Yea, we have a new version of the bgStretcher2 script. The version has been bumped from 2.0 to 2.1 and it is available for download right now. See the bgStretcher page.

What is bgStretcher?

Well, check out the official page, but simply, it is a way to have a javascript based photo gallery and slideshow that appears full screen in your browser.

So, what’s new?

• First, there was a general rewrite to clean up and remove duplicate code.
• The code was documented, so it should be easier to follow.
• Fixed the issues people were having when clicking on albums quickly. (The slideshow would appear to stop working)
• Moved some setup code from the html page to the bgStretcher2.js script.

You should be able to just drop the new bgStretcher2.js file in. I would advise cleaning up the html page that you are using to avoid conflicts. I have moved a lot of the setup code that was here into the main script file, which makes the html look much cleaner and simpler.

I entered a contest on The Light Without blog a couple of weeks ago. The picture above that I took in Seattle was the image that won. In this post on Stewarts blog I say a little bit more about the image in the comments. Also, you can see what one of the judges had to say about it.

Just wanted to toot my horn a little bit.

Thanks to Stewart and Eli.

I have been using the ThickBox plugin for Wordpress on my site for a while now. When you click on a link, the images are shown in their own window with a darkened background. This worked great until I put together something on another of my photography sites here. At the top is a flash movie (yes, I know I don’t like having a flash movie, I will move on to HTML5 video when I can) and at the bottom are images. When you click on the images you get the same lightbox effect as the plugin. The only trouble was, it was pointed out to me that in IE, the video stayed on top. Oops.

A little searching the internet found the solution. Check out here for the fix, and here for some background on how it works and for other options you have. It is now working as expected. Thanks Steve for pointing that out to me.

I have decided that my signature is crap. I tried to make a nice signature, scan it, and use it to sign my photos, but it wasn’t working. Also, when I post images online, I have used different fonts to add my name to the image, usually on the bottom. I haven’t been terribly happy with any of the fonts I have tried so far. Until now.

I think I like Jellyka – Estrya’s Handwritting. Jellyka Nerevan seems to be giving away the font for personal use. I wasn’t sure what exactly other uses would be, but I sent a donation via pay pal for the font. She has other fonts on dafont too, or you can see her website at CuttyFruty.

I have used this font with the last few sets of images I have placed online. I am not sure if I am going to keep the drop shadow or not, but it looks good on plain white!

A week or so ago, I saw that Scott Kelby had launched a new portfolio with a full screen flash gallery. I thought it looked pretty sweet, but I wanted to have a go at getting a similar, but not the same look using Javascript, not Flash. I think it turned out pretty well. You can see the portfolio here. The Javascript works pretty well. You can’t however take over the entire screen, but the images will fill the browser.

I intend to detail how it works, and provide something for you to download if you want to use it, but that will have to wait a day or two. Check back, I will share.

Only it didn’t work. Wordpress 2.9 needs MySql 5.0 or higher. Crap. I had a 4.something MySql version. I went to the 1and1 control panel. No way to upgrade. No way migrate. S.O.L. When I had created my blog and the database for it, which didn’t seem like all that long ago, the default on 1and1 was to create a 4.x database. Now I was in trouble.

Hey, no problem I thought. I was told to do a backup before the upgrade, and I had done that. I used the phpMyAdmin tool to do the backup, I could do a restore to a new 5.x table the same way, right? Not exactly. I had a LOT of data in my database. 1and1 will only let you import 2meg. I had 4 times that. I needed to reduce some data.

I know, compression! First I tried to do the data dump with zip compression. Then I found out that the import tool didn’t support it. Sheesh. Then I tried the gzip compression. For me, this resulted in exactly the same file size. This wasn’t working at all. I just need to get rid of some data.

First I created a new 5.x MySql table using 1and1.

Next, I thought that I would eliminate some cache data that I didn’t really need. I use a flickr plugin that caches a lot of data. Also, I use a twitter plugin that stores all the tweets I make there. This adds up! So I decided to delete the data. The plugins didn’t have a delete function, so using phpMyAdmin, I went to the sql tab and entered the following command:

TRUNCATE TABLE tablename;

Replace tablename with the flickr or twitter, or what ever table you need to remove all rows from. Doing it this way instead of deleteing rows is much faster.

Still too much data. Hmmmm… how about all the revisions. I never need to go back to the revisions I had before, so lets delete them:

DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = "revision";

That’s working pretty well. I am down to 3.5meg. Still not near the 2meg limit though.

There is now a time consuming way, and an easy way. The time consuming way is if you are afraid of the command line. You can download a backup file, open it in a text editor (not word), chop it into pieces, and upload these pieces, hoping you don’t make a mistake. Or, you can do a little command line magic. Just a couple of lines.

First, you need to use ssh to get into your 1and1 account. From a Mac or Linux box, this isn’t too difficult. It is built right in. From a windows machine, you will need to use a program called putty. I use a Mac, so I will show you the command line (Terminal) commands to use. First you need to find out the URL, userid, and password to use. If you go to the Administration panel, select “Web Space & Access”, and then “Secure Shell (SSH) Access”. Here you will find the URL, user and password to use.

ssh userid@sxxxxxxxx.onlinehome.us (or what ever your URL is)

Then enter your password at the prompt.

Now you are in your 1and1 shell account. Now, lets save a backup of our database without the phpMyAdmin tool.

mysqldump -h dbxx.perfora.net -u dboxxxxxxxx -p dbxxxxxxxx > backup.20100101.sql

Give your file a date so it is easy to remember what the backup is from.

The -h part is for host. The -u for user. The -p is prompt for password, then the last part is the database.

That command will take a few seconds depending on how big your database is. Isn’t is weird that 1and1 will let you have a 100meg database, but your can’t use any of their tools to import something that big?

Ok, now lets restore that data into a new 5.0 database that you created. Make sure you use the new database for this command.

mysql -h dbxxx.perfora.net -u dboxxxxxxxx -p dbxxxxxxxx < backup.20100101.sql

Again, this will take a couple of seconds, and then you are done. That’s it.

Ok, I have to confess. I did this the hard way the first time. I thought the text after the -p was my password, instead of the database name, and I couldn’t get the command to work. This way is much easier though. Trust me.

Now, remember why I was doing all this? I wanted to upgrade my Wordpress install. So next I went and edited my wp-config.php file to the updated database info. I have no idea what happened, but after I edited this file, my Wordpress site became all text, and just dumped out this file to the browser. Oops. So I then deleted the file, and started the install over again. (That’s what happens if the file is missing) I entered the database info and then got a message about an existing install. Yea, yea, I know, so I exited out, and just went to the site normally, and everything was fine. Phew. Not sure what to tell you, as that was a little bit more stressful than I thought I would be.

Next I logged in, went the the dashboard, gleefully passed the screen telling me to backup, and upgraded to 2.9 in a couple of seconds. Piece of cake.

I am donating an image to the Minnesota Lions Eye Bank for them to use on their holiday card this year. I let them look through quite a few of my images, and the blue jay above is what they selected. I am quite happy that they wanted to look through and use one of my images. The eye bank does a great service, and I am happy to donate an image for them to use.

My friend Theresa is also going through a tough time right now, and medical expenses have been mounting. They are having a benefit (see the benefit link on this site) to raise money. I have donated the above image printed at 16×24 on 1.5″ standout, and a two hour portrait photo session. They are having an auction with several other items in it as well. I am very happy to donate these to her cause. Lots of us are really pulling for you Theresa! See you at the benefit.

This was the setting of my first photo gallery. It was awesome. We had the perfect sized room at the front of the Fabulous Catering kitchen, who also catered the event. It just happened to be my birthday, but I concentrated on the gallery thing.

This was just one corner. Annie did a great job of getting frames, and then hanging all the pictures I had printed off. We are going to have a really full house once we get these back.

If you every get the chance to put on an event like this, I would recommend that you just go for it. It is such a rush to see your work on the wall, and have people looking at it and commenting on how great it is!

Anyway, it was a great event, and I want to thank all the people that came, Annie and her helpers for all the work they did, and Fabulous Catering where we had the event and all the great food they provided.