Notes

Good ideas do not come from easy search.

You need to get from papers, from other people's work.

"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want..." Randy Pausch.

"We can't change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand" Randy Pausch.

He had a way of cutting straight to the issue and getting at the kernel.

Alice teaches even a middle school age student to program. Maybe I should introduce it to my brother. Maybe he will find something interesting except video games.

Randy was fearless.

bring people from different disciplines together in a spirit of collaboration.

The argument that "we use XML, which is a widely accepted data format, and thus our interface is easy to use" makes about as much sense as "we use bits, which are a widely accepted data format, and thus our interface is easy to use.".

News: Analyzing Music the Digital Way

Philadelphia Inquirer (09/22/08) Avril, Tom
Engineers, musicians, and computer researchers recently gathered at Drexel University for the International Conference on Music Information Retrieval to discuss using computers to analyze and manage the world of sound. The event was first held in Plymouth, Mass., in 2000, with music theorists and librarians heavily represented among the few dozen attendees. Now, the event is far more technology oriented. Some of the technologies could be incorporated into iPods in the next 18 months, possibly helping listeners sort through an unruly music collection. A key part of the conference is the announcements of results from a competition in which various universities pit their music-analysis algorithms against one another. Entrants from more than a dozen countries competed in 18 tasks, using their computers to listen to selections of music and identify aspects such as genre, mood, composer, and title. The goal is to eventually help people search for music they might like by autonomously combing through millions of audio files. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor J. Stephen Downie was particularly impressed by the entrants' success at identifying cover songs by different artists. Another task challenged the algorithms to identify tunes someone hummed, which could eventually enable karaoke machines and music shops to identify the song that someone is humming and provide it to them.
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Finish one

These days make me believe that there is no free gift. I must get what I want by my hand.

Though not very happy, first eyes feel uncomfortable, then ears and finally cheated by others! One after one, I don't know why, I don't know what's wrong, and I don't know what I have done wrongly.

Oh, it is our love country's birthday. Happy National Day! Wish her a prospect future. Of course, that is sure.

Time goes on, never stop for my unhappiness. Past is past, tomorrow is wonderful and promising. Be brave to welcome every new coming day, every challenge and every difficulty.

For several days, doing homework, now, I finally finished it! Go on!

Install PHP under Apache and Vista

I initially tried the msi installer for PHP 5. Unfortunately, it installs only PHP under CGI, which although it has some performance and security issues, might be ok for a quick and dirty development environment.

But the installer is badly broken. You’ll get an error something like

PHP Fatal error:  require_once()[function.require]: Failed opening
required 'SAM/php_sam.php' (include_path='.;C:php5pear') in
sam_factory on line 1

After fighting this for a couple of hours, I ended up installing manually anyway. I used this procedure to get PHP 5 running under Vista:

1. Install the Apache webserver.



2. Get the current version of PHP 5 from http://www.php.net/downloads.php#v5. (It’s 5.2.3 at this time). Get both the zip file and the PECL zip file (which includes extensions).



3. Uninstall any previous installations of PHP 5 (Start > Control Panel > Programs and Features). You may have to reboot your machine.



4. Disconnect from the Internet. Turn off your firewall. Turn off your virus checker.



5. Turn off User Account Control (UAC).



6. Get an administrator prompt by going to All Programs > Accessories. Right-Click “Command Prompt” and choose “Run as Administrator”



7. Use the command prompt to manually remove directories containing previous PHP installations (like C:\Program Files\PHP…)



8. Go to the directory where you’ve downloaded the PHP5 and PECL zipfiles. Extract the PHP zipfile. Rename the extracted php directory (which has a name something like php-5.2.3-Win32) to c:\php. Extract the PECL zipfile into c:\php\ext.



9. In the command prompt, type:
   

   cd c:\php
   mkdir upload
   mkdir session
   copy php.ini-recommended php.ini

   
   



10. Open php.ini in Notepad:
    
    
    
    1. There are many variables… the following are important. Notice that starting a line with a semicolon in the ini file comments it out.
       

       upload_tmp_dir="C:\php\upload"
       session.save_path="C:\php\session"
       cgi.force_redirect=0
       extension_dir ="C:\php\ext"
       display_errors = Off
       log_errors = On
       error_log = "C:\php\error_log"

       
       
    
    
    
    2. You might want to look at upload_max_filesize. I’ve set mine to 16M. I also set post_max_size = 16M.
    
    
    
    3. Enable the extensions you need by deleting the semicolon at the beginning of the line. These will depend on your application… I’m going to be using MySQL (which I’ve already installed) and Moodle (which I’ll install later). My list looks like the following:
       

       extension=php_bz2.dll
       extension=php_curl.dll
       extension=php_dba.dll
       extension=php_dbase.dll
       ;extension=php_exif.dll
       extension=php_fdf.dll
       extension=php_gd2.dll
       extension=php_gettext.dll
       ;extension=php_gmp.dll
       ;extension=php_ifx.dll
       ;extension=php_imap.dll
       ;extension=php_interbase.dll
       extension=php_ldap.dll
       extension=php_mbstring.dll
       extension=php_mcrypt.dll
       extension=php_mhash.dll
       extension=php_mime_magic.dll
       ;extension=php_ming.dll
       ;extension=php_msql.dll
       ;extension=php_mssql.dll
       extension=php_mysql.dll
       extension=php_mysqli.dll
       ;extension=php_oci8.dll
       extension=php_openssl.dll
       ;extension=php_pdo.dll
       ;extension=php_pdo_firebird.dll
       ;extension=php_pdo_mssql.dll
       ;extension=php_pdo_mysql.dll
       ;extension=php_pdo_oci.dll
       ;extension=php_pdo_oci8.dll
       ;extension=php_pdo_odbc.dll
       ;extension=php_pdo_pgsql.dll
       ;extension=php_pdo_sqlite.dll
       ;extension=php_pgsql.dll
       ;extension=php_pspell.dll
       extension=php_shmop.dll
       ;extension=php_snmp.dll
       extension=php_soap.dll
       extension=php_sockets.dll
       ;extension=php_sqlite.dll
       ;extension=php_sybase_ct.dll
       extension=php_tidy.dll
       extension=php_xmlrpc.dll
       extension=php_xsl.dll
       extension=php_zip.dll

       
       
    
    
    
    



11. Right-Click on Start > Computer. Choose “Properties”, then “Advanced”. Click on “Environment Variables”. Click on PATH, then Edit… and add “;C:\php;c:\php\ext” (without quotes) to the end of the variable.



12. Open your Apache configuration file (All Programs > Apache HTTP Server 2.2.x > Configure Apache Server > Edit the Apache httpd.conf Configuration File). Add the following lines:
    

    LoadModule php5_module "C:\php\php5apache2_2.dll"
    AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
    AcceptPathInfo on
    PHPIniDir "C:\php"

    
    
    

    Look for the DirectoryIndex line. Add ” index.php” (no quotes) to the end of that line.

    
    
    

    Save the file.

    
    



13. Create a file named test.php in your Apache htdocs directory, containing this text: <?php phpinfo(); ?>



14. Reboot your machine.



15. Browse to http://localhost/test.php. You should see tabulated information about your working PHP installation.

Cite from: http://senese.wordpress.com/2007/06/06/install-php-5-under-apache-22-and-windows-vista/

Gosh! It go to work!

Test an existing program done by my supervisor's undergraduate student. She did include the php environment setups in her folders. But install and uninstall for many times, nothing work well.

Ok, give them up. I will setup my own environment one by one. First download the needed software (they are all free ones). Install the apache server. One time, no service installed. Remove and reinstall, change the settings. The same result. Try again. No progress. Finding help on the net... No improvement.

Suddenly, there is a comment "Usually, install the apache on vista, you'd better use administrator account". But how? "Run the cmd.exe as administrator, then use msiexec /i **". Oh, it's a good way. Still error.

Mm, check what is wrong actually. The socket port can not be used by two. Ok, change the port. Ok, the service started! Whoop, finished! When I type the "localhost" in the address line, still no pages!

Gosh! Why! As I have changed the port to 8080, try to add it after localhost. Oh, yeah, "It works".

Really cost me a large amount of time!