One purpose for getting myself a new laptop was to be able to continue working on the move – to be able to be working on a project at home, and without any extra effort to take that with me to work, or vice versa. Add to this the fact that I usually get lumbered with crap computers at work, being self-sufficient becomes a very attractive option. Therefore, I’ve set myself up running both PHP and MySQL on my PowerBook with the aim of doing just that.

As noted previously, configuring PHP and MySQL on Panther is an absolute breeze. One thing worthy of note, however, is that you don’t automatically get an alias for MySQL from the terminal – that is to say, you can’t just type mysql to run the monitor, you have to actually seek out the binary and run it directly. Not much fun if you’re as bad at remembering paths as me. Here’s how you add a shell alias on Panther.

The default shell is now bash. Hurrah! The bash resource script is called bashrc and lives in /etc/. Open the file up in emacs:

sudo emacs /etc/bashrc

and add these two lines:

alias mysql=’/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql’
alias mysqladmin=’/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin’

Note that the alias format is different from that used by tcsh. Close that terminal and open another. Now typing mysql should land you right in the monitor.

I also came across an excellent MySQL GUI app on VersionTracker. CocoaMySQL is still in beta but is a really neat, native OS X graphical front end for MySQL. It’s small, fast, and slick. The layout reminds me a little of PHPMyAdmin, but executed far more tidily.

I was kinda pissed off to find that my PowerBook didn’t come supplied with a copy of Apple’s Developer Tools. You can download it for free, but it’s still 600MB – and that’s a looong wait. I think I’ll have to download it and burn my own CD. Great.

On a completely different note, iLife’04 arrived in the mail today, thanks to Apple’s Up-to-Date program. I’ve had a quick play with GarageBand and it looks like a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to hooking up my guitars and messing around a bit. The only thing that worries be a little is that it could encourage novices to start hooking up daft instruments directly into their macs. I’m guessing I could blow my PowerBook to the other side of the room if I directly jacked one of my bass guitars into the line-level input. (Add to that the difference between US and Europe ‘line’ level …). How long before we see an Apple branded DI box, do you think?

I’ve also learned that GarageBand should, in fact, be pronounced as ‘gRAHgeband’, and not ‘garridge BAND’ as we might say in the UK. For reference, ‘garridge’ rhymes with marriage, and the emphasis is on the BAND. I’ve no idea why you guys state-side pronounce garage like it’s a French word, but it’s an American product so I’m happy to accept your pronunciation, as odd as it may be. :-)