And to make things worst, one of my last projects was to build API server that will use WSDL-SOAP protocol in PHP. At beginning I explained to the guys why JSON is much better protocol, they even agreed with me but they service is already done, so it’s just our part to integrate it.

On my surprise, I had less problem writing SOAP server then it’s client. All what is need in PHP is few lines in code…

require_once 'class/soap_server.php';
try {
    $server = new SoapServer(null,array('uri'=>'http://confiq.org/soap_server/'));
    $server->setClass("soap_server");
    $server->handle();
} catch (Exception $e) {
    _log($e->getMessage() . ' in '.$e->getFile().'#'.$e->getLine());
    $server->fault($e->getCode(), $e->getMessage());
}

And there you go!
Of course, you’ll need to have soap_server object around with methods that will exist in soap server!

And for client:

$client = new SoapClient(null,array(
    "uri"            => "http://confiq.org/soap_server/",
    "location"        => "http://confiq.org/soap_server/",
    "trace"          => 1,
    "soap_version"     => SOAP_1_1,
    "exceptions"     => 1));
try {
    $demo = $client->someRandomMethod('email','email');
    fn_print_r($demo);
  } catch (SoapFault $exception) {
    fn_print_r($client->__getLastResponse());
    fn_print_die($exception);
}

And that’s it!

Worth reading about this topic, PHP SOAP Extension by Dmitry Stogov!

Configuring ec2 took me less then configuring linux/postfix, it’s even easer

And what’s best it’s even cheaper than dreamhost, after one year I’ll buy simplest ec2 instance which will cast me ~80$ for 3 years. On that instance LAMP+postfix will satisfy my needs.

Mazal tov

UPDATE

So almost after the year, I’m still on amazon web services and I have nice upload. Here is the screenshot:

All facebook experience was kinda ok. Good sides of writing facebook api are:

• Very reach API
• Easy to apply a code
• Good PHP client

On another side:

• Bad manual. Where is one wiki and it’s not updated
• Restricted access to user (which is ok for user, not developer)
• Very but very bad debugging
• SLOW

The most worst is the speed cause when you surf from apps.fb.com fb server connects to your LAMP server and then communicate back to browser.  This can be very slow when your server is not in U.S.A.
Question is why don’t FB serve they own PHP application. I guess there is security involved or they want to get cheap on servers.

Anyhow after this task i had to write facebook connect for bibi. With this expiriance i wrote it after 5+ days. If i haven’t written agoraApp it could take me a weeks.

For some weird reason ubuntu decided to use striped-down version of vim (package: vim-tiny) which comes by default install. Problem with vim-tiny is it’s weak and not powerful as real vim.  However you can install it by “sudo apt-get install vim“. After that copy default vimrc file from /etc/vim to your home directory with the name .vimrc

cp /etc/vim/vimrc ~/.vimrc

After that edit it and turn syntax on (more info). Here is little example of my editor:

If you want to read/write Hebrew perhaps you should read wikipedia which says to use “:set rightleft” and “:set norightleft” (or short :set lr,:set nolr). It also says it don’t support BiDi very well for it’s simplicity, but this way writing hebrew is better that lot of IDEs that i know.  Better than my favorite komodo edit.
I remember at beginning when i saw Vim and when i started to read man pages i decided to stay with nano. I used nano for few years but today, no way that I’m returning to nano/pico after vim.

Material?

Very good matterial for LPIC-1 is IBM docs (registration required) but they web site is really buggy for downloading and showing updated material. For example if you go to: lpic-1102 you’ll find material for topics: 103, 104, 110 missing but if you try from index site you’ll see it’s there. I also had a problem with logging into the site. Overall the web-site too buggy and hard to get used to.
But if you have any good free alternative material for LPIC please contact me and I’ll update here.

There is also few tutorials which are not free, like Cbt nuggets which is very good alternative if you’re lazy to read However, I’m used to read man pages so IBM docs is fine by me.

How LPIC is build?

LPIC is separated into two certification.

• LPIC-1

LPIC-1 certification is separated into two exams:

1. exam 101
2. exam 102

• LPIC-2

LPIC-2 is also separated as LPIC-1 into two exams:

1. exam 201
2. exam 202

So, bottom line is, if you want LPIC-2 you’ll need to have 4 exams which each of them costs about 100~150$. It’s little expensive so you got to learn very good before you take them.

I was looking for motivation for doing those certification alone so i decided to write at least once a week about the progress so maybe somebody will join me I’ll try to find material and questions to check myself and I’ll share my knowledge to the world. So next exam is 101 of LPIC-1 and expect next few posts about

I started to dig in, i was really curious about this. I found thousands of articles on this issue and i was looking for conclusion. First of all I’ll write down why not XP:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic
&articleId=9079798&pageNumber=2

But that’s not the slimmed-down version of XP that Negroponte told the AP Microsoft had been working on for about a year, apparently with the XO in mind. Instead, for most low-cost laptops, Microsoft is licensing the full Service Pack 2 version of Windows XP Home, which gobbles up 1.1GB of disk space. Moreover, patches and updates such as Service Pack 3 will add about 165MB to XP each year, according to Microsoft (download PDF).

The current XO, meanwhile, comes with only 1GB of storage. That’s more than enough for the existing environment, which includes the Sugar GUI and stripped-down versions of Fedora, Firefox and other open-source software. Together, they take up only 200MB, leaving 800MB for students’ files.

Using only stripped-down versions of open-source apps has its downsides. For instance, the XO comes with Gnash, an open-source media player, instead of Adobe’s Flash player, which is free but not open source.

Gnash is compatible with Flash apps only until Version 8, according to OLPC’s own online documentation. Many popular children’s Web sites such as Webkinz.com and Disney.com require Flash 9.0.

I was laughing at this. For installing XP you’ll need more space then OLPC can have and they will recharge it 3$ per child. So this is perfect, they will need to dump prices for bigger HD and for each laptop it will recharge 3$ for Microsoft! They already sold 500 000 units, if they sell more 500k it’s 1.5M for Microsoft.

And what’s the point of gnash? Gecko (firefox) is working perfect with adobe flash plug-in [link]. Why they choice gnash instead of adobe plug-in?

I decided to read from insiders and i found interesting blog from Ivan Krstić. Ivan Krstić was director of security architecture at One Laptop per Child but he quit. He wrote:

Sleight of hand
But really, I digress. The point is that OLPC was supposed to be about learning, not free software. And the most upsetting part of the Windows announcement is not that it exposed the actual agendas of a number of project participants which had nothing to do with learning, but that Nicholas’ misdirection and sleight of hand were allowed to stand.

The whole “we’re investing into Sugar, it’ll just run on Windows” gambit is sheer nonsense. Nicholas knows quite well that Sugar won’t magically become better simply by virtue of running on Windows rather than Linux. In reality, Nicholas wants to ship plain XP desktops. He’s told me so. That he might possibly fund a Sugar effort to the side and pay lip service to the notion of its “availability” as an option to purchasing countries is at best a tepid effort to avert a PR disaster.

In fact, I quit when Nicholas told me — and not just me — that learning was never part of the mission. The mission was, in his mind, always getting as many laptops as possible out there; to say anything about learning would be presumptuous, and so he doesn’t want OLPC to have a software team, a hardware team, or a deployment team going forward.

Do i need to add more? It’s almost one man call! Nicholas who invented OLPC like more windows then Linux so he choice windows.

Conclusion: OLPC has nice idea but not obligation! It has nothing to do with ideology despite it has nice name (One Lap Top Per Child). Child will need to pay more $3 only for microsoft and more money for HD. Will it stay 100$? I honestly wish…
Unless MS won’t pay for difference, prices will rise, less computer will be selled, no ideology to achieve…
I wish I’m wrong…

Well, that is not true! First of all, you can look at they changelog list. You’ll find hundreds of new lib’s. What is most important for me is they finally decided to upgrade lib’s for my favorite dictionary stardict so i finally have dictionary that is free and working

Then i notice i have problem with flash, i can’t listen to the music while playing music flash. I fix that problem by typing “gstreamer-properties” and choosing “Pulse plugin”. By doing this you’re telling all your programs to choice Pulse plugin for playing music
I don’t know why they added it, ALSA plugin was working perfect with my box!
If you have still have problem with your sound after upgrate you might visit: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio. it explains why you are having problems and how to fix it!

Generally, upgrade was smooth, it was really GUI-like installing new software. It also upgrades kernel to 2.6.24-16. I remember when i had to upgrade red hat from 6.x to 7.x. It was pain in the a**, today it was few clicks.

It took a while cause ’till today i didn’t know in what language should i write it! i decided to write in English even my English is not mother tongue. Why English? Well if you gonna write tech stuff you should choice English cause (thanks god) English is international language that all geeks can communicate.

So the question is how to open new blog so it will be popular? Is popular what you really want? The question is, why people write blogs? There is little philosophy in this topic but mean point is that people write it cause they what to share they knowledge/experience with others. So at begging you should not run fast to report it to bots (search engines). Do what i did.

No need to rush, for example i made blog.confiq.org domain for this purpose and after writing 5-10 articles than I’ll share it on main domain: confiq.org

After that I’ll report it to search engines and I’ll write my sites link wherever i can. Examples: Another blogs, Forums signature…

The search engines works that way. More links it founds on another domains it gives more points to your site. More point better results…

Well, this is my first post i had to write non-senses but next posts you can except tech info from:

networks, Linux, Lamp