Author Archives: Mark Headrick

Blog Upgraded to WordPress v3.2 and Twenty Eleven Theme

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Since this was a fairly major upgrade and changing of the default theme, I thought I’d blog about it! The actual upgrade process was no different than any other recent upgrade I’ve made:

  • Backed up the existing file structure and database.
  • Ran the automatic upgrade which took around five seconds to complete.
  • Modified the /wp-includes/vars.php file to force $is_apache to true so I don’t have to rely on the software to detect something which I know is true:
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    /**
     * Whether the server software is Apache or something else
     * @global bool $is_apache
     */
    //$is_apache = (strpos($_SERVER['SERVER_SOFTWARE'], 'Apache') !== false || strpos($_SERVER['SERVER_SOFTWARE'], 'LiteSpeed') !== false);
    $is_apache = true;
  • Modified the /wp-login.php file to force the start of a PHP session so that the Register Plus plug-in would work properly in my situation; although, I’m debating the necessity of this plug-in since I have registration disabled right now anyway LOL.:
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    session_start();
    /**
     * WordPress User Page
     *

That’s really all there was to the upgrade from WordPress v3.1.4 to WordPress v3.2 for my blog. Everything else has been related to trying out the new default Twenty Eleven theme and slowly modifying and tweaking it. Like I did with the Twenty Ten theme, I made a Twenty Eleven child theme so that I did not have to modify the parent’s files and risk loosing any of my changes if the theme was updated in the future. In my child theme, I’m using my own style.css (you have to), header.php, footer.php, and single.php files.

I’ve got the main front-end page looking satisfactorily now with adjustments to font colors and sizes and the overall layout of the page (margins and widths of sections) and how PHP code blocks appear for the posts that have them. I’m not going to go into detail about it since these kind of things are all subjective.

The next thing I will tackle is the appearance or layout of the single post page. Right now there’s a lot of wasted or white space below the header image (some might argue that the header image itself is a waste of space). Some of the white space is related to the Twitter and Facebook buttons being there and I really do not like where they are in relation to each other. I’d prefer them to be next to each other. Part of this is related to the plug-ins I am using. I’ll get it how I want it eventually.

The main reason why I’m not just staying with the Twenty Ten theme is that I figure the most compatible theme with the new WordPress version is going to be the new default theme that ships with it; although, all indications are that the Twenty Ten theme works just fine. Even so, some change is good every now and then. I hope your upgrade has gone or will go as smoothly and uneventful as mine. 🙂

For more information about the changes as well as the new system requirements for this version (mainly the minimum PHP and MySQL versions supported), read the WordPress 3.2 Codex Page.

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! 😯 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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Update: January 10, 2020: Note: As of December 1, 2019, Netflix will no longer work on Samsung’s Blu-ray players.

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. 🙂