After a lot of experimentation I finally have one mail server up and running with Postfix and Dovecot.

Besides the official documentation I usually try to read at least one book about the tools I’m working with. Safari led me to Postfix: The Definitive Guide by Kyle D. Dent. The book gives a good overview on how Postfix works and goes through several different configurations that you may be interested in implementing. The only problem is that the book is outdated (December 2003) – that’s last decade!

Everything seems to be running ok but running and maintaining a mail server is a lot of work. There are just so many details and configurations that can go wrong. Performance, Security, Authentication, Disk space, Spam, Anti-viruses… The list is huge. I’m looking forward to meeting the next sys admin to join our team.

I’m working on a project that offers domains and email accounts to the final client so it’s been a good experience to understand how mail and dns servers work. We have a lot work ahead!

I had to move one of the web services we offer in my regular job to its own server. It was a good change, we moved the entire app from a CentOS/cPanel box hosted on the Planet to an instance running Ubuntu on AWS.

CPanel is a really good product and saves you a lot of time but it is a pain in the butt if you are serving more than shared hosting accounts. If you have ever tried to automate tasks that handle virtual domains, email accounts and DNS entries you know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, I must admit that I’m having a blast wearing a sysadmin hat during part of my day. I’m learning a lot. I have this great excuse to read some books that were on my TO READ list for a long time.

One of these books is Pro DNS and Bind by Ron Aitchison. I have had this book on my desk for months but I finally finished reading it. The book gave me a nice introduction to DNS servers, resolvers, zone files, resource records and diagnostic tools. Highly recommended.

Nvidia released new drivers for Linux 64 (v. 190.53) so I took the chance to update and plug an old 19” monitor to my laptop. To enable TwinView I muddled through some documentation but finally made it work.

Here’s the code from xorg.conf that enables TwinView:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection
 
Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option	    "TwinView"
    Option	    "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP-0, CRT-0"
    Option	    "MetaModes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select, CRT-0: nvidia-auto-select"
    Option	    "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/path/edid/monitor1.bin; CRT-0:/path/edid/monitor2.bin"
    Option	    "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-0,CRT-0"
    Option	    "TwinViewOrientation" "DFP-0 LeftOf CRT-0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

I had to add the binary EDID files because the X server was unable to identify the correct resolution for my laptop: 1366×768. The second monitor is 1280×1024… now I’m really seduced by a 27” monitor.

However, I have one more motivation to keep writing. Besides my beloved wife who has the burden of proof reading my posts I have a reader. Yes, that is right. One reader. Hallo Rafa! Thanks for all the support buddy.

Now, back to the topic of this post. I was checking the draft list and noticed that I didn’t add Masters of Doom to the Books category on this blog. I read this book many years ago but ended up reading it again this past December. Great source of inspiration.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Masters of Doom is about John Carmack, John Romero, Id Software, Commander Keen, Wolfeinstein, Doom…

If you didn’t read it just do yourself a favor and order a copy of it!

The cleanup included my bookshelf. My mission was to dispose of as many books as possible. Boy, books are heavy to carry and physics does not apply when it is part of your luggage.

While running through the titles I started to compare dates of purchase against subjects. I have had this habit since I was a teen, every time I buy a book I sign and date it.

Anyway, my small library was another lead to an obvious issue: my quest to become a programmer is a mess.

Here’s one good example. I wanted to code games when I was a teen. After some research I concluded that C++ and DirectX were the right tools for the job. I decided to start with C++ and ordered “C++ How to Program” by Deitel. Back then, a small number of web pages would advise: “You have to learn C”. My mind discarded that advice as fast as I could read it. Why would I learn C? Isn’t C++ not only C but PLUS PLUS! It is the future. Yeah, I know you are laughing at me.

I read and tried all the examples from “C++ How to Program” before reading or writing any line of pure C code and felt ready to dive into some DirectX books and code the best tic-tac-toe ever!

Turns out my ambitious plan needed a detour. You have to go through some Windows programming before you can dive into DirectX (I don’t know how it works now a days). Gosh, 70 lines of C code just to print Hello World in the Win32 API world.

I can’t just copy and paste code so I ordered “Programming Windows” by Petzold to become familiar with Windows programming. BTW, Programming Windows is a great book — and I found a minor mistake in the text! (Erratum #5).

I read the book, tried the examples and the fact is: Win32 API is C Code.

Because of that I finally ordered the classic “The C programming language” book to fill this awful gap in my skill set. Comparing the dates of purchase I realized that I bought the C book 2 years after the C++ one. Sad.

I now remember that after going back and forth I finally achieved my goal. The best tic-tac-toe game ever written did compile and run without crashing. The euphoria lasted for almost 5 seconds!

Before writing my first line of code I was already humble and comfortable with the idea that it takes a lifetime to be a great developer. BUT, it took me a long time to have a better overview of the skills set you need to build in order to be a software developer.

It’s a matter of proper guidance.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a CS degree or guru souls willing to show you the way.

I bought another Sony Vaio but this time without a stupid keyboard. I opted for the VPCCW model because it offered an NVIDIA (GEFORCE 230M) graphics card. I was interested in the SR series but because of my bad experience in the past I didn’t want to deal with ATI.

And that is the irony. Installed Karmic and even wireless worked out of the box. Surprise! After enabling NVIDIA proprietary drivers (190.42) and rebooting my screen was black. Frustration.

After some time googling and reading NVIDIA documents I found out that I had to set xorg.conf to use a custom EDID.

Option "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP-0"
Option "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/path/to/bin/edid/SNY05FA.bin"

Everything is running smoothly now but I can’t stop thinking that this kind of problem is what makes linux desktop adoption harder. It’s just a matter of time though.

CakePHP

In my daily job we deal with tons of code written in the pre-framework era but I had a chance to experiment with CakePHP in the past months. I had a good time being involved in three side projects using the framework.

The documentation is good and written like a tutorial but some times you still need need to dive into the framework’s source code to get specific details about classes and methods.

Emacs PHP mode improved

I replaced php-mode for php-mode-improved. The improved version has fixed some bugs in from the previous version but it is sad to read:

;; This has been submitted to the php-mode maintainer, but I've not yet had a
;; response.


The (probably) most popular php-mode is abandoned.

Xdebug

I occasionally read Chromium’s tools written in Python and - as the newbie for life that I am  - I wasted a significant amount of time adding print and exit statements to the code.

It was time to learn how to use a Python debugger and make life easier. Enters pdb.

It didn’t take long to look for a similar tool for PHP: xdebug.

I just wonder why I didn’t try to learn these tools earlier.

PHPUnit

This was something I was excited to do. To move all the crude test scripts to a test framework as dictates industry’s best practices.

Some tests were written using SimpleTest but after a few grep and sed commands they all work with PHPUnit now.

PHPUnit’s documentation is better and development is active. SimpleTest is stuck in version 1.0.1 since April 2008.

Evaluating how you you learn is key to excel and achieve mastery in any form of art. Yes, I’m including software in the art category.

A good example to follow are musicians as they have in their curriculum a solid base on the matter. They learn not only how to play but how to study and practice. They have method.

Aprenticeship Patterns is a good book and the subject is fascinating. Probably most of the patterns are already part of your daily schedule, but reading the book is still a good opportunity to reflect on the process to hone in on your skills.

A few months ago I added to my schedule a Windows Day. Brand new world. I dove into Vista, ASP.NET, C#, IIS, MSSQL and Visual Studio one day per week (and occasionally weekends) for a few months.

I was excited because of the novelty. I read a few books on the subject and had  to play with it.

Here are some random thoughts about my experience.

Right on the first day I got frustrated using the mouse for simple tasks like moving and copying files around so I installed cygwin.  A difference between two worlds.

I learned later that there is a Windows option for the command line: Powershell. Although I didn’t try it the Wikipedia article gives me the impression that learning Powershell is probably a good investment for Windows developers.

Back to random thoughts.

I was then ready to try Visual Studio. It is amazing to try examples from books just dragging and dropping icons that build some correctly written snippet of code. I just doubt that experienced developers would follow that approach.

One problem I had with Visual Studio was trying to set the Emacs key bindings. Leaving the keyboard home row to reach keys like arrows, page down and page up is disturbing. I followed this post advice and installed Emacs Everywhere.

The next step was the database. Oh boy, choosing a MSSQL version is so damn confusing! I’m probably getting older and dumber but I couldn’t understand which option to download from the MS website. Installing MSSQL in Vista was quite painful, too. Had to follow some MS black magic recipes to get it running. Installation on Windows 7 Beta was a breeze though.

After setting up the database I went to the HTTP server. IIS is pretty straightforward. You can setup a working environment with just a few clicks.

Working environment ready and I started to follow the books’ examples. A few ASP.NET web forms later and I was ready to start learning C#.

Talking about computer languages is somehow a taboo so it should suffice to say that C# is verbose.

Well, a few months after my first Windows I’m back to a Linux side project but I’m glad that I took some time to get an overall idea about the ASP.NET world. It’s not for me. Once you go open source you never go back.

If you are only interested in building your client project it doesn’t really matter the platform you pick but it’s a disturbing feeling that you can’t build IIS or poke Visual Studio’s source code. There is this sense of being a powerless and passive consumer always trying to catch up every .NET update.

I just finished reading one more book from the O’Reilly learning series. Learning MySQL by Seyed M.M. (Saied) Tahaghoghi and Hugh Williams.

I picked this book up for two reasons:

1) I had never read an entire MySQL book until now and there is just no excuse for that.

2) It is easy to read and digest. Productive leisure.

I think I’m now ready for an advanced book on the topic

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