Month: October 2010

PuTTY SSH

Having used PuTTY a lot over the past few years, I have often found it to have a few default settings that are rather annoying: Firstly, the colours – I never seem to be able to make out dark blue on black Change ‘ANSI Blue’ and ‘ANSI Bold Blue’ under Window > Colours Secondly, the… Continue reading PuTTY SSH

Installing mcrypt (PHP) on AWS Linux AMI

Update: with the update of PHP to v5.3.3, the amzn repository now includes php-mcrypt, rendering the steps below unnecessary. At the moment, the amzn repository has v5.3.2 of PHP (while the latest version is v5.3.3) – it also does not offer php-mcrypt. While in previous servers I have included a wider selection of repositories, I… Continue reading Installing mcrypt (PHP) on AWS Linux AMI

Installing APC on AWS Linux AMI

Update: Current versions of Amazon’s Linux AMI include the package php-pecl-apc (v3.1.9 – the same as the latest from PECL) in the repository. Using a package manager is usually preferable to using PECL- it will help you keep up to date, is centrally managed, and minimizes unnecessary dependencies (especially build tools). APC can be installed… Continue reading Installing APC on AWS Linux AMI

Coding with DNA

Alright, this one isn’t quite as exciting as the title suggests. I had the need of a quick script for a bit of biology – genetics. Pretty simple stuff really, but I thought I would post it anyway. Generating random sequences of DNA function randdna($len){ $length=intval($len); $bases=array(‘A’,’C’,’G’,’T’); $dna=””; for ($i=0; $i<$length;$i++){ $dna .=$bases[mt_rand(0,3)]; } return… Continue reading Coding with DNA