Long time no see

Wats up people?? I have been off blogger for some time now. Actually past few days have been very interesting for me. I did some coding for DevCrib. It looks like I can implement it now. Also me and some of my friends are trying to start some sort of t-shirt printing business. When we tried to come up with cool ideas for tees, it turns out that we are pretty good at it. Right now we are searching for some vendor who can print our ideas on tees. Its an experiment, we will see if it fetches us something.
The other day I got a mail stating that there is 3 day symposia on "Web technology to improve the quality of education" from July 1 - 3, 2010 at IIT Bombay. I am trying to get StudNet online before it so that I can tell people there how I am trying to use "Web" to improve the quality of education.
<** fingers crossed **>

DevCrib (Technical dicussion forum)

Me and my fellow developer have divided tasks for the 1st phase of StudNet. He will be handling the social networking and Blog and I will be handling the DevCrib (technical dicussion forum).

The basic structure of DevCrib is finalised now. It will be like,
Category: There will be several categories under which students can post their threads.
Forum: Each category will be divided in many forums. Students can find the appropriate forum to post their topics.
Topics: These will be topic under Forums for which students can post threads.
Threads: These are the actual threads started by students.
As you can see that this is in a hierarchical manner: Category > Forum > Topic > Thread

The features that we have discussed will be mostly similar to forums that already exist. In addtion to those evry student will be given points or rewards for every post or answers they give to questions asked or anything like this so that students can feel rewarded for whatever they are contributing. The points will be rewarded by other fellow students. Level of students will rise as they are rewarded more points. I feel so much excited about it. Its going to be really cool.

Design for the social networking part is also finalised. Its on paper right now, once I design it on some graphic editor I will upload it too. The way we are implementing our Blog service is a little bit 'hatke'. We are giving blog service in two ways. One will be like each student will be having his own space for blog (the usual one), the other one will be something called as "Collaborative Blog". Here students will write their blog entries under a specific topic under which others can also wirte. Anyone visiting a topic can see students views and opinions about that particular topic. They can comment over others views or opinions. Students will 'blog collaboratively'. This will be really cool if you think about it.

Ok, c ya l8r.. Gotta get back at database designing for DevCrib.

StudNet kicks off

Me and my friend felt that it is high time that we start working on the real thing. We have decided to implement Social networking, blog, and DevCrib (technical discussion forum) initially. We will launch our site with these features and afterwards we will keep on adding other features like CodeBase, KnolBase, University etc along with upgradations of previous features.

First thing was to design the database. We brainstormed for like 2 hours and came up with the tables we are going to use. Then my friend (Malik) decided on the fields that those table are going to have. We have got the tables ready with us. Design of the pages are almost done. We feel satisfied with the progress that we are making. I hope we dont lose focus. For implementing this we need to learn some new technologies, for ex. Ajax. I have been reading about Ajax, its really cool and I can only imagine how much more cooler its going to be when we start using Ajax.

While braintorming we felt that we need more developers to get on with rest of the features or just help out with current ones. So if anyone wants to join is more than welcome.

Blog completed

Finally the Blog is completed. Its a very simple Blog system. Now I have a much better understanding of PHP and MySQL. The Blog is still on my local server. Now I am thinking of starting my work on StudNet.

The first thing I am planning to implement is a network of users. Just the "Members" part of StudNet. This will have the login page, signup page initially, after logging in the Profile page will be displayed. User will be able to edit the Profile page. The right column will have the list of his friends. There will also be a "Board" where he can write his status updates or what is he currently doing or basically get in touch with his friends.

Gotta Code.

Status update

I was able to connect to mysql using MAMP and PHPEclipse. THe problem was with a missing space: mysql -u root -proot which should have been like mysql -u root -p root. So now everything is working and I have created the index page displaying the blog entry with comments too. Next step is to enhance the index.php page, introduce a viewentry.php page through which we can see each blog entry seperately with the comments. After that comes the turn of addentry.php and addcomments.php page, filename explains what are they meant for.

Now that the initial hurdles are crossed I have to change the gear and speed up my development.

Idiots Are Here

The other day I cam across Google's site hosting service, Google Sites, so I thought of having one of mine there. I am not surprised by the ease with which I created my site, Idiots are here. Google Sites is really easy to use. Some very cool features are there. Nice looking templates. If someone just wants to create a static website then I believe that Google Sites is the best out there. You can even link your Google site to external domain name (www.example.com).

MySQL socket issue with Zend Studio

I am facing a problem with mysql socket with Zend Studio. I guess I have not included the mysql socket directive in the php.ini file for MAMP. I may have to create a symbolic link between the actual mysql.sock file and the one where Zend is trying to search.

I have now resolved the 'Run as webpage' issue. I just had to place my php scripts in the htdocs directory of MAMP. There is lot of work left on this. If the socket thing doesnt work out then I will go back to using PHPEclipse. There I just had to make a symbolic link and it worked. Anyways both the IDE's are equally great I suppose. Now I am thinking when I am done with developing the blog, how to host it on internet. I already have a domain name and space on a hosting server. Lets see, its still time for that.

Oh BTW, as many as 10 people resigned just from my DC of my organisation in one day. Thats a big number and sources say 14000 have resigned in this quarter. Thats a huge number. I guess its time that the service companys realise that employees are not be treated as resources such as computers, tables or lights, they are humans. Organisation is not just about the revenues and numbers, its about the people who run it.

Anyways thats not what I am trying to say here. I am chasing my Freedom. Hope I am Free soon.

Problem with config.php

I made a config.php file which has configuration settings like host name, user name, password, database name, author name. I also made header.php and footer.php files. Then I made the index.php file. Now when I run this as PHP script then the error message I get is somehting about mysql.sock. I guess Zend is not able to find the mysql.sock file. Some configuration problem maybe. What I am wondering is how is index.php file going to get the parameters set in config.php. I havent included it in index.php file.
I was debugging it this morning, but right when I was able to figure out the problem, I had to leave for my day job. WTF. Its very difficult to work in intervals. I have to find out time so that I can work in a stretch for several hours.
If anybody has worked on php and mysql please do leave comments.

Perseverence

I have been reading the articles written by Paul Graham for a long time now. His articles are just great. He is a very active contributor in the open source world. He and his friends has started a VC company called YC (Y Combinator). After reading his articles one thing that I got to know is that 1 in 20 ideas that come to YC fails. He has written a lot about why startups fail or succeed. A good co-founder, an idea that people would use, release early and often, impress a small group than try to appeal to a large mass, never give up and many other reasons that may help a startup tick.
I have been working on my idea for about a month or so now and many a times I have felt to give up or that the idea is not going to appeal to anyone except me and many other reasons. Then it struck me what is needed to is to stick with what I believe. Persevere. If I keep working on my idea then eventually this will turn into a full fledged application.
Okay, gotta get back to work. Perseverence.

Why is there only 24 hrs in a day??

I am fed up of my day job. The timings are so cruel that it doesnt allow me to work on my project. There should have been more hrs in a day. No matter how much I try to balance my day job with my current project, I dont get any time. How am I supposed to do it?? I know its just an excuse. *All izz well* *All izz well* ..
I have to find out a way to take out time otherwise I myself am going to kill my idea. Please suggest ways.

Blog in the making

I have started working on the Blog. Im using MAMP (Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP) for development. Design is over, Tables, the pages like signin, addentry, addcomments, viewentry and others. Development is started. Im using PHPEclipse as the IDE. Its really cool. I have also got Zend Studio, maybe from now on Ill use it. Hope it finishes soon as I have to start developing the Dicussion forum.
Discussion forum is going to be very interesting as it will involve more complex queries and more optimized coding standards.
This is really fun. Web development is awesome. I hope Im able to do what I have in my mind.
I have got few honest reviews that this is a cool idea which can really be used by people. I require more developers who can help me achieve this. If anyone wants to work on some really cool stuff can contact me.
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