Bits and Pieces

Been trying to figure out a couple of things about the new version of WordPress and think I have finally gotten my head wrapped around it enough to make the changes I was wanting.

I have changed the way the archives display in two different ways.

First is that they now display from oldest to newest so if you are reading the discussions tis top to bottom as it should be.

Second is that the entire posts show up rather than just an the first few lines.

Let me know if there are any problems with this. I hope this will work out better for most folks.

One other change I thinking about making is to limit the number of posts that show up on each page to 10 verses the 20 it is set to right now. Any comments or feedback on this move can be made in either comments or by email to depatty at gmail dot com.

Later,
Dave AKA Albert Freyer 😉

Midi files playing?

*** Update – Seems that it didn’t auto start after all.  Early in the am and coffee had not kicked in with either of us yet. However, if anyone has any trouble with the site do let me know as there could be stuff broken that I’ve not found yet.

——–

Have had one person say that one of the music files started when he came to the site. I’ve got them set with “autostart=false” but will move them off the front page if this is happening.

Anyone else who has this problem, PLEASE, let me know in comments (no login/signup required, comments are set so a moderator has to approve all) or email – depatty at gmail.com. Thanks, Dave.

Update is done!

At least the initial cleanup work is done, the new theme is installed and at least mostly configured. As you can see if you are reading this, the new header is done and wallpaper up. Most of the cobwebs have been cleaned out and I am working on polishing the last of the door knobs now. 😉 All of the existing posts that are on books I have, that are on the site, have been checked and cleaned up or redone. I still have a pile of books that I haven’t scanned and uploaded, yet, but am planning on doing them asap.

For now I’m going to make my daily post over at TechnoPrimitive.org which is my personal site, and then go to bed. Till tomorrow… 😎

Not quite finished

Had high hopes of getting all the posts updated today but got bogged down in the bits and bobs. To tired tonight to go further so am gonna call it an early night and start on it again in the morning. Till then…

And now I find that the smillie buttons are not working. 😦 Still going to go to bed and wait to worry about that too tomorrow…

Update on Site Update

Kind of a redundant title I know but is as descriptive a one as I can think right now, after spending the last two days working on and slogging through this mess.

As of now I’ve managed to get over 200 of the posts tagged and those with cover scans formatted in the workaround custom database fields moved to the new WordPress standard method of handling graphics. Got around 60 left to get through and I hope to get that done today (April 15, 2008). Then I can change themes, remove some clutter from the database structure, see which of my collection of Stout paperback and hardback books I have in here already, and which ones I need to add in.

In updating some of the cover/book posts yesterday I did a Google search on Johan Blixt and found his new site and email address. Sent him an email requesting a copy of his cover scan of The Red Bull as the copy I had was quite degraded. He sent it right over and it’s now up at The Red Bull. He has a nice page devoted to Rex Stout’s books at http://homepage.mac.com/johan.blixt/stout.html and has quite a few other interesting pages for mystery readers on his site at http://homepage.mac.com/johan.blixt/.
Thanks Johan!

Guess I have procrastinated long enough and need to get back to the updating.
More as I get to it…
Dave AKA Albert Freyer

Long time no updates

Sorry for the long silence on here. Not that I have been that busy, just haven’t been doing any work on the site. No promises, as I seem to always be able to find excuses for not doing things I really should finish, but I’m going to at least update the version of WordPress that the site is running on. This could break things, and if you find broken links or whatever please let me know either via comments or you can email me at depatty at gmail dot com.

Thanks for reading.

Dave AKA Albert Freyer

Rescanning Covers Update

Just a quick post to let y’all know where I am on the scanning and updating.

I started with Fer de Lance and just got through with Too Many Women, so as of now there are 27 new scans up. I had thought I would be further along by now but Real Life keeps interfering. Another problem is that I am having to reformat the text in most of the existing posts as I go. I am also adding additional text from inside cover as my hands allow. So getting there, just a lot slower than I had wanted/hoped.

More as I can.
Dave

Quick update on covers

Just finished updating the scans of all 5 of the Fer de Lance Covers listed on the site.

To view a larger version of any of the new cover uploads, click on the thumbnail in the post, this will take you to another page with a medium sized version of the scan. If you then click on the medium sized version it will take you to a full sized version of the picture. Some browsers (firefox and seamonkey that I know for sure) will not display the full sized version without another click on the picture as they come with ‘size picture to fit window’ turned on by default.

Use your back button to return to the original page.

Hope this muddies things up enough for the evening.

Questions, comments, etc, welcomed…

Dave

Fighting with the scanner/computer

Been trying to get the scanner to scan clean cover art and getting herringbone and distortion everywhere. Had been scanning directly to .jpg. Tried it at 72, 150 and 300 dpi with the same results. 300 was better but still some distortion showing up. The scanner was making a bit of a squeak when the carriage was returning to home position so I took it apart and lubricated all the moving parts as well as the slides. It now makes less noise than it has since we bought it but still getting the distortion and herringbone patterns. So tried scanning the covers in using .png which works. But they also are huge files. Where the jpg files are between 100k and 200k in finished size the .png files are from 800k to 1.2meg for the same size output. At that point I tried using gimp to convert the .png to a .jpg and all is now well… It just takes me about 3 to 4 times as long to process a single cover.

Onward and upward as it were…

Dave

New theme and now with pictures

After looking through the code in the templates, I figured out what I needed to get the thumbnails and scans to show up and moved just that part over to the new theme. Appears to be working so am gonna start with this and work on it from here.

Got the Linux machine going again to scan more covers and have started on that. Going to have to change some other things in the new version of WordPress to get the thumbnails the size I want them to be, so when I get that worked out will start uploading more scans.

Slowly, slowly, eats the elephant…