Isilo Scribble Pad

waterdrops - revisited

scribbles — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:42:55 +0000

Lesson learned: To get the job done right, you have to use the right tool. Point and shoot cameras are fun but after a while you start losing your hair trying to get them to do what you want, not what they want. So, i decided to move up to a Digital SLR. Got a Canon Rebel XTi. First thing i tried was to revisit that whole waterdrop thing.

I need to work on getting a better lighting setup, and a better lens, for these shots. But this is definitely an improvement from the S5200.

Here goes:

Wordpress update on server(ssh)

scribbles — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 21:26:50 +0000

Just thought i’d expand a little on the instructions provided on wordpress . This is by no means a cookbook but its what worked for me. I am not responsible for anybody screwing up their installation even if you follow the steps to the T.

This is just a slightly cleaned up version of the instructions i wrote
for a friend who wanted to do the upgrade too and later suggested that i
post them for others to use. For the record we are both on Linux servers
and have either root or user SSH access.

Anyway, here goes:

BACKUP YOUR WORDPRESS FOLDER AND DATABASE
Backup your wordpress folder and database
I assume you are ssh’ed in to server at this point, change directory to your root folder if you are not
already there ('cd ~' or 'cd ~yourusername') or any folder where
you want to put the new files that we will be copying into your
current installation
Did you backup your database and wordpress folder, this might be a good time to do that.
get the current release of wordpress(2.5 at time of writing), ‘wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip'
if your wordpress folder is named ‘wordpress’ and you downloaded the latest.zip file into the folder that contains your wordpress folder, you should create a temp folder and move the latest.zip file into it so that you don’t overwrite your current installation
unzip the latest release (’unzip latest.zip‘)
Go into the wordpress admin and deactivate all your plugins(I only had one plugin activated and left it on during the upgrade and that did not cause any problems, but that’s just my specific case)
change directory to your wordpress folder(’cd www/wordpress‘ if your web folder is ‘www’ and the wordpress folder is ‘wordpress’)
you can either delete or rename the admin and includes folders. I chose to rename first then delete afterwards('mv wp-includes wp-includes-old' and 'mv wp-admin wp-admin-old')
move the new admin and includes folders into place; assuming you are still in the live wordpress folder and the newly downloaded files are in your
root/home folder ('mv ../../wordpress/wp-admin .' and 'mv ../../wordpress/wp-includes .')
copy the new contents folder over the current one: NOTE; i was not using neither the default nor the classic themes so if you are you are and have made changes to those themes, backup the themes folder inside the wp-content
folder so you can put those themes back after the update if need be.
to copy the new contents folder, going by the same assumptions as in #11 above; ('/bin/cp -Rf ../../wordpress/wp-content .')
In case you don’t have ownership of the files(maybe you logged in as root), change the ownership of the files to your username. In the wordpress folder: ('chown yourusername. * -R')
Pull up the upgrade script: http://yourdomain.com/wordpressfolderifany/wp-admin/upgrade.php
Click continue or whatever the button on that page says.
Pull up your blog, cross your fingers and hope all is well. If not, you did make a backup right? You can restore those if you need the blog back online now.
Here are the official extended upgrade instructions: click
Re-activate your plugins and test them.
For help troubleshooting, feel free to contact me or better yet, visit the forums

Here goes the snow

scribbles — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:23:28 +0000

I know i said i was going outside to shoot some snow. Guess what, its freaking cold out there. I stepped out for about a minute and that was about all i could stand.

Problem with shooting snow; its white and there is a whole lot of it.

Click on image to view the rest of the pictures. Its kinda hard to tell how much snow is out there as you can see.

As for the bird pictures in the same set as the snow pictures, i spent a lot of time trying to catch one of those birds in flight but it didn’t work out so well.I’m much better at shooting stationary objects.

On to my next subject. Not sure what.

Adventures in photographyland begin

scribbles — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 03:14:36 +0000

After months of saving pennies here and there, i finally got my hands on a digital camera. I had my eyes on a Fujifilm Finepix s5100 for a long time. When i finally had saved enough to get one, i realized that it would not cost me that much more to get a s5200 so i waited a little longer and finally got my hands on a S5200, with a free fake tripod :).

Minutes after opening the package and filling up the 16MB card three or four times, i came to one sad realization. I don’t know Jack about photography. So, i did what any self-respecting amateur photographer would do, attempt something you absolutely have no way of accomplishing for the simple sack of making yourself feel like you are not that bad.

What did i pick as my pick-me-up project? Water-drops..

How hard could it be, right?

Turn on faucet
slow it to a drip
Place container of choice in sink
Aim camera
Catch drop as it hit the water in said container

Pure child’s play i tell’ya.

About half an hour later, this is the best i came up with:

Not too bad.

I’m going outside to shoot some snow……