From msemtd at yahoo.co.uk Wed Mar 2 01:55:08 2005 From: msemtd at yahoo.co.uk (Michael Erskine) Date: Wed Mar 2 01:59:11 2005 Subject: [Nottingham-pm] News (02/03/05) Message-ID: <200503020955.08177.msemtd@yahoo.co.uk> News (02/03/05) We go big room tonight with NottLug (http://www.nottingham.lug.org.uk/). Beers at the Sir John, eats at the Polish restaurant, more beers at the Falcon. Topics are expected to include lugradio live (http://www.lugradio.org/live/2005/). Regards, Michael. -- Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. -- Wernher von Braun From msemtd at yahoo.co.uk Mon Mar 7 02:00:22 2005 From: msemtd at yahoo.co.uk (Michael Erskine) Date: Mon Mar 7 02:04:49 2005 Subject: [Nottingham-pm] NottPM News (07/03/05): I broke it! In-Reply-To: <200503020955.08177.msemtd@yahoo.co.uk> References: <200503020955.08177.msemtd@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <200503071000.25458.msemtd@yahoo.co.uk> All, Sorry, sorry, sorry - I broke the Nottingham PM wiki: I upgraded the webserver from Debian Sarge to Ubuntu Warty and things went a bit pear shaped. The Ubuntu install was fine but I overwrote some backed-up config for apache-perl and I ran out of steam last night before sussing out what was wrong! Oh, and I forgot to set up sshd so I can't fix it from work today. Ah well, a bit of downtime shouldn't hurt us too much. I should be able to fix it tonight. Regards, Michael. -- You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance. -- Franklin P. Jones From perl at tecspy.com Tue Mar 8 09:08:23 2005 From: perl at tecspy.com (Michael) Date: Tue Mar 8 09:11:39 2005 Subject: [Nottingham-pm] NottPM News (07/03/05): I broke it! In-Reply-To: <200503071000.25458.msemtd@yahoo.co.uk> References: <200503020955.08177.msemtd@yahoo.co.uk> <200503071000.25458.msemtd@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <422DDC07.1090106@tecspy.com> Michael Erskine wrote: > All, > > Sorry, sorry, sorry - I broke the Nottingham PM wiki Fixed now! I sussed it out last night - permissions! We now run on Ubuntu Warty! http://www.tecspy.com/wiki/ Regards, Michael. From perl at tecspy.com Fri Mar 18 12:05:11 2005 From: perl at tecspy.com (Michael) Date: Fri Mar 18 12:09:31 2005 Subject: [Nottingham-pm] [Fwd: User Group Newsletter - Issue 04-05] Message-ID: <423B3477.7020205@tecspy.com> All, Enjoy - Michael. -------- Original Message -------- Thread-Topic: User Group Newsletter - Issue 04-05 From: Josette Garcia To: Josette Garcia O'Reilly UK User Group Programme NEWSLETTER Issue 04-05 ================================================ HIGHLIGHTS ================================================ SPEAKER OFFER NEWS FROM O'REILLY AND BEYOND -How Paris Got Hacked? -SafariU Revolutionizes the Textbook -Remixing Culture: An Interview with Lawrence Lessig -O'Reilly Learning Lab: $200 Instant Rebate -MAKE Subscriptions Available -Trouble in the Kernel, VMware, and PostgreSQL -Building the PostgreSQL BuildFarm -Display Your Favorite Album Artwork in iTunes -Build an iTunes Remote Control -Understanding Administrative Templates -Data Binding in ASP.NET 2.0 -A Look at Commons Chain: The New Java Framework -Aspect-Oriented Annotations -Rid Yourself of Digital Media Annoyances -Build a Simple MP3 Player for Your Site -Actions for Photoshop Elements 3 -Yahoo! Web Services -Getting Real-Time Data From the Web in Excel -Stewart Butterfield on Flickr -Jolt Awards Finalists -500 O'Reilly Books on Safari -Fear and Loathing in Information Security -Object Oriented PHP Programming & Performance -Michael Stutz on Computer Outlook/KLAV Radio -Writing Apache's Logs to MySQL -iPod shuffle Tips and Tricks -Apache and AppleScript -Encrypting Connection Strings in Web.config -Building the Perfect Budget PC, Part 1 -JDMK and Legacy IT Management -Eclipse Plugins Exposed, Part 1: A First Glimpse -High Definition in Focus at 2005 Sundance Festival -Raymond Soemarsono: Natural Eye BOOK NEWS - Books for review - Coming soon CONFERENCE NEWS YOUR BOOK REVIEWS YOUR NEWS ================================================ NEWS FROM O'REILLY AND BEYOND ================================================ --------------------- General News --------------------- ***How Paris Got Hacked? Like many online service providers, T-Mobile requires users to answer a "secret question" if they forget their passwords. For Paris Hilton's account, the secret question was "What is your favorite pet's name?" By correctly providing the well-known answer, any internet user could change Hilton's password and freely access her account. ***SafariU Revolutionizes the Textbook With SafariU, you can you create and publish your own textbook, selecting exactly the book chapters, sections, or articles you need from the impressive Safari database. SafariU costs you nothing to use and offers your students more focused course content at less cost. Sign up now, get a jump on your summer and fall course prep, and your first custom textbook could be ready to print before spring break. Visit SafariU to view a video demo and sign up for access. ***Remixing Culture: An Interview with Lawrence Lessig What do you get when you mix P2P, inexpensive digital input devices, open source software, easy editing tools, and reasonably affordable bandwidth? Potentially, you get what Lawrence Lessig calls remix culture, which he explains in this extensive interview. ***MAKE Subscriptions Available The annual subscription price for four issues is $34.95. When you subscribe with this link, you'll get a free issue--the first one plus four more for $34.95. So subscribe for yourself or friends with this great offer for charter subscribers: five volumes for the cost of four. Subscribe at: The MAKE blog is available at: ***Getting Real-Time Data From the Web in Excel Did you know that you can use Excel for more than just storing and organizing static data? In this article, Matthew MacDonald, author of "Excel: The Missing Manual," shows you how to use Excel as a tool to handle up-to-the-minute information like sales figures and currency exchange rates. ***Stewart Butterfield on Flickr Not even a year old and still in beta, Flickr is a revolutionary photo storage, sharing, and organization application boasting roughly 270,000 members. Richard Koman catches Flickr CEO Stewart Butterfield for a few words on what has made Flickr so revolutionary and where it may be headed. ***Jolt Awards Finalists "Software Development Magazine" recently announced the finalists for the 15th Annual Jolt Product Excellence Awards. Several O'Reilly titles and sites were nominated: "Head First Design Patterns" in the General Books category; and "Better, Faster, Lighter Java," "Head First Servlets & JSP," "Hibernate: A Developer's Notebook," and "Mono: A Developer's Notebook" in the Technical Books category. Java.net and the O'Reilly Network were named finalists in the Web Sites and Developer Networks category. ***500 O'Reilly Books on Safari O'Reilly now boasts over 500 books on Safari, the premier electronic reference library for IT professionals and programmers. With Safari, you can search electronic versions of a broad range of the best technical books from leading publishers including O'Reilly. Check out our newest title, "All About Your iPod Photo," and learn how to get the most out of your favorite toy. Give Safari a try today with a free trial subscription. --------------------- Open Source --------------------- ***Trouble in the Kernel, VMware, and PostgreSQL Noel Davis looks at problems in the Linux kernel, VMware, PostgreSQL, Squid, MySQL, mailman, Apple OSX HFS+, movemail with GNU Emacs or XEmancs, KStars, typespeed, awstats, and synaesthesia. ***Building the PostgreSQL BuildFarm Managing a cross-platform open source project is difficult; how do you test on all the platforms you support? Leverage the time and resources of your users! Andrew Dunstan took a tip from the Samba team and recently set up a build farm for the PostgreSQL project to report build successes and failures from interested users. Here's how he did it. ***Fear and Loathing in Information Security "Society has always treated innovators and whistle blowers with ambivalence," writes author Michael D. Bauer in reference to hackers. In this article, Michael discusses why information security professionals demonize hackers and why that tendency is both irrational and counterproductive. Michael is the author of "Linux Server Security, 2nd Edition." ***Object Oriented PHP Programming & Performance Harry explores the trade-offs between object oriented and procedural programming in PHP in a lengthy discussion on the pros and cons of each. ***Michael Stutz on Computer Outlook/KLAV Radio Listen to the author of No Starch's "The Linux Cookbook, 2nd Edition." ***Writing Apache's Logs to MySQL Adding a few performance statistics to your Apache httpd logs can help you profile your applications. Digging through flat files for information is a drag, though. Logging to a relational database can make reporting and analysis much more convenient. Chris Josephes demonstrates how to install and configure mod_log_mysql and shows off what you can do with it. --------------------- Mac --------------------- ***Display Your Favorite Album Artwork in iTunes Love your iPod but miss the album art? In iTunes 4, you can associate an album's artwork with a song so it can be displayed while you play the song. Wei-Meng Lee shows you how to use two free programs, Clutter and art4iTunes.com, to simplify the task. For more tricks and tips on using your iPod photo, check out Wei-Meng's latest eDoc, All About Your iPod Photo. ***Build an iTunes Remote Control AirPort Express is great for streaming music from your Mac, except when you have to change tracks from another room. There are commercial solutions available, but here's a great evening project using your web-enabled cell phone and the power of Mac OS X. ***iPod shuffle Tips and Tricks The iPod shuffle is the easiest-to-use iPod to date. But that doesn't mean you can't customize how you listen and upload music. Scott Knaster shows you some very handy tips and tricks for the shuffle and iTunes 4.7.1. ***Apache and AppleScript AppleScript traditionally interacts with Mac applications and Apache is the web server that powers most of the Internet. David Miller shows you how AppleScript can invoke Unix utilities through its do shell script command, thereby creating some interesting intersections with Apache. --------------------- Windows/.NET --------------------- ***Understanding Administrative Templates Administrative templates are a key management component of Group Policy on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. Mitch Tulloch, author of "Windows Server Hacks," shows you how they work and how to use them. ***Data Binding in ASP.NET 2.0 Not only has Microsoft made radical changes in how data binding is done between ASP.NET 1.x and 2.0, but it has also created significant differences between how it is done in Windows Forms and ASP.NET in 2.0. This keeps life interesting (Jesse Liberty says, gnashing his teeth). In this new column, he dives into data binding in the new Web Forms. ***Encrypting Connection Strings in Web.config One of the best practices in ASP.NET is to save your database connection strings in the Web.config file instead of hard-coding it in your code. It's not such a good idea to save your connection strings as plain text in Web.config--you should ideally encrypt the connection strings so it leaves no chance for a potential hacker to easily get more information about your database server. In ASP.NET 2.0, Microsoft has taken this further by allowing you to encrypt the connection strings in Web.config, all without much plumbing on your part. In this new article by Wei-Meng Lee, he shows you how it works. ***Building the Perfect Budget PC, Part 1 You can build a powerhouse system without breaking the bank. In this first part of a two-part article, Robert Bruce Thompson and Barbara Fritchman Thompson, authors of "Building the Perfect PC," show you which components to buy. --------------------- Java --------------------- ***A Look at Commons Chain: The New Java Framework In part one of a two-part series, Bill Siggelkow covers the basics of Chain, a promising new framework from the Jakarta Commons subproject that lets you integrate Chain into the Struts build process. In part two, Bill will cover how Chain is being applied to Struts and other projects. Bill is the author of O'Reilly's "Jakarta Struts Cookbook." ***Aspect-Oriented Annotations Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) and attributes are two leading-edge programming concepts, each with typical applications. By combining them, using attributes to indicate where AOP code should execute, you can effectively declare new Java syntax. Bill Burke introduces this new technique. ***JDMK and Legacy IT Management Keeping a network with legacy (and possibly unreliable) devices is nearly impossible without some automated help. Stephen Morris shows how to use the Java Dynamic Management Kit to keep tabs on your network and find potential points of failure. ***Eclipse Plugins Exposed, Part 1: A First Glimpse Many developers use Eclipse out of the box as an IDE, never investigating its powerful extensibility. But as Emmanuel Proulx shows in this first installment of a new series, Eclipse's modular system of plugins allow you to customize it to your suit your development needs. --------------------- Digital Media --------------------- ***Rid Yourself of Digital Media Annoyances Sometimes those little quirks in your favorite digital media toys can take all the fun out of playing. Preston Gralla offers a baker's dozen fixes to MP3, iTunes, and QuickTime annoyances, so you can get back to the fun. Preston is the author of "Internet Annoyances." ***Build a Simple MP3 Player for Your Site You don't have to monkey with Flash, redundant windows, or unpredictable plugins to deliver smart-looking audio playback for your visitors. With this sneaky bit of JavaScript, you can generate pop-up music players on the fly. ***Actions for Photoshop Elements 3 Want to automate a complicated artistic effect, like making a photo look like a watercolor, or adding a 3-D frame? Photoshop Elements 3 makes these tasks easy with actions. Barbara Brundage, author of "Photoshop Elements 3: The Missing Manual," shows you how to write, install, and troubleshoot actions in Elements 3, for the Mac or Windows. ***High Definition in Focus at 2005 Sundance Festival Cheaper than film, bigger and better than plain, old digital video, high-definition digital video definitely came into its own during this year's Sundance Film Festival. According to Sony, nearly half of the features, documentaries, and shorts screened in Park City were shot in HD. Susan Boyer reports. ***Raymond Soemarsono: Natural Eye Some people are meant to be artists. Self-taught photographer Raymond Soemarsono has a natural eye for composing stunning landscape scenes, then taming his digital camera to record them according to his vision. His gallery features many places with which you're probably familiar. Maybe it's time to get in the car and revisit them? --------------------- Web --------------------- ***Yahoo! Web Services Paul Bausch takes a look at the new Yahoo! Web Services interface and shows how to tap into the API with a sample application. ================================================ BOOK NEWS ================================================ ***Wanted: Slashdot Reviewers We are looking for folks to submit reviews to Slashdot. We've got some hot new books coming out this fall and winter we want to get Slashdotted. Here are their guidelines: ***Wanted: Amazon.co.uk reviewers - www.amazon.co.uk ****Latest books available for review * Apache Security This all-purpose guide for locking down Apache arms readers with all the information they need to securely deploy applications. Administrators and programmers alike will benefit from a concise introduction to the theory of securing Apache, plus a wealth of practical advice and real-life examples. Topics covered include installation, server sharing, logging and monitoring, web applications, PHP and SSL/TLS, and more. * IPv6 Network Administration This essential guide explains what works, what doesn't, and most of all, what's practical about IPv6--the next-generation Internet standard. A must-have for network administrators everywhere looking to fix their network's scalability and management problems. Also covers other IPv6 benefits, such as routing, integrated auto-configuration, quality-of-services (QoS), enhanced mobility, and end-to-end security. * Jakarta Struts Cookbook The Jakarta Struts Cookbook is an amazing collection of code solutions to common--and uncommon--problems encountered when building web applications with the Struts Framework. With solutions to real-world problems just a few page flips away, this quick, look-up reference is perfect for independent developers, large development teams, and everyone in between who wishes to use the Struts Framework to its fullest potential. * MAKE: Technology on Your Time If you like to tweak, disassemble, re-create, and invent cool new uses for technology from home entertainment systems to in-car computers you'll love MAKE, our new quarterly publication for geeks and do-it-yourselfers. Inspired by our bestselling Hacks books, MAKE is a mook. It combines the unexpectedness and visual appeal of a magazine with the permanence and the in-depth instructiveness of a how-to book. Visit MAKE's web site: make.oreilly.com . * Outlook 2003 Personal Trainer Fully illustrated and jargon-free, the Outlook 2003 Personal Trainer book presents a clear view of the latest personal information program from Microsoft Office. With this handy reference by your side, you'll be able to better manage and organize email messages, schedules, tasks, notes, contacts, and other information. Includes a companion CD tutorial to guide you through each lesson interactively. * Programming C#, 4th Edition Programming C#, the top selling book on Microsoft's high-performance C# programming language, is now in its fourth edition. Aimed at experienced programmers and web developers, this comprehensive guide focuses on the features and programming patterns that are new to C#, and fundamental to the programming of web services and web applications on Microsoft's .NET platform. * Python Pocket Reference, 3rd Edition Updated to cover Python 2.4, Python Pocket Reference, 3rd Edition is the perfect on-the-job reference. For experienced Python developers, this book is a compact toolbox that delivers need-to-know information at the flip of a page. This third edition also includes an easy-lookup index to help developers find answers fast! The Python Pocket Reference, 3rd Edition serves as the perfect companion to Learning Python and Programming Python. * QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual This thorough guide examines the many features of the popular QuickBooks accounting software. Through dozens of insightful tips and tricks and a friendly writing style, it enables financial managers to quickly understand how to use the program s tools to implement and maintain critical accounting processes. Ideal for QuickBooks users of all levels, from beginners to sophisticated users. * Windows XP Hacks, 2nd Edition Completely revised and updated, this smart collection of insider tips and tricks covers the XP operating system from start to finish, including all the new features that come with Service Pack 2 (SP2). You'll also find timesaving hacks for security, file distribution, digital media, web browsing, and more. An ideal all-in-one resource for XP beginners, as well as more experienced power users. * Word 2003 Personal Trainer As the most complete and engaging tutorial available for Word, this invaluable guide details all of the latest advancements to the popular Microsoft Office word processor. Features sections on templates, WordArt, charts, drawings, plus advanced topics like how to perform mail merges and create web pages. Includes a companion CD tutorial to guide you through each lesson interactively. ****Coming Soon * Access 2003 Personal Trainer * Firefox Hacks * iPhoto 5: The Missing Manual * Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition * Linux Desktop Hacks * PC Annoyances, 2nd Edition * Photoshop Elements 3: The Missing Manual * Python Cookbook, 2nd Edition * SharePoint User's Guide * Visual Studio Hacks * Windows Server Cookbook ================================================ CONFERENCE NEWS ================================================ ***Register for the 2005 MySQL Users Conference, Santa Clara, CA--April 18-21 The MySQL Users Conference, co-presented by O'Reilly Media and MySQL AB, brings together experts, users, and industry leaders with unique MySQL insights, offering attendees a detailed look into new features in MySQL 5.0, sessions and workshops designed to teach best practices, and exposure to new open source technologies. For more information, go to: User Group members who register before Febuary 28, 2005 get a double discount. Use code DSUG when you register, and receive 20% off the early registration price. To register for the conference, go to: ================================================ YOUR BOOK REVIEWS ================================================ Igualada GNU/Linux Users reviewed - Mind Hacks *** The Scottish ColdFusion User Group reviewed - Head First Java *** Birmingham pm reviewed - Perl Graphics Programming eBay Hacks IRC Hacks Network Security Hacks Learning PHP 5 *** Esperia BG NetAcad reviewed - Windows XP Pro: The Missing Manual *** Igualada GNU/Linux User Group reviewed - Learning GNU Emacs *** MMUG, Armenia reviewed - SQL In A Nutshell *** Northants Linux Users Group reviewed - Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing *** Java User Group, Milano reviewed - Head First Java (in Italian) (in my blog, in English) ================================================ YOUR NEWS and more ================================================ ***The Scottish ColdFusion User Group will be holding a two day event, 26/27 May at the University of Edinburgh - ***ACCU is holding their yearly conference on April 20th-23rd in Oxford - ### Josette Garcia O'Reilly UK Limited Tel: +44 (0)1252 711776 www.oreilly.co.uk *************************** The information contained in this e-mail message and any attachments is intended for the addressee only and may be confidential. 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