Thomasso’s weblog » Nifty Plug-ins

Working in Open Source: Bug1174H23

November 5th, 2006 Thomasso

Another hurtle was stepped over in the free world of Open Source–the Adobe Flash bug in Fedora-Core 5 and 6 (FC5, FC6) was fixed. I was getting a little peaved when, for the last 3 weeks, I could not get any flash-plugins to work on my machine–FC5 in any browser, including FireFox.

First I skewered, (literally too I might add), the net looking for the answer: That was a dud! At first I thought it was a bug, as I found out latter at this assumption was correct, and then I looked at some of the known fixes out there, such as the YUM Repositories where automatic install can be done with little or no hassles. The Flash plugin had a font / scrip problem where it would not, or could not read some of the various fonts that it uses. Adding to this, the font problem seems to have invited a unexpected security breach, thus causing it not to work at all in FC5.
After following some of the FAQs and fixes, I then gave up, and searched for another way to fix the problem. Then after some sole searching and reading about this problem, I then went to my favorite repository for RPM files, typed in “Flash-Plugin” and presto! The Flash Plugin worked right from the start–the power of the RPM file stood its grown again.

This raises some issues about repositories for open source systems, and how people are suppose to get right to the heart of the matter without spending too much time downloading, then ending up with 50 files installed?

Posted in Blog and Web Tech, General, Nifty Plug-ins | Comments Off

A Few Thoughts on Stuff

December 11th, 2005 Thomasso

When I first started to type out this post, I was going to talk about how ridiculous it was running around town while the mad x-mass shopping rush was taking place. I was also going to say how put off I was with the whole commercialization of penquote:x-mass:closequote: and how our children are getting sucked into the gift giving scheme. But no, I am not going to talk about that–instead I am going to talk about how happy I am that this term at College is almost over and that I have one last exam to do. I am going to talk about how happy that I will have some time to myself and will be able to spend it with some friends and hopefully some family.

But first, I reactivated my Smilies Icons today because I thought this theme could use them. I never reactivated them when I did the upgrade from Word-Press 1.2 to 1.5. I thought at the time that having them was a little too tacky for the theme’s tastes. Now that I am creating this theme from scratch, I could use them as long as I keep them to a minim. Word-Press came with about 20 to 22 stock smiley Icons, and adding them was real easy, with just a plug-in and some added code, the task was pure and simple. I may put them back in the comment section too if I find someone who would like to have them when they comment here. So, if you want them, just let me know–just one person needs to say penquote: Give me my Smillies back :closequote:….

I managed to do what I had to do for x-mass shopping. I did the bear minim that one could do in such times–that is, I sent Money Orders out to my two sisters who live way out in the boonies and bought gifts for my two nieces and nephew who live closer but do not live in the same house. I figure I will let them do the shopping and I can take all the credit for that. great plan eh?

For those of you who have been trying to keep in touch with me, well, you will soon have a much easer time as I may brake down and purchase a Cell Phone! Yes, that’s right folks, I my have a mobile phone and you can leave messages as apposed to not leaving anything like it is now. You all know how much I hate having the phone…. peroid….. but you have made your point about contacting me for various things when they come up. I will keep you posted as to when that actually happens.

So, until then, you all have a happy season holiday and happy shopping, spending money, running up those credit cards. I know I am being sarcastic.. he he he. But hey, you might as well have well you still can–right! Leave a comment if you are just saying Hi!

Posted in Diatribe, General, Nifty Plug-ins, University classes | 4 Comments »

Hey, the Week is Over

November 26th, 2005 Thomasso

Another week is over yet again. What and week although better than the last one, this one still bites. This post is little more than a update from last week’s drama regarding the switching and re-posting of employees into different departments at my work. Since that “phone call” I made last Friday, everything seems to be quite as far as the interaction between me and management goes. This quite period is normal whenever I inquire with the Human Resource managers about any problems occurring at the work place: they really take my inquires seriously. The “phone call” has already hit the top ten topics of conversation in the rumor-mill and the grape-vine got pretty hot while that rumor hit the wire. The short of it is–I only wondered why an employee could be moved from one department from another when there is a pay increase involved. Another words, could the employer take an employee without any competition and post them into a that higher-rate job position while the other job positions in that department have being filled with applicants who applied and won their competitions. The whole thing smells to me. My take on this is–I’m happy where I’m am and choose not to move because of the extremes in the other department. I do not wish to work in the Freezer-Cooler, even for a extra $0.25 to $1.00 per hour. They forgot that others want to work there. The managers only looked at those with the skills rather than those whom wished to advanced into that department and seek the skill–like training them is a bad thing? This is why I wonder about my employer and just how long this corporation is going to stay afloat in todays market economy?

The changes to the look and feel of the Blog are coming along nicely. My very own theme for Word Press. I just uploaded the CSS today with the new gif images and I’m quite happy with the look. It really jumps off the screen on my lap-top. The only problem I have right at the moment is on the MS- Internet Explorer browser: I can’t get the footer to show in IE while all the other browsers have no problems with that. Hummmm? Shity MS, why do people put up with it? Oh yeah, they paid for it…. he he ha ha ha ah he he…

Posted in Bitching about work, General, Nifty Plug-ins, Photographs | 4 Comments »

Graphics and Animations

November 12th, 2005 Thomasso

Today was a bit of a milestone as I finally got the art of POVRay and GIMP working together for me to produce GIF animated photos for the web. Alright, not a big deal for those who operate under a MS Windows operating system, but a victory on a LINUX system. Povray is a very powerful and free 3D graphics program that Ray Traces objects that you scrip into it. The complexity and ease of this GNU software package was daunting at first but once I spent some time with it, the easer it was to create with. GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Program is standard issue with almost every LINUX platform and works very similarly to Corel and Adobe’s packages. Putting these two together was an almost impossible task as tutorials and documentation files are scarce and poorly written. In a moment of truth, I woke up yesterday and the idea hit me as this great wave of inspiration followed through with a plan that I put to work immediately. The result worked. My first creation involved a short 21 frame animation in POVRay. Instead of rendering it to a MPEG of AVI file I dropped the frames into a directory as raw JEPG images. Next I converted all the images into GIMP format then renamed them to conform to GIMP’s GAP module which creates GIF animated images. On my very first try, as shown, success followed with more creative ideas and complex animations which are many times smaller than posting movie files of the same length.

Posted in General, Nifty Plug-ins, Photographs | Comments Off

No, You’re not Lost, I Just Upgraded!

February 26th, 2005 Thomasso

O kay, I have just done the bog upgrade and figured I should start back to the basics and work my way up again. I guess the look of the old layout sort of sucked. I could tell because everyone was telling that the blog was cool, but…. That was the indicator! When people are nice, that really means trouble and a change in needed. So here we are… Recently added: I just did a bunch of editing on the index page and it looks fairly straight forward. I Administration page is a little lame, but it works. So I’m slowly getting most of the plug ins back up again. I think there are a couple of them that I’m going to leave for good…. the new layout just does not need the clutter.

Previous entry from earlier on today: I think the first thing I must do is get the old favicon up, and start working the CSS to get these post looking good again. The drop case letters are off, yet I didn’t figure the old plugins would stay when I uploaded everything. At least that is one less thing I must do. Those plugins were a bitch sometimes to get working.

Oh, now I guess I need to worry about SPAM again because I just realized that my SPAM protection systems are gone. Holy crap! This could get ugly…..:(

So Here Is Word Press 1.5 StrayHorn!

Posted in Blog and Web Tech, Events, General, Nifty Plug-ins | 2 Comments »