No SQL Expert

Ubuntu is based on the sudo command, apparently eliminating the possibility of directly using the root account.

Sometimes, when a series of commands must be executed as root from console, it becomes “annoying” to use sudo command.

Even though it doesn’t seem possible you can authenticate as root.

First of all the user must have root right,  when using sudo command!

The authentication can be done in two ways:
– sudo session:

1sudo -s

– using su:

1sudo su

Of course the root authorization is only for the current console. But from this console, for example other consoles can be opened, and they will be running as root.

Ever since I’ve learned about the existence of the elephpant, I’ve wanted one. A goal not exactly romantic or worthy of being idealistic, but a lot more complicated than it looks.

Not even google can give very relevant results. The french company Nexen which is producing them don’t have any retail shops, in fact there isn’t any official retail market for them.

Although the Web is full of photos of the php elephant from all sorts of events, or even erotic ones, not the same thing can be said about places to buy if from.

The Nexus site states that there is a minimum of 50 small php elephants or 1 large, but here is where the story ends. At some point I decided to try to buy 50 elephant but… I was unable to do that either.

Eventually, after about 2 years of searching I’ve got by chance on eBay. I’ve thought that maybe a second hand one exists. It seems that there is somebody in US that is distributing! When I’m writing this blog it seems that not even that announcement exists, but with a little luck in few weeks will resurface. The search has to be on “php elephant” not “elephpant” which is the official name.

After about a couple of weeks since placing the order, it arrived! Now I’m the happy owner of an elephpant! The price is not exactly small, 15 pounds + delivery, but for this long awaited mascot I think it worth it.

It’s really quite small, but very nicely done, and very cute. He was my mascot from the ZCE 5.3 certification.

The mystery about the rarity of these elephants had an answer on elephpant.com: “No retail at the moment. We prefer relying on local PUG or online shop to actually do retail.”. It looks like at the moment the only way to get one is to find someone that bought 50 php elephants and now is selling some of them, or to buy 50 yourself!

The fate of the 2011 elephpants production it was decided at the end of last year, with a pre-order form on http://www.elephpant.com/. And most likely pre-orders will be soon available again.

When the pre-order form appeared on elephpant.com I even got a email telling me to pre-order if I’m still interested. So if you are interested you should subscribe to the newsletter.

With this generation a new pink php elephant is on his way! Probably they are here for the PHP Woman side of the community. There aren’t any images with this new elephant, because this is the first generation.

Another year has passed and PHP 6 will not arrive.

Actually for the last couple of years I’ve been expecting PHP 6, and I believe this is more of a traditional blog for me to close the year.

PHP 6 will not come because the trunk was abandoned and rebuild from a 5.3.

Even if PHP 6 will not be out for a while now, PHP 5.3 is gaining popularity. Frameworks like Zend Framework and Symfony are each preparing in 2011 a 2.0 version that will need PHP 5.3+ to run. Even CodeIgniter, a framework that is was traditional PHP 4 compatible will need at least PHP 5.1.6 for version 2.0.

Even more, the official Zend certification for PHP is now ZCE 5.3, and it’s becoming very popular, even if it was released just few months back.

But a new year is ending and is time to check achievement from last year’s resolution and to write a new one.

Last year I’ve finished my masters, and with it I’ve finished way to many years to want to count of school. In fact this is the firs winter that I’m not in some form of school, maybe this is why I feel like I have so much free time :).

I’ve change my work place, and with it I was forced to use some things that were on my TODO list for quite some time:

• Linux
• Symfony Framework Linux was a subject around I was gravitating inevitable for years, but never got to in to deep. It was always on my “todo” list, but never got the time or patience to really get into much detail with it, or didn’t have the continuity when I did it. When I got to my new work place I found my self in front of a Ubuntu computer, and I’ve started to panic a little.

After few months I’ve made a new step, and for the first time in my life I went to a professional course. The course was organised by Info Academy. Paid from my own pocket and a little overlapped with my work hours. But I’ve reached the conclusion that I had to do it. Probably it does not sound like a big deal, but I usually study on my own, and it was quite weird for me. Now that is over I can say that it was a great investment and I recommend it (to all from Romania that can go to this centre).

Sometime during that course I’ve realised that it was time to boot in linux from time to time even at home. The next step was to reconfigure the boot manager to boot directly to linux. Now that I’m almost exclusively use linux, I’ve reached the conclusion that is user friendly enough to be a real alternative to Windows.

Symfony framework is another dusty entry on my “todo” list. Even if I’ve been playing around before with CodeIgniter and Zend Framework, I’ve never even got near to Symfony until last year. I’ve felt the fundamental difference of concept between ZF and Symfony. This was another reason to panic at my new work place, and after all: “all frameworks suck”.

Is not a very easy to learn framework because of the concepts, but I thing it worth it. What I like most about this framework is the CRUD generating, that is very easy to do but is very powerful and flexible. Another thing is the use of YML files, which was taken from Ruby on Rails, is a way better alternative to the PHP’s native ini files.

In the end, 2010 was a good year, with lot’s of achievements, even if I didn’t check everything on my last year’s resolution, I think I’ve checked enough.

And now I wish you a great and full of achievements 2011! Happy new year!

In the 256’th day we celebrate programmer’s day, so for all those concerned: Happy programmer’s day!