First you need to download the swatch package from here.

If you haven’t done it before you will have to set up cpan and it’s a lengthy process. Run cpan in the terminal. It’s safe to say yes to all the options. Once it’s installed you need to add some perl modules. In the cpan prompt add the following modules:

install Date::Calc
install Date::Format
install Date::Manip
install File::Tail

That’s the perl part finished anyway. Now change to the swatch directory and compile:

perl Makefile.pl
make
make install

Ok swatch should be installed now. So set up the configuration file: vim ~/.swatchrc Add the following lines to the file:

watchfor /PHP Parse error|PHP Fatal error/
bell 3

Save and return to the command line. Now to add swatch (and also optionally apache and mysql) as a startup item do as follows. Create a new directory named StartUpItems, then create the following files so your setup should look like this:

StartUpItems
StartUpItems/StartUpItems (a file with no extention)
StartUpItems/StartupParameters.plist

Now add the following contents to StartupParameters.plist:

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
< !DOCTYPE plist SYSTEM "file://localhost/System/Library/DTDs/PropertyList.dtd">

    
        Description
        Various Startup commands including Swatch, Apache and MySQL.

        OrderPreference
        Late

        Provides
        
                Starts up Swatch, Apache and MySQL.
        
    

That’s just a file required by OS X to recognise the startup item, don’t worry to much about it. Now to the StartUpCommands file which is a bash script:

#!/bin/bash
. /etc/rc.common

StartService(){
        ConsoleMessage "Starting Apache, MySQL and Swatch"
        apachectl start
        /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server start
        /opt/local/bin/swatch --daemon --config-file=/Users/conormacaoidh/.swatchrc --tail-file=/var/log/php/php-error_log --pid-file=/var/run/swatch-httpd-errors.pid
}

StopService(){
        ConsoleMessage "Stopping Apache, MySQL and Swatch"
        PID=`cat /var/run/swatch-httpd-errors.pid`
        kill -9 $PID
        apachectl stop
        /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server stop
}

RestartService(){
        RunService stop
        RunService start
}

RunService "$1"

The file

/etc/rc.common

is provided by apple and makes the process a lot easier, though it is not needed. The lines in StartService and StopService do the opposite of each other but are very similar. You may need to change the apache and mysql start/stop commands according to your own setup. If you are using MAMP this file will start apache and mysql:

/Applications/MAMP/bin/start.sh

As for the swatch line you will obviously have to change the config file location and the php error log location to what’s appropriate on your machine.

And that’s it really. Then copy the items to the correct directory for OS X to recognise them:

sudo cp -R StartUpCommands /Library/StartUpItems

It is vital that you change the permissions or else the startup item simply won’t be executed:

sudo chown -R root /Library/StartUpItems/StartUpCommands
sudo chgrp -R wheel /Library/StartUpItems/StartUpCommands
sudo chmod -R 755 /Library/StartUpItems/StartUpCommands

That’s it. You can test the configuration by running SystemStarter -n -D which will emulate what happens when the computer starts, it is useful for de-bugging.

So restart you computer, load a php file with an error in it and your machine will beep thrice!

The program source is below. You should execute the program from the command line giving the with and height of the square you wish to draw, for example:

java Squares 4x4

And the code:

import java.lang.String;
import java.util.regex.*;

public class Squares{
        public int dimensions[];

        public Squares(String[] args){
                if(args.length==1){
                        Pattern form=Pattern.compile("^\\S+x\\S+$");
                        Matcher fit=form.matcher(args[0]);
                        if(fit.matches()){
                                try{
                                        String[] dims=args[0].split("x");
                                        int width=Integer.parseInt(dims[0]);
                                        int height=Integer.parseInt(dims[1]);
                                        this.dimensions=new int[] {width,height};
                                }
                                catch(NumberFormatException e){
                                        System.err.println("Argument must be a string, width by height, in the form 6x6");
                                        System.exit(1);
                                }
                        }
                        else{
                                System.out.println("Argument must be a string, width by height, in the form 6x6");
                                System.exit(1);
                        }
                }
                else{
                        System.err.println("Please supply an argument, which must be a string, width by height, in the form 6x6");
                        System.exit(0);
                }
        }

        public String draw(){
                int i;
                int z;
                int width=this.dimensions[0];
                int height=this.dimensions[1];
                String square="";

                for(i=0;i<height ;i++){
                        for(z=0;z<width;z++){
                                if((i==0||i==height-1)&&(z==0||z==width-1))
                                        square+="+";
                                else if(z==0||z==width-1)
                                        square+="|";
                                else if((i==0||i==height-1))
                                        square+="-";
                                else
                                        square+=" ";
                        }
                        square+="\n";
                }

                return square;
        }

        public static void main(String[] args){
                Squares square=new Squares(args);
                String draw=square.draw();
                System.out.println(draw);
        }
}

Using the fare table write a program that calculates the fares and test if it is correct. Upload your .java or your Scratch file. A template file for java will be provided. (Hint, only the boundary values needs to be tested. The fare table is also presented in the slides. The compile command for java should be “javac TaxiRide.java”)

Fare table
Distance (km)	Cost (€)
>50	30
50-100	25, plus 9 for each km > 50
100 – 2000	190, plus 8 for each km > 100
> 2000	1800

It wasn’t the hardest task. The only thing that confused me was the Java switch syntax. In PHP you can have conditions in a switch statement such as:

<?php
switch($num){
        case ($num<10):
                // blah
        break;
        case ($num<100):
                // blah
        break;
        default:
                //blah
?>

I couldn’t get Java to accept anything other than a value for the variable bring switched. So I did it the old-fashioned way! My code is below…

public class TaxiRide{
        public int distance=0;

        public TaxiRide(String arg){
                try{
                        int distance=Integer.parseInt(arg);
                        this.distance=distance;
                }
                catch(NumberFormatException e){
                        System.err.println("Arguement must be an integer representing the distance traveled");
                        System.exit(1);
                }
        }

        public int calculateFare(){
                int distance=this.distance;
                int fare=0;
                int i=0;
                if(distance<50){
                        return 30;
                }
                if(distance%lt;100){
                        fare=25;
                        distance-=50;
                        for(i=0;i<distance;i++){
                                fare+=9;
                        }
                        return fare;
                }
                if(distance<2000){
                        fare=190;
                        distance-=100;
                        for(i=0;i<distance;i++){
                                fare+=8;
                        }
                        return fare;
                }
                return 1800;
        }

        public static void main(String[] args){
                TaxiRide taxiRide = new TaxiRide(args[0]);
                int fare=taxiRide.calculateFare();
                System.out.println("The fare is: "+fare+" euro for traveling "+taxiRide.distance+"kM\n Thank you\n");
        }
}

I feel i am learning a lot from this course. Lately I have been experimenting in a few different languages. I added a bit to the Scratch Linux installer, written in Perl, so that it added an icon in the applications menu during installation. I’ve also been messing around with bash, trying to automate some of my most common commands… was thinking of writing a small bash script that backed up my data when my external hard drive is plugged in, similar to Time Machine on OSX.

This weeks Bonus Task is to solve the First Problem using Java:
“If we list all the natural numbers below 10 that are multiples of 3
or 5, we * get 3, 5, 6 and 9. The sum of these multiples is 23.

Find the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000.”

In the code below, I have achieved this objective and also expanded on it. My program allows you to pass on two multiples and a max integer value to the program for which to calculate the results. You can execute:

java Multiples 3 5 1000

That command will find the sum of multiples of 3 and 5 below 1000, as stated in the task. You can also change the values to calculate different sums. The code for Multiples.java is below:

/*
 * Developer:   Conor Mac Aoidh
 * Homepage:    http://blog.macaoidh.name/2009/11/21/java-project-euler-multiples/
 */

public class Multiples{
        public static void main(String[] args){
                Multiples multiples=new Multiples();
                int one=0;
                int two=0;
                int max=0;
                if(args.length==3){
                        try{
                                one=Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
                                two=Integer.parseInt(args[1]);
                                max=Integer.parseInt(args[2]);
                        }
                        catch(NumberFormatException e){
                                System.err.println("Argument must be an integer");
                                System.exit(1);
                        }
                }
                else
                        System.out.println("You must supply integers in the format:\n multiple_one multiple_two max_integer");

                int sum=multiples.sum(one,two,max);

                System.out.println("Find the sum of all the multiples of "+one+" or "+two+" below "+max);
                System.out.println("Sum:"+sum);
        }

        public int sum(int one,int two,int max){
                int i=0;
                int sum=0;
                for(i=0;i<max ;i++){
                        if(i % one==0)
                                sum=sum+i;
                        if(i % two==0)
                                sum=sum+i;
                }
                return sum;
        }
}

Simple as that!

First you need to import some of the java libraries that we will be using:

import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;

Then add the class, Popup. Make sure to name the file Popup.java

public class Popup{
private JFrame frame=new JFrame("Hello!");
private JPanel panel=new JPanel();
private JButton button=new JButton("Say Hello");
private JLabel label=new JLabel("Click the button to say hello...",SwingConstants.CENTER);
private ButtonListener buttonListener=new ButtonListener();

What that actually means is create a new instance of JFrame, JPanel, JButton and JLabel and store them in the frame,panel, button and label variables. As for the ButtonListener, we will deal with that later. Now we will deal with the launchFrame function which does what it says on the tin – launches the frame! Basically it just connects all of the pieces of information stored into the variables above and displays them together.

public void launchFrame(){
int height=400, width=600;
frame.setSize(width,height);
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

Above we create two new integers which store the width and height of our frame. The next line sets the variables to the frame size. The final line tells the Java application to close when the window, or JFrame, is closed. Now that we have the configuration out of the way we can move on to adding the variables to the frame.

frame.getContentPane().add(label,BorderLayout.CENTER);
panel.add(button);
frame.getContentPane().add(panel,BorderLayout.WEST);
button.addActionListener(buttonListener);
frame.setVisible(true);
}

The code above adds the label to the frame, then adds the button to the panel and then the panel to the frame. Once again disregard the button.addAction.. line for now. The final line simply sets the frame to visible so we can see it.

Now that we have the frame settled, we need to add our essential main function to start up the execution:

public static void main(String args[]){
Popup popup=new Popup();
popup.launchFrame();
}
}

This code basically creates an instance of our class, Popup and then executes the function launchFrame which we have created in that class.

That’s the guts of it, but now we need to talk about these lines:

private ButtonListener buttonListener=new ButtonListener();

 public void launchFrame(){
....
button.addActionListener(buttonListener);

Basically we have previously created a button, but these lines define what happens when the button is pressed. The second line of code tells the machine to listen out for the clicking of the button, and when that happens to execute the variable buttonListener. We have created the variable buttonListener, which creates a new instance of the ButtonListener class which we have yet to create.

That is the next step, to create that class. Create a new file called ButtonListener.java and add this code:

import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;

public class ButtonListener implements ActionListener{

The first four lines import the libraries that we are using. The final line is important. It states that our class, ButtonListener is implementing the ActionListener class. Below is the content of our new class:

private JFrame pressed=new JFrame("Hello World!");

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent actionEvent){

First, we create a new JFrame for our popup just like we did in the other file. The function actionPerformed is a function from the ActionListener class that we are implementing. The parameters for the function are predefined so we need them. The rest of the code is very similar to the previous code so I won’t explain it in depth. Basically it just configures the new frame, adds the label and then displays it:

int height=160, width=200;
pressed.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
JLabel pressedtext=new JLabel("Hello World!",SwingConstants.CENTER);
pressed.getContentPane().add(pressedtext,BorderLayout.CENTER);
pressed.setSize(width,height);
pressed.setVisible(true);
}

Save that file and then compile both files by executing:

javac ButtonListener.java Popup.java

Now if you run the program you should see a nice visual dialogue:

java Popup

You can download a jar archive of the program here.

The full code is below. Popup.java:

import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;

public class Popup{
        private JFrame frame=new JFrame("Hello!");
        private JPanel panel=new JPanel();
        private JButton button=new JButton("Say Hello");
        private JLabel label=new JLabel("Click the button to say hello...",SwingConstants.CENTER);
        private ButtonListener buttonListener=new ButtonListener();

        public void launchFrame(){
                int height=400, width=600;
                frame.setSize(width,height);
                frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
                frame.getContentPane().add(label,BorderLayout.CENTER);
                panel.add(button);
                frame.getContentPane().add(panel,BorderLayout.WEST);
                button.addActionListener(buttonListener);
                frame.setVisible(true);
        }

        public static void main(String args[]){
                Popup popup=new Popup();
                popup.launchFrame();
        }
}

ButtonListener.java:

import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;

public class ButtonListener implements ActionListener{
        private JFrame pressed=new JFrame("Hello World!");

        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent actionEvent){
                int height=160, width=200;
                pressed.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
                JLabel pressedtext=new JLabel("Hello World!",SwingConstants.CENTER);
                pressed.getContentPane().add(pressedtext,BorderLayout.CENTER);
                pressed.setSize(width,height);
                pressed.setVisible(true);
        }

}

Capture the Flag Part 3

This time I have deviated from the rules a wee bit. The red player is controlled by the CPU, while the user controls the blue player. Once again the objective is to capture the red flag and return it to your blue base. If you bump into a player who has a flag then flag gets returned to it’s base.

The players, and flags have three random starting positions each. I have re-written this example from scratch, not using any of the code from part one or two. I am happy with the code this time, and have done my best to make it effective.

The red player has two modes, aggressive and defensive. When the game starts the red player attempts to capture the flag and return it to it’s red base automatically. If at any point the blue player acquires his flag the red player will go into defensive mode and attempt to recover his flag.

To throw a spanner in the works I have added a BOOST and an obstacle. The boost can gradually makes the player who absorbs it smaller to increase evasive skills. It also makes the player a lot faster. The obstacle has two modes. If you bump into it the wrong way, you will simply bump off it. If you follow the arrows through the obstacle with your player then you will receive a big speed bonus. Both these items will prove vital in winning against the red player, who moves faster than the blue one.

Controls

Up Key – Move Up
Down Key – Move Down
Left Key – Move Left
Right Key – Move Right

Learn more about this project

The whole course centers around the use of Java, I’m not sure yet if we are going to be using anything else. We haven’t actually even started with Java yet, but we are using this program called Scratch to program our Java for us! I wouldn’t say that it is the Dream-weaver of Java, far from it. In fact I think that it is a great method of getting into Java. It has a set of preconfigured code which you can arrange into blocks, which then run – quite similar to the source of Java actually except simplified. It also eliminates the need for compiling.

Last week I went to my first “lecture” which was good enough, but I learned something valuable that day; computer hardware is not the road that I want to go down! I didn’t really enjoy the hardware aspect of the day but when it came to the Scratch lessons I was flying! For our first assignment we had to write a game in Scratch, which is essentially it’s own unique programing language. The game is called “Capture the Flag”. I was actually flat out all week and didn’t get a chance to start work on it until today, which is coincidentally the deadline for it’s completion! I spent about three hours making the game, here’s the manual and the game:

Capture The Flag

Overview
Capture the flag is a simple two player game which involves stealing the flag from the opposite colours corner.

Controls
Blue Player
Up Arrow Key = Move Up
Down Arrow Key = Move Down
Left Arrow Key = Move Left
Right Arrow Key = Move Right

Red Player
W Key = Move Up
S Key = Move Down
A Key = Move Left
D Key = Move Right

Rules
To gain a point a player must capture the opposite colour flag and return it to their base (the starting point).

If a player is in possession of a flag and his opponent touches him the flag is returned to it’s base and the player to his base.

To win a player must gain three points.

Faults
The one fault with the game is that, at least on my computer, when one player is using the keyboard to move the other player cannot move simultaneously. Although this is a fault it does also make the game a bit more interesting because the players have to fight even to move!

Learn more about this project

Anyway to celebrate the birthday of my Blog I decided to do it up a wee bit. I added a nice wee sidebar to my theme, which I am actually thinking of releasing at some stage in the near future. Also I added a new download manager to http://files.macaoidh.name . It is very useful; it keeps track of how many people are downloading what. Hopefully in the future it will give me an idea of what people that view my blog like and don’t like. I will actually have to go over all my previous posts and make sure that the download links are correct considering there was a big change in the link format.

The only real reason I wrote the thing is because someone has commissioned me to do something similar, starting next week. But the commissioned work will be a bit more complete and stuff. So feel free to try and hack my system. I don’t want to find faults when I’m finished writing it and then have to go back… The manager also serves as a very useful tool for me. I have included an admin area in which I can log in, upload files and choose to store them, make them available for download or even to download + password protect them! This feature will no doubt come in handy, I like to think of it as my personal, non-user-information-gathering, version of Google Docs!

What else has been happening recently… ooh I am in the process of making/releasing an album with The Dominican Affair. It is called Stealing the Ceiling. We have our last mixing session this weekend and hope to have it available on piratebay towards the end of October! It will also be available to purchase or download at http://www.holygrailrecords.com

Just thought I’d mention that 6th year is terribly shit. I can manage to squeze about 2 hours of programing in thrice a week. Also I am doing an Introduction to Computer Science Programing course in UCD over the next few months just to prepare me for college and to make sure that I actually want to study Computer Science! It will be good craic to learn Java at that course; I plan to make a facebook application/game when I have learned Java and base it in Monaghan.

Oghgbjkc damn! I just realised that I still haven’t renewed my macaoidh.name subscription! Better get to it… three days left…..

Dynamic Search Plugin

The dynamic search plugin enables you to search different sections of your website dynamically. You can choose between searching Site Wide or a selection of categories. You can add catagories in the admin area. A catagory must be a pagename and the plugin will search that page and all sub pages. The plugin also keeps a record of the most popular searches and displays a link to them on the main search page.

The entire plugin is written in both PHP and jQuery. The PHP end acts as a backup for the javascript end. It also allows you to use your own search form to display results from this plugin, as I have done on the MMC site.

Download | View Live

Mailing List Plugin

This is a plugin that I released a while ago but I have made a few changes recently. Previously there was PHP form validation which replaced the form itself if you made a mistake. The problem with that was, depending on the setup of your website, it might not work layout wise. Thats why I have replaced it with a nice jQuery alert, similar to the one I am using on Furasta. The changes aren’t large enough to release a new version but I have updated the SVN and supplied a new download link.

Download | View Live

News Plugin

I wrote this plugin trying my best to make it compatible with the Dynamic Search plugin. If you want to create a news page then you just choose news as the page type. To add a new news item you simply create a new subpage of the news page. If you look at the News page in the frontend it will show a summary of all the news items. It is a very simple plugin which has no database, only 4 files and features pagated results. You can also search the News section easily using the Dynamic Search plugin.

Download | View Live

I also did quite a lot of work on a Music Store plugin which works similar to the iTunes Store. The plugin is not live yet but it will be soon and in the end I decided not to release it, for the moment anyway, because it gets very complicated when dealing with paypal access details. If anyone wants a copy for it, at a price, I can tailor it for your exact needs.

<?php
class user{
var $id;
var $name='';
var $username='';
var $email='';

function __construct($id){
$this->id=$id;
}
function about($t){
if($this->$t!=”) return $this->$t;
$q=dbRow(‘select ‘.$t.’ from users where id=”‘.$this->id.’”‘);
$this->$t=$q[$t];
return $this->$t;
}
}
?>

You will obviously have to adjust this to suit your database setup. It also requires the following function:

function dbRow($q){
$s=mysql_query($q);
$r=mysql_fetch_assoc($s);
return $r;
}

As you can probably see this example simply echos database information. The main benefit of the class is it will never make the same query twice. Once you ask for the username it is stored within the class so if you ask for it again in the same page it doesn’t have to query the database again. You could look at it as a type of internal page caching. Also it is incredibly easy to use. All you need to do is:

$u=new user($id);
echo 'Query Database: '.$u->about('name');
echo '<br/> From Memory: '.$u->about('name');

Easy as that!