Going through this file Install PHP, mysql, phpMyAdmin on linux I had a few issues with some mysql and phpMyAdmin installation. Only that these details were not mentioned in the link there.

Additional sources thst would help the phpMyAdmin installation:

The Documenation.txt / Documentation.html file present in the phpMyAdmin folder.
It lets you set up a password for the root user and also lets you know on how to grant permissions to additional users that you create.

Once you create a new user you can log out of the root account on the system and login as ordinary user of the system and enter "mysql -u username -u" and press enter on the terminal.

1. Creation of the virtual machine
- using vmware, I mainly used most of the defaults for creating new virtual machine, only changing the OS to be installed to specify Suse Linux and not allocating 8Gb on the hard drive.

2.) Installing Suse 10.1 on the VM
- obtained the cds to install via a mirror site and put them locally at /groups/linux/suse/suse.mirrors.tds.net/pub/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/iso
-steps to install were pretty straightforward, only needed to pay attention to when to install the next cd.
-set up a user name along with the root user
-I did not install many of the online software updates for Suse 10.1, instead will install them on a as need basis.

The MPI boot camp was a well designed and thought provoking seminar for me. It not only introduced me to the world of parallel programming but also showed how MPI was one among the approaches to solve the parallel computing program.

It cleared the myth that more processors on a computer would make a program run faster. A program has to be tailored for it to make use of all the processors on the machine that it is being run on. It also gave enough boost to explore the world of parallel computing with MPI on my own. I think this tutorial would surely serve as a great start for the Distributed and Parallel Computing course I am likely to take the next semester.

The Python programming language is increasingly becoming the language of choice to those programmers that require ease of coding and readability over speed and expressiveness. Knowing this I was curious why programmers in a High Performance Computing environment were giving a boot camp in how to program in Python. My previous experience with Python consisted of writing a couple of programs that were to perform some complex bioinformatics algorithms. Scripting languages such as Perl and Python are common in the field of bioinformatics so I was informed that it would be a good way to program. Unbeknown to me when beginning to code in python, one of our programs was to be a brute force algorithm (one with many orders of magnitude) and one that I learned would take my python program about two hours to run. That same algorithm written in java was compiled and ran in about 3 minutes, quite a difference. However, the java program contained about three times the amount of lines of code, making it much harder to read, and most likely, much longer to code. This tradeoff of run/compile time and coding time was exactly why the HPC guys chose Python for some of there mid level programs.

Mike Gancarz proves with many examples and illustrations how the Unix philosophy has brought about changes in the world. He packs the entire power of Unix in a few principles and says these are the ground rules to be a good Unix programmer.

There were a few interesting sections which need special mention. He compares a software to a human system and says that it has a youth, mature and old age. This part gives a clear overview into the software industry and I feel is the highlight of the book. It gets you near to practicality. He also explains why some bad decisions are taken in the software development industry. What is the thought process behind them and proves why are those practices wrong. And also illustrates how the unix principles fit aptly in those places.

The caption of the article Web 2.0 sounded to me as something related to new model of web development but it turned out that I was completely wrong and the author starts off with the same too.

The author suggests web is no more to be called a world of connected computers. Its a medium people are in today and if a standard has to flourish here then it better relate as closely as possible to its people. He implicitly states people are as important to the web as the web is to the people. And suggests that a standard developed with this in mind will always flourish and is the way to the future.

Gancarz finishes his book by explaining the ten "lesser tenets" to the UNIX philosophy. These are those philosophies that are not universally agreed upon and are often seen as moot. I thought some of these were very interesting, such as 'look for the 90 percent solution,' where he basically says that you can deliberately ignore those aspects of a problem that are costly, time-consuming, or difficult to implement. Your solution thus has a better "bang-for-the-buck" in implementation costs, and carries the attitude of "if someone needs this capability bad enough, they can do it themselves." Yet not all tenets were as worthwhile in my mind as this. He says to 'use lower case and keep it short' when typing any text in UNIX. It has been my general practice to adhere to the 'keep it short' part of this tenet. Terseness is highly valuable, especially with the piping abilities of the UNIX command line, were some commands may get pretty lengthy. But I say if someone wants to capitalize, capitalize. He explained that lower-case letters are generally easier to read. I disagree, I believe some words/phrases are easier to read if some of the letters (not just at random) are capitalized. But again, that's just a personal preference.

"Don't be evil." It's a seemingly simple concept. I would even go as far as to say that the majority of people in this country abide by this concept. It also just so happens to be a motto of Google. Does that mean that Google came to be one of the biggest companies in the U.S. by not being evil? Well, I am not sure, but they are definitely getting a lot of help from Web 2.0 based technologies. If you have heard of the phrase 'Web 2.0' but aren't sure what it means, don't be alarmed, you are not alone. There is no clear-cut definition for the phrase but it can be summarized by a few general characteristics. Mainly, it has the basic concept of a "network as a platform," meaning users are delivered and allowed to use the application entirely through a web browser. The users own the data on those sites and are able to exercise control over that data. It has architecture that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it. And finally, it has rich user interface and may have some type of social networking aspects.

Reading on through the remaining six dogmatic tenets, there was a gradual shift in his tenets, moving from those ideas that all developers can incorporate into their practice, to ideas more specific to developers in a UNIX environment. Which, I suppose, is somewhat needed, otherwise the book would be called "The General Development for any Environment Philosophy." So as I have yet to actually develop in the UNIX environment, I cannot say "yes you right, that is what you should do." Instead I see it more of a jump-start to programming in UNIX. I have always wondered how different my earliest programs would be (as far as structure, portability, etc.) if I had written them knowing everything I know now. It was very much a "learn as you go" process and therefore I likely spent more time coding and troubleshooting than I should have. But for me and other developers who have yet to work in a UNIX environment, we can read this book first and have more of a "learn, and then go" approach to programming in UNIX.

The reading has a been a delightful experience as it presents the vague history of the develpoment of Unix throwing light on the more important 'simple goals' of the operating system and the principles in the minds of the people who developed it. It shows the easy ideas that became important granules in the software development.

An interesting part was the 'Small is beautiful' section. It shows the potential advantage of splitting up heavier work into smaller counterparts and how this methodology could be more powerful by making the work less complex and more flexible. I quiet like the idea and agree with most of it but would like to add a few comments.