Splash of Style...Macs, Photography, Design, and other Passions

Aftermarket Batteries: Update a Year Later

June 3, 2009 by debbie T | Digital Photography

It’s been over a year since I ordered the replacement battery for my Canon XTi from Diamondback Batteries so I figured I would post an update.

How well has the aftermarket Diamondback battery held up against the original OEM Canon battery? I am afraid that it hasn’t held up so well. The Diamondback battery won’t hold a charge anymore; I charge it fully, and by the next day, it’s already half down. My Canon OEM battery is still going strong.

But truthfully, does it really matter that after a year the Diamondback battery isn’t so great? I mean, I only paid $11 for it. Compare that to $50 for a Canon battery, and it’s really not a bad deal.

Diamondback offers a “One Year Hassle Free Replacement Warranty” and I wish I noticed it a couple of months ago instead of 2 months over the warranty. But no biggie. I am going to order another one today. So yes, I do still recommend them!

Make sure to use the discount code for $5 off, it gives you almost free shipping.

My previous post on aftermarket batteries.

WordPress Does Not Remember Login

June 3, 2009 by debbie T | WordPress

I was having trouble with my WordPress admin login using Firefox; I would need to login every time my browser window was closed or I exited Firefox. Strange because one of my other WordPress blogs had no problems.

I cleared Firefox cookies, my cache, passwords, form data! Nothing seemed to work. I tried it on Safari, and same problem. Wouldn’t “remember me” and I would have to log in every time. So, I knew it wasn’t just a Firefox issue.

Then I found this post on the WordPress Support forum.

I had my Settings>General>WordPress Address set for “http://www.splashofstyle.com” with the “www” but whenever I tried to access the blog, (typing the address or from any of my bookmarks) I was using “http://splashofstyle.com” without the “www” – THAT was the problem; it didn’t match the WordPress Address setting, so it made me log in every time.

wordpress settings for web site address

So, now I am consciously including the “www” whenever I access my WordPress Admin and it now remembers me every time. yay!

Finding Your Way

June 1, 2009 by debbie T | Art and Graphics • Digital Photography

Snapped this photo in between the rain storms last week.

Ants love peony flowers. They have been all over them since the buds appeared. I guess there’s a sticky substance that ants eat on the buds that help the blooms to open.

debbie T - Finding Your Way photo

Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/640)
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 100 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Lens: Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro
Camera: Canon XTi
Edited in Lightzone (Relight tool)

(all photos are copyright protected. Do not use or copy without written permission)

Fingers Crossed

May 28, 2009 by debbie T | Digital Photography

It’s been cold and rainy this week, but it was great outside this afternoon for snapping photos in the back yard! The rain drops were gorgeous and everything was so green and alive.

Happy Gorgeous Green Thursday!

happy gorgeous green thursday!

Exposure: 0.003 sec (1/400)
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 100 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Lens: Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro
Camera: Canon XTi

(all photos are copyright protected. Do not use or copy without written permission)

Mac OSX – US Flag Icon on my Menu Bar

May 27, 2009 by debbie T | Mac Corner • Mac Software

I don’t know what I did or what happened, but on my Macbook Pro (running Mac OS X Leopard) a little US Flag icon appeared on my menu bar this morning. I love my flag, but I really don’t want it on my menubar taking up precious space.

I wasn’t sure how to remove it; there was no option on the right-click menu, so I hit “Open International” from the (right-click) drop down menu.

International-settings

Down at the bottom of the International Settings window, thankfully I found a checkbox that I unchecked – “show input menu in menu bar”. It worked! The flag icon disappeared.

Song from the New Bud Light Lime Commercial (2009)

May 21, 2009 by debbie T | iTunes & iPhone

I have watched the new Bud Light Lime commercial a couple of times, and I love the song…googling only brought up findings for an older commercial from last year – the song “creator” from santogold.

I finally found the song on the Bud Light Lime web site; it’s also by Santogold, and the song is “Lights Out (Remix)” – get the free download! Grab it while it’s hot! Cool song!

Publish WordPress Posts in the Future

May 21, 2009 by debbie T | WordPress

I knew setting a future publish date could be done in WordPress, but I never really had a need for it. But I decided to try it out on another WordPress blog and it works great!

On your ‘Add New Post’ page, on the right column, there will be an option to ‘publish immediately’ or click the ‘edit’ link to change the publish date. It’s also a good way to publish past dates too.

Change the publish date and click OK

Set the WordPress publish on date

The new publish date is displayed. You can change it at any time by clicking the edit link. Hit the “schedule” button to update your post.

The scheduled publish date

Testing Web Design in Different Browsers

May 20, 2009 by debbie T | Internet • Web Design • Web Development • Windows on the Mac

Every web designer knows how important it is to test test test their new web design in multiple browsers. Windows doesn’t make it easy to test in multiple versions of Internet Explorer, although it is possible through various means.

What I decided to go the virtual route. I have VMWare Fusion installed on my Mac, with Windows XP and Windows 7 virtual machines, running IE 6 and IE8 respectively.

So in order to run IE7, I copied the XP/IE6 virtual machine onto an external hard drive (due to lack of space on my laptop) keeping IE6 running, while upgrading to IE7 on the original XP machine.

Works great!

For more info on how I moved my VMWare Fusion virtual machine, check out my article explaining how I accomplished it. Note: When you launch the “copied” virtual machine, it will ask if it was moved or copied, in this instance I chose “copied”

How to Use Sugars in Espresso Code Editor

May 17, 2009 by debbie T | Expression Engine • Mac Software • Web Design

I have been working with Espresso code editor from MacRabbit, and so far it’s been a good experience, but I wanted to learn more about Espresso Sugars….Sugars are little plug-ins for Espresso. Don’t ask me exactly what they all do, because I am just learning; but I believe they add functionality and coding languages to Espresso.

I downloaded the Expression Engine sugar, since that is the CMS I have been working on. I figured it would be a great help to have the Expression Engine coding easily accessible.

So, I copied the .sugar file into the sugar directory, and tried to figure out what to do next. I felt pretty stupid! I found the Expression Engine codes in the Actions menu, but they were all grayed out. huh? In fact, most of the Actions seemed to be grayed out.

I found nothing on Google, so I figured it was best to ask for help on the Espresso Discussion Forum for sugars. I quickly received an answer from Anthony Short, who I just realized is the author of the Expression Engine sugar! ha! Too funny.

Anyway, he told me Espresso should be able to automatically figure out that it’s an Expression Engine document (which it wasn’t doing) but if not, I needed to set the language for the document under View>Language.

espresso-language

That did the trick! All the Expression Engine coding was magically listed in the “Snippets” panel. The coding also works with code completion, which is a lot easier!

Unfortunately, there is no way to permanently set the language to Expression Engine for the document. Once you close the file or quit Espresso, it reverts back. I hope there is some way to save the document language in the future.

ReDesigning a Web Site with Expression Engine

May 16, 2009 by debbie T | Content Management • CSS • Expression Engine • Web Design • Web Development • XHTML

I have been a faithful Expression Engine user since 2004. I was lucky enough to be one of the thousand or so people who received free copy way back when. Movable Type had just released version 3, and there was a huge uproar over the new licensing agreement. Pmachine (Expression Engine) decided to take advantage of the bad publicity and give away a ton of free copies (originally $149).

Anyway, I have been a fan ever since. Yeah, version 1.5 might be looking a little long in the tooth, but it works for me. I know they are busy perfecting the new 2.0 version so it’ll be worth the wait.

So, back to the point of this post. I use Expression Engine on another large web site I have. It’s been almost 4 years since I last designed it, and it’s in bad baaaad need of a redesign. It’s true that if you don’t use it, you lose it; a lot of my web coding knowledge has been tucked away into back pockets in my brain, so it’s also been a challenge to relearn CSS. There has been so many new tips and tricks, and the good news is, no need to design for old outdated browsers. I do still need to worry about IE6 users, but further back than that, nope. Done!

So, for the past week or so, I have rolled up my sleeves and concentrated on relearning CSS and the Expression Engine design tags & templates. It’s been a blast. I forgot how much I loved coding!

My Process

I don’t know if anyone will care about my redesign process, but I figured that I would try to document it anyway, at least for my own sake.

Where to start? Read the Rest of the Article