The Jennifer Morgue is the second book in the Laundry or Bob Howard series by Charles Stross. This review contains some minor spoilers.

Did you ever experience the feeling of being turned into a zombie while watching a PowerPoint presentation? Well, here it is for real, a PowerPoint presentation is used to turn people into zombies. After barely surviving this ordeal, Bob Howard, computer übergeek and demonology hacker extraordinaire in his Majesty’s occult secret service, must stop software billionaire Ellis Billington. Billington has managed to get his hand on a Soviet Cold War device that permits communication with the dead. He plans to use it to raise an eldritch horror, codenamed Jennifer Morgue, from the Stygian depths, in order to rule the world.

The Jennifer Morgue

The entire operation has been put under a specific geas by Ellis Billington, meaning that if the good guys want to win they have to play it by the rules of the archetypal British spy novel. So you have a huge yacht in the Caribbean, a very rich evil mastermind with a white cat, casinos, martinis (shaken, not stirred), and you also need a British secret agent. Don’t tell Bob, he’s not supposed to know.
And you’ve got to have girls — Bond girls. There is the gorgeous looking (at least glamor level 3) Ramona Random from the Black Chamber, who planted a demon on her in order to control her — not just any demon but a succubus. Every man she has ever slept with died horribly less than 24 hours later. Can she be trusted?  Is she even human? What will Bob’s girlfriend Dominique “Mo” O’Brien do? Lie back and think of England? Yeah right, when hell freezes over.
What is the role of the Laundry, Britain’s occult secret service? The Laundry wouldn’t be the Laundry if they played by the rules, at least to other people’s rules.

Rating:

Charles Stross did it again. This is the second book in the Laundry or Bob Howard series, where hard science fiction is mixed with the British spy novel and Lovecraftian horror, and spiced with humor, sarcasm and satire. Not as geeky, fast-paced and witty as the first novel in the series, The Atrocity Archives, but still very good.
Click here for my review of the first novel.

What do you get when you mix hard science fiction, a spy thriller, a loathing for bureaucracy, a computer hacker as main protagonist, Lovecraftian horror, a wicked sense of humor and set it all in an alternate history? Answer: The Bob Howard or Laundry series by Charles Stross.

This is a review of the first novel of the series: The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross.

The grinning sallow face of Fred from Accounting looms out of the darkness in front of me and I recoil before I realise that it’s all right — Fred’s been dead for more than a year, which is why he’s on the night shift.

The premise for the series is that certain mathematical computations, the Turing-Lovecraft Theorem, can be used to open gates to other dimensions and universes or summon demons and even worse things that, as Terry Pratchett puts it, even the dark is afraid of. Or you could use some candles, a human sacrifice, and some other stuff, but that’s old school.

The many-angled ones, as they say, live at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set, except when a suitable incantation in the platonic realm of mathematics — computerised or otherwise — draws them forth. (And you thought running that fractal screensaver was good for your computer?)

The main protagonist is Bob Howard, a computer geek now working as a low-level techie for the Laundry, Britain’s super-secret, occult, government agency. As a student they caught him messing with stuff he shouldn’t have and offered him the choice to either work for the Laundry or … Well, it wasn’t much of choice anyway.

I thought I was just generating weird new fractals; they knew I was dangerously close to landscaping Wolverhampton with alien nightmares.

The Atrocity Archives

After a while he gets bored and volunteers for active duty on Her Majesty’s Secret Occult Service, which is something he will regret several times during the novel when fighting zombies, Nazis, nameless horrors, and his line-manager.

Rating:

This is a special kind of fast-paced geeky science fiction that I had never encountered before. Take William Gibson’s cyberpunk, Terry Pratchett’s sarcasm and humor, Lovecraft’s horror, and Ian Fleming’s James Bond and this will give you most of the ingredients. I am not really a fan of Lovecraft, but in the mix served up by Charles Stross it is simply irresistible.
This is not going to be everyones cup of tea. You will either like it very much or not at all. Be prepared to read sentences like “Most of it boils down to the application of Kaluza-Klein theory in a Linde universe constrained by an information conservation rule. ” If this doesn’t put you off, you could be in for a treat.

I wasn’t a big fan of the superhero comics (Batman, Spiderman, X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Hulk, …), but I had a friend who was so I read quite a lot of those comics during my teens. They provided a nice pastime, but nothing more. I was much more a fan of Guust Flater, Durango, Rode Ridder, Soda, Jeremiah, Blake & Mortimer, … which non-Belgians probably never heard off. Your loss.

The very first page of the Watchmen immediately sets the tone with an excerpt from Rorschach’s journal, October 12th, 1985:

Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout “Save us!” …
… and I’ll look down and whisper “No.”

How’s that for change? Can you even imagine Superman, Batman, Spider-man, Wolverine, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Storm, Wonder Woman, … utter a phrase like that? Saying no to a person in need. The Watchmen grabbed my attention from the very first page.

When the story takes place the glory days of the costumed heroes or masked vigilantes are over and they are outlawed. Costumed heroes because apart from Dr. Manhattan they do not have superpowers. The only ones still active are Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian, but these last two work for the government.

The story starts with the murder of one of the costumed heroes. Is it a standalone event or is there a plot to kill and discredit these masked vigilantes? Or is there something much more sinister going on? Will the remaining heroes find themselves out of there depth on this one? Follow Rorschach on his, initial lonely, quest for answers.

The author makes no effort whatsoever to make the costumed heroes look sympathetic: paranoid, cynical, estrangement, aggression, violence, rape, murder,  … You sometimes wonder what the difference is between the heroes and the villains. The characters transcend the simplistic good versus evil so often found in comics. How do you judge someone like Rorschach or the Comedian? How do you judge a god-like being as Doctor Manhattan? How do you judge Ozymandias?

I can see the world through Rorschach’s eyes, understand Doc Manhattan’s estrangement from humanity, kinda get the Comedian’s joke, follow Ozymandias’ logic, and sympathize with the Night Owl 2.0. If you have read the novel, you realize this is kinda scary. It only shows Alan Moore’s genius.

You can call this story impressive, awesome, a master-piece, or a classic, but it’s not a nice or enjoyable story, it grabs your attention and doesn’t let go. The scope, the setting at the height of the cold war in an alternative history where the USA won the Vietnam war, the flashbacks to the early years of the Watchmen and even into the origins of their predecessors the Minutemen, and the mix of comic and text makes this book a master-piece. For a comic this book contains an unusual amount of text; excerpts from (auto)biographies, interviews, news paper clippings and psychiatric reports.

Usually a story written for a certain format doesn’t do well in another format. Who doesn’t know the expression “the book is better than the movie?” However, this comic would hold it’s ground if published as a novel. The story, the setting, the scope, and the depth would make sure of that. Which is probably why it made Time Magazine’s list of 100 best novels.

The first time I read this, I just grabbed it on impulse in the adult comic section in the public library where it was on display between the Star Wars comics and the comic adaptations of Agatha Christie’s and Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels. They should have put a warning label on the cover, “This is no ordinary comic.” If I would have to compare it with a well-known novel than it would be George Orwell’s 1984.

I am not the first one who finds it hard to write a review of the Watchmen. How good is this book? What do you have to compare it with? I have less than a dozen Marvel comics, but even if I would have 5 times as many, I would give them all up for a copy of the Watchmen. I wouldn’t give up my Guust Flater collection though. I would also find it hard to part with my Blake & Mortimer collection or with the beautiful, 3-part, hardcover, comic adaptation of Joe Haldeman’s Forever War by Marvano.

Some of the references to other comics might seem obscure, but Belgium has more to offer than fries, chocolate, beer, and waffles. Belgium is also known for its comics, but unfortunately you will have to learn either Dutch or French to read most of them. Point of reference: Tintin wouldn’t make it to my top 10 list of best Belgian comic series.

I hope you found this review helpful.

Rating:

Why write a review for a mediocre fantasy duology? Because the story reminded me of a much better fantasy trilogy I once read.

KingMaker, Kingbreaker

The titles of the 2 novels in this duology are:

1. The Innocent Mage
2. The Awakened Mage.

The second novel is sometimes referred to as Innocence Lost.

From the cover of the first novel The Innocent Mage:

Enter the kingdom of Lur, where to use magic unlawfully means death. The Doranen have ruled Lur with magic since arriving as refugees centuries ago. Theirs was a desperate flight to escape a powerful mage who started a bitter war in their homeland. To keep Lur safe, the native Olken inhabitants agreed to abandon their own magic. Magic is now forbidden them, and any who break this law are executed. Asher left his coastal village to make his fortune. Employed in the royal stables, he soon finds himself befriended by Prince Gar and given more money and power than he’d ever dreamed possible. But the Olken have a secret; a prophecy. The Innocent Mage will save Lur from destruction and members of The Circle have dedicated themselves to preserving Olken magic until this day arrives. Unbeknownst to Asher, he has been watched closely. As the Final Days approach, his life takes a new and unexpected turn …

From the cover of the second novel The Awakened Mage:

“The evil foretold has risen … and we are all that stands between it and the end.”
Asher has come a long way for a fisherman’s son. Together with his friend Prince Gar, he has defended their kingdom against its bitterest enemy, but at great cost.
Now, the evil mage Morg is preparing for his most deadly assault. Desperate, trapped in a broken body, Morg has little time and fewer scruples. And he has a plan.
As Gar and Asher unwittingly fall into a dangerous deception, Morg gets ever closer to his goal. And this victory would be particularly sweet, for who better to destroy the kingdom than the two who would give anything to save it?

Review

The Innocent Mage

Rating: 6/10 or
I would put these books in the category fast-food. Fast-food books are an entertaining read for a couple of hours (per book) or an evening or two. Don’t expect the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, though-provoking issues, sarcasm, witty remarks, or life-changing insights. I just wanted to spend some quiet evenings reading, nothing more and nothing less. These 2 books have served their purpose. After all, a bad book is still better than a good movie or TV series.
Karen Miller could use some help with her characters. Asher, the main protagonist is impatient, rude, bad-tempered and full of self-pity (what have I done to deserve this, why is everyone always picking on me). Not once did I feel any sympathy for him. Not once.

Why spend time writing a review for a mediocre fantasy duology? While reading these novels I got this feeling that I had read something similar before, but better. I kept hoping that it would come back to me, but it was only after I finished the second novel that I made the connection with a fantasy trilogy that I had read some years before.

The plot:

• 2 types of magic, one used by the nobility, the other used by outcasts who are hunted down and killed
• main protagonist swears absolute loyalty to his master, a prince and future king
• main protagonist discovers that he has magic too and uses it to help his master at great personal risk
• main protagonist makes few friends and lots of enemies
• main protagonist discovers that he has both kinds of magic
• main protagonist’s powers are discovered, he is hunted down, beaten, tortured, found guilty and (nearly) executed
• main protagonist is saved from death by a small group of loyal friends
• main protagonist saves the kingdom

The Awakened Mage

Where have I read this before? I am so glad that it came back to me and I immediately wanted to return to the library to get The Farseers Trilogy by Robin Hobb and reread it … again:

1. Assassin’s Apprentice
2. Royal Assassin
3. Assassin’s Quest

Robin Hobb is a far better writer than Karen Miller when it comes to storytelling, giving the characters depth, describing the landscape, …
Also by Robin Hobb in the same universe and with some of the same characters: The Liveship Traders Trilogy, The Tawny Man Trilogy, Soldier Son Trilogy and The Rain Wild Chronicles.

PS: I have read the books in Dutch: De Onschuldige Magiër and De Magiër Ontwaakt. A story can be affected by the translation, but in this case I doubt I would have to make any changes to my review.

This is the first book of the Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett. This series is about a young girl who wants to become a witch and is part of the discworld series.

The Wee Free Men

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Tiffany Aching, a young girl on the Chalk decides that she wants to become a witch. She gets the opportunity to prove herself when another world makes contact with hers. A dark, cold and parasitic world, and it’s ruler, the Queen of the Elves, kidnaps her little brother.
With a weapon (her mother’s frying pan), her granny’s magic book (Diseases of the Sheep) and the help of the Nac Mac Feegle (aka the Wee Free Men) the fighting’, thieving’, tiny blue-skinned pictsies who were thrown out of Fairyland for being drunk and disorderly, she is going to get steal her brother back.
What could possibly go wrong?
Guest appearances: Miss Tick, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg.

Review:

Rating: 10/10 or
This is Terry Pratchett at his best. Witty, entertaining, hilarious and the book contains lots of references to contemporary society and other stories. Terry Pratchett is probably the only author that can make me laugh out loud while reading. The Scottish dialect of the Nac Mac Feegle slows down the pace of reading a bit, but even as a non-native English speaker I find it understandable and very funny.
In this book Terry Pratchett defines what separates witches from the common folk. Witches have First Sight, the ability to see what is really there, and Second Thoughts, the thoughts you think about the way you think. This could as well be the definition of a skeptic.

With over 30 discworld novels it is sometimes difficult to know where to get started. The first discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, is an obvious good choice, there are some more or less stand-alone novels like Pyramids and Small Gods, and there is the Tiffany Aching series. You don’t need any prior knowledge of the discworld series to enjoy this novel.  The Wee Free Men is the first in a series and is followed by A Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith. A forth Tiffany Aching novel is in the making: I shall Wear Midnight.
This series is intended for young adults and teens which makes it more accessible than his other work. His books are so full of wisdom, sarcasm, and references to contemporary society, classic stories, movies, … that I sometimes have the impression that I am missing something. It is what makes rereading his books so much fun; each time I discover new references and puns.

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

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.

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.