You may be getting an error message from your WordPress install that say either “The uploaded file could not be moved…” or “Unable to create directory…”

The obvious step would be to check to see if you have permission to write to that directory.  However, if you tried everything and  you still can’t upload to Wordress, this may be the problem…

You may have PHP safe mode turned on.  From the PHP documentation:

“The PHP safe mode is an attempt to solve the shared-server security problem. It is architecturally incorrect to try to solve this problem at the PHP level, but since the alternatives at the web server and OS levels aren’t very realistic, many people, especially ISP’s, use safe mode for now. “

PHP safe mode won’t let you create files or directories if your PHP scripts and upload directory belongs to a different user. So there are 2 possible solutions: either disable PHP safemode (not recommended), or change the owner of scripts and upload directory by issuing the following command after you navigate to the root of the blog.

chown -R apache:apache

Only those who purchase a Thesis Theme Developers Option are authorized to remove the Thesis Theme attribution in the footer.

A lot of times people want to customize their footer to add copyright notices or other information. This how to change your Thesis footer link from saying “using a Custom Footer Hook.

Step 1: Open your custom_functions.php file (thesis > custom > custom_functions.php) in your favorite editor

Step 2: Underneath the example code already in the file, place the following code:

/* Custom Footer Hook */

remove_action(‘thesis_hook_footer’, ‘thesis_attribution’);

function add_custom_footer () {

?>

<p>© 2010 yourblog.com – All rights reserved. – <a href=”http://www.yourblog.com/privacy-policy/”>Privacy Policy</a></p>

<p>No content on this site may be reused in any fashion without written permission from Ourblog.com or whatever you want your footer to include</p>

<?php

}

add_action(‘thesis_hook_footer’, ‘add_custom_footer’);

What does this do?

The remove_action(‘thesis_hook_footer’, ‘thesis_attribution’); tells Thesis that you wish to remove the regular default Thesis footer function “thesis_attribution” from the “thesis_hook_footer”.

The word “function” tells Thesis you want it to do something. The add_custom_footer is the name of the new function.

The HTML for what you want to appear in the footer is added and then the add_action(‘thesis_hook_footer’, ‘add_custom_footer’); line tells Thesis to add a function to the thesis_hook_footer (the hook that creates the footer) and the function you want to add is the one we created – add_custom_footer.

So, the code above essentially says “Hey Thesis, please remove the code (thesis_attribution) you put into the footer (thesis_hook_footer) by default and replace it with our code (add_custom_footer). You can do that with any hook function you’d like.

I was at my cousin’s wedding and took a bunch of photos.  When I went to blend my contribution in with the pictures taken by others, I realized that the timestamp was set wrong .  Ooops.  Luckily, I’m not the only one with this problem.  Phil Harvey of Queens University realized a need and created a command-line tool for Windows as well as Mac OS X to bulk update image files’ EXIF data.

So with a simple command of:

exiftool “-DateTimeOriginal+=0:0:0 1:0:0″ fix

I was able to add an hour to the creation date of the EXIF data in the “fix” directory.  Thanks Phil!

ExifTool is a platform-independent Perl library plus a command-line application for reading, writing and editing meta information in a wide variety of files. ExifTool supports many different metadata formats including EXIF, GPS, IPTC, XMP, JFIF, GeoTIFF, ICC Profile, Photoshop IRB, FlashPix, AFCP and ID3, as well as the maker notes of many digital cameras by Canon, Casio, FujiFilm, HP, JVC/Victor, Kodak, Leaf, Minolta/Konica-Minolta, Nikon, Olympus/Epson, Panasonic/Leica, Pentax/Asahi, Ricoh, Samsung, Sanyo, Sigma/Foveon and Sony.

via ExifTool by Phil Harvey.

The City of Toronto, as part of their cycling education efforts aimed at both cyclists and drivers have started an advertising campaign about sharrows or “share arrows”, which show road users that a street should be shared.

via City of Toronto starts advertising Sharrows.

This is from a HBR article.  I think that some innate ability has to be present, but the article resonates with what I believe to be true.  That of a capacity for all of us to grow both mentally and physically.

Most believe in the labels that they have been given and live a life full of “I can’t do….”, “I’m not good at…”  The reality is that it is almost never too late to acquire a new skill or improve on something that you can already do.  It just takes focused practice.

1. Pursue what you love. Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.

2. Do the hardest work first. We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain. Most great performers, Ericsson and others have found, delay gratification and take on the difficult work of practice in the mornings, before they do anything else. That&apos;s when most of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions.

3. Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break. Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.

4. Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses. The simpler and more precise the feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments. Too much feedback, too continuously, however, can create cognitive overload, increase anxiety, and interfere with learning.

5. Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed learning. It&apos;s also during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.

6. Ritualize practice. Will and discipline are wildly overrated. As the researcher Roy Baumeister has found, none of us have very much of it. The best way to insure you&apos;ll take on difficult tasks is to ritualize them — build specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.

via Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything – Tony Schwartz – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review.