In 2008 when I had my first certification exam there were 22 Zend Certified Engineers in Romania, I was number 23.

With time looks like more people took the exam, and this week the number of 100 Zend Certified Engineers was exceeded!

After a search of PHP ZCE, full of joy, I find that the 100th certified web developer in Romania is actually my colleague and friend Emanuel Croitoru,  whom I’ve tortured for weeks on end with: “don’t worry, is easy”.

When the time came to really study the manual it didn’t look that simple. 🙂

But after all, the determination to make this step is just another reason that a ZCE is trying to become a good web developer!

Since I’ve first learned about IPs, I’ve wandered when will the possible number of addresses will run out. Now is official, there are no more IPv4 addresses!

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has officially announced on February 3 that the las IPv4 addresses have been allocated. Off course they haven’t been allocated directly to the users, but they will be used by ISPs.

But what will happen if there are no more IP addresses? Well, as this has become obvious some ware in the evolutionary process of the Internet IPv6 was created. What is the difference? Well, using IPv4 there are about 4 billion addresses, with IPv6 there are 3.4×10³⁸, in fact I don’t even know how to pronounce a number that big, but it will be enough for a very long time.

Fortunately, a lot of operating systems already have support for IPv6, and if they don’t, they will start having very soon.

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.