I just finished putting together a website for a family member who is running in an upcoming election for a local office.  I used Artisteer to generate a very simple one-column, red, white and blue wordpress theme so voters can instantly get to know a candidate.  I thought with November elections coming up, this might be a WordPress theme that others can use so I’m making it available here for free.   If enough people are interested in the free version of this theme, then I’ll take the trouble and add more features like different page templates (with multiple columns), wordpress menu support and the like.

Please let me know what you think of this theme and if you have any suggestions or feedback:

Download here: Wordpress Political Theme (117)

*for $10, I can help place the candidates picture in your theme if you need help doing so.  Just contact me for help.

Well, I recently purchased a new computer and I’m trying to figure out how to transfer my photos, using Picasa, from one computer to another.  I’ve also been wondering for a while how to backup Picasa to my external hard drive because burning 17 DVDs seems like an awful amount of work.

So I figured out how to backup Picasa to an external hard drive and wanted to share this info with you.  So here is how to get started:

1) Click “Tools – > Back Up Pictures

2) Click “New Set” in the “Create a Set or use an existing one” box

3) A “New Backup Set” window will appear.  You can create a name for your backup set.  This name will be a way for you to recall this backup later.  I would name it “Backup to External” or something along those lines so you don’t confuse your backup sets.   Under “Backup type” you can choose either CD/DVD or disk-to-disk.  It even says in the parenthesis “for external..drives”.  Now you can use the “Choose…” button to navigate and select your external hard drive.  Once you have selected your hard drive, you will be able to select the “Create” button.

4) You’ll now want to choose the folders and albums you want to backup.  The default is to show just the files since your previous backup.  If this is your first backup to your external, then you want to “Select All”  Give it a few minutes to calculate how much space will be needed.

5) Click “Backup”

That’s it!

Now hopefully for my next post, I can talk you through how to restore this backup to your new computer (once I get Picasa installed on it!)

Paul

Turns out, Joomla does have a breadcrumb module, but you have to create it first.  Here are the steps:

1. Go to Extensions – Module Manager
2. Click on the “New” Icon on the Right
3. Click on “Breadcrumbs”, click “Next”
4. Configure module like normal (title, position, class, etc)

See, I told you it was easy!  Still don’t believe me, check out this video tutorial:

The first is the © (copyright) symbol. To create the copyright symbol while typing press and hold the ALT key on your keyboard and then enter 0-1-6-9 consecutively on your keyboard. Again that is “ALT”+0169.

The second symbol is the § (section) symbol.  I use the section symbol when refering the Code of Federal Regulations.  For instance, let’s say I’m going to quote from CFI Title 14 Section 91.  I would enter §91.xx for the regulation I am about to reference, see? To create the section § symbol, hold the ALT key on your keyboard and then enter 0-1-6-7 consecutively on your keyboard. Again, that is ALT+0167 for the § section symbol.

Now, if your last question is, where did you get that “keyboard font”, I downloaded the font “Keystrokes.ttf” from here:

http://www.coolfonts.info/font-5520-keystroke.php

You can also try these places for free fonts that look like keyboard keys:

http://www.byte-sized.com/?software/keyboard/download.htm

http://www.newfonts.net/index.php?pa=show_font&id=111

As you can see, iTunes automatically picked the “Poster Frame” for all my imported movies.  The poster frame is the video frame iTune automatically chooses to display the movie thumbnails when sorted in the grid view mode.  The problem is that the poster frame was the same for each movie. Instead, I’d like it to be the title frame so I can quickly identify the title of the movie before playing it. So the question is of course, how do you change the poster frame to be the title frame of my imported movie?

You can do this easily in 3 steps:

1) Click play

2) Pause the movie at the precise frame or time you desire

3) Right click on the movie and choose “Set Poster Frame”

4) Done!

You can return to the library, to see the updated thumbnail of your movie!

Watch this video tutorial if you have any questions:

To find a gmail email on a particular date you can just enter the date in the search field in YYYY/MM/DD format.  So let’s say you want to find all emails on March 19, 2009 you would enter in the search box:

2009/03/19

Screenshot:

You can also use the search terms “before” and “after” combined with a date to find all emails before or after a date:

after:2009/03/19

or

before:2009/03/19

You can even combine those into 1 search term to find all emails between a date range:

This search would return a result of all emails between February 2, 2009 and February 28, 2009.

Pretty neat huh?

Every single time that I upgrade my Yireo Magebridge for Joomla and Magento I get this error:

The webshop is currently not available. Please come back again later.

And every single time, I scratch my head wondering how I fixed this error the last time I upgraded Magebridge.  So here are the instructions for me so I don’t waste time looking for this solution again:

The problem is with the magebridge.php file located in the magento subfolder.  You need to change the permissions back to 644.

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE)"  nsresult: "0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE)"  location: "JS frame :: http://www.yoursite.com/magento/js/index.php?c=auto&f=,prototype/prototype.js,prototype/validation.js,scriptaculous/builder.js,scriptaculous/effects.js,scriptaculous/dragdrop.js,scriptaculous/controls.js,scriptaculous/slider.js,varien/js.js,varien/form.js,varien/menu.js,mage/translate.js,mage/cookies.js,varien/product.js,calendar/calendar.js,calendar/calendar-setup.js :: anonymous :: line 1528"  data: no]

After a lot of searching….well, I found nothing.  All the answers on the Magneto forum were no use to me at all.  After about 30 minutes of searching though, I did find an answer that works (at least for now).  I had to re-install the Lib_Js_Prototype using the Magnento Connect Manager.

Here is how you do that from the Magneto admin backend:

1) System – Magento Connect – Magento Connect Manager

2) You will be prompted for your admin user name and password

3) Select Lib_Js_Prototype and then choose from the drop down action menu Re-Install.

4) Click on Commit Changes

If everything goes ok, you should see something like this:

This seemed to solve the problem for me….at least for now.  Hopefully this works for you or at least helps you out somehow.

Like any good detective, my first step was Google and from there I learned that yes the house was built in 1850 and it is located at 1157 Division St, Napa, California.  Google maps also lists a business at that address, a company called “Benefits Plus”.   In fact, Google Maps street view has a great shot of the home:

Ok, so now that I know where the house was located, I needed to find out just who was Captain Andrew Sampson?

I emailed the Napa Public Works Department and they were nice enough to send me the “Historic Resources Inventory” which notes among other things, the description and significance of this particular property:

The Andrew Sampson House is an excellent example of the 19th century practice in Napa of creating a two story house by raising the original one story cottage and building a new first floor. The original cottage, now the second floor, is believed to have been built in 1850, soon after Stephen Broadhurst bought the land near the Napa River from Joseph P. Thompson, one of Napa’s first settlers. Andrew Sampson, originally from Sweden, purchased the property in 1871. He had an active role in the Napa River trade as he ran a tow boat line, operated a schooner between Napa and San Francisco and had a drayage business in Napa Valley. The house raising took place c.1900. The house stands on a fieldstone foundation and is frame with shiplap siding. Note the variation in window moldings on the first and second floors. More recent additions are a wing to the rear and extension in the gable end and. the front porch and steps. The house remained in the family until 1974. Two Sequoias in the front yard were planted by Andrew Sampson’s wife, Olinda, in the 1870s.

Wow.  Cool.  So the first story was actually an addition to the house.  That’s a pretty neat fact.

The fact sheet that they sent also included an old photo taken of the house. It’s pretty grainy, but you can tell even from this photo that a lot of work has been done to the house:

So anyhow that’s all I’ve been able to find out about the Captain Andrew Sampson House 1850.   If you have any more information, be sure to share it.

1. In your magento admin backend, go to Admin> System> Permissions> Users.
2. Click “Add new user”
3. Enter the user’s information.
4. Be sure to click on the “user roles” tab on the left menu to assign the account to a role. (You can create more limited-capability roles using ADMIN> System> Permissions> Roles so that users can’t reset anything too deadly if you want.)
5. Save user.

Hopefully this post helps to save someone else wasting 15 minutes looking for the answer on the magento forums.