Here’s an oddity that I don’t quite understand, but am happy to simply note the solution for. =)

Installed Phoco Gallery on two sites recently. On the first site everything works fine. On the second site clicking a thumbnail generates a 404 error. Hmm. Everything is configured the same, but I found this post on their support forums that offered a solution. It wasn’t the exact same problem I was having, though. I was using the Random Image component instead of the Tree component, so it wasn’t clear if it would be the same problem or not. In the end, simply creating a menu item (on any menu) that is a Phoca Gallery page will alleviate the problem. I checked, and on the older site I did indeed have a test menu item for Phoca. On the new site I did not. Adding a menu item for Phoca (even though unused) was enough. How strange, but at this point I’m just happy it worked! =)

Update: It appears the menu item has to be published and not in the Menu Trash. Heh. =) I stuck it on an unused menu.

Found a great WordPress plugin for automatically generating/updating a Google sitemap file for a blog. It’s called Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress and it’s pretty slick. Had some nice debugging features to help out developers with odd environments, too. The one problem, and I saw this coming, was that the entire blog directory must be writable by the script, which in some environments means it must be 777. Groan.

Great chart over at Campaign Monitor showing what CSS properties various email readers (both desktop and web-based) support. Handy for those of us who craft HTML-based emails for clients. =)

Here’s a couple of links worth reading that pertainto Facebook and SEO/SEM…

• How to Make a Fan Page in Facebook
• Why You Need to Make a Facebook Fan Page for Your Website NOW!

I so rarely use server side includes (SSI) on Linux systems that today I ran into the same problem this guy had. I use them all the time in our Windows environments, but in our Linux-based PHP-world, I use the PHP-based versions (include or require). It’s basically just a matter where you can’t include something from above the directory you’re in with Linux SSI. Boooo! I’m sure there’s some perfectly reasonably security reason for this somewhere. Anyone?

More permissions issues. After installed WordPress 2.71, make sure /wp-content/ is writable by WordPress, or you will have to manually add the /wp-content/uploads/ directory and make it writable by WordPress. This could very likely take the form of 777 permissions (groan).

Warner Music correctly identified their unlicensed music in a couple of YouTube videos I posted for our Heath High School reunion in 2008. Videos are still there, but muted. Grumble. Will have to get some new music for those sometime soon.

• Here…
• Here…
• Here…
• And here…

Preface: You have to understand that Apple really, really, REALLY doesn’t expect (want?) folks to be upgrading the drive of their MacBook Pros. This was nothing like the nightmare involved in an old clamshell iBook drive upgrade, but boy howdy I’ve never seen so many screws.

Whew. Just a follow-up from a previous post where I mentioned I was considering upgrading the hard drive in my MacBook Pro. Found a walk-through online with photos, so I was somewhat prepared, though I found out too late the Torx driver heads I had were one size too large (doh!). A lunch-break trip to Home Depot took care of that little problem. Everything went pretty much according to plan, with three notable exceptions that I’ll post here for anyone else who may be interested in a similar upgrade:

1. During the initial “cracking” of the case, I got to the step where you remove the top panel (with the keyboard) but couldn’t get the bloody thing detached at the front middle. The article cautioned about this area and said to rock the panel side to side in order to get it to release. I went on for some time (rocking, shaking, inserting plastic objects in the gaps, etc.) before realizing that I had missed a screw that was holding this part together. Heh. One more screw and voila. =)
2. On the way out I was in a hurry and made a really unfortunate but laughable mistake. On each side panel there are four tiny screws that need to be replaced. On the first side: Screw 1… done. Screw 2… done. Screw 3… done. Screw 4… whoa. The screw went too far into the hole. Huh? Yeah. Was it the wrong screw? Nope. Weird. Couldn’t get it out, so would have to come back to it. Next! Screw 5… whoa, same problem. What on earth? Couldn’t get it out, and this was going to be a problem. Screw 6… wait a minute. There are only supposed to be four screw holes on each side. That’s when it dawned on me… I had put the screws into the screw holes for the monitor plug. Heh. Yikes. Had to leave, so I finished up the rest of the job and left two screw holes empty in the battery compartment. I banged as hard as I dared, shook, used my tiny magnetic tools… nothing. Maybe it would come out on the trip home. Nope. At home I tried sticky-tack (sidenote: my sticky tack has been in my desk since college, and it pretty gooey at this point), but no luck. In the end, I put Super Glue on the end of my screwdriver, held it to the screw long enough to get a bond, and then unscrewed it out (even though the screws were too small, the threading still prevented them from just coming by pulling). Same trick on the second one, and voila.
3. One last snafu to mention. In the battery compartment there are three tiny screws that to the casual observer will appear identical to the other tiny screws on the unit. Being a casual observer, natch, I made this error, and put them in the pile with the other small screws. But there is a big difference… these three screws have no counter-sinking bevel, and so if used on the outside of the unit not screw down flush with the case. I found this out the hard way, but noticed and put things right.

Yay! 320GB of goodness. The night before I had used SuperDuper to migrate my main drive’s date onto the new drive by way of OWC’s Mercury On-the-Go FireWire 800/USB 2 portable eSATA drive case. Sheri and I watched a movie on NetFlix while the transfer happened, and I was suprised that it was done by the time the move ended. Man, I love FireWire 800! =)

Another year, another loss. Matt Selman sums it up for me.

Found this link at CNN interesting today. From the article…

“It is not just coffee that can lead to caffeine withdrawal. While a 6-ounce cup of brewed coffee contains about 100 milligrams of caffeine, tea and cola have about 40 milligrams each, a bar of milk chocolate has about 10 milligrams and hot chocolate has about 7 milligrams.”