So no project work today – instead meeting up with spinning folk to finalise details for our trip to Bolzano next month. Because some folk will be off road-cycling before we spin, I thought it might be worthwhile everyone having everyone else’s cellphone numbers. The trip is being organised though FaceBook. It’s a worthwhile tool but there’s no way I’m giving it such contact details. So I suggested I set up a secure website on my domestic web-server, an old mac laptop.

So I dragged out the code from my web-design module and copied it across, intending to hack it down to a simple DB where people could enter names and numbers and view previously entered details, then set about ensuring PHP and MySQL were running. Not much work to find and install the latest versions of PHP and MySQL that will run under MacOS 10·4. Tiny bit of work (remembering how to use nano) to hack the apache config file to enable PHP. Even found GUI tools for MySQL. All fine and funky – except the mysql_connect command fails at the first fence. I know it’s deprecated, so I try mysqlreal_connect. This version of MySQL is too old to understand that command. Over and out!

And of course the simple solution, suggested by the lead spinnerette, is that she knows everyone’s cellphone numbers and can just email them around…

HUBRIS in large lumps.