Things are slowing down. I am using the time to put finishing touches on a handful of projects and taking a breath. I am currently working on:

1. Final changes on Cock-a-doodle kids e-com site
2. Changes on Braided Accents product catalog
3. Starting Braided Accents Price list
4. Final Return to Excellence forum look and feel changes.

Feeling caught up is good. Feeling caught up on a Friday is priceless! It will give me time to work on my Gullible project.

Today was the last day of class, and like most of my “last days” it was a deadline day. The students hand in their work (or use the last class time to finish up and mat projects) and then go home. Not much for me to do but oversee the class, review sketchbooks, and draw in my own sketchbook a bit. The picture here is the result of my doodles. Oddly enough, the reference shot is a picture from my “Owned” file. This girl has an unusual beauty that inspired me to jump off the deep end and do some steampunk daydreaming. Like most of my jump off points it is not meant to be a portrait, but still … something about her smirky smile that just wants to be empowered as a take-care-of-business heroine.

A note to self: Because I sort of just jumped in without thinking about it, I drew this as a low res file. By the time I realized what I was doing, I was too far in. so this is a web only shot sorry to say. I need to pay more attention to file sizes in my digital drawings.

Last week I took a well deserved Road Trip with a buddy of mine. The impetus for the trip was a math conference I was planning on attending in Salt Lake City. (Math Conferences attract school districts and teachers, who in turn attract publishers, who in turn attract freelancers. See? The world does make sense!) My friend who is a salesman makes a pass by that direction on his route and we decided to combine expenses and drive down together. At the last minute the people I wanted to meet and greet at the conference pulled out and I was left with a road trip to nowhere. Instead of scratching it off my plate, we decided that a buddy trip was long overdue and reason enough to hit the pavement.

One of our stops was Twin Falls Idaho. Ironically The actual waterway “Twin falls” is damned down to a trickle for agricultural reasons. However, Shoshone falls is just up river and part of the same canyon system that is carved by the Snake River. When the spring thaw starts to hit, the falls are an explosion of water. Last week however it was biter cold and the wind was blowing down through the canyon at a clip to make eyes water. No thaw in sight. But the falls was still pretty awesome … so I took a picture

(No you can’t see the rest of the pictures. It was a guy trip. Hotel rooms, Cheeto’s in the bed, urinating in milk jugs, room service, and unabashed testosterone driven mayhem.)

As most of you know, those who have been following my various blogs, or classroom antics, for years; I am not a big fan of doing web work. Part of this is due to my non-linear thinking. I am not great at writing code. I can read it 99% of the time, but writing it from scratch is beyond me. Part of this is also due to to the nature of working inside of a box. I hate working inside of a box — espcially a box where I spend a lot of time designing something that will look different on any given browser on any given day on any given machine.

However, I am pressed from time to time to throw my hat into the web building ring. And I answer the call with a fair amount of teeth gnashing. The result of all this angst is that I am fairly competent in Dreamweaver and CSSedit. I use Transmit to direct traffic and modify small bits of code as I go, and Illustrator and Phtoshop (and sometimes Fireworks) to tie the visuals together.

Over the past two years, as more and more of my clients make the move to eCommerce type solutions in various forms, I have seen quite a few shopping cart back ends cobbled to website front ends. As most of these ventures have been budget driven (my clients want to test not invest) I have been forced to dive into another Web building tool; Zen Cart.

Zen Cart is a community driven, public licence (open source) eCommerce solution. It is by far the most convoluted piece of software that I have ever used. But, I am getting past the steep learning curve and I have recently built a basic eCommerce site in three days. The trick in this software is knowing where NOT to look for making changes to something that should be straight forward. The good news is, I may actually make some money on this project, well, I will as long as I can keep project creep at bay. (Another web eccentricity that I hate.)

This has been an awful test of my patience, but I have stumbled across a third party direction on how to fix my WP 2.5 problem. The generic and almost useless direction from WP forums was to reinstall all the files and make sure that they were copied correctly. I did this three times (there are hundreds of files) and found nothing. A blogger then wrote to check on the “wp-includes/media.php and wp-settings.php” and make sure they are intact (re-upload them). I did check on them and sure enough there were partial files there in the directory when compared to the original files. (You can deduce this by comparing file sizes, in this case 10k vs 16k). I immediately re-uploaded these files and cleared the cache and restarted the browser and all seems to be well.

So the bottom line is; Yes the forum support was right. Make sure the files were uploaded correctly and all is well. However, why did I have to dig off some third party site to focus on these particular files? Or is this just me protecting my ego? Anyway. it seems to work.

Here is the link to the FAQ that answered the question.

This is a portfolio site. I rather need the ability to upload and swap out pictures of work at will to suit my clients and particular whims. Although I have not had a problem updating my site with textual posts (there are two of them below.) I needed to upload a picture this morning and found this little message hanging in the wings to greet me:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: wp_constrain_dimensions() in /home/content/v/a/n/vanettda/html/wordpress/wp-admin/includes/image.php on line 173

Fatal errors are never a welcome sight, but undaunted I tried, and tried again. I cleared cache and retried and double checked my pictures and retried. I tried to see if the files where in the site directory , (they are) but still nothing. From all points of attack anything that has to do with the new “Add media” section of WP 2.5 is borked.

I went to the forums and found a couple of threads that start to talk about the problem. But of course as soon as the thread starts … the moderator shuts it down (topic closed).

They do have this 2.5 Image/Media uploader problems check list.

I spent three hours of my workday methodically following the list. Out of all eight, none of them work.

I find it hard to believe that something as basic as adding pictures (via their NEW interface) was not beta tested unless … WE ARE the beta testers. It just goes to show, early adopters pay a price.

I am now in a VERY pissy mood.

For those of you who actually read this blog you may have noticed that I changed the theme. I was tired of the old look and since switching themes is so easy, Why the heck not? This look is a little cleaner. I think.

I have successfully upgraded to WordPress 2.5. This may seem like a small maneuver, but I hate database linked, theme protected, overwriting-file, type upgrades. So much can go wrong as I straddle the divide between intellectual trust in the code and half blind faith in the voodoo magic that twinkles in the gaps between 0’s and 1’s. Of course I have learned a lot about playing within the box that WP provides for customizing themes. In some of my earlier attempts, I dove into outside areas and pages and tweaked little pieces of code to make it do something that was in reality far simpler to accomplish within the theme. The result at upgrade time was a vast line by line comparison to make sure all my tweaks survived the transition; a cumbersome event that guaranteed that I only upgraded when absolutely necessary.

This time however, my tweaking was kept to a minimum, my customizations where limited to the theme code and I was able to upgrade without worry and with (very little) no trepidation.

I love it when a plan comes together!

BTW, I added some new medallion sculpts I have been working on under the sculpting tab.

The holidays are officially over and I am neck deep again in web sites (finishing one and starting another), a catalog project for another client, and of course curriculum tweaks for this upcoming spring semester. The first project for my NIC Illustration II class will be story boards. I am changing it very little from last year, but I still need to get it organized and set up so that it presents well. I haven’t checked the rosters yet but I expect full classes with lot of the same faces (bright and cheery and ready to work! that I had last semester.

I didn’t do as much painting and working on my book that I wanted to do over the holidays, but I did relax and catch my breath which is just as important, if not a little bit harder to pull out of. (Damn. Ended in a preposition. minus two points for bad grammar.)

Yet another blog. (Deep sigh.) I am hoping to simplify my life and create an adaptable workspace, portfolio page where I can rant and rave and post pictures of what I am currently working on. Having sorted through dozens of “portfolio” web engines and hating all of them, while also having created dozens of blogs for friends etc. and loving the flexibility of those, I have decided to try and fuse the best parts of blogging, and portfolios and see what happens. It can’t be any worse than what I have. Wish me luck!