A few weeks ago I purchased these Ruby Programming language related domain names:-

• primeruby.com
• prime-ruby.com
• rubyprime.com
• ruby-prime.com

Not precisely sure what I'm going to do with them though obviously something related to Ruby. I prefer the hyphened name though I'm covering all bases by also purchasing the non-hyphened domain names.

I'm open to suggestions.

What a waste of a few hours. Finally, I decided to upgrade my personal blogging site, running stuff, from Drupal 5.x to Drupal 6.x. The actual figures are from Drupal 5.15 to Drupal 6.10. I stripped the site back to the bare basics, removed all contributed modules that weren't absolutely necessary and back to the default theme, Garland. According to the update status, for version 5.x, everything was up to date.

I'm patting myself on the back in one regard in that I did a backup prior to upgrading.

Anyway, what a waste of time. Heaps and heaps of database errors, just too many to casually attempt to fix. I don't know how people survive without requisite database skills as now this has turned into a major upgrade, if I'm willing to upgrade after all. It's a problem I could overcome but it's now a decision whether I could be bothered putting the time into it.

Thank god for backups. Restoring the backup went through smoothly, within about 5 minutes, maybe a tad longer, my site is as it was hours earlier.

If anyone has some suggestions to ease the pain a little I'd love to hear from you. In my mind, I'm thinking that maybe the backup should go from Drupal 5.15 to Drupal 6.1 and then do all the necessary updates to the current version of 6.10.

Yet again, another change of focus. I've had a go at C++, was already familiar with various dialects of basic and now I'm looking at Java from the ground up. That is, starting with the console side of things. I still want to learn a cross platform GUI system and I reckon Java is the way to go.

Even though I spent many months studying C++ (at the console level) that time has not been wasted. Programming techniques or how problems are solved do not change between programming languages it's only the syntax that changes. In the case of Java there is very little syntax change and therefore I'm finding the transition relatively easy.

Change of focus as regards IT Self Study. I haven't touched C++ since the start of April, this year, but have every intention of finishing the book. No doubt I will have to cover some old ground just to come up to speed again, if anything, that's the frustrating part.

The question is why I haven't continued with the self-study. At the start of April I got involved with creating this site and then shortly after that decided to update my Realbasic application that converts Wordpress Blogs to Drupal. The whole point I was learing C++, leading towards the GUI aspect, is that I could do away with Realbasic and not be held ransom to their pricing structure.

The change comes as of a few hours ago I ordered my copy of PureBasic. This software package is attractively priced and better still, the price covers all future upgrades. Better still, yet again, I have access to the Windows, Linux, Mac and Amiga versions.

This version of basic is implemented slightly differently than Realbasic and Visual Basic so there will be a slight incline of a learning curve to come to grips with the basics. From what I've read thus far it shouldn't be that difficult.

I've also got Ruby waiting in the wings but I've got a feeling it'll be waiting there for a while.

As of tomorrow, I'll go searching for some tutorials, get use to some of the basics and then, maybe within a week, start to the process of converting my Realbasic Wordpress to Drupal converter to Purebasic. That process will be part of the learning experience, so it will take time. That's not to say that I won't stop any Realbasic development. If a bug is found, I'll fix it and release a new version.

This falls into the category of 'Note to self'. I use Google Applications (Gmail system) to administer my email but using my domain name "essaytee.com" From that account I can send and receive email from my other domains.

Lately, my email activity died a little, wasn't getting as many as usual and definitely none from my running website (http://superjacent.net). I receive emails when comments are left. Well, comments have been left and yet no emails. Checked the site out, everything was configured as it should be.

As a last resort I logged into cpanel and walla, all email for superjacent.net was being diverted to the blackhole and no forwarding in place. Initially I swore that I set things up correctly the first time.

Back to my email account and I listed all emails pertinent to superjacent.net and the last one received was on 14 May, six days ago. Then it dawned on me. Six days ago I fiddled with superjacent.net domain, had to delete it and re-add so as I could point it to another document root. What I was doing was putting the running site back to the root of superjacent.net rather than a sub-directory. Obviously, when I deleted the domain name it also deleted the email settings as well.

Something to remember for next time.

Not much content published over the last week or so and the reason being is that I've changed hosting companies. Previously I was with Servage.net but it became apparent that I had to upgrade to a quicker system. I'm now hosted by Drupal Value Hosting.

It's no easy process changing hosting companies and I see it as two distinct phases:

1. Choosing a new host; and
2. Process of changing over.

For both of these topics I'm going to write up some short articles explaining the processes I adopted.

This site should now run consistently quicker than before and hopefully with not as many outages.

A zero week this week, not even a casual glance at the book (C++ Primer Plus Fifth Edition by Stephen Prata). In fact the book is still open, bookmark in place, at page 771.

For this week (week #20), my entire time was devoted to getting this web site up and running (in C++ speak should that be *this???). I'd been procrastinating for weeks and so decided to just get the site up and running. It went live on Wednesday 2 April, 2008.

So now the site is live I can get back to the reason why I created (*this) it in the first place; to assist me with my study.

Commenced Chapter 14 of C++ Primer Plus Fifth Edition by Stephen Prata. This chapter dealing with class templates.

Not that many hours devoted to study this week. Other time devoted to establishing a new website to cater for C++ study and other technical IT issues.

Completed Chapter 13 from the book, C++ Primer Plus Fifth Edition, by Stephen Prata. Studying this chapter highlighted an obscure compiler/linker error which most likely only occurs when progressively compiling. By that I mean, write some code, compile and check, write some code compile and check and so on. It was not pointed out by the text of the chapter. It caused me some grief, required some extra research but finally nutted it out. As a result I wrote an article/paper relating to this feature which I'll publish when my new site is up and running.

A little more study time than the previous week, the six hours evenly spread over four days. Continued with Chapter 13, Class Inheritance - Review Questions and Programming Exercises. One programming exercise remaining.

That's it.