As you may well notice the theme for the blog has changed today. I’ve spent a while tinkering with the CSS to get the image alignment working properly, so enjoy.

The theme i’m using was found here. They have plenty to choose from. Most templates look okay “out of the box” but by tweaking the style.css file you can get things looking just the way you want.

Most of my css advice came from gumbald, king of css, so please go check out his blog .

Thanks to gumbald for pointing out that at present this blog is the number one hit under that all to common search term “Stevp”.

Got a bit carried away with VMWare so have scrapped the ubuntu install for the time being and am playing with server 2003 trust relationships. I’m doing this again with VMWare server. So far i’ve installed one domain, my intention is to copy the VM, destroy the domain and create another. Then having the two VMs running together hopefully set up the Trust

Logmein Hamachi is a great program for creating a quick and easy VPN, i use it under windows connecting from home to work. Under windows this is easy and fine, my next challenge is to get it to work under Ubuntu. There are several guides available, i attempted to follow one yesterday but didn’t have much success. In order to make the switch from MS to Ubuntu completely this is something that i will certainly require, so lets hope i can get it working.

Now this is why I Like linux, in the time since my last post (around fifteen minutes?) I have set up and installed all the essentials for a web server

• Apache
• PHP
• MySQL

All installed and tested through the Terminal with no restart required. Now i bet you cant do that with MS

To install Apache (Web server): sudo apt-get install apache2
To Install PHP (for dynamic pages): sudo apt-get instal php5
To install MySQL (databases): sudo apt-get install mysql-server

To make the whole lot work: sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Jobs a good un, you now have a webserver

Following this weeks release of the new version of Ubuntu i thought i’d give it a go. Firstly, i’m installing in a Virtual Machine under XP Pro, if it turns out to be much good my plan is to ditch XP and move altogether. I tried before with Gutsy Gibbon but had a few too many issues with graphics.

First thing to note is that there seems to be extra options in the installer, the ability to install without going into the live version, great if you fully intend to install from the start.

The installer seemed to look a bit nicer with an improved map for choosing your locale.

Aside from that there isn’t really a lot different (well visibly at least) to the install process, except some very nice artwork on the wallpaper.

Have just upgraded Word Press to the latest version, it really was the easiest thing in the world. Instructions in the ReadMe file.

This week i’m working on an ASP driven system to record achievement. The project is to be based on a similar earlier projects using ASP to tie in to an MS database. This is an ambitious project but looks like its going to be fun.

I’ve made a start and so far i’ve written pages that generates a class list from a table within the database. When this project is complete there will be near to five hundred tables of classes with objects appearing in several. The most useful thing i’ve discovered really is how to use javascript to check multiple tickboxes with a “check all” feature, an example of which can be found here (Not the one i used but similar)

The Moodle migration is now all set for lift off, just waiting on a window of opportunity and instruction from above

I have this week successfully developed an earlier project to add an ASP front end to a MS Access databse. The front end allows entries to be added to the database and reports to be seen on what is there. This is to be used as a Job allocation and jobs in progress list.