If you’re like me and have a wordpress blog that you’ve updated to 2.6 you may have found that you cannot right align photos in your blog posts.
This is because many of the site templates are not totally up to date.

The solution is to edit your CSS style sheet
1 Go to your Site’s admin panel
2 Click on the Design tab and then Theme editor below the tab. It should bring up the style sheet (style.css) If not look at the Theme Files list on the right.
3 Click the Ctl+F to bring up a search window and key in img right or even just img r and click next.
4 Find the line

img align left{ float:left; margin:0 12px 5px 0; }

and change it to

.alignright { float:right; margin:0 0 5px 12px; }

This will then ensure that images are right aligned.

Someone asked a question today that got me to think that pixel settings is still not really understood. So I thought I’d explain what the Image Size resize/resample option does.

When you open an Image Size dialgue box you usually have three methods of adjustment. One to scale styles one to constrain proportions and one to resample.

Constrain proportions and scale styles are checked (ticked) by default. If you want to stretch the image so it looks squashed then you’d uncheck constrain proportions and adjust either the Width or Height dimensions depending whether you wanted it stretched across or up. This can be used subtly to make a landscape look more like a panoramic shot, but should be used with care.  If you want to keep the image the same proportions you keep these ticked and the aspect ratio remains the same.

Resample Image is the one that gets most people in a pickle. By default this will be set as default. If you leave it at default you will notice that the resolution setting is unconnected from the width and height in the Document size settings. Resolution is usually set at default at 72ppi (pixels per inch) If you change the resolution to, say 300ppi you will notice that the Top value Pixel Dimensions will increase dramatically. This is because you are about to resample the image. Doing this instructs Photoshop or similar image-editing program to add pixels (interpolate).

If the box is unchecked you will see it connects the Resolution settings with the Width and Height. If you now change the default 72ppi to 300ppi you will see that the Pixel dimensions stay the same, but the width and height decrease.

You are basically taking the 72 pixels in each inch and squashing them into 300 per inch. Computer screens are set at 72ppi so you do not need an image to be set to a resolution of 300ppi, although it doesn’t matter if the file is, because the computer will display at 72ppi anyway.

Now the person who asked the question had been told he needed the image to be 300ppi for a magazine submission. While it’s true that magazines and book publishers need 300ppi files the only important figure is the pixel dimensions, because this determine how big an image can be at 72ppi, 240ppi or 300ppi.

So what do you need to know? Any good magazine editor/picture buyer will know how many pixels he/seh needs for the image and will request the necessary…ie he/shh will request a 2400pixel image. As they are printing at 300ppi it means they have asked to use the image at 8in (2400pixels / 300), yet the same image on your computer may appear to be 33in (2400pixels / 72) if you change from 72ppi to 300ppi with the resample image unchecked the 2400 pixels will stay the same. If you check resample image when changing from 72 to 300ppi your 2400pixel image will increase to 10000pixels and will be a huge unecessary file.

Hope that’s clear…if not ask questions here

If you get this error when requesting a new password it looks like you won’t be the only one. I wasn’t!
So I upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1 and then deleted my cache which lost my password that I didn’t write down. So usual simple thing request a new one…only this time the system didn’t work. The email arrived with the message:

To reset your password visit the following address, otherwise just ignore this email and nothing will happen.

I clicked the link and got the Sorry, that key does not appear to be valid message.

Thankfully there is a solution that I found on doing a search using Google. It’s in the WordPress forums and asks you to: Download the ZIP file with those two changed files here:
http://trac.wordpress.org/changeset/7837?format=zip&new=7837
Unzip it using WinZIP or something, then upload those two changed files to your site.
There is one change to make to the code

Just above that code it gives in wp-login.php is a line that read like this:
if ( empty($key) ) {

Try changing it to this:
if ( empty($key) || preg_match('/[^a-z0-9]/i',$key) != 0) {

Check out the full thread here

Interesting?

So I post a thread uncovering a scam. It gets to number one in Google Search. And then disappears. Now I am not even listed in the search for this post. What happend? Are Google supporting crooks, has it been reported? All my other blog post are unaffected. What’s going on?

Incidentally I’ve also start getting lots of spam – all on that one post. Well just to clarify LocalGame Shop offering four super console deals is not legit and you WILL lose your money. This will get to the top of search engine…how long will it stay this time I wonder?

The company are still appearing on price comparison stores as incredibly good value. Just to repeat this is not a good deal. You WILL lose your money. See my previous blog post for full details.

Of course If I’m wrong please post in this thread, I’d love to hear from someone who has got their goods

Well following my recent post about being scammed by a web site that appeared offering superb deals on Nintendo Wiis and XBoxes, it looks like the crooks who operated recently as rapidgamingstore are back again with the same scam. Different web site, but same stock, same convincing deals, same convincing service, trusted money back offers etc, and same town, but a different address.

LocalGame Store offers New Nintendo Wii “Ultimate Gaming Pack” Video Game System comprising

Nintendo Wii Console
Wii Stand
5 Wii Sports Games: Baseball, Bowling, Boxing, Golf, and Tennis
Remote and Nun-Chuck
Sensor Bar
Power and AV Cables
User Manual

Along with 10 games including:

Wii Sports
Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2
Marve: Ultimate Aliance
Need for Speed: Carbon
SD Gundam: Scad Hammers
The Legend of Zeda: Twilight Princess
Tony Hawk?s Downhill Jam
Metal Slug Anthology
Trauma Center: Second Opinion

All for just £106 – the catch is you have to buy 5, well the real catch is they will not turn up, and in a couple of months when they’ve fleeced enough suckers the site will disappear along with any form of contact and any sign of your gear.

I was over at Saltwick Bay on the North Coast last weekend photographing the wreck near the Black Nab Rock. It made me wonder if there was any history surrounding the boat. Sadly little information seems to be around the web on the subject. A couple of people have mentioned patchy details about it on the ePHOTOzine site. And there’s even a shot taken just three years after the boat capsized here.

The most information I could find was on the Whitby Lifeboat Station History page which states that a
Silver Medal awarded to Coxswain Robert Allen and the Bronze Medal awarded to Helmsman Richard Robinson for rescuing a survivor of the fishing vessel Admiral Van Tromp, which was wrecked after grounding on the Black Nab Rock in thick fog, an easterly wind, and a heavy breaking sea on 30 September 1976. When a survivor was seen on a rock Helmsman Robinson drove the D class lifeboat in at full speed, onto a ledge, and the man was grabbed just as a large sea broke over the rock and washed the boat back into the sea. 

Black Nab at Saltwick Bay is well worth a visit, but watch for the tide. It comes in fast and you can easily get trapped!

It occured to me that many photographers don’t protect their photos. Ok you can’t prevent people from nicking you pics when they are on the web, but at least by putting a notice up you may deter a useful percentage. Rather than adding an ugly stamp across the front of your photos you can also use the photo’s metadata to add a copyright notice.

There are four important fields found in the IPTC section and one of these that I’m going to help you with the legal wording.

1 is Copyright Status…set this to Copyrighted

2 Copyright I put my name…. Peter Bargh

3 Rights Usage Terms… and here’s what I put:
This image is the property of Peter Bargh and protected under UK and International copyright laws. Copying, duplicating, saving as a digital file, printing, publishing in form of media including web, manipulating, transmitting or reproducing without the prior written permission of Peter Bargh is strictly forbidden and would constitute a breach of copyright.
Feel free to copy this and replace my name with yours.

4 Copyright info url…link this to your own site…ideally to a page about your photo copyright. Make sure you add a bit about photos being available, should a potential buyer by looking.

If you use a catalogue program, such as Adobe Lightroom, you can make this, and keywording a much more automated and quick task.

Hope that helps.

It appears to be a common problem but finding a solution can be hard. I’ve been getting an “error loading w0572d42.dll
The specified module could not be found” message for about a year every time I restart my computer. At first I tried to find out what it was and couldn’t. So I clicked ok, the message went and the computer ran as normal, or at least I hoped it did.

Today I had some free time so I looked a bit deeper and found an answer by Malke Routh, MS-MVP to a similar problem. His suggestion was to download a “program from Microsoft that will help you stop the error messages”

I tried this option, not really understanding what I was doing but it worked. Here’s what I did.
Step 1
Download the program AutoRuns for Windows v9.13 from here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Step 2
Click on the autoruns.exe file (it’s safe)

Step 3
A list of all the stuff that runs at start up will show. If you PC’s like mine there will be loads of stuff. Click the Everything tab at the top.

Step 4
Click on the binocular icon (search) in the menu. And key in the name of the .dll file that’s causing the problem.

Mine appeared on the list as “jvba05ee” and on the right “File not found: w0572d42.dll”

Step 5
Untick the box to its left

Step 6
Restart the computer

Job’s a good un! I no longer get the message. While I was in the Autoruns system I also found several other File Not found entries so I unticked them too. You can delete entries but I’m not confident enough to do that yet!

I liked to think I’m pretty sharp when it comes to spotting scams. After all I can recognise when a site offering to protect me from Spyware is actually a spyware site. Or when I’m told I’ve won the lottery I know I haven’t. The fact I haven’t entered is a bit of a clue here. I also reject the letters from people (usually Nigerians) (I’ve nothing against Nigerians) offering to give me millions to look after or pass on to a third party and keep a chunk for my trouble. Or the ebay/paypal deals suggesting I’ve used their system wrongly. Or the “INSERT BANK we are making your finances safer by asking for your password” scams. It’s all so easy to spot.

But that all went sadly wrong when I was looking for a Nintendo wii a few months ago. I did the usual DealTime price comparison search, which brought up the usual Amazon, Play.com etc, all suggesting prices of around £180 for the basic item, but at the top of the list was a company offering one for £106. So I naturally clicked the link.

Catch one: you have to buy 5. Okay I can cope…my team at MPL would all like one. So it sounds like a great deal.

Catch two: the company was abroad – Indonesia to be precise. Shipping £82! But that still meant the unit cost was far less than UK…even when you take into account the import tax. But can they be trusted? I did a few quick checks. The site looked official…photos of wiis on pallates all bundled and ready to go.

Feedback on feedback sites saying what a pleasure to deal with them.

So I clicked to buy and set the ball in motion. An email arrived in minutes – all offical looking suggesting I pay via bank transfer to:

Bank Name : Bank Central Asia (BCA)
Bank Address : Jln. Dr Cipto Mangunkusumo 4E Bank City :Cirebon
Bank State :Jawa Barat Bank ZIP :45131
Bank Country :INDONESIA
Bank Branch :KCP CiptoMangunkusumo
IBAN / Account Number :3740521321
SWIFT Code :CENAIDJA
Name on Account :METASARI

and “Once you send the payment through your bank, please send to us scan copy of receipt from your bank”

I did this and waited patiently. Yesterday six weeks later I had still not received anything, so went back to the web site…surprise, surprise, the site has gone replaced by the domain registrar’s landing page. A quick search on Google brought me to several other mugs who had the same experience and had also been conned.

So who was this company? Rapid Game Store or rapidgamestore www.rapidgamingstore.com

I’d like to say do not do business with these crooks but they do not exist now, although they will no doubt pop up again under a different guise and do exactly the same again!

So, just in case they try again with the same names here’s the sales manager’s name: Dede Suryana and the details they had for the store:

Store address : Pasar Baru-Metro Atom Plaza Lt. II Jakarta Selatan, DKI Jakarta, 18274, ID
Phone (62)-21-74415253 Fax (62)-21-74415254
Email : Sales@rapidgamingstore.com
Website : http://www.rapidgamingstore.com

If anyone knows how we can get back at these crooks let me know.

Please feel free to comment here and add any scams you’ve got hooked in and any tips for potential victims.

Keep it clean!

I’m going to start using my blog to share problems I come across and the solution I find. Here’s my problem of the day. I haven’t used Helicon Focus for a few weeks. I launched it today and all the menus were in Polish.

Now I’m not totally familiar with the program so cannot work my way around it with my eyes closed (or in Polish) so I needed to find out how to get back to English. I struggled to find preferences but couldn’t work out which one was for language. Looked around elsewhere and drew a blank.

A difficult search on Google eventually brought me to helicon.com.ua, where someone else asking the same question got an answer. That person was told that he probably accidentally selected Polish when he installed the program or he changed default. Well if he was like me it just happened.

Nevertheless the following solution was provided.

1 Go to the “View” menu (second from the right – Poka? in Polish. Click it.

2 The bottom button in the view tab is for languages (titled Jezyk)

3 It has a pop-out menu where English can be selected as one of the options.

4 Click OK.

5 Restart the program.

It will then open in English.