Well!!

After a bunch of tinkering and troubleshooting here and there, and looking under the hood, and sticking my hands in places they probably shouldn’t go, it seems I’ve finally fixed the NextGEN Gallery problem…
…somehow. 

I say ‘somehow’ because I’m not exactly sure what finally fixed the problem.  I know that the last thing I tried was disabling all the plugins, then re-activating them all one at a time, as a suggested course of action by a random support thread.  Prior to that I went code-hunting in the various plugin files to see if I could spot anything amiss but didn’t really change much, if anything at all.

In between that I also disabled and installed/activated some plugins as some of the more observant visitors would probably have noticed by now.

I *do* know that the Less (is More) plugin was interfering with the way the Visual/HTML views were displayed in v2.7’s post editor, and once I disabled that the editor worked perfectly.

But anyways, I’m glad it all works properly now.  It means I can concentrate wholly on improving the site and adding more content, instead of hunting down silly bugs.

That’s all for now.

So, after repeated automated email messages from my webhost which stated dire consequences for not heeding their advice, I finally got around to updating to WordPress to version 2.7.
After having backed up my entire site I went through the entire process following the instructions provided by the WP documentation: deleting folders, replacing files, and editing a couple here and there as necessary. Everything seemed to go ok until I tried firing it up again.

ERROR…

To cut a long story short, after a little Google and WP Forums sleuthing, I was informed that I must’ve missed uploading a couple of files. So I went through the whole upload process again and voila, all was well again and I proceeded to update the site’s database and get the site back in running order.

Back in the day I used to have a little more help and direction when dealing with WordPress issues, but these days I’m pretty much learning to fly solo. Not an altogether negative experience, but it has it’s learning curve. Besides, I’m pretty cluey and resourceful, and I enjoy the odd puzzle now and then… although, not the frustration that comes with it.

Anyways, I got everything running smoothly again, except my front page preview images were all screwy and low res. So I went to the NextGEN Gallery settings and lo and behold, I had to update the plugin. So I did. After that rigmarole, my preview images don’t show at all. :glare: The image links work OK, as they display the ALT text, but the images have gone AWOL, and it seems to be directly related to the NGGallery.
And that’s where I’m at now.

I’ve done some sleuthing and searching for answers but so far have found none, but it seems to be that some sites have problems after the upgrade since I’m not the only one who’s encountered this.
I’ll keep looking around and posting on forums, emailing people and what-not until I get it fixed, I guess.

In the meantime, please bear with me while I get this sorted or find some other alternative.

WPAU

Coincidentally, during my search for answers I came across something that might make future upgrades a little easier. The WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin..

According to the site this plugin “automatically upgrades your wordpress version to the latest files provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.”

It looks to be fairly straight forward and by all accounts seems to do the job so I kinda look forward to trying it out for the next upgrade.

Now I’m off to work….

Phew…! 

It’s been a while since I last posted on here, hasn’t it?

Well, I got somewhat discouraged at WordPress and some other stuff and the headaches it was giving me affected my creativity but I think I’ve managed to get that all worked out now.  In addition, my sister’s family came to stay with us for a while so the house was a somewhat busy (and noisy!) there for a while.  ;P  My younger brother also graced us with his presence, so it was somewhat of a family get-together.

And on top of that, I’ve been working on some icons for the 2008 GUI Championships.

Shutter Reloaded Headaches

Basically, what was happening was that the way I was using the Shutter Reloaded plugin for WordPress to display image previews on one of my posts was causing some major drama and the post just wouldn’t save after a certain number of either characters or perhaps images were shown in the post.  So I had to troubleshoot for a while, but I think I finally resolved it with a little help (yup, you guessed it.. Steph saves the day again ). 

It seems that what I was doing was adding way too many characters or something and it made the post choke or some such so it wouldn’t even save.  Once I’d cleaned out the superfluous code however, things got a little better and I was able to continue with the post, which coincidentally, needs only a final proofread and I’ll be able to post it. 

The Gonzalez family visit

My sister Carol and her husband, their son and newest daughter flew from Mt. Isa in Queensland to grace us with their presence.  During their visit, they lodged in our humble abode and managed to displace me from my usually quiet study, in which I would normally be found up until midnight on most nights… except while they were here. 

Anyways, I got to meet my newest niece and see my youngest nephew also.  Lily (aka. Lily-Bean) was cute, (mostly) quiet and smiley little thing.  She has a habit of breaking out in a huge but cute toothless grin at the slightest provocation.

We pretty much all took advantage of their company while they were here, though “some” (no names given ) managed to monopolize their time more than others.

Lil’ bro also visits

Juan also stopped by for a visit.  He stayed at dad’s and was pretty much visible around town and at our various family functions. He’s a bit dorky but it’s always good to have him around.

Got you that time, didn’t I, Juan? 

Icons for the GUI Championships

Aside from all that, I’ve been working on an icon package which I will submit to compete in the 2008 GUI Championships.

The bi-annual event, “is an inter-website contest in which top graphic designers from around the world compete for $15,000 in cash and prizes.”

So I’ve been hard at work coming up with nice looking-concepts for each icon and getting them drawn and endlessly tweaking them in order to bring them to life so you can enjoy them on your desktops with a little help from IconPackager.

So here’s a small taste of what’s in store.  Bear in mind that these are only small previews of individual icons.

Site Update

After all the drama with the posts, I also finally managed to get the site updated to the latest version of WordPress.  The process was a bit involved and time-consuming but it all seems to have gone off without a hitch and as a bonus I have a complete backup of my site just in case something awful should happen. 

So that’s about all for now.  Keep an eye out for part 1 of the logo tutorial mentioned earlier coming out sometime tomorrow (finally!  I know, i know…   )

So the Dell technician came around today to take a look at my lappy. He took it apart, poked and prodded here and there and then called me over.

As it turns out, it seems like it really had nothing to do with the video card. He showed me the CPU’s exhaust/heatsink which had a thick layer of dust which was preventing the entry/escape of hot air. I was amazed at how much dust it collected. It fully looked like a bit of fur coating or something.

Anyways, after he showed me, he said that though that’s was the most likely cause of the overheating problem, he would still replace the parts since he had them here anyways. I was like, “Yeah sure, go ahead!” I mean why not, right?

I actually wish I’d brought my camera to work so I could’ve taken some happy snaps of my lappy all spread out over the desk, and the dust-burger on the heatsink, but alas, I left my camera at home since I’m waiting for the case I purchased to arrive.

So anyways, he went about his task of installing the new components and putting everything back together again, then once it was all solid again went on to test it by turning it on and running it for about 15-20 minutes. He then made me sign the receipt and went on about his day.

All in all I think it went fairly well. I’ve yet to encounter any CPU slowdowns like the type I encountered earlier, and the keyboard is still a little bit hotter than I’d like it, but it doesn’t seem to be causing any major problems.

There’s a lot to be said about Dell tech support for their professionalism and prompt resolution of the problem. About 10 minutes after the tech left, I received a call from the Dell helpdesk asking if all had gone satisfactorily. I replied that I was still making sure that everything was a-ok and the lady politely stated that if all was ok she would be closing the support ticket but that I could call again if anything else happened. That’s great service.
It should be stated that if I hadn’t had a current warranty on this baby, my wallet would be in a whole world of hurt right now.

For all the negative press and horror stories I’ve read about Dell, I’ve never had a bad support experience with them and because of that I always recommend to anyone considering purchasing any kind of equipment from them to pay a little extra and get an extended warranty. It’s definitely well worth it.

Good on you Dell. Another satisfied customer.

So the other day a dude I work with, Sam, told me I should up the refresh rate on the 2nd monitor I have set up at work which I connect my Dell Inspiron 9400 17” laptop to. So, being the curious geeky always-wanting-better performance customizer that I am, I happily obliged. And all seemed well…

A few days later things started going south. After a few hours of normal use, the CPU use jumped up to 100% and didn’t show any signs of subsiding.

I fiddled around as best I could on a system running at top speed (which ironically slows it down to a crawl), killing processes and frantically trying to ascertain what could possibly be causing such slowdown but alas, I could find no reason or rhyme.
Looking through the Task Manager I could find no process using anywhere near 100% of the CPU so I figured it must have been something else. I even downloaded Process Explorer from Microsoft TechNet, which provides detailed information on processes and other information, but could still find no culprit!

After several days of this kind of behaviour from my computer and hours spent on troubleshooting, I remembered that I upped the refresh rate on the monitor and figured that could be a possible cause.
Turning down the refresh rate helped, but the PC continued to experience slowdowns. I got the bright idea to turn off the dual monitor support and that stopped the CPU drain completely. So I’m left to conclude that the video card on my little beast is dying.

Luckily, a quick review of my Dell warranty plan revealed that I still have over 6 months warranty left! So I emailed them today telling them about my problem. Hopefully, they’ll come around and get it fixed this week so I can do some actual work.

UPDATE: So I called Dell Tech Support today since they hadn’t gotten back to me yet and explained the problem in more detail to the thickly-accented, presumably Indian lady at the other end of a very crackly and degraded line.
After several long alternating periods of explaining and waiting on hold she returned with the news that a technician would be contacting me to arrange an appropriate time to install a new CPU fan on the lappy.

While I found it a little strange at the time that a CPU fan could be to blame, on hindsight it makes some sense but I really hope that’s actually it. She said to make sure the problem was fixed before I let the technician leave, so I’m going to have to try it out for a while with some CPU intensive tasks. I’ll have to see what I can come up with.