So why the big fanfare now? Well I’m happy enough with it now to let other people look at and use it and also I’ve submitted it to the PEAR Pepr process, and the grilling that entails, so it can be included in the PEAR repository.

And if this pushes more people to using Openstreetmap (or PEAR for that matter) all the better!

So now, along with having the mysql prompt defined as prompt=’\h@\u (\d) > ‘ in the [mysql] section of my ~/.my.cnf file (so host, username and database name are included in the prompt), I have also installed rlwrap and set up an alias in my .bashrc:


if [ -x /usr/bin/rlwrap ]; then
alias mysql='/usr/bin/rlwrap -a -pGREEN /usr/bin/mysql'
fi


This displays the mysql prompt in green, after checking that rlwrap is available, which I have configured for my development environment only – now I just need to train myself to be extra careful for when the prompt isn’t coloured.

The 2010 Open Source Awards was launched last month by Packt, inviting people to visit www.PacktPub.com and submit nominations for their favorite Open Source project. Now in its fifth year, the Award has been adapted from the established Open Source CMS Award with the wider aim of encouraging, supporting, recognizing and rewarding all Open Source projects.
WordPress won the 2009 Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Award in what was a very close contest with MODx and SilverStripe. While MODx was the first runner up, SilverStripe, a Most Promising CMS Award winner in 2008, made its way to the second runner up position in its first year in the Open Source CMS Award final.
The 2010 Award will feature a prize fund of $24,000 with several new categories introduced. While the Open Source CMS Award category will continue to recognize the best content management system, Packt is introducing categories for the Most Promising Open Source Project, Open Source E-Commerce Applications, Open Source JavaScript Libraries and Open Source Graphics Software. CMSes that won the Overall CMS Award in previous years will continue to compete against one another in the Hall of Fame CMS category.
These new categories will ensure that the Open Source Awards is the ultimate platform to recognise excellence within the community while supporting projects both new and old. “We believe that the adaption of the Award and the new categories will provide a new level of accessibility, with the Award recognizing a wider range of Open Source projects; both previous winners while at the same time, encouraging new projects” said Julian Copes, organizer of this year’s Awards.
Packt has opened up nominations for people to submit their favorite Open Source projects for each category at http://www.PacktPub.com/open-source-awards-home . The top five in each category will go through to the final, which begins in the last week of September. For more information on the categories, please visit Packt’s website http://www.PacktPub.com/blog/packt’s-2010-open-source-awards-announcement

jQuery 1.3 with PHP

This is the first book sent to me from Packt where I wasn’t left dizzy from trying to understand just what it is the author was trying to get across. It looks like their proof-reader was awake for this one – totally awesome.

jQuery, as the vast majority of us already know, is a JavaScript library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. In other words it does all the heavy lifting and takes care of cross-browser compatibility issues so you don’t have to and thus allows you to focus on the work that you need to do without all those distractions.

“jQuery 1.3 with PHP” is aimed “for PHP application developers who want to improve their user interfaces through jQuery’s capabilities and responsiveness”. Over the course of ten chapters Verens starts the off with an introduction, then a series of ‘Quick Tricks’ that almost immediately help you add some measure of “Web 2.0″ functionality to what I’d term a “web 0.2 application” rather sharply.
The book ends with a chapter on Optimization – some of which you are bound to already know and some which are complete gems.

In the middle are chapters with mini-projects on tabs and accordians, forms and form validation, file management, calendars (and how to make your own google-calendar-like application), image manipulation, drag and drop and data tables.
In each case, projects are analysed and the required steps for each are outlined in the simplest terms – no extraneous buzzwords are used or are the projects over-analysed for the sake of pedantry.

I was a little surprised in some places where, for example, the json encoded output was not created via json_encode; but then thought not everyone is going to have PHP 5.2 or greater installed. Thumb forward a few pages and this is mentioned. So all’s o k.

It was good to see Kae suggesting use of the PEAR Validate package (or similar) in the Forms and Forms Validation chapter (chapter 4). I had to wonder if there was a PEAR package for creating and shunting down jQuery validation rules to the client – and found that there isn’t. That’s something to consider for later on, I guess.

The rest of the book is similarly both easy to read and easy to understand – my first port of call for learning how to do something that I’d almost term exotic with jQuery and with PHP in the background is usually Google but that is going to change (actually it already has).

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if this books working title was “JQuery and PHP: The HowTo” – it is that good.
Now, this book is not for learning jQuery – that is not within its remit, but I would heartily recomend “jQuery 1.3 with PHP” by Kae Verens to anyone wanting to utilise jQuery from a PHP background.

As most of you will probably know OSM is to printed atlases from AA, Ordnance Survery etc, as wikipedia is to encyclopedias. People can contribute data to the project through a variety of activities: going out and actually mapping an area with a sat nav or gps unit [even a mobile phone with GPS in it such as an iphone, nokia n95 or whatever], tracing data off Yahoo [and other] aerial imagery, filing bugs on the openstreetbugs website or literally drawing in information via the walking papers map making website. And better again, this is about providing free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them.

Anyway…I mentioned how the OpenStreetMap map of Nenagh is more complete than even the latest commercially available maps for Garmin and Google Maps and listed off a few ways how OSM could be used commercially: by real estate agents, courier companies, how being able to pin-point where all the amenities are would be useful for tourists, and so on.

Compare the Open Street Map of Nenagh with the Google Map of the area – as you can see, there’s still quite a bit of work to be done – Millers Brook needs to be marked as such along with the various groves, avenues etc that comprise that estate. Plus all the amenities, shops [perhaps even their opening hours] and the Shannon Development Industrial Centre still need to be added – as I’m sure are some other small portions of the town that I’ve unknowingly neglected.

It’s fair to say that this will never be finished – existing housing estates will be extended, there will always be urban development plans that when implemented would also need to be included on the map.

It would also be cool to have the new “Nenagh Cycling Hub” rendered on the opencyclemap.org website.

I discovered the OpenStreetBrowser site to be a great test of the data that myself and others have entered – it’s also a great way of demonstrating just what can be done with OSM data.

If you happen to spot something that I’ve missed please either drop me a comment or use the openstreetbugs website.

On a related note: it would be good to see a PEAR/PHP based client/component for interfacing with the OpenStreetMap server so that interesting apps utilising that data could be implemented on the LAMP stack – something to go alongside the Services_GeoNames package from pear

As you might infer, this is quite serious – the Health Service Executive in Ireland have already made the first steps in downgrading and then closing the General Hospital in Nenagh. Already there are plans for numerous cuts, including a proposal to remove 24-hour accident and emergency services at the hospital in favour of the introduction of advance paramedics to partly replace the present service.

The only numbers important to the HSE, it seems, are those balanced on their accounts sheets – not the number of lives that will be lost, the number of minutes late that ambulances will arrive to road accidents, the ill and those in need.

Representatives of the HSE were invited to attend but did not – most likely because they know no matter how they try they can not make sense of their own arguments. In short, they can not justify what they are proposing.

Google for phrases such as “save nenagh hospital” and “friends of nenagh hospital” to see just how serious and important this is – you’ll find links such as this article in the Irish Times (Doctors to fight cuts at Nenagh hospital).

Please add your voice by joining the Save Nenagh Hospital group on facebook, by writing to your political representatives and by writing to the papers.

Don’t let Nenagh become the next Monaghan.

1. I first met my wife at her house warming party seven years ago – it took four years for anything to happen though! I’m so happy it finally did though!
2. My first computer was a ZX Spectrum 48K that was bought when I was seven years old – I’ve since progressed through BBC computers, Apple Macs and then onto PCs. I also had a accounts on the WRTC vax – VMS and OSF/1.
3. I’ve similarly gone through a number of differing computer languages: Basic in various incarnations (ZX Basic, BBC Basic, VB), Z80 Assembler, HyperCard (yes, really), C, C++, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, ColdFusion, Java.
4. I might be Irish but my surname isn’t.
5. I read a lot of fantasy: Gemmell, Eddings, Tolkien, Pratchett; though I also enjoy Tom Clancy and Dale Brown novels.
6. I’m long-sighted in one eye and short-sighted in the other: one good reason why I’ve never been that good at sports.
7. I am an active PEAR developer.

Tagging Others

I’m supposed to tag 7 other people who then repeat the whole process:

• Proinnsias Breathnach for being such a good friend all this time. And because he doesn’t blog enough.
• Kae Verens for having a name that sounds the same as his first inital – and for helping out loads at the IPUG stand at last year’s Irish Opensource Technology Conference.
• Donncha O Caoimh for his trojan work back in the day with the ILUG CMS and for WordPress mu.
• Jaime Hemmett for her exuberance and energy she’s brought to the Irish PHP scene.
• AJ McKee for starting the Irish PHP Users Group in the first place!
• Justin Mason for Spam Assassin, SiteScooper and being an all round nice guy.
• Fuzzix for his levity and humour. That plus he’s a ZX head like myself.

Rules

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.

• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.

• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.

• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter

He quotes from the report:

Another commonality between these three vendors is that they are all written in PHP. If we look back over last year’s disclosures and apply the new CPE methodology to them, we would uncover another newcomer to the top five list, PHP itself, which would rank number four in the 2007 top five vendor list.

What are featuring in IBM’s top ten of vulnerable that makes the report insinuate that the PHP language is a security risk are Jooma, WordPress and Drupal. How PHP would feature in a list of “vendors” is beside the point – if a construction company were to build a house where the windows don’t close fully, the security alarm doesn’t work and where bare wires are exposed you don’t “blame” the windows, alarm system and cabling. The responsibility rests with the construction company and/or the individual contractors hired by that company. Similarly, we can’t “blame” PHP for bad software architecture and security risks present in Joomla, WordPress or Drupal – the onus is on the software developers and architects to design secure [web] applications.

They should, at the least, ensure input data is of the expected type, of certain values; handle uploaded files in a secure and cautious manner that they don’t overwrite files crucial to the health/security of the system running the application or the application itself; use an audit trail for checking against attacks, ensure security in depth against SQL injections, Cross Site Vulnerabilities, Command Injection and … I could go on but won’t – search for php security best practices, get the Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide, check out the library resource at the PHP Security Consortium.

Now where’s ruby, cobol, C, and z80A assembly language on that list? And why is Linux mentioned there as a vendor?

Andrii and his son Ivan

MySQL, Inc.
Mail to: MySQL, Inc.
Attn: Linda Dong
20450 Stevens Creek Blvd #350
Cupertino, CA 95014

or
US wire transfer:

MySQL Inc: 7396643001
SWIFT: NDEAUS3N

or
International wire transfer in any currency:
Bank: Nordea Bank
Bank address: Stockholm, Sweden
Bank account: 3259 17 03868
IBAN: SE27 3000 0000 0325 9170 3868
SWIFT: NDEASESS

Thanks to those who have donated already. A child’s life is precious and I hope we can give Ivan a chance.