I’ve been reading quite a lot about WordPress 2.7 (named Coltrane) and how it is a major upgrade over all the past 2.6 releases. I felt I needed to do the necessary upgrade and keep abreast with things. I do know of some people who have BROKEN their WordPress blog installations after an upgrade, so please, PLEASE do backup both your database and your web files BEFORE you embark on this project.

Then, spend some time reading the official WordPress upgrade guide which is found here.

It took me about 30 minutes to read up about the process, deactivate my existing plugins, backup all the necessary files, download the new latest.tar.gz file, I was off on my SSH spree to decompress and copy over the necessary files, while preserving my original theme and customizations.

I forgot to take a screen capture of The Backpackr backend before upgrading, so I grabbed one off my company’s blog site. This is how it looks before the upgrade - fairly clean, but quite severely lacking in navigation, hence the need to install third party tools to improve admin menus.

And ta daaa, the ALL-NEW-AND-IMPROVED WordPress 2.7 - one of the most major changes is really the user interface. They’ve spent a lot of time noting down the common paths that bloggers take and made them handy, with less clicks to get to. The Dashboard on the left is really nifty too with nice new javascripty sliders. Bravo, Wordpress…. BRAVO!

As I was writing this post, I already noticed they have improved the image upload mechanism. Previously, when you select insert image at full-size, they LIE… they still try to squeeze you into some WordPress-thinks-you-need-500-x-400-size or something. Now I seemingly have power to go full-size and REALLY have wide images without tweaking the HTML behind it.

Other functionality that is advantageous to the blog administrator is the ability to upgrade WordPress with a click and a little typing, rather than having to download and manually upgrade it like how I did. It’ll save you a good 20 minutes, at least. I haven’t tested this feature yet, obviously… as there aren’t any upgrades to be had yet.

Here’s a snippet from the WordPress blog that I thought was interesting.

The Story Behind 2.7

The real reason Coltrane is such a huge leap forward is because the community was so involved with every step of the process. Over 150 people contributed code directly to the release, our highest ever, with many tens of thousands more participating in the polls, surveys, tests, mailing lists, and other feedback mechanisms the WordPress dev team used in putting this release together.

I’ve been commenting on blogs for awhile now and wondered how these people just seem to have their pictures pop-up everywhere. Surely they can’t have uploaded their pictures onto every person’s blog, right? Duh, stupid question!

Anyhow, the answer is really simple - get a GRAVATAR. That stands for GLOBALLY-RECOGNIZED-AVATARS. WOW… what a great idea. So here I am traipsing over to www.gravatar.com (incidentally, they share the same database as Wordpress, and if you have a Wordpress account, you can log right in) to get myself an avatar.

Yup, go choose a suave picture of yourself, and send it to the server. Your email address is now associated with that image, and when you go onto a Wordpress / Blogspot site and leave a comment, your picture will automagically appear if the blog owner enables gravatar support! Amazing, eh?!

For those geeks who want to know how it works, I did a tad bit of reading, and in a nutshell, each blog engine encrypts your email address with something called an MD5 encryption method (the FBI/CIA folks probably created it… hah), and then sends the information in the form of the img src tag to the gravatar servers, which then return the associated image! That’s quite a brilliant idea, and your email address never gets submitted directly to their servers.

Go, get yourself a gravatar today and look cool-er!

I’m not sure how you store your media, but I sure hope to goodness that you backup your data regularly. And when I say backup, it doesn’t just mean burning one DVD copy of your wedding photos.

These days, data is really the lifeblood of most businesses, if not all of them. And we cannot go without it (do I hear a chorus of “yes-es”?). When was the last time you took a break from your blackberry, iPhone, computer and Internet for more than 72 hours? (’nuff said, right?).

For those who are not convinced about backups, read an article I wrote some time ago here.

Anyhow, I archive my data on several brands of DVD, and I’m glad I did do this weird step in data backup as sometimes, certain brands of DVDs do fail. Here’s some photos from DVDs of mine that suffered weird symptoms. As a result of these problems, your computer might just freeze and not be able to access the data, or certain files will be inaccessible. The worst case is a totally inaccessible disc.

I think I’ll refer to this as chicken pox - there are random spots on the DVD.

And this is known as dandruff - it flakes

Suicide - looks like slits were made on the DVD

Well, I hope you’re better acquainted with the various “illnesses” that DVDs develop and do something to doctor them before it’s too late.

For those who don’t know, contextual ads are targeted advertisements that are displayed on a webpage based on what the content is. For instance, you may be looking at a page about the latest cameras and all of a sudden, Google serves you an ad for guess what… the new Canon 5D MKII camera!

Well, it doesn’t always work… I was watching a video on YouTube today that was made by this ultra-cool-yet-crazy-lady called Justine Ezarik, or probably better known as iJustine.com. Anyhow, what happened was, YouTube as always was serving ads, and I suddenly noticed that it had taken the literal word Turkey, and was serving ads to go visit the COUNTRY OF TURKEY!

Check this screenshot out…

Anyhow, I guess it’s not so easy for the ad engines to determine what type of turkey Justine was parading about. It’s just a little unfortunate for advertisers who choose keywords that might have different connotations. As such, when you advertise on Google, do beware of how you position your ad.

Sigh… I’ve been slacking in churning out videos and posts… And what have I been working on?

A lot of project management! And some programming.

I’m currently heading the projects division at Integricity Corporation and there’s always so much going on, especially around this time of year when all clients are trying to launch their new sites.

We’ve probably launched 10 different projects in the last month, with one that was just launched tonight! We welcome Louis Pang’s refreshed blog to the blogosphere - much more intuitive with a whole lot of new functionality! Louis is a good friend, and probably one of the most sought after wedding photographers in Malaysia (and by many from abroad too!). All the best with the new blog, Louis Pang Studio!

What else have I been busy with? Well… here’s a sneak peak at an Integricity-owned project that will revolutionize the dining experience for Malaysians. It’s called TheQguides, and it’s not out yet… but will be very shortly. A teaser is on the website here. I can’t show you more, but here’s a brief glimpse of what’s being birthed in our labs…

As such, I’ve been rather tied for time. BUT, just to let all of you know… I have swung to the dark-side. I am now the owner of a hand-me-down Macbook Pro from my wife. She has got a new-fangled Macbook Pro, but I’m happy with what I have now. There’s much to learn, but I’m getting there. I’ll share more info soon on the learning process and how a PC is different from a Mac.

Oh, the pain of relearning shortcut keys! GRRR…

Has anyone encountered FireFox freezing up when accessing Gmail? It seemed to happen quite often for me, and I realized the common site being accessed was always Gmail. Too much Ajax happening in the background?

Perhaps this will force me to upgrade from FireFox 2.0.0.16 to the new spunky FireFox 3?

If this is happening to you, a suggestion by a certain amanda on troublefixers.com was to clear the browser cache by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Del. I’m not sure when you do this - AFTER it freezes once, then restarting FireFox, or to just do it periodically?

By now, I presume you have assembled your PC hardware and are just raring to try your hand at installing the Mac OS. This tutorial follows on from Part 1 - Choosing the parts - do watch it first if you haven’t assembled your machine.

Your parts may be different from what I’ve prescribed, and it’s alright. You may have success with what you have already, but in the event you do not, then go watch the video and buy the recommended parts.

Other resources that are handy while building your hackintosh are as follows:

• Choosing the parts
• Bios settings before installation
• OSx86 Project
• InsanelyMac

If you have questions on building the Hackintosh, feel free to post them here. I’ll try my best to help you out.

Music credit: Robert Jakob

THIS TUTORIAL IS BASED ON THE ASUS P5K PRO MOTHERBOARD.
YOUR SETTINGS WILL DIFFER IF YOU ARE NOT USING THE SAME HARDWARE.

Before you commence the installation of the Mac OS on a PC, there are some settings in the BIOS you’ll have to configure. As your PC boots up, hit the key that is stated which takes you into BIOS - it’s normally the [DEL], [F1] or [ESC] key that will work for you.

(It’s amazing… this guy, Michael Stevens set up a page on most BIOS types and what key to press. Check it out here.)

Anyhow, once you get into BIOS, follow each setting to the “T” and you’ll be assured that your Mac OS installation will work. I used the Leo4All installation, it will work for others too, I’m sure.

ASUS P5K PRO BIOS MAIN TAB

(Read more…)

Apple & Intel inside

As part of my exposure to the world of Macs, I decided to try a project that is fairly publicized on the Internet - to build a Hackintosh. This is essentially building a computer system with regular PC parts that you can pick up from your local computer store, but installing the Mac operating system on it.

This effectively provides you with a full functioning Mac that could even be more powerful than their native Macs, and most importantly… AT A LOWER COST! (I paid less than USD600 for this Core 2 Quad machine - not including the monitor)

Stay tuned for the next part of this series that details the operating system software installation process.

Summary of computer components used

• ASUS P5K Pro motherboard
• Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz (Q6600)
• NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT graphics card
• 2x 2GB DDR2-800MHz Kingston RAM
• Pioneer SATA DVD-ROM
• 250GB SATA hard drive
• A regular casing with a good power supply

Music credit: Sunset (Ken Verheecke), Farranos no Frevo (Camerata Brasileira)

Ooops… we’re not quite done with this page yet… but it’ll be up soon!