1. Open the PDF that needs a signature with Preview.
2. Click the Annotate tab to display the annotate toolbar.
3. Select the Signature button.
4. If you do not have a signature loaded already, click Create Signature from Built-In iSight…. If you already have one loaded, skip to step 7
   
5. In the Signatures tab, click Create Signature…
6. Sign your name to a white piece of paper and hold it up to your iSight camera.
7. Click Accept when your signature is positioned correctly inside the preview area.
   
8. With the Signature button selected (it should be blue), click and drag where you want to place your signature.

Last time we talked about general Zend Server setup. This time, we will be going through setting up virtual hosts on your local machine. This again will involve Terminal.

This assumes you have Zend Server set up and running. If it is not, go here.

1. Open Terminal. Terminal can be found at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app

   You can also open it from Spotlight by typing “Terminal”

2. We are going to edit our httpd.conf file. In Terminal type:
   
sudo vi /usr/local/zend/apache2/conf/httpd.conf


   Enter your password if prompted

3. Use the up, down, left, right arrow keys to scroll down to where you see:
   
# Virtual hosts
#Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf


4. In Terminal press “i”. This will take you into edit mode to edit the file.

5. Remove the “#” before “Include”. It should look like this now:
   
# Virtual hosts
Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf


6. Press the escape key to exit out of edit mode. Press “:x” to save your changes.

7. Now we are going to edit our httpd-vhosts.conf file. In Terminal type:
   
sudo vi /usr/local/zend/apache2/conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf


   Enter your password when prompted

8. In Terminal press “i” to go into edit mode.

9. Use the up, down, left, right arrow keys to scroll down to where you see:
   
NameVirtualHost *:10088


   In the previous tutorial we change the port to 80. So now we have to change this line to read:
   
NameVirtualHost *:80


10. Let’s say you want to have a local virtual host for http://www.super-awesome.local that needs to be pointed at the /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Sites/super-awesome directory. We need to add the following to the httpd-vhosts.conf file:
    
<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Sites/super-awesome"
    ServerName www.super-awesome.local
    ServerAlias super-awesome.local
</VirtualHost>


    * Note: .local is just what I picked. You can change that to .dev or .blah or whatever you like. Try to stay away from common domain extensions like .com or .net. And, yes, you can end it with more than one extension like .foo.bar

11. Press the escape key to exit out of edit mode. Press “:x” to save your changes.

12. It’s probably a good idea to make sure we didn’t mess up syntax or spelling. In Terminal type:
    
sudo apachectl configtest
sudo apachectl graceful


    Enter your password if prompted

    If there are any errors they will be displayed to you. Repeat steps 10 and 11 as many times as needed.

13. Let’s go ahead and restart Zend Server so it can get the changes. In Terminal type:
    
sudo /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh restart


    Enter your password if prompted

14. Browse to either http://www.super-awesome.local or http://super-awesome.local and your site should display

At work we have a project to be built with Codeigniter sitting on a Linux machine but we wanted to use Microsoft SQL Server on a different machine as the database. Turns out, it’s not a simple as changing the database type in Codeigniter to “mssql” to get it up and running. If this is all you do, you get the dreaded white screen. You need a PHP extension to do it. Problem is, Microsoft only makes this PHP extension for Windows. There are a lot of tutorials out there on how to build the extension yourself on Mac or Linux machine (this site for example), but none seemed to work for me.

Instead of setting up a Windows virtual machine and being forced into developing that way, I decided to install Zend Server CE. Zend comes with a MSSQL extension, it just needs to be enabled.

This tutorial does include Terminal work. I am going to walk through step-by-step, so even if you are not comfortable with Terminal, you will be up and running with Zend Server CE in no time. The only requirement is you are running an Intel Mac OS X.

1. Download Zend Server CE. CE (Community Edition) is free.

2. Install Zend Server CE like you would any other application. You can optionally drop/drop Zend Controller.app into your applications directory if you want.

Once installed, in your applications directory, open ZendServer.app. This will open a browser window. Go through the three steps. Congratulations! You have Zend Server CE set up and running. But we aren’t done yet.

By default, the root folder of your Zend Server is at /usr/local/zend/htdocs. Since /usr is a hidden directory, it’s not easily accessible.

But first…

3. Open Terminal. Terminal can be found at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app

   You can also open it from Spotlight by typing “Terminal”

4. OS X comes with Apache already installed. We don’t want to use that version. We want to use the Zend Server version.

   In Terminal type:
   
sudo /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh stop

   To stop Zend Server. Then type:
   
sudo apachectl stop


   Enter your password if prompted

5. We need to move apachectl to a safe place, such as your home directory. In Terminal type:
   
cd /usr/sbin/
sudo mv apachectl /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/


6. Then create a symbolic link to Zend Server’s apachectl. In Terminal type:
   
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/apache2/bin/apachectl ./


7. Start Zend Server’s Apache. In Terminal type:
   
sudo apachectl start


   You should then see:
   
   
/usr/sbin/apachectl start [OK]


8. If you go to http://localhost/ in your browser, you will either get a forbidden or a 404 message. We’ll change that next.

9. Zend Studio’s Apache comes preconfigured to use port 10088. Let’s change this to port 80 like the default Apache port uses.

   Now we are getting into vi editing. I think this scares a lot of people. But don’t worry. It’s very simple.

   We are going to edit our httpd.conf file. In Terminal type:
   
sudo vi /usr/local/zend/apache2/conf/httpd.conf


   Enter your password when prompted

10. You are in vi edit mode so you won’t be able to type in Terminal like you normally would. Typing only gives you the the OS X bump sound. That’s normal. You can use the up, down, left, right arrow keys.

    Look for the line that says “Listen 10088″

    In Terminal, type “i” to go into edit mode to start editing the file. At the bottom of the Terminal window it will say “– INSERT –” to notify you that you are editing the file.

11. With your blinker over the “L” on “Listen”, type “#” to comment out that line

    Use the down arrow to go to the next line.

    Type:
    
Listen 80


12. Since we are already editing this file, we will go ahead and change our root directory since, as I mentioned earlier, the /usr directory is a hidden directory.

    Use the down arrow to scroll down to where it says
    
DocumentRoot "/usr/local/zend/apache2/htdocs"


    With your blinker over the “D” on “DocumentRoot”, type “#” to comment out that line

    Use the down arrow to go to the next line.

    Type:
    
DocumentRoot "/Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Sites"


    This is the default web root for OS X sites. This is a pretty good place to put out root as well.

13. Use the down arrow again to scroll down to where it says
    
<Directory "/usr/local/zend/apache2/htdocs">


    With your blinker over the “<”, type “#” to comment out that line

    Use the down arrow to go to the next line.

    Type:
    
<Directory "/Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Sites">


14. We are done editing this file. Now we need to save it. In Terminal, hit the escape key to edit out of editing mode. The “– INSERT –” at the bottom will go away.

    In Terminal again, type “:x”. This exits vi mode and saves what you changed

15. Restart apachectl type typing:
    
sudo apachectl restart


    Enter your password when prompted

16. If you go to http://localhost/ in your browser, you will see the default Mac OS X homepage now.

17. To configure Zend Framework, type:
    
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/share/ZendFramework/bin/zf.sh ./zf


18. To Configure Pear, type
    
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/bin/pear ./
sudo pear upgrade pear


19. Now we have to configure MySQL. In terminal type:
    
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/mysql/bin/mysql ./
sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/mysql/bin/mysqladmin ./


20. We have to edit some settings in my.cnf for MySQL, so we go back to vi. In Terminal, type:
    
sudo vi /usr/local/zend/mysql/data/my.cnf


    To edit the file, it is similar to what you did in step 10.

    Use the down arrow to scroll down to where it says:
    
socket = /usr/local/zend/mysql/tmp/mysql.sock


    With your blinker over the “s” on “socket”, type “#” to comment out that line

    Use the down arrow to go to the next line.

    Type:
    
socket = /tmp/mysql.sock


21. By default, the password that comes with Zend Server is blank. You can change this by removing the “#” next to “password” and then changing “you_password” to whatever you want. Make sure you remember what the password is though.

22. To save the file, it is similar to what you did in step 14.

23. Configure phpMyAdmin. Since we changed the web root for Apache, we will have to create a Directory entry and Alias for phpMyAdmin, since it exists somewhere else. To edit the httpd.conf file again, in Terminal type:
    
sudo vi /usr/local/zend/apache2/conf/httpd.conf


    Enter your password when prompted

24. To start editing the file, use similar steps from step 10.

    Somewhere in the file (I put it at the very end), type:
    
Alias /phpMyAdmin /usr/local/zend/share/phpmyadmin
<Directory "/usr/local/zend/share/phpmyadmin">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>


    * Hint: Yes, you can copy/paste this if you don’t want to type it all out yourself.

    To save the file, use similar steps from step 14.

25. Go ahead and restart Zend Server. In Terminal, type:
    sudo /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh restart

Where do I put the file for my website(s)?

Files will be places in /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Sites

Yes, of course you can create directories within that folder.

What is the URL for my site?

The root of your site is now at http://localhost/ If you have a directory within the /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Sites directory, the URL would become http://localhost/FOLDER_NAME

To configure Zend Server, you can get to it by going to http://localhost:10081/ZendServer/ or simply by opening ZendServer.app

phpMyAdmin is located at http://localhost/phpMyAdmin The default username is “zend” and the password is left blank. You can also use “root” as the username. Again, with no password.

How do I start/stop/restart Zend Server?

To start Zend Server, in Terminal type:

sudo /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh start


To stop Zend Server, in Terminal type:

sudo /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh stop


To restart Zend Server, in Terminal type:

sudo /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh restart


Uninstalling Zend Server

1. Open Terminal

2. Enter
   
sudo /usr/local/zend/bin/uninstall.sh


   This will:

   1. Stop all Zend Server processes
   2. Delete all Zend Server installed files
   3. Remove the ZendServer.app from /Applications
   4. Remove Zend users

3. It will ask for your password. Enter your password

4. It will ask you if you are sure you want to remove Zend Server. Type “yes” (without the double quotes)

5. It tells you it will a couple directories, including your MySQL databases. Type “cont” (without the double quotes) to continue

6. In your applications directory, drag Zend Controller.app to the trash (if it is installed)

1. Click on the Apple logo
2. Click on “More Info…”
3. When the System Profiler window opens, on the left side, click on “System”
4. On the right side there should be an area that says “64-bit Kernel and Extensions”

If it says “no,” you are running 32bit. It’s easy enough to fix.

Option A
Restart the computer, when it is booting up, hold down the 6 and the 4 keys on your keyboard. To verify is booted into 64bit, do the same steps as above.

Option B
This required some Terminal work as well as a restart. Inside Terminal, type
sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture x86_64
This will require you to restart before you can start using the 64bit kernel. To verify is booted into 64bit, do the same steps as above. In case you want to go back to 32bit, inside Terminal again, you would type
sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture i386
Once again, a restart is required.

The up side is that it gives you, give or take, a 30% increase in just about everything your computer does. But be careful. Some software and drivers aren’t ready for 64bit just yet.

I guess I never noticed it, but I have a lot of menu icons! In order from left to right is:

Adium
Waveboard
Tweetie
BetterTouchTool
Alfred
Dropbox
Google Notifier – Calendar
Google Notifier – GMail
Caffeine
MobileMe Sync
Time Machine
Bluetooth
Wireless
Audio/Volume
Time
Spotlight

Check out a screenshot of all of them on my desktop:

Now I get to go through and install all of the software and set up all of my preferences.

My home command center is almost complete!

Thank God I had renters insurance. For $7 a month, it’s almost dumb not to have it. It’s the price of eating at a fast food restaurant. Skip the fast food for one day out of the month and you just paid your renters insurance.

When I finally got the check from insurance, I went to replace my Macbook Pro with another Macbook Pro. No one seems to have any. Well, people have the 17″ but I wanted the 15″. So I have to hold off on get the Macbook Pro. So I started looking at computers to replace a Sony Vaio that was also taken. The only reason I use a PC is to test things in IE, so I wasn’t looking for anything fancy. Then it hit me. Why get a computer that I really won’t use much? I can always get another Mac. Install Windows on a virtual machine or Bootcamp it. This allows me to get a computer I want but still be able to test things in IE. So I got a Mac Mini.

For now it is in my bedroom because it is the only computer I have. When I am able to get another Macbook Pro, I’ll put the Mini in the living room and hook it up to the television. The Mini will by my entertainment computer with light IE testing. The Macbook Pro will be my primary computer.

[Update @8:00PM Feb 21, 2010] And a picture of the Mini on my desk.

I have to say the Magic Mouse is almost the best mouse I have ever had. I say almost because with both the Logitech mouse and Mighty Mouse, I had a way to do application Exposé without touching the keyboard. For most people, this isn’t a big deal. But I spend a lot of time on the computer. Shortcuts like that really help.

I’m pretty sure Apple is working on updating the Magic Muse driver to do it now, but in the mean time, you can use BetterTouchTool. I have it set right now to three finger click opens up Exposé. I can easily change it to a two, three, four, or five finger click, or tap, or swipe. It’s a pretty nice little program. If you gave a Magic Mouse, I recommend you try it out.

Even if you don’t have a Magic Mouse, you can still use it on multitouch touchpads on the Macbook and Macbook Pro.

[Update Jan. 11th, 2009] There is also MagicPrefs which looks like it does the same thing. I haven’t tried it because BTT is working great for me.

I removed it from the dock and put it back in thinking that would do the trick. It didn’t.

So I tried the official Windows fix and restarted. The icon was still in the dock at this time. That still didn’t fix the problem. So I removed the icon from the dock again and then put it back in the dock and it started showing up again.

I assume restarting the computer then adding the icon back in the dock solved the issue but I can’t be sure because the icon is displaying now and I don’t know how to make the ico transparent again.