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Drupal Woes

Over the last month or so since I migrated Silwenae.com over to [Site5][1] for hosting, and transferred the silwenae.com content to [Apatheia.org][2] I’ve been working on the image module in [Drupal][3] as it stopped working during the site migration.

I’ve been through the code, I’ve re-installed the module, and nothing has worked. I decided to tackle it this weekend, with mixed results.

I upgraded Apatheia.org’s Druapl installation from 4.5.5 to 4.6.3 so it was running the latest version. (No problems there).

I downloaded the image.module for 4.6 and installed it. (No problems there).

In reviewing the images in the website, the root web directory of apatheia.org does not have an images directory. Looking at my backup of silwenae.com, it had an images directory with all the images stored in it, including all the re-sized images that the image.module made. Where did they go?

To further complicate things, when you look at the images stored on Apatheia.org, take a look at the Majordomo story on the frontpage. According to the image properties, it’s at: http://www.apatheia.org/images/majordomo2-312_800x600.jpg , but there is no images directory when I ssh in to the website, or FTP in. Is Drupal doing something via mod_rewrite? Per one post on the forums, I turned clean URLs on, but it didn’t fix my image upload problem.

In the image.module settings, I changed from using ImageMagick to GD, and I could now upload a picture, though the thumbnail wouldn’t store, and it errored out upon submitting.

I did a chmod on the tmp directory, and pointed the settings a few different ways at the current tmp directory with mixed results. I re-created an images directory.

You can now upload images, with some caveats:

Upon selecting an image to upload and hitting preview, you see the image with the following error at the top of the screen:

warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/apatheia/public_html/modules/image/image.module on line 623.

Hitting submit off this preview results in an error page with the errors:

`warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/apatheia/public_html/modules/image/image.module on line 623.

warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/apatheia/public_html/includes/common.inc:348) in /home/apatheia/public_html/includes/common.inc on line 159.` However, then going back to Apatheia.org (use a bookmark or something) you’ll see the image uploaded just fine. So it’s working – it spits out errors, but it’s working. The image properties still show in apatheia.org/images – _but there are no files in that directory_! I’d love to know where they are. The image.module in Drupal is notoriously buggy – the number of threads in the forums looking for help with the module are staggering. There aren’t a lot of good alternatives. Gallery2 integration exists, but I don’t think it’s quite what I’m looking for. It’s frustrating as the functionality that was there in 4.5 was perfect – it was great for the users of the site, the re-sizing functionality was very cool. My only beef with it then was it was a little difficult to post stories around the pictures (though you could bump pictures up to the front page) but this one has me beat. [1]: http://www.site5.com [2]: http://www.apatheia.org [3]: http://www.drupal.org

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High Resolution Wallpapers

Via WeblogTools Collection at WordPress Planet:

Here is a collection of high resolution wallpapers for folks with very normal to very large monitors. With resolutions of up to 2560×1600, including my default resolution of 1920×1200 (which can be very hard to find wallpapers for without streteching) the collections include a lot of high-res photo’s, as well as a few abstract art pieces.

I downloaded a couple and am currently using Feathers. Pretty.

Stupid Local TV Broadcasters

I missed 45 minutes of Destination: Lost Wednesday night because of a major storm that ripped through the Twin Cities. (It was no Category 3 or higher storm, but it did a little damage).

The local ABC affiliate, Channel 5 KSTP, used the hurricane system and people’s fears of those storms to sensationalize the storm reporting for as long as they could, including 45 minutes of Destination: Lost and the first 20 minutes of the season premiere of Lost.

I have it on my TiVo – it’s just them repeating themselves for an hour – high winds, look at the radar, blah blah blah.

But that gets me to my point: ABC is unwilling to re-broadcast the premiere this weekend, due to cast contracts and the residual payouts. At least they’re admitting it’s about the money, so they can screw over their viewers.

Being technologically aware, I just went out and downloaded it from an HDTV rip and burned it to DVD. 42 minutes long now and no commercials – just because my local affiliate wouldn’t broadcast it.

And the television industry considers this an illegal act. An over the air television show, currently stored on my TiVo, and I can’t go download a copy and watch it on my TV. I purchased Lost Season One on DVD a week and a half ago. I’ll spend money where it’s deserved, for a quality and innovative program like Lost.

But yet, god forbid you miss one show in a series, you are not supposed to download them. What if it’s a show like Lost, Alias or 24 where you miss one episode and it can seriously set you back in understanding the plot?

The TV industry needs to get with the times then and offer a technological solution if they want to make this illegal. They should be ashamed of themselves for being the Luddites they are. Sony Betamax vs. Universal was settled over 20 years ago and yet here is history repeating itself.

Last.fm Follow-Up

I signed up for an account at Last.fm and downloaded and installed the XMMS plug-in. (I manually downloaded the plugin from their site, and then thought to check Synaptic. Sure enough, it was in the Ubuntu repository!)

It’s pretty cool so far – after listening to only two or three different artists it already had Weezer at the top of the recommended list for me, and I’m a huge Weezer fan. It will be really interesting to see it when it really kicks in with other users in addition to just figuring out my listening habits.

If you’re really curious about my musical tastes, you can see my Last.fm user page here.

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Sonic

A follow-up from my visit to Houston last week: I finally had the chance to eat at a Sonic, “America’s Drive-In”.

The funny thing is, none of us had any idea it was only a drive-in. I see the commericals all the time on ESPN, and have wanted to stop there to see what it was all about. I see the breakfast food commericals about ten times more often than I do for their burgers.

They were all over Houston, I saw more Sonic’s than McDonald’s (which is fine with me). Drive through or drive-in are your only choices, maybe outdoor seating if you were lucky. Had a Jalapeno Double Burger with Tater Tots and a Lime-ade, all three of which were quite good for fast food.

Definitely better than your normal chains such as Hardees, McD’s or BK. Step up from Culvers ups here in the north, but not quite as good as an In ‘N Out out west.

And our thoughts are with you for those of you in Houston right now.

Last.fm

I’m very intrigued by Last.fm, formerly Audioscrobbler.

Download a plugin for your favorite music player (Linux players included!) and start listening to music. From there Last.fm will start recommending music to you based on what you and others listened to that’s similar.

I can’t do justice to explaining it, so go read the FAQ. I’m very intrigued in Last.fm as a way to get introduced to more music, but not sold on using XMMS as my music player as I love Muine and am starting to test Banshee.

But I love the concept of Last.fm. Social networking tools own me.

Ubuntu Blog

I was taking a peek at WordPress.com (more on that in a minute) and it showed one of the top hosted blogs there is the Ubuntu weblog.

It already has some nice tips and tricks posted (like the bash command append). I’ll definitely be adding that to my blogroll.

WordPress.com is similar to Movable Type – hosted blog solution for users who don’t want or have a server to host their own blog on.