I don’t watch much television because frankly I can’t stay awake during the commercials. I have a TIVO but it’s not HD quality and I’m no longer investing money into technology that only does one thing and not all that good to boot. I do enjoy watching movies and since I travel a lot for my job, it’s nice to have them on my MacBook Pro or iPod Touch. I came across VisualHub after watching an episode from one of Leo Laporte tech shows and thought that is exactly what I need to transfer movies to my iPod. After shelling out the $23.32 (yes, I save my receipts!) I found that this was one of the best tools around for compressing and combining video files. It’s so easy to use and depending on the processor of your Mac, it can convert a 2 hour movie in under an hour. While not exactly speedy it does a good job on the quality which is more important to me.
Sadly, Techspansion’s website has been shuttered and the products have been discontinued. Tyler Loch (Techspansion’s founder) left a note on Techspansion: “After much soul-searching (it’s not you, it’s me), for personal reasons, Techspansion is closing its virtual doors.” His choice is understandable, but we will definitely miss VisualHub (not to mention the laugh-out-loud funniest release notes in software history). Best of luck to Tyler.
The good news is that the source code from Tyler’s projects are now up on SourceForge so hopefully we’ll see great software resurrected into an even greater open source application for all to enjoy. Thank you Tyler!
written by Billy
\\ tags: Apple, compression, Leo Laporte, Macbook Pro, software, Techspansion, video, VisualHub
Hey! Why should Wordpress have all the cool features? I really like seeing the latest comments in a sidebar on blogs that I read and thought why shouldn’t this be something for Coppermine Photo Gallery. If you can leave comments on photos then you should be able to see the latest ones without having to view the “Last Comment” and wait for the images to load. So with that I give you the hack to display the latest comments on your gallery.
This hack is using the i3Theme Classic Center Edition from MangoOrgange that I’ve ported to Coppermine and changed the color scheme. It’s called MellowYellow and it’s really easy on the eyes. The code additions are easy to implement because in most cases all you have to do is copy and paste the below code into your theme.php file. I’ve outlined the specific instructions where this may not be the case.
Copy and paste the below code into your theme.php before the ending “?>” tag.
{code type=php}
// This function is for displaying latest comments in list form in a sidebar.
// Change the number of comments to display by editing “$comment_cnt”.
// Please acknowledge use of this code by including this header.
// Develeoped for Coppermine Photo Gallery by Billy Bullock – www.billygbullock.com
function lastcomments()
{
global $CONFIG;
$comment_cnt = 4; //change this number for comments to display
$select_columns = ‘p.aid, p.*, msg_body, msg_author, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(msg_date) as msg_date’;
if (USER_ID) {
$query = “SELECT $select_columns FROM {$CONFIG['TABLE_COMMENTS']} as c, {$CONFIG['TABLE_PICTURES']} as p WHERE approved = ‘YES’ AND c.pid = p.pid ORDER by msg_id DESC LIMIT $comment_cnt”;
$result = cpg_db_query($query);
}else{
$query = “SELECT $select_columns FROM {$CONFIG['TABLE_COMMENTS']} AS c, {$CONFIG['TABLE_PICTURES']} AS p, {$CONFIG['TABLE_ALBUMS']} AS a WHERE c.pid = p.pid AND p.aid = a.aid AND approved = ‘YES’ AND visibility = 0 ORDER by msg_id DESC LIMIT $comment_cnt”;
$result = cpg_db_query($query);
}
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
if ($CONFIG['enable_smilies']) { //displays smilies if enabled in configuration. Also need “function process_smilies_custom” & “function get_smilies_table_custom()”.
written by Billy
\\ tags: Code, Coppermine, Development, Hacks, i3theme, photo gallery, php, Themes
There was a request over at the Coppermine Photo Gallery Forum for a port of the WordPress i3Theme. This is a great theme designed by N.Design Studio then customized by Mickey Cheong Kah Meng of MangoOrange
written by Billy
\\ tags: Coppermine, i2theme, i3theme, Themes, WordPress
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