keep on discovering new jokes and references. For those not familiar with Terry Pratchett’s work, his books contain lots of references to contemporary society, economy, politics, computer networks, Shakespeare, the press, religion, movies, TV-series, Taoism, … While rereading his work, you sometimes discover new references.

Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

Unseen Academicals

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork — not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they’re in the mood for trying everything else.

The prospect of a Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt, who no one knows much about. As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed forever.

Because the thing about football – the important thing about football – is that it is not just about football. (Text was taken from the cover)

Review

How does Unseen Academicals compare to the other discworld novels? Well, for a discworld novel it’s below average. I would rate most discworld novels 9 or 10 on a scale of 10 and this one only deserves an 8/10 or 4 stars. However, a book with a 4 star rating is still a very good book.

The quality of the book is uneven. The first half is wittier and better worked out than the second half, which feels a bit like a rush job. There are several plots that go nowhere. The second half is also darker than the first half.
It’s a typical Pratchett book in the way he takes on issues in contemporary society (self-worth, xenophobia, power games, football, idolization). He is still a master of sarcasm and parody, and one of the funniest and wittiest authors around, but this book sparkles a bit less. Some people think that Alzheimer’s disease is starting to affect his writings, but I don’t want to go there. This book still shows his genius, but especially the second half could have used some more fine-tuning and editing.
I also expected a greater role for Rincewind, but he might have well been no part of this story at all. There are 3 well-known discworld protagonists that gain a lot of depth in this novel, but that will only appeal to and be noticed by experienced discworld readers.

Conclusion

Rating: 8/10 or
Has this book worth? Yes, it sure does.
Is it a good book to start reading the discworld series? No, The Colour of Magic, Small Gods, Pyramids, The Wee Free Men, Going Postal … are better suited for this.

I am looking forward to the next discworld novels Raising Taxes and I shall Wear Midnight.

The second article in the series of pictures from the past month. That makes it official, it’s now a tradition.

I wasn’t able to expand my Lebensraum in December. I went back to the gym for the first time in over half a year and I still haven’t found a sustainable pace. As you will notice we had a lot of snow in December. That is very nice for taking pictures, but snow, frost and a bicycle don’t go well together. During that time I was mostly restricted to the neighborhood. Despite all the snow, we didn’t have a white Christmas. The heavy rain on Christmas Eve made it all disappear.

Nothing spectacular happened in December, apart from the fact that I was so fortunate to photograph 2 birds of prey.

All photos are taken with my Canon Powershot S3 IS. For the long distance shots I used the Canon Teleconverter TC-DC58B 1.5x with the Conversion Lens Adapter LA-DC58E.

I am using the PictoBrowser plugin for Wordpress to access my photos on Flickr. Let me know if you experience any problems viewing the photos.

This is a first for me; starting a kind of photo diary of the past month. Some of you who follow my blogs will know that I have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis aka Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). If you want to know more about this disabilitating disease, visit my blog ‘Life with ME/CFS‘. This disease can affect people in different ways; some people can still have a more or less normal life and go to work, while others are bedridden. Some ME/CFS patients are bedbound, some are homebound and I am more or less citybound. On an average day I can go anywhere in my hometown Ostend using my bicycle.

With this photo diary I will document some of the things I saw in my hometown during the past month. I hope that during 2010 I will be able to expand my roaming range and offer you something more than the same photos over and over again. As you will probably notice I am a nature lover, and more specifically a birdwatcher. I am also curious where this series will lead to. Will I stick to just plain photos of my surroundings or will I start experimenting with photography? Like many things right now I have no idea where they will lead to. Will exercising improve or worsen my condition? Will the appointment I have with a professor for my disease prove to be beneficial or not? Is there a future for me in writing, most likely technical writing, or not? Will I be able to go back to a job in ICT? Sitting in a coach wont provide me with any answers. So I have plotted several journeys and I will see where they will take me. I sure hope one of the destinations is a sunny beach with hula girls and drinks with umbrellas.

All photos are taken with my Canon Powershot S3 IS. For the long distance shots I used the Canon Teleconverter TC-DC58B 1.5x with the Conversion Lens Adapter LA-DC58E.

I start this photo-diary using the PictoBrowser plugin for Wordpress to access my photos on Flickr. Let me know if you experience any problems viewing the photos.

This was my tryout blog and I learned a lot from it. But as I felt the need for a personal blog I decided to revitalize this blog after 6 months of inactivity.

Letters and Quill

This was my tryout blog. I published articles on it for almost 6 months in the first half of 2009 on a wide variety of topics. One of the many lessons that I learned from this blog is that you should focus on 1 topic, or on a limited number of closely related topics. In May 2009 I started an online training on professional technical writing and I didn’t have enough time and energy left to keep on blogging. At that time I had over 1500 unique visitors per month. It was my intention to start more focused blogs after the online training. I decided to pull the plug on the life-support of this blog. Thank you, you have served your purpose well, may you rest in peace.

Fast forward 6 months. I just launched my blog ‘Life with ME/CFS’ on living with the disabilitating disease Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) and I would very much like to start a technical blog in 2010. I haven’t decided on the topic yet, but suitable subjects are: linux, Mac OS X, open source software, gadgets, and/or blogging. But what if I want to write a book review, a movie review, some personal not ME/CFS-related stuff, or to experiment? Hold on, I already have a blog for that. Without any new articles for the past six months this blog still attracts over 1500 unique visitors per month and the occasional positive comment. All I have to do is to start publishing articles again.

I probably will not publish any technical articles anymore on this blog, although they have been the most successful ones.
I recently lost my job because of my disease and am on disability. This is now, but what about the future? I accept my condition for now, but I expect to get better again, with or without help. I am not one for giving up hope, at least not without a fight, so I expect that one day I will have to go looking for a job again. When, where, how, and what kind of job I do not know. Maybe writing for these 3 different blogs will help me find answers to those questions. I have the greatest expectations for my technical blog, but that’s for 2010.

Good plans, good intentions. For 2009 though I will focus on this personal blog and my Life with ME/CFS blog.

Topics you may expect on this blog:

• book reviews
• movie reviews
• audiobook reviews
• personal stuff
• the past month in pictures
• maybe about politics
• maybe the occasional rant
• maybe about writing and blogging
• …

My tryout blog is dead, long live my personal blog.

Resources

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I confess, I was the kind of guy who never clicked on an ad. My eyes were trained to ignore ads in all shapes and sizes to the point that I didn’t even noticed them. That changed when I added AdSense to my blog.

To click or not to click

At this moment I only use AdSense, but I guess everything I mention in this article can be applied to other means of online advertising too. I deliberately do not provide any links in this article, nor do I mention any company names. If you want to find the sites and companies that I mention here, you will just have to look at the ads on my blog.

The idea for adding ads to my blog was suggested to me by a penpal and I thought of setting a modest goal for myself, namely to let my site pay for itself within a year and a half. I am too much of a down-to-earth kind of guy to believe those getting rich while you are sleeping schemes. I also didn’t want to overload my site with ads and I certainly didn’t want any pop-ups.

Soon after I added AdSense to my blog I started wondering why no one was clicking on those ads. From a spiritual point of view this is very understandingly, if I do not pay attention to the ads on other peoples sites, let alone actually click on one of them, why should anyone bother with the ads on my site ? Click and thou shall be clicked upon (gospel of Johan 1:1).

I decided to take an active interest in online advertising. And what better place to start than the ads that appear on my site. After all, those ads are based on the contents of my blog and since I write about things that interest me, the ads, at least some of them, should be interesting too.

Disclaimer. I am fully aware that clicking on the ads on my own site is prohibited by Google. When I signed up I agreed to Google’s terms, conditions and program policies. And while I do not think that if I should click on one of my own ads an alarm would go off at Google’s headquarters, I am aware that they can track this. So I looked at the ads on my site and then typed in the URL or did a Google search on the company’s name.

Studying ads

Not only did I learn from studying my own ads, I actually benefited from them too, even financially. What did I gain from studying my own ads ?

• I received a free ebook about virtualization in exchange for my email address. Let me rephrase that, in exchange for one of my email addresses.
• I have this idea for a new website. For this project I can either use my current shared hosting company or choose a new one. I already had a shortlist of 3 possible candidates who meet my requirements obtained via Google search  and thanks to the ads on my blog I was able to add 2 more.
• Another pet project of mine is to have my own virtual private server (VPS) and I would like to start this project in the second half of this year. I already found 2 affordable VPS hosting companies and thanks to the ads on my blog I was able to add 3 more to my shortlist.
• I started buying books online more then 10 years ago. Thus far I probably shopped at 7 different online bookshops, always looking for the cheapest prices and the best service, and yes, it is possible to have both. Availability is also an issue. The last 2 years I ordered at the same company offering a speedy delivery for the cheapest price, but thanks to AdSense I have found another bookstore that is even cheaper for quite a lot of the books on my wish list. On my first order of 2 books I saved 30% and you have to admit that is impressive.
• A site with useful blogging and Wordpress tips.
• One site for making money online that was good enough to bookmark

Some other sites for which I have no immediate use, but are interesting enough to mention them here:

• 2 sites for self-publishing books or ebooks
• professional VPS hosting companies
• some good deals on ebook readers, but I already have one and I am very pleased with it

I did discover some funny ads too: an ad for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 in an article about installing a virtual ubuntu server on Mac OS X and an ad for a psychic palm reading in an article about my BeBook.

I also learned to my surprise that not all advertisers expect you to spend money: some advertisers just want some attention, others want your email address in exchange for something, but a majority indeed hopes to gain a new customer.

What did I learn from my own site ?

I realize that I should either limit the scope of my blog or set up a couple of blogs. There are currently too many topics for one blog: iPod, ebook reader, Linux, PHP, virtualization, Mac OS X, book reviews, … That’s enough topics for 3 blogs and I have 2 more topics in mind. The result of this variety of topics is that people who read a fantasy book review, can get ads for virtualization or website hosting. This is definitely not good. No wonder I do not get that much clicks on my ads. So as soon as I have enough articles I will probably split up my blog in a personal, LAMP and Apple blog. By the way, my goal of letting my site pay for itself in a year and a half from now looks realistic.

The added value of ads

The last 2 months made me look at ads in different way, I now know that they (can) have an added value for a site. And I started using them. It’s not like I am clicking on every ad on every site that I visit, but when I read an interesting article I now scan the ads and when I see an interesting one I click on it. Doing so might guide me to some extra bit of information and it also helps a fellow blogger or webmaster. After all, the worst thing that can happen, is that I will have wasted a couple of seconds.

Ideally, it comes down to this. You, the visitor, can find some additional information, get some free stuff or discover a new ecommerce shop that offers a product or a service you were looking for (or never knew you needed) or is good enough to bookmark for later use. The website owner, the publisher, makes a buck. Google makes a lot of bucks, which allows it to offer a lot of services (Google search, Gmail, Google Calendar, …) for free. And the advertiser gets the attention he wants or gains a potential customer. Actually, it is a win-win-win-win situation. Think of it, you can effectively help yourself and the world economy, the troubled world economy with just a mouse click. What are you waiting for ? Start right here, right now!

Just as I was finishing my review of the beta version of Zend Server CE, Zend proudly announced the release of Zend Server and Zend Server Community Edition (CE). So I had to start all over again with a fresh installation of Zend Server CE 4.0.1. I was pleased to see that they fixed some of the quirks and bugs I had encountered in the beta version, but oddly enough they introduced some new ones too.

Zend has made quite a lot of noise about their latest products, namely Zend Server and Zend Server CE (Community Edition) and I felt tempted to try it out for myself.
According to Zend, the Zend Server Community Edition (CE) is a free Web Application Server that is simple to install and easy to use. Well, you are about to find out, if you continue reading. It is intended as a community-supported product via the Zend support forums, and updates will be made available periodically. Still according to Zend, the Zend Server CE should be ideal for developing and running non-critical PHP applications. Replace free with commercial, non-critical with business-critical and add some extra features in the mix and you have the Zend Server. Since I do not need a commercial webserver I decided to try out the community edition.

Ubuntu server

At home I usually tinker with virtual Ubuntu servers, so I installed a basic virtual Ubuntu server (8.04 LTS) with OpenSSH server as the only extra software package, no LAMP.  I already posted an article on how to install a virtual Ubuntu server on Mac OS X using VirtualBox, so I will not repeat it here. I christened this server zsce and assigned the static IP-address 192.168.1.83 to it. I didn’t bother installing the linux guest additions for VirtualBox.

Zend Server CE doesn’t install a DBMS and the manual doesn’t mention it either, but I thought it made sense to install MySQL before attempting to install Zend Server CE.

sudo aptitude install mysql-server mysql-client

You will be prompted to provide a root password for MySQL.

And now …

Installing Zend Server CE

I used the DEB installation method for installing Zend Server CE using aptitude. Installing on a Ubuntu server means using the command line only.

First you will have to add a repository to be able to download the Zend Server CE

sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following lines to the file:

# Zend Server CE
deb http://repos.zend.com/deb/ce ce non-free

Add Zend’s repository public key. If you did not use the sudo -s command earlier, like mentioned in the manual, you will get the following error:

johan@zsce:~$ sudo wget http://repos.zend.com/deb/zend.key -O- |apt-key add -
--10:31:23--  http://repos.zend.com/deb/zend.key
=> `-'
Resolving repos.zend.com... 93.188.130.102
Connecting to repos.zend.com|93.188.130.102|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1,673 (1.6K) [text/plain]

100%[========================================================>] 1,673         --.--K/s

10:31:24 (441.22 KB/s) - `-' saved [1673/1673]

gpg: no writable keyring found: eof
gpg: error reading `-': general error
gpg: import from `-' failed: general error

Lesson learned: follow the manual to the letter or place the sudo command before the apt-key command.

johan@zsce:~$ wget http://repos.zend.com/deb/zend.key -O- | sudo apt-key add -
--10:32:41--  http://repos.zend.com/deb/zend.key
=> `-'
Resolving repos.zend.com... 93.188.130.102
Connecting to repos.zend.com|93.188.130.102|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1,673 (1.6K) [text/plain]

100%[========================================================>] 1,673         --.--K/s

10:32:41 (104.95 KB/s) - `-' saved [1673/1673]

To follow the manual more closely I now ran the sudo -s command, which makes me root.

johan@zsce:~$ sudo -s
[sudo] password for johan:
root@zsce:~#

Update the package repository info.

aptitude update

Install Zend Server CE. I copied most of the installation messages so you can see which packages are installed with Zend Server CE.

root@zsce:~# aptitude install zend-ce
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-common libaio1 libapache2-mod-php5-zend-ce
libapr1 libaprutil1 libframework1-zend-ce libicu36 libmcrypt4 libmhash2 liboci-zend
libpng12-0 libpng3 libpq4 libpq5 libsqlite0 lighttpd-zend-ce openssl php-bcmath-zend-ce
php-bz2-zend-ce php-calendar-zend-ce php-ctype-zend-ce php-curl-zend-ce
php-data-cache-zend-ce php-debugger-zend-ce php-dev-zend-ce php-exif-zend-ce php-fcgi-zend-ce
php-ftp-zend-ce php-gd-zend-ce php-gettext-zend-ce php-imap-zend-ce php-intl-zend-ce
php-json-zend-ce php-ldap-zend-ce php-mcrypt-zend-ce php-mhash-zend-ce php-mime-magic-zend-ce
php-mysql-zend-ce php-mysqli-zend-ce php-oci8-zend-ce php-optimizer-plus-zend-ce
php-pdo-mysql-zend-ce php-pdo-oci-zend-ce php-pdo-pgsql-zend-ce php-pgsql-zend-ce
php-posix-zend-ce php-soap-zend-ce php-sockets-zend-ce php-sqlite-zend-ce php-tidy-zend-ce
php-tokenizer-zend-ce php-xmlreader-zend-ce php-xmlwriter-zend-ce php-xsl-zend-ce
php-zem-zend-ce php-zendutils-zend-ce php-zip-zend-ce php5-common-extensions-zend-ce sqlite
zend-base-ce zend-ce zend-ce-doc zend-extensions-ce zend-framework-ce zend-gui-ce
0 packages upgraded, 67 newly installed, 0 to remove and 10 not upgraded.
Need to get 48.5MB of archives. After unpacking 179MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] Y
...

This can take a while depending on your connection.

...
Setting up sqlite (2.8.17-4build1) ...
Setting up zend-extensions-ce (4.0.0-1+b60) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of zend-gui-ce:
zend-gui-ce depends on lighttpd-zend-ce; however:
Package lighttpd-zend-ce is not configured yet.
zend-gui-ce depends on php-fcgi-zend-ce; however:
Package php-fcgi-zend-ce is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing zend-gui-ce (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Setting up zend-framework-ce (1.7.8+b34) ...
Setting up zend-ce-doc (4.0.10+b20) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of zend-ce:
zend-ce depends on zend-gui-ce; however:
Package zend-gui-ce is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing zend-ce (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for libc6 ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
Errors were encountered while processing:
lighttpd-zend-ce
php-fcgi-zend-ce
zend-gui-ce
zend-ce
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
Setting up lighttpd-zend-ce (1.4.18-1+b56) ...

Setting up php-fcgi-zend-ce (5.2.9+b36) ...
Setting up zend-gui-ce (4.0.16+b150) ...
Site zendserver_gui.conf installed; run /etc/init.d/apache2 reload to enable.
* Reloading web server config apache2

Setting up zend-ce (4.0.0-1+b60) ...
* Stopping web server apache2
apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName
httpd (no pid file) not running
...done.
Starting ZendServer 4.0.0 ..

apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName
spawn-fcgi.c.206: child spawned successfully: PID: 7700
Starting ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]
[08.04.2009 10:44:59 SYSTEM] watchdog for lighttpd is running.
[08.04.2009 10:44:59 SYSTEM] lighttpd is running.
ZendServer started...

This is a bug they fixed. In the beta version the installation stopped after ‘E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)’. I then had to run the installation command again to get to the message ‘ZendServer started…’.

If you want to get rid of the ‘Could not reliably determine the server’s fully qualified domain name… ‘, just add a servername to the Apache configuration file.

vi /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

ServerName zsce

Restart all Zend Server Community Edition daemons.

root@zsce:~# /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh restart
Stopping ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]
spawn-fcgi.c.206: child spawned successfully: PID: 8359
Starting ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]

Check the Zend Server Community Edition status

root@zsce:~# /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh status
[08.04.2009 10:04:54 SYSTEM] Apache is running.
[08.04.2009 10:48:54 SYSTEM] watchdog for lighttpd is running.
[08.04.2009 10:48:54 SYSTEM] lighttpd is running.

Hurray!

Browsing, using Firefox, to https://192.168.1.83:10082 I got ‘Secure Connection Failed’ error; ‘192.168.1.83:10082 uses an invalid security certificate …’. So confirm the exception and you will get a prompt to provide a password for Zend Server CE.

Post-installation steps

Adding the <install_path>/bin directory to the $PATH environment variable for all users.

Finding the <install_path> directory for your Zend Server (linux). I already know that the zendctl.sh script is located in that directory, so all I have to do is to find it.

root@zsce:~# updatedb
root@zsce:~# locate zendctl
/usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh

By the way, the location is also mentioned in the manual. Just showing off.

root@zsce:~# vi /etc/profile

and add the following lines to the end of the file:

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/zend/bin
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/zend/lib

In order for the changes to take effect, run the following command:

root@zsce:~# source /etc/profile

I decided to install the extra extensions.

root@zsce:~# aptitude install php5-extra-extensions-zend-ce
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libgif4 libgmp3c2 libltdl3 libming0 libmssql-zend odbcinst1debian1 php-fileinfo-zend-ce
php-gmp-zend-ce php-imagick-zend-ce php-mbstring-zend-ce php-memcache-zend-ce
php-ming-zend-ce php-mssql-zend-ce php-odbc-zend-ce php-pcntl-zend-ce php-shmop-zend-ce
php-sysvmsg-zend-ce php-sysvsem-zend-ce php-sysvshm-zend-ce php-wddx-zend-ce
php-xmlrpc-zend-ce php5-extra-extensions-zend-ce php5-unix-extensions-zend-ce unixodbc
0 packages upgraded, 24 newly installed, 0 to remove and 10 not upgraded.
Need to get 4311kB of archives. After unpacking 10.4MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] Y

and also phpMyAdmin.

root@zsce:~# aptitude install phpmyadmin-zend-ce
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
...
Setting up phpmyadmin (4:2.11.3-1ubuntu1.1) ...
Lighttpd not installed, skipping
invoke-rc.d: unknown initscript, /etc/init.d/lighttpd not found.
Setting up phpmyadmin-zend-ce (4.0.0-1+b17) ...
...

I selected lighttpd as webserver for phpMyAdmin when prompted, this isn’t mentioned in the manual, but it produced a message stating that lighttpd is not installed. I ignored it and phpMyAdmin seems to be correctly installed and working. When you have ServerSpy installed in your Firefox browser you will notice that phpMyAdmin uses lighttpd as webserver. Strange, but it works, just keep going.

When I tried to access phpMyAdmin via my browser (still using my MacBook) I got the following message:

“For security reasons, the link to the phpMyAdmin interface from Zend Server is locked for remote access and is only accessible from localhost. “

Great, I am running Zend Server CE on a command line only linux server and must access phpMyAdmin from the localhost. Zend Server CE is also supposed to be for development environments, so where’s the harm in accessing phpMyAdmin from another computer? Despite being my first encounter with lighttpd it took me only a couple of minutes to figure out how to fix this, without RTFM. I added the IP-address of my home network (192.168.1) to the lighttpd configuration file.

vi /usr/local/zend/gui/lighttpd/etc/lighttpd.conf

...
$HTTP["remoteip"] !~ "127.0.0.1" {
$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/phpmyadmin/" {
url.access-deny = ( "192.168.1" )
server.errorfile-prefix = "//usr/local/zend/gui/lighttpd/share/lighttpd-custom-errors/errorcode-"
}
}
...

Restart all Zend Server Community Edition daemons.

root@zsce:~# /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh restart
Stopping ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]
spawn-fcgi.c.206: child spawned successfully: PID: 8359
Starting ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]

Don’t ask me to explain the change to the lighttpd config file, my first attempt to fix it worked. Hurray!

Now we get to the point were they included some new bugs.

I wanted to install the Dojo toolkit and the Zend Framework extras. But compared to the beta version the manual now contains some typos which will prevent you from installing them.

From the manual for version 4.0.1:

aptitude install framework-zend-dojo-ce

resulted in

Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "framework-zend-dojo-ce"

and

aptitude install framework-zend-extras-ce

resulted in

Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "framework-zend-extras-ce"

A quick search in the manual for the beta version revealed that the correct way to install the packages is:

aptitude install zend-framework-dojo-ce

and

aptitude install zend-framework-extras-ce

This way the packages installed without errors. Since I have never used the Dojo toolkit and the Zend framework I didn’t test them.

I did not install any other packages, so I do not know if there are more typos.

Tests

This is just a review about the installation of the community edition of the Zend Server. No tests, no benchmarks, no security audit, … Well, as it was installed separately, I did test the database connection to MySQL using the following 3 database extensions: MySQL, MySQLi and PDO.

I created a database (testdb), with 1 table (names) containing 2 fields (id and name), inserted some records using phpMyAdmin and tested the connection to the database and retrieval of the data using PHP-scripts.

The first 2, MySQL and MySQLi, worked flawlessly, but this was not the case for PDO. The following error was displayed in the browser, when testing PDO on Zend Server CE:

Error: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’ (2)

The solution for this problem (via Google) was to include socket information in the DSN (Database Source Name) as you can see in the script below. I never encountered this problem when using the default LAMP installation on Ubuntu or CentOS.

<?php
try {
    $dbc = new PDO(
          'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=testdb;unix_socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock',
          'testusr', 'testpwd');
    $sql = 'SELECT * FROM names';
    foreach ($dbc->query($sql) as $row) {
        echo $row['id'] . '. ' . $row['name'] . "<br />\n";
    }
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage() . "<br />";
}
$dbc = null;
?>

Test PECL installation:

root@zsce:~# pecl list-all
All packages [Channel pecl.php.net]:
====================================
Package           Latest Local
pecl/APC          3.1.2        Alternative PHP Cache
pecl/memcache     2.2.5        memcached extension
pecl/hidef        0.1.1        Constants for real
pecl/memcached    0.1.5        PHP extension for interfacing with memcached via libmemcached library
pecl/spidermonkey 0.1.2        JavaScript engine for PHP
pecl/selinux      0.2.1        SELinux binding for PHP script language
pecl/bloomy       0.1.0        Extension implementing a Bloom filter

OK

Test documentation. The following chapters on the locally installed help for the Dashboard (https://192.168.1.83:10082/ZendServer/help/zend_server.htm#dashboard.htm) returned not found errors (404).

• Administration Interface/Administration/Passwords
• Tasks/Working with Zend Server

Review

Bugs / quirks / annoyances / missing / typos / remarks:

• Missing: MySQL
• Missing: PHP CLI. My mistake, it is present.
• Typos (?): names of the packages Dojo and extras for Zend Framework are spelled wrong in the manual
• Documentation: when to install your DBMS, what webserver to choose when installing phpMyAdmin, how to allow access to phpMyAdmin from outside localhost, the relationship between lighttpd and Apache, …
• Bug: PDO, doesn’t work without including socket info in the DSN
• Installation takes more time and effort than a default Ubuntu or Centos LAMP installation.
• The installation of phpMyAdmin reported lighttpd not installed.
• Bug: some broken links in the locally installed help

I can understand Zend not including MySQL in the installation, because not everyone uses MySQL and if they did include it, people would start complaining why PostgreSQL isn’t included. So, it’s no big deal. It would be a good idea though to include in the installation manual when you are supposed to install your DBMS. Most likely this will be before installing Zend Server, but it wouldn’t hurt mentioning this.

It isn’t that difficult to install Zend Server CE, but it takes more time and work than a default LAMP installation on Ubuntu.

Documentation is still a bit lacking: when to install your database (before seems logical to me), installation of phpMyAdmin (which webserver to choose, how to allow access from another computer), more information on the relationship between lighttpd and Apache … I am not asking for a complete manual on lighttpd and Apache here, it’s just the first time I am confronted with lighttpd (among other stuff) … or is all that supposed to be common knowledge.

Actually, I find it impressive. It’s quite an achievement to offer a product like this and making it free for home/development/non-critical use. No less than 5 installation methods: 1 for Microsoft Windows, 1 for Mac OS X and 3 for Linux (tarball, RPM and DEB). The list of software and packages is extensive, but I might not be the right person to appreciate all of this. I’ve never used a debugger, caching, … and I don’t know why they install 2 webservers (lighttpd and Apache) instead of just one. This is why I stick to reviewing the installation procedure. Let’s be honest; the list of bugs, remarks, … will not take a long time fixing.

Why would you use Zend Server CE ?

Speaking for myself, from a professional and personal perspective, I see no use for Zend Server CE in the near future. This may sound quite harsh, but let me explain.

At work we have a mixed server environment, Windows and Linux (CentOS, Scientific Linux) servers. I do not see us replacing the current webserver setups with Zend Server (CE). Although I do see that a mixed server environment might be the ideal place to use Zend Server; resulting in identical setups for your Windows and Linux webservers, which would make it possible to move sites easily. Especially if you start from a clean slate or want to restart with a clean slate. But this will require a lot of work and I don’t see it happen any time soon. It’s also no use to develop on Zend Server CE when you do not use Zend Server in your production environment.

I am also not impressed with the argument that Zend Server uses a very recent version of PHP (5.2.9) compared to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (5.2.4) and CentOS / RHEL / SL (5.1.6). You choose an environment and you stick with it for a while and since security updates and bug fixes are backported I do not see a problem with this approach. I do admit that RHEL’s approach feels a bit like the other extreme compared to Zend Server.

It’s very unlikely that shared hosting sites will move en masse to Zend Server in the near future. So when I develop my personal site at home on a Zend Server CE installation and then upload my site to my webhost, there is a risk that there will be errors due to different PHP versions or different installed components, modules and packages. This is asking for trouble; you should always keep your development environment identical (or as identical as possible) to your production environment. The same goes if you work as an independent contractor. Of course, if Zend Server gains a lot of momentum this situation might change in the years to come, but I feel no need to be an early adopter.

I do not feel like I have wasted my time installing Zend Server CE even as I have no intention of using it in the near future. It made me realize that there are some areas where my knowledge is lacking: debuggers, caching, Zend Framework, lighttpd, … So my list of interesting things to study just got a bit longer.