Hey mom! I got that stain out with Dawn!

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OK. First, some background. Back on Father’s Day, I had dinner with the folks at Luby’s Cafeteria here in Oklahoma City. By the way, their food is always great and their cakes are awesome, always moist. Anyway, I noticed after we left that I had this big stain on my shirt.  Only place I think I could have got that stain was from rubbing my gut against the railing where you get the food or against the edge of a table because of where the stain was located. Or, upon reflection, I could have leaned over into my own food while in line.

On the way home, I rubbed it with a Shout Wipe stain remover they had in the truck and then tossed it into the washer when I got home. When it came out of the dryer, all I managed to do was just make a bigger darker area in the shirt. “Look ma! A new truck rag!” LOL. I tossed the shirt on the dryer and there it sat until I did laundry again which was a few days ago. So, it just sat there for some time.

While was I doing laundry, I looked at the shirt, looked at the bottle of Dawn on the sink and decided why not. You know, “Dawn, it takes grease out of the way!”, or whatever their slogan is. So, I squirted some on the spot, lathered it up, and tossed it in with the rest of that load.

When I took the shirt out and looked to see what the damage was this time, I was actually shocked that it was completely gone! 8-O Hot damn! It worked! LOL

So now, not only is Dawn the only thing I clean my glasses with (the kind I wear on my face to see with.. those alcohol things just spread the gunk around), it will be my most frequently used pre-wash stain remover now.  Yeah, I know in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big a deal, but it was for me at the moment. :)

Getting Audio To Work When Streaming Netflix Movies With Samsung BD-C6500 Blu-ray Player

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This is mentioned in other places on the internet but thought I would add this here as well. When attempting to stream Netflix movies with my Samsung BD-C6500 Blu-ray Player, I would hear no audio with any movie title, including the Heroes Season 1, Episode 1 that they like to use for troubleshooting purposes for some reason. For reference I am using the latest firmware as of February 7, 2011 (version: BSP-C6500WWB-1020.1 ) with an optical digital cable connection to my Denon AVR-3806 A/V Receiver.

Following advice I found on the net, my current workaround/solution:

Before going into the Netflix application, go into the Pandora radio application and listen to any radio station/channel first. Then, exit Pandora and go into Netflix to watch whatever and the audio will work. I have no idea why it works but it does. It’s either a bug in the player’s firmware or a bug with the Netflix application the player uses. Before you can use Pandora you will need to setup an account with them and then configure the player to use it. The instructions for all this are covered in the manual and Pandora’s site. Using the basic Pandora service is free so no need to worry about any costs associated with it.

Hopefully this will help anyone that runs into a similar issue. :)

Not Counting Views Made by Gallery 3.0.1 Admin

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Update: June 22, 2011: This information also applies to Gallery version 3.0.2.

After upgrading my Gallery to version 3.0.1, I needed to re-add my code modifications to stop the gallery from counting views made by the administrator since I don’t care how many times I view my own pictures LOL. Some of the core files had changed so I had to make the following changes this time.

First, in /themes/(your theme)/views/page.html.php add the following code near the top (below the first line, making sure you keep the code within PHP opening and closing tags.):

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< ?
if ($user->admin == '1') {
   $_SESSION['admin'] = true;
} else {
   $_SESSION['admin'] = false;
}
?>

Then in /modules/gallery/models/item.php around line 1019 modify the increment_view_count() function by adding the check around the query statement:

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  public function increment_view_count() {
    // mrh added the session admin check
    if(!$_SESSION['admin']) {
      db::query("UPDATE {items} SET `view_count` = `view_count` + 1 WHERE `id` = $this->id")
      ->execute();
    }
  }

Now, views will not be counted by the gallery administrator! Since I am the only one that uploads photos, this is all I need to do. For those wanting to stop view counts made by any owner of a photo, check out this thread on the Gallery forums. :)

Gallery Upgraded to Version 3.0.1

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A couple days ago I upgraded my Gallery to version 3.0.1. The process wasn’t quite as easy as it is to upgrade my blog these days in that it’s not just a simple point-and-click operation. Even so, it did go without issue as I understood how I needed to go about it. My process was as follows, which closely follows these upgrade instructions:

  1. Backed up the current database and files (I had modified several of the core code files so wanted to make sure I saved everything for later comparison).

  2. Created a new temporary directory both locally and on the server that would receive all the updated code before switching it to the live version.

  3. Copied over my customized .htaccess, robots.txt, favicon.ico, php.ini, local.php and other necessary files that I use into the new directory.

  4. Downloaded the Gallery 3.0.1 code and extracted it locally. I then removed the included .htaccess and robots.txt files so they would not overwrite my custom ones. I then re-zipped the files into the proper directory structure for my situation.

  5. Uploaded and extracted these files into the new directory I had made on the server.

  6. Copied over the /var directory to its corresponding location in the new directory I made in step 2.

  7. Changed my theme within the Gallery admin section to the default theme so that when I switched directories, it would have a theme to load as I knew I would be re-doing my custom theme based off the new default.

  8. I went to gallerymodules.com to make sure I had the latest versions of the 3rd-party modules that I use, several of which did have newer versions. I extracted the modules locally and combined them all into a single MYMODS.ZIP file to upload to the server. I then extracted these into the /modules directory of the new gallery directory I had created.

  9. Renamed my gallery directories such that the new code would be active and ran the upgrade script. It updated both core and 3rd-party modules that needed to be. The new gallery code was then active and everything seemed to work fine.

At this point it was time to re-create my theme with the new Gallery default Wind theme as the base and add back the various code tweaks I had made over time if needed. Rather than go into any code specifics with this post, I will make separate posts as warranted, most notably about how to not count views by the Gallery admin. :)