Disentraintment – A little of this and a little of that…

GA Tripping

There are three things people strive to do what they do for:

Identity

Security

Stimulation

If you are going to sell something, be it an actual product or an idea, you must know what your product is! The product is what you present and give someone, not you or your ego, even if your product is intimately tied up with your product/pitch.

People will do much for you, and be very forgiving, if they like you. The most important reason people like others is because they think the person they like cares for/about them.

Figure out what you are good at. Follow that, work on that, capitalize on it. The things you are not good at, don’t do and don’t worry about it. Figure out how to get others to handle that part for you or, just don’t do that. Good managers are folks that can see what people working for them are good at and facilitates their focusing on those tasks.

Batch Photoshop CS5 Processing

I am trying to create an action that allows me to take a photograph, resize it to 750pix wide, then save it again as a thumbnail 220 pix W. I also need a workflow.

Ok, here we go.First I need to have 5 folders in place: originals, renamed originals (if necessary), for resizing, resized originals, and resized thumbs.

The originals are obvious. Renamed originals are for photos that need to be renamed for my conventions (what are these conventions?). For resizing are just a copy of the renamed originals. The resized originals will be for the 750 px wide photos. The resized thumbs will be for the 220 px wide photos.

There is a tutorial about how to do some of this here: Photoshop batch resize.

This will begin by using the following two folders: “for resizing” and another called “resized photos.”
Create an action in Photoshop to resize an image to 750 px W.
open up batch command in photoshop, follow directions in tutorial about how to set each option
process for resizing files and put processed files into resized photos folder

Things to know about this: sometimes photoshop does not want to run this batch action. If so, close photoshop and try to set up the batch processing procedure again.

Now I need to repeat this same process for the thumbnails. This will require a different action and the folder called “resized thumbs.”

Resize thumbs using renamed originals. Now they need to be renamed by adding “thumb” to end of name. This is done through Bridge.

open bridge
open folder of resized thumbs
go to tools/batch rename
set up to add thumbs….rename in same folder….new filename; current filename, name, original case (then) text, -thumb
you should be able to see how it will change the file name in the lower portion of the dialogue box
once this is set, save the preset with the name “thumb”

This seems to work just great. The settings in the batch process in Photoshop is able to get around the seeming limitations of the batch “save to web” problem. The tricky part is to make sure all the boxes are checked or not checked correctly so that there are not any problems.

Once completed parse out files to where they need to go. Original files are stored as is. The resized original and resized thumbs are for the website. Purge the for resizing files and renamed files folder contents. Once parsed out makes sure there are no photos in any of the five folders.

That should do it!

Staying in Touch

I have not written in forever so it is time to make a post. How are you all doing? I am fine, just busy. I recently attended a Drupal programming class and this has helped me understand Drupal so much better. I can’t believe how powerful a CMS can be, or how cool Drupal is with all its great tools.

So now I am dreaming even more about building bigger and better Drupal sites. The only hesitation I have at the moment is in waiting for Drupal 7. It should be out soon, but not soon enough. Even with saying that I have to admit that I will never have the time to devote all the time I would like to my Drupal projects. One can dream though!

Another nice thing that is up and coming is a project that I am now starting that will involve getting volunteers to write content for a site that I think should be pretty darn nice. It will be a local nature site, including species accounts, habitat treatments and lots of pictures. This will be my second such site and I am pretty excited to see what is possible. The first site I did like this was not set up to handle volunteers. It was a static HTML based site so allowing others to participate, and assign them specific roles, was just not possible. This site will be created outside of a web publishing framework, so not exactly Drupal at the moment, although I may port the data into a newly built Drupal site. I will just have to see how it goes. All of these things are just ever expanding experiments anyway. My hope is doing all this is to continue to learn, to build my skills, and to provide as much useful information to others as I can.

Return from being Hacked!

My website was hacked and hijacked by someone a few months ago. Pretty scary, as I have no idea how this happened. A redirect was sending people to another website where there were some links to fairly nasty content. Very strange.

I have fixed the problem and am working again to add information to the site.

Photoshop Actions Glitch

Photoshop CS3 Actions

I was trying to create an action that is based on some default photoshop behaviors that take place when you manual perform a few particular steps. More specifically I am working in Photoshop CS3 and am wanting to create an image form the clipboard.

Default Manual Behavior

If you have an image saved to the clipboard, go to Photoshop and open a new file it will open a dialogue box that contains the dimensions of the clipboard image. You simply except what is already filled in here (name, preset, width, height, etc.) and click on the OK radio button. From there you will have a new document window. Simply apply paste – using the menu or Control V (Windows shortcut) and your image shows up in a right sized document.

Broken Actions Behavior

Try and record these steps as an action. If you have CS3 and run the record actions with these steps, it saves whatever dimensions you have for the image on the clipboard. Run the action for a larger image and it shows up truncated.

There is a Solution!

Here is what you need to do to record this action to allow you to see the entire image on your clipboard, regardless of how big or small it is.

save an image to your clipboard
set up your new action and start recording
File > new
Custom Dimensions: Width 1 and 1 Height
Paste
Image > Reveal All
Stop recording

I have been using this for a few days and so far, so good. I hope this helps someone……..

Color and Web Design

I have run into a buzz saw today. Web colors and not using standard colors on a site I am trying to put together. This is the first time I have run into a problem like this personally although I was well aware that this can be an issue. The big pain is I thought I was getting past the design phase. Building content was gearing up and now I have to spend my morning changing colors.

I am shooting for a pastel arrangement. Soft, soothing and fairly unobtrusive. The following is a bit of a concern but is not the end all as to what I have to do: “The Navajo Nation considers four colors to be important: Turquoise, white, yellow, and black. These colors represent four sacred mountains.

The rest of this post is a form of a note to self….how and what to change on this site.

First are the bad colors.

body {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
background: #E2C738;
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
color: #000000;
}

That background is a supposed to be a sandstone type color and it is way to yellow on some browsers. Instead I have to switch to something a lot lighter.

F0E68C ?

This is a color called Khaki. I will keep my internal colors for the content of: CCCC98 (right sidebar) and ffffff (content area). The changes I need to make are to my repeating background behind the main content area. Unfortunately it has “wings” or small edges that leak out in the main background. They were originally there to have a blending between the side of the content area and the background color. So a little bit of psd photoshopping and I can straighten it all out.

I am also consider this color DAA520, which is Goldenrod. This will be mixed with Khaki F0E68C for the background.

In trying all of these changes, it is sort of back to the drawing board. I have a few background colors and they all, of course, need to work together.

I have finally settled on a few options using Goldenrod, Khaki and a grayish green that I had been using in my sidebar. All of these are being mixed and matched to various parts (site background, menu background and the sidebar). I have posted a few test looks and will ask the folks that need to check things out how they like (or dislike) the different versions.

Windows Live Sync and the Start Menu

I have a few computers that run Windows Live Sync and was recently annoyed by one of its strange features.

The Problem

There is a folder in my start menu that is named “Windows Live.” In this folder is a single entry for starting up the sync program and is named “Windows Live Sync.” So what is the problem?

I moved that folder into another folder on my start menu. A little while later the same folder appears right back where it originally was found. So I delete it and it magically reappears later.

What gives? First of all, this is really a feature. Here is a posting I found on a tech forum:

KyongHwan Kim [MSFT] posted on Monday, December 29, 2008 10:09 PM

That’s expected behavior(By Design) in this release.
We will revisit it to improve user experience.

Thanks!

On one hand I found this this hard to believe. What programming manager decided it was a good design idea to purposely thwart a users wish to get rid of something? On the other hand I found it not surprising. Big c0mpanies working on big projects can fumble things.

The Fix

How to get rid of the annoying reappearance of the Windows Live start menu items

Method one

One workable solution is to Microsoft’s TweakUI. Fight fire with fire. Open the program and:

go to the Taskbar and Start Menu
from the expandable list there (click on the plus sign next to the item mentioned above) choose “start menu”
find the entry for Windows Live Sync in the window of “frequently used items” and uncheck it

Done

Method 2

Open a command prompt and locate the Windows Live folder (Right click on it in the menu and you can easily see where it was located); for instance for mine was located in:

C:\Users\jason\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

Navigate to the folder containing Windows Live; and run:

attrib +s +h “Windows Live”

This will cause it to have the same attributes as protected operating systems files and be hidden from your site.

It’s still there, but it’s not visually messing up your world.

Done!

Big thanks go out to:

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/33742023/a-new-and-different-pro.aspx

and

http://g.www.ms.akadns.net/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windows.live.sync&tid=8b144ea6-d62c-41a2-b977-ceac9e39ae09&cat=&lang=&cr=&sloc=&p=1

Careful

safe-play

I just don’t think a lot of things make sense anymore. A sure sign I am getting old, I guess. The sign above is from a playground (Sunset Park) in Harvey Cedars. Basically this is a total cover-your-ass piece of crap from the manufacturer of the playground equipment and the town.

One of the most striking is it says adult supervision is required. First of all, if I child was to get hurt on a playground there should be no question about blame or fault. Unless of course there was actually something wrong with the equipment…but even then I am not so sure. If your a parent and your not watching your kid, it is your problem. But the other side of this is that they have a sign that says be careful, do things like this (safely!) and that adult supervision is necessary.

Time in court…it says right there they should be watching their child. The instructions and warnings about being careful are posted on that sign. Blame free for the town.

Kids are going to get hurt on the playground. It happens. You know who is to blame for most of it? Nobody. Kids play to learn what they can and cannot do. Part of that experience includes getting hurt. It teaches us to be more careful. It is called growing up.

What I am really wondering is why we had to get to this point. Everyone is looking for someone else to blame, while at the same time absolving themselves from any responsibility.

Acquia Drupal Website, Part 7

Modules

Modules provide a way of adding functions to your Drupal website without having to build them from scratch. Modules have a variety of uses and are contributed by Drupal developers and users. We have already gone through turning off one module that came preinstalled with our Drupal install: the Acquia Connector.

Some modules require you to configure them once they are loaded or enable options you can select from once they are working. Others do things internally and you both never see, interact with, or change the functioning of the operations the modules create. Just like learning how to use Drupal takes some time and effort, some of the more complex modules can also require you to learn how to use them.

For now I am going to cover loading and turning on some of the modules I will be using. My purpose here it to explain this process and not how to use any of the modules mentioned. At least not yet.

My next step is to turn on a few modules that are currently on my host server They are part of our Acqai Drupal build but are not presently turned on. For this we need to go to:

Site Building> Modules

Core Modules

Scrolling down the page a bit I come to a set of modules that are under a heading “Core – Optional.” These come with every build of Drupal 6 (the version that we are working with). Some of these are already checked off but I am going to implement a few more. For each of the listed modules, I am placing a checkmark in the box that precedes their name.

Blog – this should be self explanatory. Drupal, as a total CMS solution, offers blogging as part of its functions. After the blog module is turned on, whenever we go to the create new content page we will see an option to create a new blog entry. I am not going to get into how to set up or make a blog entry for awhile so hold tight or do some or your own research if you want to learn how to blog with Drupal.

Path – this helps with naming new posts and pages. More on this later.

Ping – a simple module that can be helpful for indexing and alerting others of new material on your site.

I check off these modules and to complete loading them I go to the bottom of the page and click on save configuration.

Other Acquia Drupal Included Modules

You probably noticed there are many other modules listed besides the Core-Optional ones we just selected. These are included with Acquia Drupal and I do want to turn some of these on.

As an aside, any module that you find in the Acquia build of Drupal we have installed are available on the Drupal.org website. Acquia distinguishes itself by putting together a collection of modules in their Drupal package that they think are commonly useful to a lot of different users’ needs. This is helpful but the real value they offer is an excellent support system for helping you to implement and run your Drupal website. You have to pay for this support but since Acquia is run by some of the people that created and maintain Drupal istelf, the value they offer is well worth the price of paying for support.

I am specifically interested in and will be checking off some of the modules found towards the end of the Module page in a section with the heading Other.

Comment Notify – this allows for email notification of new comments. If you have pages on your site where people can leave comments, this will provide an option to allow them to receive an email when new comments are posted.

Mollum – this is a spam filtering system. It can block comment and form spam (you can build forms and contact pages that allow people to send you messages through your website). To get Mollum to work you will need to register for the service and configure the module. More about this later.

Pathauto – this allows for a helpful hand in creating URL names for new content. I use this because I would rather my content have a real name instead of the characters, numbers and node assignments that Drupal would otherwise use for my URLs. As a technical point pathauto does not change how Drupal names new content internally. Pathauto creates what is called an alias and it properly associates the alias with the name Drupal creates and uses.

Token – I can’t claim to understand Token and its derivatives (see the next two modules listed here) but I do know I need this module. It is used by other modules for a variety of reasons, including the just mentioned Pathauto.

Token Actions – see Token above.

TokenSTARTER – see Token above.

Other Modules

There are a few other modules I like to use that are not included with Acquia Drupal. I have to go to find them at Drupal.org, download, unzip, upload to my host, and then turn on these modules to add them into my Drupal build.

Finding Other Modules.

This is pretty simple if you know the name of the Module you need. I go to www.drupal.org and on the sidebar navigation find a link called Modules. From there I find the module search box and click on that link. The new page that opens up has a search box on its sidebar that has a heading “search modules.” This is not the drupal website search box that is positioned just off of the navigation bar across the bottom of the header. I enter my search term, for example Page Title, and it provides a list of modules associated with my search terms.

I can download the Page Title module right from the listing that comes up but I will click on the module name (the text is in large, bold black lettering but it is actually a link to the module home page). You have a number of choices once you arrive at a module’s homepage. You can download the module, find out additional information about how to load and use the module and also find many other module specific resources.

You will see various download options on many module homepages. There may be different stable version for Drupal 5, 6 and there may be a few development versions. The stable version is designated by numbers, symbols and perhaps an x or two. The development versions are designated by ending in “-dev” and they should not initially be loaded onto your live website. Developmental versions not considered production ready. Once they are stable and appropriate for running on a live site they will be able to shed their -dev ending.

I click on the link to download the latest stable version of Page Title and go through the process of getting it onto my PC, then unzip it into a new directory. You will need to have a program that can unzip a tar.gz file for this to work (search on the internet to find a program that can do this).

Once I have the module unpacked I need to FTP the files to my host server. I logged onto my FTP server, connected to my host and navigated to the /sites. Once there I added a directory called “all” and then created another directory in there called “modules.” This is where I uploaded the Page Title module.

modules

I repeated this for all of the modules I wanted to add. From there I returned to my Site Building> Modules page in my Drupal administration section, where I can now see the new modules I just uploaded to the server.

I am specifically going to get and install the following modules:

Backup Migrate

Comment Mail

Globalredirect

Nodewords (once downloaded to your host server this will show up with the name ” Meta Tags” on the Module page in Drupal)

Page Title

Conclusion

I have turned on a number of modules that I use and find helpful. My reasoning for using each of these varies and I have not addressed what you should or should not use to build your own website. As I learn more, and as Drupal develops, my ideas about what modules I use will change.

Drupal has a lot of great capabilities and I have only just begun to understand its complexity and usefulness. If there are other modules that anyone else thinks are a must for a base install of getting a Drupal website started I would love to hear about this in the comments.

Acquia Drupal Website, Part 6

Site Information Settings

There are a few changes here that will be helpful, including being able to tell Drupal the name of your own custom homepage. This administration page is found at…

Site Configuration> Site Information

The entry on the page is for the Site Name. This is the name that shows up on the header of your site for most themes, including Acquia Marina. You can set up a theme to have a header with a picture behind it, with a logo, and with other text but for now we are going to use the default and let the site name text be our header content. Drupal automatically added in the URL address here but I changed it to “Learn Local History.”

The next line is where you can change your administrative email (as discussed when you first enter an email address when you are installing Drupal through the web interface).

The slogan entry box is for a byline that can show up under your site name text. I did want to add that for my site. For now I added “Learn, Share and Appreciate Your Town’s Unique History.” I may change this later. The slogan will not show up in my header until I work on the theme administration page.

I ignored the mission portion of this page but did add a copyright notice to the “footer message.” I put in the following text: All information © Learnlocalhistory.com 2009

For the default homepage I entered:

node/2

This is the homepage I created in the previous part of this series. As usual, to finish things off I had to click on the “save configuration” button.

These changes mean that my site now has a homepage that I created myself and the site name that shows up in the header is more in line with what I want to see there.