PHP on nginx with fastcgi-caching

Submitted by andri on

I have a little VPS that hosts my blog and other various small projects. With a recent nginx update, my configuration files stopped working and I had to cut fastcgi-caching from my setup. I spent about 2 hours searching for this, so I am putting it up here - in case anyone has uses for it.

This setup uses php5-fpm and nginx.

Tags: 

How I lost my love of programming and regained it

Submitted by andri on

As a kid in Iceland, I was always fascinated by all things technical. Be it light-switches at my grandmothers house or what is generally described as the idiot-box. I have always loved this stuff, and still do.

When I was eight years old, I discovered the delightful world of computers and in retrospect, many of my friends were handpicked, because they had interesting toys to play with. I spent all of the time I could playing and "messing" with computers. It started with computer games, but eventually I ran out of games for our Amstrad CPC 128k and had to resort to reading the computer manual to retype some of the programming examples in the back. I still remember the light-bulb-moment when I was at school and figured out what "IF" really meant through our English class. I created all sorts of simple menu programs with pixel graphics for our first family computer in BASIC, without having any idea of what I was doing was actually programming.

Tags: 

Modern PHP Development Links

Submitted by andri on

I started hacking around with PHP in 1998 but never really considered it development until I learned what I used to consider "superior languages". A decade later, PHP is going strong and I am actually employed at a company where we do a lot of PHP (my opinions are my own). I've been wanting to implement something smart for deploying PHP projects (like continuous-integration) and decided to compile a list of useful links here. Wouldn't really consider this an article, just a placeholder of links.

Tags: 

What I love about Gnome 3

Submitted by andri on

My Gnome 3 Desktop

There has been a lot written about Gnome 3 in the past half a year. People do not like change, and the fact that we now have Unity, Gnome 3 and KDE 4 leaves many people wanting their fucking old desktop back. I tried Unity for a few months, didn't really get used it. In this article, I would like to focus on the positive part of my Gnome Shell experience (with Ubuntu 11.10).

Tags: 

Icelandic Virtual Keyboard for Meego Harmattan

Submitted by andri on

Coming from a nation of 300.000 people has its downsides, like lack of keyboard support on various platforms. So, when I got my awesome Nokia N9, I wasn't all that surprised that there was no text input option for "Íslenska" or Icelandic. Fortunately, The Nokia N9 is mostly open source and the on screen keyboard uses Maliit. For those who like custom keyboards, they can check out MesInput.

I have created a virtual keyboard file for Icelandic and contributed it to the MesInput project (awaiting confirmation).

Until then, you can download the file from here:

Then place it into:

/home/user/.config/meego-keyboard/layouts

The file can be uploaded through the SDK (sftp/ssh) or through USB mass storage (untested).

Tags: 

Rant on Moblin, Meego and now Tizen

Submitted by andri on

I spend a great deal of time reading about new technologies. Usually, that leaves me excited with all the new cool upcoming stuff and occasionally I feel like developing on it. For a while, I have been a big fan of the Qt development framework. The API is clean, the IDE is nice and it also allows you to create rich applications in QML without much programming experience.

In the video above, the Nokia N9 is demonstrated. This UI, that seems to impress most people - would not be possible without Qt. Now, unfortunately Nokia's new CEO (fresh from Microsoft) decided that Meego was a burning platform and abandoned it. That left Meego in the hands of Intel, who said that "they were fully committed". Which, today, we found out was a lie.

Tags: 

Social Networks and the future

Submitted by andri on

I live abroad, disconnected from friends, ex co-workers and family so I try to use social tools to stay in touch. With the rise of Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and every other web 2.0 webpage on the Internet - you can be social everywhere. Now, the problem is simply to pick the right services and try to inform your friends. What is missing, is a way to be social with your contacts and not just with the company supplying this specific social service.

Tags: 

AJAX problems with jQuery and IE 7

Submitted by andri on

I spent the day debugging a specific Javascript error in Internet Explorer. It seemed to have problems with fetching a JSON data file through $.ajax.

For reference, the solution was to force IE to use ActiveX for xhr (found by Bjoggi at the jQuery forums):

$.ajaxSetup({
xhr: function()
{
if ($.browser.msie)
{
return new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
else
{
return new XMLHttpRequest();
}
}
});

Hope this helps anyone else - since searching for "ajax ie" results in a whole can of worms...

Tags: 

Site update

Submitted by andri on

It has been months since I've written anything here, so here is what has happened:

  • I went to Iceland as an intern for 4 months at Sprettur where I learned a whole bunch of stuff. I also got to attend a Test-Driven-Development and Agile Design courses with J.B. Rainsberger as a part of my job there.
  • I am finishing my studies here, so hopefully I will be looking for a job in February 2011.
  • I also vacationed in Iceland for 20 days with my girlfriend - it was very nice, I have pictures!
  • I went through the old articles from andrioid.net and andri.dk and posted the good ones here.
  • I have an iPad now, courtesy of my friends at Sprettur so I will probably dial down on my Apple bashing for a month or two...

Tags: 

Pages

Subscribe to Andrioid.net RSS