Donald Faison is a Star Wars fan September 27, 2009

Don Faison on Jimmy Fallon May 2009
This is an adorable interview with Don- he is promoting his movie “Next Day Air” and talks about his love of Star Wars and pitching a show to George Lucas with him in the lead in the Lando Calrissian Chronicles

http://rapidshare.com/files/231552093/DonFaison_JimmyFallon5409.divx
Alt link
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7A6NRUHD

Start Watching Supernatural ! DVD special will let you catch up for the new season August 27, 2009

Start Watching Supernatural ! DVD special will let you catch up for the new season

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Eastwick at Comic Con August 5, 2009

Eastwick at Comic Con

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Burn it Up with the Burn Notice Summer mid-season Finale! Contest and Trailers! August 5, 2009

Burn it Up with the Burn Notice Summer mid-season Finale! Contest and Trailers!

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July 13, 2009

Get Your Own Quiz!, More Quizzes

WARNING for Windows XP users with AMD Processors: Things to do BEFORE installing SP3 July 12, 2009

I just spent the last 48 hours wrestling with a nightmare brought on by a HUGE oversight in the latest iteration of Windows XP and service pack 3. My sister has an older Compaq Presario desktop computer with an AMD processor. We upgraded to SP3 a few weeks ago and then on Thursday night her system got stuck in a loop where it would not reboot. I checked all kinds of support sites to see what to do, tried every trick in the book and finally gave in. I pulled out my old XP installation disks from 2002- yeah remember XP has been around a LONG time- and set out to reinstall Windows and hopefully restore her computer so she can put off buying a new one.

It took two rounds of windows updates and then suddenly the errors on booting up ended and the install was nice and clean. I had to go looking for some wayward lost drivers and found out something very interesting. The reason for the cataclysmic failure? Windows Service Pack 3 installs into every computer a special INTEL driver command that confuses a machine with any other driver, causing conflicts and a subsequent complete eventual failure of the operating system. ONE STUPID DRIVER! After reading this, I followed the instructions provided to remove the driver which should protect us from a similar failure any time soon, but since I reinstalled before catching this – I may not have caught things in time. You see- if a future wonderful Windows update decides you need the driver it will try to re-install it and screw up the system again. Why the heck is Windows installing processor control drivers without being asked or asking what your working environment is?  Talk about poor planning.

Bottom line- if you have crashed your system recently after installing SP3- don’t toss out your PC just yet! If you can turn it on and have your initial install disks, go ahead and reinstall. Make sure you update to SP2- then go to your manufacturers website to check for patches and instructions on what to do to keep the Windows woogies aways.

The up side to all of this is her system is running faster than ever since we cleaned away all of the crap, all of the old anti-virus software and all kinds of legacy crap you never seem to be able to remove no matter how many tricks you try. It is clean and only loaded with what she uses every day.  I have had to rebuild machines in the past and it is always a pleasure to use a reconfigured computer- made faster and running smoother once it has been updated and the cobwebs of its past swept away.

Multipleverses wishes you a happy 4th of July with Erica Durance July 3, 2009

Chuck Season 1 Episode Guide June 29, 2009

Order Chuck on DVD, Blu-Ray or Video On Demand from Amazon

Michal- one of our Multipleverses staffers put together an excellent Episode Guide for Chuck Season 1- I added pics pulled  from our forums and some clips and interviews from our library. Check it out to learn more about this fun show!

Guide is in two parts

http://multipleverses.com/2009/06/29/mul….-episode-guide/
http://multipleverses.com/2009/06/29/mul….e-guide-part-2/

Coppermine Installation made easy if you can’t use an autoinstaller June 29, 2009

I have previously given details on easy set up of Coppermine using a free webhost as your server platform. Today I am updating that info to give you the steps to install the album application on your own if you can’t use an autoinstaller. Actually- installing yourself is fast and easy and in many ways better as many autoinstallers manage to generate unwanted code that can make future updates difficult.

Preparation:

1. Download the latest version of Coppermine  from the Coppermine project site http://coppermine-gallery.net/ and make sure your hosting company has all of the required scripts installed on their server. You will need a newer version of PHP , GD 2.0 and the ability to add a MYSQL database. Read through the documentation provided with coppermine and make sure you have everything required available on your server. At this time- peruse the Coppermine library ( http://coppermine-gallery.net/demo/cpg14x/)of user templates if you want to use something other than one of the pre-made ones supplied with the application. You can download these from the Coppermine download resource area (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=89658 )
2. Create a MYSQL database and a database user, then assign full privileges to your user. Make sure you WRITE DOWN your database and user info so you can retrieve it at any time.
3. Unzip the coppermine installation files onto your hard disk. Also unzip your template files if you have downloaded some additional ones. I usually have a folder on my drive for COPPERMINE and have these two things in two folders within it.
4. Open your FTP client- I use Filezilla and then go to your website and choose the directory to install your gallery into. If your site is going to be just a gallery, you can install it in your root directory, otherwise make a new directory and name it. This will be the address for your Coppermine gallery. ie http://mysite.com would be your gallery address if you published to your root directory- or http://mysite.com/gallery would be the address if you were having your gallery installed in a directory on your site.
5. Load all of the files within the Coppermine installation folder to your directory. Once added, you can add the themes you downloaded and unzipped to the THEMES folder. Each theme will need to be added singly into their own folder- don’t load them into a single one within the THEMES folder.
6. Set user permissions- the program needs to be able to write to your database to install your site. I usually go ahead and go to the top level of my installation directory and right click on it in Filezilla and select FILE ATTRIBUTES. Set the value to 777 to allow install to occur.
7. Once this is done- open your gallery directory in your browser. You should get a page directing you to the installation page for Coppermine. If you do not, then ad the suffix index.php to your address- this should fix this. At your install page you will be asked to provide your database name and user info. Fill in all fields and that is it! You will then be directed to your coppermine homepage.
8. Set your coppermine settings in the config panel. You can change your theme, add links to your website or forum, set every detail on using coppermine. Some recommendations: Use GD 2 to handle images and make thumbs and make sure you have selected /usr/bin/ as your path for converting photos or the thumbnail tool won’t work. Also- don’t use the random photo display option- it is a resource hog. Instead replace the breadcrum list with  breadcrumb/lastalb,2/catlist/alblist/lastup,2
9. I recommend not allowing people to register and making albums public to eliminate SPAMMERs from accessing your gallery.
10. If you load pics using the FTP tools, you will want to make sure you go in and set the file attributes to 777 before you try to add them to your gallery using the bulk loader.

HAVE FUN! Coppermine is a flexible tool and ideal for adding photos over time. Now you know how to install it on any PHP/MYSQL server.

For 1.5GB of free server space I recommend 000webhost.com

This will allow you to load about 1000 photos without any problems- make sure images are sized to about 1600px as maximum size for easy viewing and loading.

Free album hosting for fansites! June 29, 2009

I have previously talked about using my favorite webhosting service for hosting Coppermine galleries for your fansite or collections of photos. Today I want to talk about an alternate type of gallery you can load that is really easy to use and does not require any database programming.

How to set up a gallery

1. Sign up for an account on a webhosting site- click on the banner above to get 1.5 GB of free space from 000webhost.com
2. Download the web-album application J-Album from http://j-album.net/
3. Organize your photos on your hard drive into folders as you would like to display them in an album
4. Open j-album , pick a layout theme and start to build an album. Once you have all of your photos in the order you like in folders and you have added any links you would like in the settings area, click on the make album link. This will generate all of the html you need to link your photos into a nice album that is ready to publish to the web. I recommend choosing the option to copy originals so that all photos are in your album file for easy loading purposes. This is also helpful later. MAKE SURE THAT YOU NEVER CHOOSE TO REMOVE a folder from your album projects- just exclude them as one of the quirks of J-album is that it will remove your files from your harddrive erasing  your photos!
5. Once the album is made, you can choose to publish it directly from your J-album interface. It will first try to publish to the j-album site- you want to make sure you select the option to publish to an alternate site. At this point enter your ftp info. You will be asked if you want to load to the main directory- if your site is to be used just as an album- say ok and proceed. The program will run until your album is loaded. You can add additional photos later by updating your album project and adding more pics, then repeating the publishing protocol. You can load a j-album with up to about 500 HQ photos to your free 000webhost.com account without any problems. You can load many more photos if they are not HQs. To conserve space- I recommend not making slides and using intermediate pictures, just link the thumbs directly to your originals. This will speed up the time taken to make the album and publish it both.

That is it! Photo albums in a jiff! Make sure you register with J-album and get an account there. You can add your albums to your account and add counters and stats using thier album gadgets once your album has been published.

You can check out my most recent webalbum which has a collection of HQ promo photos for the defunct CBS vampire series Moonlight as an example:

I have a j-album address which will allow you to browse my other j-albums as well

http://jalbum.net/browse/user/album/240106/

You can access the album direct as well without the navigation panel

http://moonlight.hostei.com/

If you have more photos- you can use your paid hosting service and publish your albums to directories. To do this, instead of using the j-album publishing tool, use a ftp tool ( I recommend filezilla) and open your album project. You will see a variet of files, you want the album files. Open the album files up and then load all of the files in the folder to your hard drive in the directory you want to have your album appear on. That is it. Nothing else to do.

One tip for making a gallery with any application- make sure your photo and gallery names are not too long. Many hosting companies have limits on file names. Also- make sure your photos are sized to fit on your host. Usually I try to have my photos under 4MB in size. You can use a program like Easy Thumbnails or VSO Image Resizer to shrink the size of your UHQ images to ones more hosting friendly with ease.