It all started on Friday as we came back from the pub. I was describing how we've been, twice, on Neil Bauman's Geek Cruises but never been asked to talk or lecture, even in a "lightning session" on them. A little wistfully, maybe, as I'm a "wannabe" - I would love to get up and deliver a talk just as I do here in the UK for a living. We came to the conclusion that Neil's not asked me because (a) I'm not a big name in his customer's world which is USAcentric and (b) I've not written published a book. It could also be that we've not been pushy enough - HEY - NEIL ....

I've written a lot, and I still write a lot. You'll find nearly 1000 articles in this series, about a half of which are technical. You'll find over 1000 pages of technical detail in our course notes which we hand out when you come and learn with us and you'll find over 1000 technical postings in our user forum.

So why have I not been published? Well - it's not because I've not been asked (please excuse the double negative) and it's not because people don't read the stuff I write - they do. On a typical weekday, around 300 read my page telling them about the difference between a JOIN and a LEFT JOIN, a further 300 learn about using PHP and MySQL to upload, store and serve images, and even on subjects as obscure as dynamic mapping hits will be into three figures. No - the real reason is that I've simply never felt I have the time to put a complete book together, and proof it, and get it through all the formal publication stages, that I've always felt there are plenty of competing books out there, and that I've always felt that having published a book on our technologies it would only be a matter of weeks before I felt it was out of date or that I had something I wanted to add.

However, we did come to the conclusion on Friday that I have a book, constantly updated and already written, and it's here on this website. The LAMP Cookbook. A number of longer articles on Linux, Apache httpd, MySQL, Perl and PHP in our solutions centre, then a large number of tips and techniques on each of the topics - PHP, Perl, MySQL and Apache httpd and Linux all indexed under category and subcategory.

A quick Google search doesn't - YET - reveal a "LAMP Cookbook" page, so perhaps there's an opportunity there. But then most of my readers here will know that for every 10 good ideas we have, we only have time to bring one of them through to fruition. So perhaps I'll leave you, the reader of this musing, to pick at the pages on this site as my virtual book ... you'll find that each of the topics (such as PHP) goes down into subtopics (such as arrays in PHP, and within there you'll find numerous source code examples such as this one and a whole load of short tips under unlikely names such as breaking bread


Neil, I might be available for a week sometime next summer ...
(written 2006-11-13, updated 2009-01-01)

Commentator	says ...
Randal L. Schwartz:	Maybe if you stopped playing with MySQL, and started writing about PostgreSQL, you'd get tapped for a speaking role? :) Anyway, by the time you're on the cruise, our schedules are already pretty full. And prior to that, you have to be a big enough name that you'll draw people worldwide. It's purely about business and marketing, and clearly not personal. (comment added 2006-12-18 04:47:14)
Graham Ellis:	Understood, Randal ... possible answer (a) confirmed ;-) Good to see you here ... hope to see more of you! -- Graham (comment added 2006-12-21 07:07:19)

S151 - Introduction to SQL and MySQL
  [84] MySQL - nuggets - (2004-10-11)
  [85] Present and future MySQL - (2004-10-12)
  [175] Worthwhile - (2005-01-11)
  [382] Central London Courses - Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl, MySQL - (2005-07-18)
  [444] Database or Progamming - which to learn first? - (2005-09-13)
  [515] MySQL - an FAQ - (2005-12-03)
  [591] Key facts - SQL and MySQL - (2006-02-04)
  [691] Testing you Perl / PHP / MySQL / Tcl knowledge - (2006-04-19)
  [918] Databases needn't be frightening, hard or expensive - (2006-11-08)
  [2134] Oracle take over Sun who had taken over MySQL - (2009-04-21)
  [2561] The future of MySQL - (2010-01-03)
  [2567] Extra MySQL course dates (2 day course, UK) - (2010-01-08)
  [2786] Factory methods and SqLite in use in a Python teaching example - (2010-05-29)
  [3269] Files or Databases? MySQL, SQLite, or Oracle? - (2011-04-28)
  [3928] Storing your intermediate data - what format should you you choose? - (2012-11-20)

P201 - Perl - Introduction
  [25] Release numbers - (2004-08-23)
  [317] Programming languages - a comparison - (2005-05-20)
  [577] Learning to program in Perl or PHP - (2006-01-26)
  [594] Twice is a co-incidence and three times is a pattern - (2006-02-07)
  [604] Perl - multiprocess applications - (2006-02-13)
  [629] Choosing the right language - (2006-03-01)
  [743] How to debug a Perl program - (2006-06-04)
  [846] Is Perl being replaced by PHP and Python? - (2006-08-27)
  [1717] Q - Should I use Perl or Python? - (2008-07-23)
  [1753] Perl v PHP, choosing the right language - (2008-08-14)
  [1852] Perl and Blackberries - (2008-10-23)
  [2070] Converting to Perl - the sort of programs you will write - (2009-03-08)
  [2812] What is Perl? - (2010-06-15)
  [2832] Are you learning Perl? Some more examples for you! - (2010-06-27)

H101 - Introduction to PHP
  [48] PHP - onwards and upwards - (2004-09-14)
  [55] Evening classes to learn PHP - (2004-09-19)
  [93] Case Sensitive? - (2004-10-19)
  [124] PHP v Java - (2004-11-20)
  [132] Portrait of the author - (2004-11-27)
  [135] Too many Perls - (2004-11-30)
  [341] Happy Birthday, PHP - (2005-06-09)
  [380] Bridging to the customer requirement - (2005-07-16)
  [433] FTP - how to make the right transfers - (2005-09-01)
  [624] It's REALLY easy to add a little PHP - (2006-02-26)
  [646] PHP - London course, Melksham Course, Evening course - (2006-03-14)
  [712] Why reinvent the wheel - (2006-05-06)
  [789] Hot answers in PHP - (2006-07-02)
  [795] Remember a site's non-technical issues too - (2006-07-07)
  [917] Syntax checking in PHP - (2006-11-07)
  [949] Sludge off the mountain, and Python and PHP - (2006-11-27)
  [1050] The HTML++ Metalanguage - (2007-01-22)
  [1198] From Web to Web 2 - (2007-05-21)
  [1958] PHP - Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end ... - (2008-12-23)
  [2097] PHP Course - for hobby / club / charity users. - (2009-03-22)
  [3025] Learning to Program ... in PHP. Course examples. - (2010-11-01)
  [4118] We not only teach PHP and Python - we teach good PHP and Python Practice! - (2013-06-18)
  [4621] The power of scripting - (2016-01-12)

G901 - Well House Consultants - Talks and lectures
  [62] Technical Open House - (2004-09-25)
  [99] Should we call it 'Geekmas'? - (2004-10-25)
  [128] Technical Weekend / Geekmas - (2004-11-23)
  [134] Geekmas - a brief review - (2004-11-29)
  [247] Extreme training - (2005-03-16)
  [310] Just in time - the talk is writ - (2005-05-13)
  [1101] Mushroom Curry and Perl Courses - (2007-03-07)
  [1242] Speaking at St. Catherine's College, Oxford University - (2007-06-24)
  [1419] National Speaker - now to get the talk ready - (2007-11-02)
  [1422] Wiltshire - speaker / after dinner talker offer - (2007-11-05)
  [1459] Interactive training, and advancing techniques further - (2007-12-05)
  [3221] How long is a speech? - (2011-03-29)
  [3351] Research and development with the help of your tutor or guide - (2011-07-09)
  [3834] Geekmas 2012 - celebrating open source languages such as Perl, PHP and Python - (2012-08-11)
  [4284] Talk and walk to promote train service - Melksham Carnival - (2014-07-11)

G208 - Well House Consultants - Library
  [167] Upgrade to the Library - (2005-01-03)
  [669] The best Open Source library in town - (2006-04-04)
  [2943] Our facilities to support Well House Consultants Courses - (2010-09-02)
  [3259] Our library in Melksham - (2011-04-23)
  [3440] Research is exciting. But should routine be automated? - (2011-09-14)

A601 - Web Application Deployment - Apache httpd - an overview
  [576] Why run two different web servers - (2006-01-25)
  [659] Web Application Components - (2006-03-28)
  [1265] Apache, Tomcat, Jakarta, httpd, web server - what are they? - (2007-07-13)
  [1593] Keep the client experience easy - single server contact point - (2008-03-27)
  [1897] Keeping on an even keel - (2008-11-21)
  [2016] Apache httpd and Apache Tomcat miscellany - (2009-01-30)
  [2038] Sticky Sessions with mod_jk (httpd to Tomcat) - (2009-02-12)
  [2054] Tuning httpd / the supermarket checkout comparison - (2009-02-26)
  [2063] Internal Dummy Connections on Apache httpd - (2009-03-02)
  [2077] Why put Apache httpd in front of Apache Tomcat - (2009-03-12)
  [2186] An FAQ on the Apache httpd and Apache Tomcat web servers, and on using them together - (2009-05-17)
  [4064] Apache httpd - a robust, open source web server - (2013-04-16)
  [4434] Public training courses - upcoming dates - (2015-02-21)

A100 - Web Application Deployment - The Components of a Web-Based Solution
  [34] Linux / LAMP course - (2004-08-31)
  [49] Business is the predominant user of Tomcat, Perl and Tcl - (2004-09-15)
  [166] Acronyms - (2005-01-02)
  [367] Ajax - (2005-07-03)
  [442] How far away is that server? - (2005-09-10)
  [510] Dynamic Web presence - next generation web site - (2005-11-29)
  [673] Helicopter views and tartans - (2006-04-06)
  [1176] A pu that got me into trouble - (2007-05-04)
  [1496] PHP / Web 2 logging - (2008-01-06)
  [2099] Should I maintain the programming code on my own website? - (2009-03-23)
  [2896] LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP - install, configure, administer - (2010-07-30)
  [3891] The components of an Apache httpd / Tomcat / MySQL stack and what each does - (2012-10-13)

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