• How to Fix Image Resizing Problem in the Arthemia WordPress Theme

    I downloaded the Free Arthemia WordPress theme the other day to use with my students’ FBLA site. I really like how the theme looks like a professional newspaper like the New York Times as wells as how easy it is to add Headline and Featured stories just by assigning a category to them.

    One thing I could get working was the images that show up with the Headline and Featured stories when you add the Image custom field to an article. The images would just show up as a red x. When I tried to view them in Firefox, I got the following error:

    finfo_open(): Failed to load magic database at ‘/usr/share/misc/magic’.

    After poking around on the Internet for a minute, I found that there are some files that PECL finfo uses to sniff out the MIME type of files. Apparently, the files are some sort of flat file database that holds, well, MIME types.  Luckily, I extrapolated a solution after seeing a workaround on a forum. If you’re using Arthemia Free Version 2 and are having the same problem getting your images to load, here’s all you must do.

    Replace lines 216-220 of the /wp-content/themes/arthemia/scripts/timthumb.php with the following code:

    $file_cmd = "file -ib  \"$file\"";
exec ($file_cmd, $exec_output);
$mime_type =  $exec_output[0];

    That’s it! The only other thing you have to make sure to do to get your images to resize and show up properly is to put the absolute path to the images without your domain. So, in my case, I have an image whose full path is:

    http://breathittfbla.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/foreman.jpg

    To make it work, the value for the Image custom field has to be set to:

    /wp-content/uploads/2009/07/foreman.jpg

    After changing those lines of code and then putting the right file path in the Custom Field, Arthemia is resizing and displaying images in Headlines and Featured Stories without issue.  I hope this helps somebody!

  • For Whatever Reason, I Now Eat Lots of White Rice

    Anybody that’s known me for awhile knows I’m not a fan of vegetables, other than potatoes. But for whatever reason, I have been addicted to eating white rice for the last few weeks. Beck and I went to Peking’s in Hazard and I had sweet and sour chicken (which was great). It came with a side order of steamed white rice. I ate some…I really enjoyed it. Since then, I have eaten two boxes of instance rice. Beck says rice looks like maggots, and I’m inclined to agree. Dad always said my taste buds would change as I got older, but who knew it would be toward the end of the spectrum where rice lives.

  • I Guess the CIA Should Start Putting Out a Newsletter

    Dick Cheney is under fire for not disclosing a secret plan to kill Al’Queida leaders at close range to Congress. At what point does Congress need to know military secrets? These are the same people that can’t even conceal their kinky affairs or charges that they have sexually harassed staff. I think we should make our elected officials feel good about themselves by filling them in on extraneous details. Military matters that need to be kept secret, however, are beyond these people. I wish matters were different, but with the way things stand right now, the more we keep these people in the dark, the less they’re going to screw things up.

  • WordPress Meta junkies: Use Headspace2

    I haven’t been a WordPress user very long, but I have found one plugin that eased a big issue with me: Good meta descriptions in WordPress posts, categories, and archives. Out of the box, WordPress isn’t really equipped o use Excerpts as the Meta Description for a post. Enter Headspace2, which allows WP authors to edit Meta Descriptions to their heart’s content.

  • Good Bye, Custom Blog…Hello WordPress

    I’ve been debating on whether or not to switch to WordPress for about a year now.  Part of the reason I held off is because I like to write my own software. My custom-written PHP blog setup was tweaked over a period of 6 years. It served as a proof-of-concept for a lot of things I learned how to do in PHP. For being the active testbed, I thank my old blog.

    That being said, I just couldn’t resist WordPress any longer.  A lot of really smart coders that I admire use WordPress to manage their blogs and sites. If it is good enough for the best, then it is good enough for me.  I think this will really help me get more ideas out there. I have always enjoyed posting fixes and whatnot that I figure out, but my custom blog was nowhere near this slick. And, I must say, migrating my old blog to WordPress is the most fun coding that I have had in a long time.

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