sooyindotcom

*sob sob*…I didn’t manage to install Movable Type version 3.2 because I’m a highly incompetent web non-programmer who only knows how to upload files via FTP but do not know what else to do to them to get them to work.

In short, it failed. So I’ve decided to put it aside to be tested again on a rainy day.

The good news?

I’ve finally got my photo gallery up. I decided to give another shot at installing Doug Bowman’s photo gallery template, and after a few tweaks here and there, I managed to get it up and running! I’ve just spent the last two days trying to customize it a teeny tiny bit, and right now, I’m uploading my photos while typing this entry. I decided to document the problems that I encountered, in case any of you do decide to install and happen to run into the same problems as yours truly.

• Problem 1: Plugin error for MTCollate at line 544. If you encounter this problem, do open up the MTCollate.pl file and do a search for ‘uild‘. What I found was that the ‘build’ command got split into two lines, ie. ‘b‘ on one line, followed by ‘uild‘ on the other. Once I fixed that, the problem went away.
• Problem 2: Another error for another MT plugin: Collect.pl. This time, the error message showed that one of the commands wasn’t closed properly. Since I ain’t a hotshot Perl programmer (not even a non-hotshot one, actually!), I did a search through Google but couldn’t find any versions other than the one I downloaded. I was about to give up when I went back to the website to download the zipped file again and saw that there was another download link for the plugin code. What I did was to copy the plugin code and paste it over the existing one in my server. Once I did that, problem solved!
• Problem 3: Despite following Doug’s clear instructions, some of the templates I created kept on linking to the .php version instead of the .html version. To solve that, simply open the template, copy the source code, and paste it into the Template Body
• Problem 4: If you have a problem with Photon, I think one way of solving it might be to uninstall and reinstall the program, at the same time, delete and recreate your weblog. Highly recommend you make sure Photon is working before setting up your weblog! Once I did that, I was able to ‘autodiscover‘ my weblog and grab the categories, so do give it a try.
• Problem 5: This is actually unrelated to setting up the photo gallery templates, etc. I was trying to create my own header, and for some reason, the background colour I used just couldn’t blend into the photo gallery’s background. I tried using GIF format with a transparent background, but it really degraded the graphic. Surfing around, I discovered that I could use the PNG format and the graphic still remained pristine. I was really really happy until I viewed my website on Internet Explorer. *Argh* All the graphics had gray backgrounds instead of the transparent one that I created. Wtf?!? Googled ‘PNG Internet Explorer transparent‘ and found that Internet Explorer doesn’t support transparent backgrounds for PNG format images. Apparently, there’s a workaround but I didn’t bother to even try it. I switched all my graphics back to GIF, after all, a little degradation in quality won’t kill anyone! *grin*

And that’s about it…=) Do drop by in a few days time to view my spanking new photo gallery right here.

I just found out that Movable Type version 3.2 has been released. Best of all, the free version includes unlimited weblogs! *XXOO* to the people at Six Apart!

As usual, being the kiasu person that I am, I’ve already downloaded and uploaded the latest version. And as usual, I’m having truckloads of problems trying to set it up. Wish me luck!

I was just double checking my MT’s xml-rpc file location on my Photon application (cause it apparently recognizes the path so I was finding it a little bit weird why Flickr doesn’t) when I got an acute case of itchy-fingers and decided to click the Autodiscover button to see if it’s working. The past few times I clicked it, nothing happened, ie. Photon couldn’t find my blog ID, etc. But this time, funnily enough, it did!

I swear my heart started beating a tad bit faster while I sat there gaping at the application window. With crossed fingers and toes, I went back to the main window…and lo and behold…Photon managed to grab my categories from my Photo Gallery weblog!! I was going…wtf? Praying hard, I clicked the export button, fully expecting the ’server error’ message to appear. AND IT DIDN’T.

The freaking program exported my photo, created the entry and posted it by itself!! I could just sit here and cry tears of happiness. This will save me tons and tons of time…instead of exporting and creating the entries one by one, I can now export batches and batches of photos with automatic entry creation!

Honestly, I really don’t know what happened. This is totally amazing. God probably blogs and he must have taken pity on me? Whatever it is…I’m totally thankful!

I need to wash Moshi & Moro’s cage.

I need to go bathe.

I need to clean up the house.

I need to do the dishes.

I need to unpack my loot from today’s bunny shopping spree.

But I want to blog first….hehe….

I found this website called 43 places and 43 thing…wait a minute. I swear I’ve written about this before. Dang it…I need to put a Google search on my webbie. Ok, this topic can wait.

Bunny shopping! Spent almost one hour at Pet Safari today searching for bunny food, bunny hay, bunny litter, bunny litter tray, bunny snacks, bunny food bowl. And I bought: Bunny pellets (to restock…and also to change the brand cause apparently the one recommended by Pets Wonderland is full of junk food), alfalfa hay (to restock) and absorbent litter (to restock), a yellow litter tray, 3 types of snacks (milk biscuits, hay cubes, honey coated grains) and two food bowls (one for the hay, one for the pellets). *satisfied sigh* My wallet’s screaming, though!

M has uploaded the photos she took of Moshi and Moro on her Flickr website…much better than the ones I tried taking earlier…hehe…=) See it here. I would’ve downloaded it, but as usual, there’s something wrong (this time with my mt-xmlrpc file location), so it’s a no go.

Ok ok…time to go do my chores.

Oh yeah…one more thing though. Someone close to me made an interesting comment/joke today while I was talking about office politics, ie. how some people get promoted even though they don’t appear to deserve it because they really really suck at their work: “Ideally, promotion in the private sector is measured by your capability (ie. ability to do stuff). But in most offices, promotion is measure by your cable-bility (ie. ability to pull strings).” Sad, but true. And apparently, someone who knows someone who knows someone else heard this from someone that goes somewhat along these lines: “Promotion in the government sector is given based on your ‘kulit’-bility instead of capability.” Sad but true?

Ok, I’m outta here.