Beneath the dark glass of the monitor glowed the faintest hint of green light. A little green square blinked in the corner like a pulsating heartbeat. The whine of cathodes was palpable.

About a dozen of us stared silently into the darkness of their own monitor, as if entering a trance. A voice from behind us broke the spell: “This is called the ‘cursor’.”

The room was long and narrow, the walls lined with computers. Everyone sat with their backs to each other; together yet alone. The only human interaction was through an occasional brush against the chair-back as the teacher slowly paced the room.

And thus we were introduced to the personal computer — sitting in front of us at almost half our size, returning its own perplexed and curious gaze.

It was probably an Apple IIe. The green phosphor screen, the raised keyboard, the giant floppy disk drives. I vividly remember the sound it made while reading the disc. It was the early 1990’s and I was about 10 years old. That particular model was nearing its end of life. But it would mark a beginning for mine.

Sometimes our trip to the computer lab involved playing a game as a small group. In retrospect, it was a team-building experience. We weighed the risks and rewards. We made decisions collectively. We shared successes and failures. And if it was Oregon Trail, we always failed.

One day our teacher presented us with an ambitious class project. We were to create our own book. Each student would come up with a short story and illustrate it themself. We experienced the entire publishing process: writing, editing and layout. When everyone’s story was finished, we waited for the books to be bound. On release day, everyone was presented their own copy and read their story in front of the class. What a sense of accomplishment!

Creative collaboration. It started in that little computer lab. It continues with every project I take on.

—Mark Chambers

Mark David Chambers
Submitted by Mark Chambers on

Satisfying Server Requirements of Common Drupal 7 Modules

Written by Mark Chambers on

These instructions were tested under Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS using PHP 5.6.

If you’re wondering how to upgrade to PHP 5.6 on Ubuntu 14.04.5 then read Step 2 of this article.

Advanced CSS/JS Aggregator

AdvAgg requires Apache’s mod_headers and mod_expires to be enabled. The following commands will accomplish that.

In a terminal run:

sudo a2enmod headers
sudo a2enmod expires
sudo service apache2 restart

That’s it!

Installing PECL

PECL is a repository for PHP extensions, some of which may be required by your Drupal modules. Simply run:

sudo apt-get -y install php5.6-dev make

Done. Now you’re ready to install PECL extensions.

Installing PECL uploadprogress for Drupal Core

Open a terminal and run the following commands:

1: Install the library

sudo pecl install uploadprogress

2: Add to PHP

Create an .ini file:

sudo vi /etc/php/5.6/mods-available/uploadprogress.ini

Add the following text:

extension=uploadprogress.so

Then run:

sudo phpenmod uploadprogress

3: Restart Apache

sudo service apache2 restart

Done.

Installing PECL runkit for Extended Path Aliases

This library is required to use the advanced features of Extended Path Alias.

Open a terminal and run the following commands:

1: Install the library

sudo pecl install runkit

2: Add to PHP

Create an .ini file:

sudo vi /etc/php/5.6/mods-available/runkit.ini

Add the following text:

extension=runkit.so

Then run:

sudo phpenmod runkit

3: Restart Apache

sudo service apache2 restart

Done.

Removing PECL, but not its libraries

Remove the dev package

sudo apt-get remove php5.6-dev

Clean up the dependencies

sudo apt-get autoremove

Done.

Source
MatruDEV, Antoine Solutions, Dmitry Zenovich