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phil's blog

Use Image as a Background in Microsoft Word 2007

Submitted by phil on Thu, 2008/03/20 - 20:17

Have you ever wanted to insert an image as a background for a Microsoft Word document? Usually you would use MS Publisher for something like this but not everyone has free loads of cash to purchase a fancy flier program like Publisher.

I spent about an hour trying to figure out a way to effectively embed a picture as the background for a word 2007 document and decided to blog it in hopes to save someone else some time.

32MB nVidia Driver Update Ubuntu Beryl - Compiz Fusion Fix

Submitted by phil on Mon, 2008/03/10 - 04:25

I'm not a Linux guy... I find Linux to be rather frustrating. It is a programmers operating system and I am not a programmer. That aside, I am writing myself a note on how to "fix" and update the nVidia driver on my laptop, and get it to work with Ubuntu Gusty 7.10 & Compiz-Fusion.

(If you are looking for Beryl, like I was for an hour and a half today... Beryl has merged with the extra plugins sector of Compiz and become Compiz-Fusion)

Drupal Default Filter - Role (role) user is not allowed to use format Full HTML.

Submitted by phil on Thu, 2008/02/07 - 00:08

I ran across a beautiful Drupal module this evening called Default Filter which allows the Drupal administrator to set input filter defaults, based on various roles within the system.

I have run into issues where I have wanted to assign the Full HTML input format for all administrative users, and Filtered HTML for all anonymous or low level authenticated users. Up to this point, I just set the default filter to Filtered HTML and manually changed it when I created a new page.

Default Filter takes care of this problem!

Drupal Fix for Internet Explorer Cannot open the internet site with embeded Youtube and Google Video

Submitted by phil on Sun, 2008/01/27 - 15:01

Drupal is a wonderful CMS platform for building an encompassing and professional website presence. I have however, run into an issue where Drupal does not like to show embeded video's through Youtube or Google Video when viewing a page in Internet Explorer. If you try to visit the page with the embeded YouTube or Google Video, Internet Explorer throws up an error message to the effect of:

Internet Explorer Cannot open the internet site http://domain.com/page[/codefilter_prism_code]

Operation Aborted.

Image Opacity Hover Fix for IE6

Submitted by phil on Wed, 2008/01/23 - 16:32

IE6 is known to have a host of CSS limitations, forcing web designers to come up with creative ways around the new CSS standards and Microsoft's poor integration of the new standards and their own proprietary way of doing things.

Early in my web design days, I found out about the wonderful psuedo :hover and the ability to make images transparent when hovered over, or originally transparent then full opacity when hovered over.

Join Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 to a Domain

Submitted by phil on Fri, 2008/01/18 - 21:50

I recently reloaded Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 to Windows XP SP2, so I could join it to a domain. This was before I realized that XP Media Center 2005 could be joined to a domain! Grr!! Much time wasted and a somewhat unhappy customer seeing as people don't like change... I wish I had run across this article sooner!

I give all credit to the author (whomever that may be...) but wanted to keep track of it for my own personal record keeping.

Maximum CPU Processor Upgrade for Dell Dimension 4300 / 4300S

Submitted by phil on Thu, 2008/01/03 - 14:16
Image: Dell Dimension 4300

I have a friend who owns a Dell Dimension 4300. It originally came with a Pentium 4 1.7GHz processor and after running across a few faster processors, I decided to try upgrading the CPU on the Dimension 4300. I did a bit of research and found a forum that mentioned the maximum CPU speed was a theoretical 2.0GHz for the system. So, I stuck in a 2GHz and it worked flawlessly. I also had a 2.4GHz Celeron that we yanked out of one of his newer computers and stuck that in just to see what it would do. It worked flawlessly as well.

z-index Flash Objects Thickbox Fix Colorbox Over Youtube

Submitted by phil on Wed, 2007/09/12 - 19:01

I had an issue with thickbox where it would show the image behind a flash video in FireFox. IE7 worked great. I ran across Sheriar Designs Blog posting a fix specifically for DHTML menus over a flash video. I figured I would give it a try and much to my surprise, the suggestion worked! I give ALL CREDIT to the author of the blog, Mani (Pronounced like Bonnie, not Mani like Danny)

Gateway 7215GX Sound Problem 'FIX'

Submitted by phil on Fri, 2007/09/07 - 20:00

I spent two days, trying to figure out how to get the sound to work on a Gateway 7215GX. I tried searching for 7215gx drivers, 7215gx sound drivers, 7215gx audio drivers, gateway 7200 series drivers and all sorts of combination's, only to see the very crappy gateway driver pages showing up, along with a few here-and-there posts about other people having the same problem.

Embed Google Maps into a Drupal Node without a Module Using PHP

Submitted by phil on Tue, 2007/07/03 - 18:25
Update: This method is a bit out dated. Google has provided a way to embed google maps into a webpage through an <iframe> tag. This method is MUCH easier to do, plus, with the ability to sign-in and save your own maps, you can put detailed information related to your map location!