Start by executing this command:

cd /usr/share/vim && sudo vim vimrc

After entering your password press i to enter insertion mode and add the following lines after the line set backspace=2:

set showmatch           " automatically show matching brackets
set binary noeol        " do NOT put a carriage return at the end of the last line
set backspace=indent,eol,start  " make that backspace key work the way it should
set history=100         " keep 100 lines of history
set ruler               " show the cursor position
syntax on               " syntax highlighting
set hlsearch            " highlight the last searched term
filetype plugin on      " use the file type plugins

" When editing a file, always jump to the last cursor position
autocmd BufReadPost *
\ if ! exists("g:leave_my_cursor_position_alone") |
\ if line("'\"") > 0 && line ("'\"") < = line("$") |
\ exe "normal g'\"" |
\ endif |
\ endif

The lines above add syntax highlighting and a few other useful things. The line set binary noeol is very important for web developers. For example if you are programming in PHP and you leave a space outside the closing ?> it will cause http headers to be needlessly sent. That line prevents that from happening.

Well that's it if you press ESC then type :wq you will return to the terminal. Try editing some files again and the highlighting should be enabled.

Well anyway here are a few commands to configure a vim template system on UNIX (It should work on both OSX and Linux):

• Download the template system:

  curl -C - -O http://www.vim.org/scripts/download_script.php?src_id=3747

• Open VIM:

  sudo vim

• Source the file you have downloaded from within VIM by typing:

  :source ./download_script.php\?src_id=3747

• Now the VIM template system has been configured. The previous command should output the template directory so that you can create new templates, it differs depending on your OS.

That’s it if you need more info on how the system works you can visit the project homepage here.

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.

First you need to download and install the Java Development Kit (JDK) from Sun here. Then change directory to your workspace – where ever you want! In my case it was:

cd /home/conor/java

Then open up a new file named HelloWorld.java in your favourite text editor. In my case it was:

vim HelloWorld.java

Now we start the coding:

class HelloWorld{
  public static void main(String[] args){
    System.out.println("Hello World!");
  }
}

This is basically just a class that tells Java to output the words ‘Hello World! Now the code must be turned into machine code so that it is faster to run. To do that simply type:

javac HelloWorld.java

This creates a new file named HelloWorld.class which is written in machine code. If you open this file in your text editor all you will see is a load of gobledeegook. Now the application is ready to run. Type the following command to run it:

java HelloWorld

You should then see Hello World! written on your screen like this:

[conor@host java]$ java HelloWorld
Hello World!

Another one in the bag!

The reason for this is I am finally getting around to switching to Linux hosting! Oh I can’t wait because Windows has been shit. It hasn’t really caused a problem until now but I can’t get my CMS to work on Windows. I can’t advertise the CMS properly without a Demo. It’s all a vicious circle really.

Anyway it could be a few days until my sites are back up again. Until then I don’t know what your going to do – I recommend staying inside and keeping to your-self, staying low until it blows over. Sites affected are:

• Todhchai Promotions
• My Blog
• Furasta CMS
• Next Generation Designs
• MusicJam

If you want to blow of all your rage click here. Or show your love here.

1. I was sixteen on 19th September > Virgo (What a sign – a fucking  mermaid!). I am still in fifth year at school which i absolutely detest. In fact the only thing that is keeping me in there is the promise of College. From my perspective that is heaven! Parties all the time – and when there are no parties I will be studying for tests by Programming! What more could you want? I should probably mention that I have been in an all Irish school for my whole life and that I talk Irish at home. Native language gotta be done. Oh and just for the record my name, Conor Mac Aoidh is pronounced “Mac í” or “Mac e”.

2. I play the Drums in two bands > The Pot Smokin’ Pirates and The Dominican Affair. Guess which one I enjoy more? I started the drums when I was 13. Before that I played the bodhran (What a load of shite). I went to drum lessons for about a year then I tought myself. When I finished teaching myself I moved on to teaching other people. At the moment I am practicing for the local Panto. I have done it three times before, it is good crac on the night. Gotta hate the music though! The Pot Smokin’ Pirates where the first band I joined, or should I say formed! They were a school band but soon enough I discovered that school and rock music don’t go so well together! We used to practice in the lead singers garage. One day his older brother asked me to join his band ‘The Kamikaze Potato Men’. Thats when I really got to grips with the drums – I was playing with a band three years older than me! Eventually ‘The Kamikaze Potato Men’ got rid of the lead singer, found a new one and formed The Dominican Affair!

3. I am Oifigeach na hAirgeadais for Ógra Shinn Féin Muineacháin. I don’t want to delve to deeply into this because once you start me I can’t stop! Basically I support and am a member of Sinn Féin. I am in favor of a democratic-socialist, anti-neo-libiralist, egalitarian 32 county united Ireland. Make Partition History! 26 + 6 = 1.

4. Oh what else… I am half Scotish, half Irish and was born in England. I used to collect Warhammer! God I have to include that because it was not a minor thing in my life. For those of you who are familiar with the way it works, I had a 3,000 point Empire Army! That is pretty massive for a ten year old in fairness. The strange thing is that I used them for display. I only ever played a couple of times and found the games to complicated. My main concentration was actually painting the things. I used to paint them like a machine. I also had millions of nobles and all that I couldn’t use because I didn’t have enough points to incorporate them! Come to think of it my first army was High Elves. By the end of my Empire collection I had gotten pretty good at painting the models. Then I started with Bretonians. I had just enough of them to play – two core units and a general. I recently got rid of almost everything in my collection. I kept only a few things. My two best painted pieces – ‘The Green Night’ and a Celtos model which I made a cool base for. Also I have an old White Dwarf from the 80′s signed by the Eavy Metal Team. I might Ebay it! I think that I have enough to make a core unit and general army at the moment!

5. PHP. This tagged thing is directed towards the language users so I had better talk about it. I started learning HTML at the end of 2007 as part of a school transition year course. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first. Then by chance I got work expierence with the local web design company, webworks last summer. That is were i learned CSS and began on PHP. Not to soon after that I got hooked on the language and I love it! I am currently writing Furasta CMS, which will be in beta of it’s first “stable” version by the end of next week, hopefully! I am a linux user and have been since November! I started out with Mandriva One 2009 and then recently moved on to Fedora 10. I think that Linux bears a big role in the future of computers in general.

6. I can fight. With a sword I mean! I trained for Medieval Historical Re-enacting for too many years. I did all the shows where you dress up and people stare at you and ask you if they can look at your sword. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be really. It’s like any other physical sport. You do the same thing over and over and over untill you can do it in your sleep! Then finally once you have done it for a few years you dump the wooden swords and go on to metal! I have to say the proper equipment is pretty cool. It’s quite tough to fight with armour actually because it weighs a ton. I learned how to fight with a sword. shield, staff, pike, bow and arrow and claymore. I haven’t really done anything with it in the last year but there is talk of it starting again so you never know!

7. This is tough… Em… I am an atheist. I believe that believing in God is a completely personal thing and that it should have nothing what-so-ever to do with the state and especially the schools! I don’t have a problem with anyone else that believes in god I just hate the fact that so much trouble has been caused in this world because of religion. I was not baptised and brought up to make my own decision – and I have! It annoys me that my school gets massive “grants” from Catholic Associations and therefore it is a Catholic School. Not only that but the fact that I have to take time out of classes to go to mass four times a year. Basically I think that religion in schools should be eradicated, but the religion class should be kept. I think it is a good idea to discuss religions and to make people aware that there are much more religions out there than Catholicism and that they should make their own decision rather than blindly following the crowd.

Now onto the tagging. I am bound by the rules to tag seven other people. The problem is that I only know one PHP developer and that is the person who tagged me! So for now I will leave this part. But I will update it once I meet other enthusiasts, so I’m not breaking the rules!

Rules

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter

Mandriva was the first Linux OS that I ever used and I suppose it appealed to me because of it being a very user

friendly distro. Actually when I first stumbled upon it I was extatic. I was stuned with KDE 4.1 and its amazing ability to allow you to customise everything. But eventually I realised that I didn’t want to customise everything and that some things are better left to the distro designers! Mandriva, for me, was kind of a bridge into the Linux world. I learned a hell of a lot while using it and I am now quite familiar with the Konsole and all it’s various

commands. But after a while I did feel like I wanted more, more Linux that is – and less Windows. Because at the end of the day Mandriva is designed for Windows users and in my opinion it is a bit Windows like.

Anyway I better start talking about Fedora. I went of to a faulty start with this distro. I had previously tried Fedora 9 on my laptop but it rejected my graphics card and I decided to wait for the release of Fedora 10. I know it has been released for a couple of months at this stage but I was waiting for a packaged release. I got this last week in the Linux Format magazine. Unfortunately Fedora 10 also rejected my graphics card. But not to worry the local Linux guru was happy to help! Once I got the graphics sorted I had free reign!

The CD I got with the Linux Format magazine had everything! I distinctly remember in Mandriva having to download ever

ything that you would expect to have with a distro, packages that a hell of a lot of programs depend on, such as glibc. Not the case this time though thank god because my internet connection would probably get stressed and stop working or something…. The CD gave me a pre-installed web server! Brilliant because frankly I could not have been arsed learning how to set up Apache vhosts again! It also came with a wide range of extra programs such as GIMP 2.6 (I tried to get this for Mandriva but urpmi was still stuck on 2.4!), Transmission Bit Torrent (usefull for downloading music) and rythmbox music player. I was surprised at the fact that it didn’t include Konqueror – I thought that all distros did. It could be a KDE program.

Another choice that I had to face was KDE or GNOME? As I earlier emphasised Mandriva One 2009 came with KDE 4.1, which was the first stable release of KDE 4, and Mandriva was the first distro to be released with it. It certainly had a lot to live up to after KDE 3, not that I would know – it’s a bit before my time! I had enjoyed KDE and I wanted to take it with me when I made the switch to Fedora. But i still haven’t actually got round to setting it up and for the moment I am stuck with GNOME 2.24. That is not a bad thing though because it is ever so slowly growing on me. I am at the point now where I think that I might just not bother setting up KDE…

So Fedora 10. All round it’s impressive. The last release I toyed with was Fedora 8 and it has certainly changed for the better since then! The new graphically animated boot proccess is much better than the old jumpy thing and the desktop photo of a blue star is very interesting. For those of you that reject it’s animated state you are wrong! I spent ten minutes yesterday staring at that screen and I am certain that it moves! However slightly and smoothly, it does move!. Thats about it. Fedora 10 gets top marks by me, great distro! Hopefully the team can keep up with their twice a year releases because I for one can’t wait ’till Fedora 11.

Oh and be expecting some Fedora Magik in the form of USB!

When I got home I stuck in the CD, not expecting much since I was disapointed with both Fedora and Ubuntu. Oh My God it is brilliant!! Mandriva is the best operating system that I have ever stumbled upon! Absolutly brilliant! It combines all the good visual aspects of Microsoft’s Window Vista and the good old back end of Linux! The graphical ‘flowing’ widgets and the availability to completly customise everything visually creates a great user friendly (and more importandly Windows user friendly) interface.

So I set about getting rid of Fedora. I only had 12 GB hard drive space reserved for Fedora but I was so impressed by Mandriva that I managed to clear 34 GB for it! The OS is now installed and almost fully functional.

I have to say I am surprised that a Linux distribution has finally achieved what I have been waiting for. The things that I want in Linux are finally available, which are:

• The graphical, ease of use, user friendly aspects of a Windows distribution. Mandriva in my opinion has achieved this, and to my great suprise it has out-done any Windows OS that I have ever used in this section in particular.
• No Viruses. This has allways been available – but without the other points it means nothing.
• The ability to code properly, I have learned the hard way that this isn’t possible on Windows.
• Oh and everything is easy! Like MySQL for example, i found it impossible to set it up on Windows without using PHP MyAdmin.

Over all i think Mandriva is brilliant and I cant wait to get it working properly. The only one problem that I did find with it is that my 02 3G modem won’t work properly on it. I have found some articles to hack the config files, which I intent to do as soon as I find out how to log in as root!!! oh it will all work eventually…

Just to note I got The Strats website up at http://www.thestrats.com please check it out and give me a review here or preferably at http://www.webdesignforum.com/5904-review-my-new-site.html#post22842