Web Development Blog

After upgrading to Wordpress 2.5.x one of my favorite features has to be the automatic plugin updating. But today, one DEVTRENCH reader alerted me that a certain download wasn’t working. Well, as it turns out, none of the downloads that use the wp-DownloadMonitor plugin were working. Seems like the new automatic upgrading system changes the way that plugins can be made and after doing the auto upgrade of this plugin it ERASES your old download files with no warning! Of course if you read the README file for wp-DownloadMonitor it says it all in there, but you don’t exactly get that information when clicking on upgrade in the Wordpress interface.

From the README file:

= Upgrade instructions from v2.0.6 =

Due to the new wordpress update system, the upload directory can no longer be within the plugin folder; wordpress deletes it. Therefore the plugin directory is now the uploads folder in the wp-content folder. ENSURE YOU MOVE DOWNLOADS HERE BEFORE UPGRADING! The plugin will convert the urls to the new directory on activation.

This is stupid, and I was lucky, because I did a backup before upgrading to WP 2.5.1. And BTW, it does not convert the urls - I had to do that manually in the database.

So, I think I’ll be a little more careful about using the automatic plugin updates from now on and be doing a backup first.

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About 6 weeks ago, when my darling little girl was born, I had this grand notion that I would quit drinking Mountain Dew. After all, my 3-or-4-can-a-day habit was getting kind of expensive with the skyrocketing prices of 24 packs and gas. And I figured that I was probably better off not drinking all of the bad stuff that makes Mountain Dew sooooo good (namely BVO, caffeine, and reports of benzene).

Instead of just laying back on the stuff, I decided to quit drinking pop all together. Well, that was a stupid idea. After a few days of bad headaches, I was pretty much ok until I had to get back to work at both my day job and my freelance activities. I mean, I just couldn’t stay up past 11:30pm without dozing off at my computer, and that’s with taking a nap! I just felt totally mellowed out, it was horrible.

I finally got my senses back and bought me a case when it went on sale ($4.98 here in Lincoln), and now I feel back to normal. The first night back to drinking I stayed up until 2:00am no problem, and last night I was up until 3 (bit tired today though, hmm, time to open up a new can). I never realized how much I depend on caffeine to be able to stay awake and just really feel normal, which is kind of weird, but that’s the way it is.

“Hello, my name is James, and I’m addicted to Mountain Dew.”

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I haven’t blogged for the past week and for good reason…my wife had our third kid on Thursday the 17th and I pretty much didn’t turn on the computer for 10 days. Olivia was born at 7:56am, the same time as our son was born.

For those of you that don’t know, babies are really cool, especially when it comes around the third time. Unlike the first time where I pretty much freaked out for nine+ months, this time felt really natural and fun. And when you’re not freaking out, you can really take time to enjoy the new baby. It’s fun when you are prepared for it Honestly I never really pictured myself as a dad when I was growing up (I thought I was going to be an Artist!), but it has turned out to be the second most enjoyable thing in my life (second to being married to my wife).

So while we were enjoying our new baby, our van was hit in the parking garage of the hospital. No note, no report, nothing. I couldn’t believe it. Basically what happened is someone scraped the paint off the bumper and put a pretty good dent in the side panel near the rear light. I talked to the hospital security and they said that since it was a hit and run they had to call the police. So then I got to wait for 40 minutes for them to show up and basically tell me it’s bad luck. I wanted to ask the officer if they had the Lincoln CSI Unit on the case, but I pretty much knew the answer was no.

Once we got home I took the next week off for vacation to help my wife with the new baby and our 2 other kids. It was nice to get away from work and just be at home (I work at home so that pretty much means no computer).

We purchased a new camera, an Olympus Stylus 840, for this occasion because our old camera, a Kodak, had terrible red eye when taking pics. I really like the new Olympus, it’s a great camera. Our old camera used an SD card, while the new one uses XD. I thought I was a-ok since my card reader accepts both, but when I put the XD card full of photos of our new baby girl into the reader, it wouldn’t read it. When I placed it back into the camera it said there were no pictures!! I scrambled to find the usb cable and plugged that into the camera and computer. It was able to load that way, but over half of our pictures were gone! I about put my fist through the wall, but since I did that a few months ago I went outside and hit my car a few times (it’s good to get your anger out, right?). Well, thanks to my wife calming me down and , I googled for some way to get the photos back and found PhotoRec. It worked, thank you Jesus (and Christophe Grenier)!!

That pretty much wraps up all of the excitement for us this past week. I’m slowly getting back to the grindstone..

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