Back Office notepad

[mathmatix]

im basically trying to build a notepad for the employees inthe admin section..

so i decided i was just going to add a table to the prestashop database, insert the first note from mysql, and create a php form that would update and echo the note based on last employee input… however im getting a parse error that i dont understand… its in my $sql query itself but i dont know what it is…i get this msg
Parse error: parse error in C:\wamp\www\note2.php on line 18

and line 18 is

$sql = “UPDATE `prestashop`.`am_np` SET `note` = ‘$note’ WHERE `am_np`.`id` = 1 LIMIT 1;”;

here is the full code (this is only for the end page of the script, but i know the request functions are working because i can successfuly echo user input from previous page) i just cant get that user input to update into the database

<?php
$username = “root”;
$password = “mypassword”;
$hostname = “localhost”;

//connection to the database
$dbhandle = mysql_connect($hostname, $username, $password) or die(“Unable to connect to MySQL”);
echo “Connected to MySQL
“;

//select a database to work with
$selected = mysql_select_db(“prestashop”,$dbhandle) or die(“Could not select “);

$note = ‘_REQUEST[“note”];’

$sql = “UPDATE `prestashop`.`am_np` SET `note` = ‘$note’ WHERE `am_np`.`id` = 1 LIMIT 1;”;

mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error()); /
?>

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</html>

?>

ive also tried changing the $note to ‘”.$note’”, “’.$note.’”, “$note”, and every other stupid little variation…


i even broke up the line to see if the parse error moved, and it seems ive narrowed it down to the $sql variable itself, but when i change it to something else i get the same error =(