Most of us with roots in, or connections to, Alexandria, remember Herbie K’s.

An Alexandria institution for decades, it was perhaps “THE” place to dine.

Its tongue-in-cheek byline was well known in Alexandria and throughout Louisiana:

“The World’s Worst Service, with the World’s Finest Food”

Owned by Herbie K. Smith, its last location was on 3515 Lee Street.

Read the entire story and view artifacts on The Alexandria Retrospective…

Singing Star and Cowboy Legend Roy Rogers boated into Alexandria on a journey down the Red River from Denison, Texas, on his way to New Orleans.

Roy was riding in a Yellow Jacket Charger, built by the Yellow Jack Boat Works of Denison, Texas. Roy apparently had some ownership in the company, and was a spokesperson and endorsing celebrity.

Read the rest of the story on The Alexandria Retrospective…

(Photoshop.VN) -

Source: AEC v1.2.6 – Account Expiration Control Valanx.org – Nulled | BoyGJ.COM

The free hosted users of wordpress.com have many free features on their blogs and the list of features is growing longer day by day. This year we have already had some Christmas goodies made available to us and I’m not referring to the return of a favorite ie. a little snow for the holidays. We now have wordpress.com holiday desktop wallpaper in seven different sizes, and more goodies are on the way.

More goodies?

A Typekit Font section has appeared under Appearance  on our dashboards.  There we see:

Typekit is the easiest way to use real fonts on your website, just enter your Typekit ID and you’ll be able to choose from hundreds of fonts some available for free, and some available for a subscription fee.

In addition look for an announcement post soon, but yes; there are expanded features (crop, rotate, flip, and resize) for image editing under development that will most assuredly be welcomed.

Yesterday, the geotagging feature introduced just last month was also expanded to include – Email Geolocation

If you haven’t already tried our post by email feature then it makes blog publishing as simple as sending an email. Configure your blog, write an email, and we’ll do the rest. You can add photos and videos in your email and they’ll all be included, regardless of whether you send them from your home computer, your office, or a cellphone.

During the holiday season, the hours for support have been changed so do keep that in mind when filing your support tickets.

We will be closing support for one week in order to spend time with our families whilst trying not to overcook the turkey, coping with relatives, and staying sane.

Let’s all share in the spirit of peace and hope this holiday season, and carry our mutual desires for health and happiness for all, into the new year.

Related posts found in this blog:

Free Christmas blog headers and graphics

Free Christmas countdown tickers for your blog

As the title states 11GR2 is now available for HPUX on Itanium. http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/index.html

Co-incidentally I had my first foray into VMware over the last few days and yesterday got an 11GR2 database built (OEL 5.3)

Initial impressions were that the installer is much cleaner but I have not done anything else with it as yet.

Now I need to find my list of 11GR2 new features that I wanted to investigate

(Photoshop.VN) -

..

WordPress is a very mature open source software product – new releases are well documented and tested. In fact you can read the full list of new features, changes, upgrades, and improvements on the

Codex

. Lets take a look at the news that stand out and make WordPress 2.9 worth upgrading to.

WordPress 2.9 comes with interesting new capabilities for supporting Post Thumbnails without the need for custom field hacks. This is great news but for some reason the feature will not be active unless you explicitly turn it on in the functions.php file.

The code part

In order to turn the it on just open functions.php (if it’s not present simply create it) and add the following code:

If your creating Themes that others may use it is highly recommended to ensure it will run in previous versions of WordPress. Simply use function_exists to achieve this:

if





(





function_exists





(





‘add_theme_support’





)





)



add_theme_support



(





‘post-thumbnails’





)





;

From the file wp-includes/post-image-template.php you will have 4 new functions available to control rendering of the post image in your theme (was actually called xxx_post_image until recently but a late

code change turned image into thumbnail

…):

• has_post_thumbnail()
  
• get_post_thumbnail_id()
  
• the_post_thumbnail()
  
• get_the_post_thumbnail()
  

Here is an example of how you can check within the loop, if the post has a Post-Thumbnail. If the post have an image it can then be displayed where ever you want:

//insert post thumbnail if present





if





(





(





function_exists





(





‘has_post_thumbnail’





)





)





&&





(



has_post_thumbnail



(





)





)





)





{





echo





‘



.



the_permalink



(





)





.





‘”>’





.



the_post_thumbnail



(





)





.





”





;





}





//else insert image using ex. custom fields





…

The code will output a generic tag with a class of “wp-post-image” unless you add one yourself. For real backwards compatibility – highly relevant if you update existing themes – you should add an else clause and insert images the old way here.

You have different to control the output. The most simple option is to use the predefined sizes like this but you can also add the attributes available for img as shown on last line:

<



pre



>



the_post_thumbnail



(





)





;





// without parameter gives you a Thumbnail



the_post_thumbnail



(





‘thumbnail’





)





;





// Also a Thumbnail



the_post_thumbnail



(





‘medium’





)





;





// Medium resolution



the_post_thumbnail



(





‘large’





)





;





// Large resolution



the_post_thumbnail



(





‘medium’





,





array





(





‘class’





=>





‘alignleft’





,





‘alt’





=>





‘alttext’





)





)





;




// Take full control over thumbnail size





// Here the image will be scaled to to 100×100 pixel



the_post_thumbnail



(





array





(





100





,





100





)





,





array





(





‘class’





=>





‘alignleft’





,





‘alt’





=>





‘alttext’





)





)





;

The configuration part

So once your theme has been tuned and is ready to use the latest cools WP2.9 Thumbnail Features you also need to attach an image to you posts to make it work. You simply do this by clicking the Set thumbnail and upload or select existing image. The Post Thumbnail box will be located just below the Categories box.

Sidebar Descriptions

Widgets are great because they add real flexibility in the themes. On the other hand themes with lots of sidebars can be very challenging to use as it may be difficult to understand where a specific widget will be displayed. With this new feature you will be able to add description to each sidebar that you create in your theme making it more user friendly.

Adding descriptions to your widget areas is as simple as adding an extra argument to the register_sidebar() function. See example below.

<



pre



>



function register_theme_widget_areas



(





)





{



register_sidebar



(





array





(





‘name’





=>





‘Primary’





,





‘id’





=>





‘primary’





,





‘description’





=>





‘The primary widget area is used as top right sidebar.’





,





‘before_widget’





=>





‘
‘





,





‘after_widget’





=>





‘
‘





,





‘before_title’





=>





‘

‘





,





‘after_title’





=>





‘
‘





)





)





;

Adding a few lines of descriptive text will take a few seconds but will be very important for your theme users.

Image Editor

The WordPress Media Manager has got some really cool new features consisting of two main parts

.

1) An image control bar, allowing image rotation, image flips and image cropping. Included with the main WordPress image edit bar are both undo and redo buttons as well. 2) A part for image size and cropping aspects. This not only show pixel size for cropping but allows aspect ratio adjustments. Finishing up the main functions is the ability to adjust images or thumbnails independently and all at once.

While not being a fully featured image editing system the new Edit Media feature will provide enough control for most users.

Trash

Trash is a new feature and the last step before a permanent delete. You can put a post, image, page into trash, if you don’t want to include them in your posts list.

This new feature will help you recover deletions – could be accidental in an environment with multiple users. It basically enables you to restore posts, pages, comments and attachments that have been trashed at an earlier point in time.

If you like to configure a special date of how long files should be kept in your trash, you can configure it in your wp-config.php.

define





(





‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’





,





10





)





;

The default settings deletes your content after 30 days. If you don’t want to use trash at all, just use the value 0.

define





(





‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’





,





0





)





;

Media Embed

Makes it easier to embed third-party content such as YouTube videos, etc. Similar to Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin. WordPress will now support

oEmbed

– a format for allowing an embedded representation of a URL on third party sites. The simple API allows a website to display embedded content (such as photos or videos) when a user posts a link to that resource, without having to parse the resource directly.

If you don’t like this feature you can turn it off. It will be active by default. By the way it seams like the



feature never made it for the release…

New Templates Based on Slug

This is an important feature for theme developers. In previous versions of WP you had to use a query in your theme or a Plugin to adjust the design or the content to a specific category. WordPress will now support location of category, page and tag templates based on ‘category-slug’, ‘page-slug’ and ‘tag-slug’ respectively. It will also support location based on on ‘category-id’, ‘page-id’ and ‘tag-id’. This means that in stead of making your themes complex and difficult to maintain using:

if





(



is_category



(





’somecategory’





)





)





{

to make somecategory render differently you can simply create a template file called category-somecategory.php.

Metadata API

In WordPress 2.9, there is a new Metadata API that can be used to access data from the WordPress meta tables.

The add_metadata() function takes a meta type (‘comment’, ‘post’, ‘user’, etc), the ID of the content type, the key and value of the metadata and whether the information should be unique or not (true or false).

add_metadata



(





‘comment’





,





2535





,





‘email’





,





‘name@somedomain.com’





)





;

You can also use update_metadata(), delete_metadata(), get_metadata() and update_meta_cache() for further wrangling. Refer to wp-includes/meta.php for full documentation.

Other

WordPress 2.9 provides more enhancements and features that you should be aware of:

• Comment Metadata: Metadata for comments is just like it is for posts, pages, and users. Allowing developers to easily highlight comments of various types fx. author comments.
  
• Optimize / Repair Database: WordPress has added a new feature which allows you to optimize / repair your database. There are many good plugins providing this vital functionality but now it’s build in. You can activate this function by setting WP_ALLOW_REPAIR=true in your wp-config file.
  
• User Registration via XMLRPC: You can now enable user registration through a XMLRPC client
  
• Custom Theme Directories: WordPress 2.9 introduces register_theme_directory() which takes a wp-content-relative path and will additionally scan it for themes. Plugins can use this to add themes without requiring copying by the user
  
• Batch Plugin Update:You will now be able to upgrade multiple plugins with one click from our WordPress Admin Panel
  
• The emoticon system can be altered using the smilies_src hook.
  
• If you’re a Theme Developer this post will show you important enhancements in fx. wp_query:
  
  Geeky bits in WordPress 2.9
  
  
• JSON compatibility, before only beneficial to PHP 5.2, has been backported for use in WordPress
  
• rel=”canonical” for single posts and pages aiding in SEO
  
• A new sanitization API (with functions like esc_html())
  

Anything important missing? Please share your opinion in a comment.

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If you haven’t already tried our post by email feature then it makes blog publishing as simple as sending an email. Configure your blog, write an email, and we’ll do the rest. You can add photos and videos in your email and they’ll all be included, regardless of whether you send them from your home computer, your office, or a cellphone.

Last month we introduced a great geotagging feature that allows you to identify where you’re located when writing a post. This has now been linked in with post by email so you can send a photo, via email, from any GPS-enabled device and we’ll use that information to automatically set the location of your blog post. If you have an iPhone, for example, then take a photo, email it, and you’re all set.

As we roll out more geotagging features you’ll be able to use this information to show friends where you’ve eaten, to show places you’ve visited on vacation, or if you’re forgetful, to remind yourself where you’ve been.

Naturally you may not want your location to be public and the geo information will only be used if your personal profile allows it. Additionally, you can include the [geotag on] and [geotag off] shortcodes in your email to override your profile defaults.

Full details of all post by email shortcodes can be found on the support page. This includes how to include category and tags.

Since September of 2008, LinkedIn members have earned over $1 million by participating in targeted research surveys on professional topics. Over 100,000 members from more than 85 countries have shared their experience and opinions on topics spanning from cloud computing to healthcare reform to real estate through these research surveys. LinkedIn Surveys enables members to share their valuable experience, help shape important business decisions, while also earning a reward for contributing their opinions.

Members who qualify and complete a survey can receive an honorarium between $5 and $100, which they can select from a variety of options such as Amazon e-certificates, Paypal transfers, Starbucks cards, books, song downloads, or donations to global charities. Over the past year, LinkedIn members have donated over $150,000 of their rewards to charities like Doctors without Borders and the International Red Cross. Here are thoughts from one of our users, Warren Sypteras:

“I was sent an invitation to do a survey  from LinkedIn.  I normally hate doing these things because I spend my time giving data for free.  Ergo;  the surveyors only benefit.  I was surprised to find that LinkedIn actually DO value the opinions they get.  Thanks!”

Launched late last year, LinkedIn Surveys allows business professionals, market researchers, consultants, or investors to gain market insights from targeted professional audiences around the globe. If you’d like to learn more about using LinkedIn Surveys for your own research, click here to learn more about our offerings.

Participation in research studies is by invitation only and members are selected based on their profile information and relevance of their expertise to the research topic. If you are interested in participating in upcoming research studies, you can improve your chances of being invited by making sure your profile is complete and up-to-date.

We’ve pushed our last feature for 2009 – the ability to comment on a title.  Now users can write up their thoughts on each title, and start a conversation around each one.   We’ve implemented a system from a great service called Intense Debate.

Users will see the comments below every title description, and can enter their own comments at the bottom.  If you have strong feelings about a title we’d encourage you to write up your thoughts – you’ll help the entire Cultivate community make better decisions about what titles will help them.

This is just an initial implementation – in the future we’ll be adding things like the ability to search comments, to rate them, and to comment/review a title via email.   We hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season!

—————————-

Common Questions:

Do we moderate? Comments are posted immediately, but we do review them and will edit/remove posts that we find either off topic or offensive.  Because we service such a great group of professionals we don’t expect this to happen though!

What if I find a comment that is offensive? Please let us know right away, and what title it was posted under.

Will other people know who I am if I comment? No – all comments are anonymous.  Just put your first name in the ‘name’ field and type your comment.

One common thing  most current and past residents of Alexandria seem to remember: Hokus Pokus Liquor, and its incredible neon sign. Who can forget the “flying” neon ghost outside the building as they drove down Lee Street during the 1950s?  Hokus Pokus remains a thriving business in Alexandria, and elsewhere in Louisiana, with its new store in Lake Charles.

These photos were taken by the author in January 2003. You can also link to Google Maps for a street view of the Hokus Pokus building.

Hokus Pokus Liquor Store, Lee Street, Alexandria, Louisiana

One of the favorite topics for viewers of the Retrospective is the Noah’s Potato Chip Company, located at 2725 Lee Street, just past City Park, and almost to Texas Avenue. Many have fond memories of the Company’s community involvement, and the great taste of those chips! Some remember school field trips taken there, and selling Noah’s chips for Y-Teens. They also sponsored bowling teams for those stationed at England Air Force Base.

The pictures below were taken about 2002.

You can also see the street view from Google Maps to get another look at the building.

Alexandria Louisiana Area World War II Military Camps and Bases

The Retrospective has collected numerous historic postcards and other information dealing with several military installations in the area.

These artifacts from the past tell amazing stories of the magnitude of the camps, and lives of the people who served there.

We’ve just made a few updates to our pages on Central Louisiana World War II military camps and bases, including Camp Livingston and Camp Claiborne.

We also have pages dealing with the history of other Louisiana military bases, including Alexandria Army Air Base, later renamed England Air Force Base, and Barksdale Air Force Base.

The Retrospective is now on Facebook, with our own “Group” … join us for news about the Retrospective, and about related information on historic preservation, Alexandria, Louisiana, photography, architecture, history and other related features.

Join the Alexandria Retrospective Group on Facebook!

The Retrospective is now on Twitter … follow us for news about the Retrospective, and about related information on historic preservation, Alexandria, Louisiana, photography, architecture, history and other related features.

Start following on Twitter now!

The memories remain with us to this day, 50 years later. The high school has moved, and evolved, and grown at its new campus on Highway 28 West. But the memories of Menard Memorial High School on Elliott Street remain for many of us…

We’ve just completed work on a new section of the Retrospective, entitled Menard Memorial High School. It’s a look back to the old school on Elliott Street run by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart.

For those with interests in Pineville, Alexandria’s sister city across the Red River, we are working on a new feature:

The Pineville Retrospective

The section is not yet complete, and we are searching for new content and photographs to include. Contact the Retrospective if you have materials to submit

Although not generally considered part of Central Louisiana, Ruston is less than 100 miles from Alexandria, and even less distance from the northern reaches of Pineville and Tioga.

Ruston retains many historic buildings from the late 1800s. Postcards represent a media that enables us to visualize, and remember, the past. Knowing the value that such cards possess in documenting Ruston’s past, I have assembled a small collection depicting the architecture of Ruston and Louisiana Tech during the first 50-60 years of the 20th Century, and am making it available to others via this site.

View the Ruston Louisiana Retrospective

For those of us that grew up in central Louisiana in the Alexandria and Pineville area, we clearly remember the images of the Christmas season. The Alexandria City Hall was always a highlight, with its Christmas lights and tinsel, red Santa Claus North Pole house, and the little white church. Down Third Street, the animated Christmas window displays at Wellan’s Department Store were always a major attraction.

Christmas lights were strung all around Alexandria, down Bolton Avenue and Lee Street. Even the water tower between Texas Avenue and MacArthur Drive was covered with lights!

View the Alexandria Retrospective Christmas past

our newly enhanced website ROI and statistics report

The new account report on yourdomain.webdadi.net has got some new updates showing you more ROI and statistics from your website.

Find out your conversion rates from property alerts back to your website and many other stats including in the report period:

• new online registrations
• number of email property alerts sent
• property alert response rate
• number of active properties online
• number of for sale properties
• number of under offer properties
• total new applicants registered

Webdadi are going to be including some Google Analytics into Webdadi in the near future to take advantage of more Search engine feedback and identify what is working and what is not working well in your website.

Tell is what you think here we would be grateful for any feedback if possible.

Thank you.

Well, there are new servers installed into Club Penguin! Three new ones to be specific! They are called Below Zero, Cold Snap and Permafrost. Good names – I believe. They were possibly added because of Rockhopper. If there are more servers installed – give us a call by commenting. We’ll credit! Here’s a picture I put together of all the new servers.

Below Zero will usually be full, as it is in the picture. Cold Snap in occasions. Permafrost will probably be not. What does that even mean? Permafrost? It seems to be  a name. Very confusing! So do you think that they should of installed more servers! I think so! Minimum of 6 new servers atleast!

With the ProLiant G6 server series, HP is determined to continue its dominance in the server market. There is substantial difference between the previous ProLiant series and this one, which is branded as G6 series. There are new features and HP has focused mainly on power saving features in this series.

So, what is G6 series all about? Watch this video – direct from HP where they show their labs and interview the team who has designed the new G6 server series. It is an interesting video – specifically if you are interested in knowing what G6 is all about.

Watch the video here: ProLiant G6 Backstage Tour

Here at LinkedIn, we believe that people search is one of the most valuable new areas of search technology. Late last year, we announced the launch of the new people search platform, rebuilt from the ground up. Since that launch, I’m happy to report that the enhancements have resulted in nearly doubling overall search activity on LinkedIn. Thanks for tons of great feedback you provided since we launched that has helped spur these numerous improvements.

Today, I am excited to announce the release of another huge improvement to LinkedIn’s People Search experience: “Faceted Search”.

“Faceted Search” offers dynamic filters that are automatically generated based on your actual query results. These filters let you quickly and easily hone your query over 50 million LinkedIn profiles based on 8 facets: current company, past company, location, relationship, location, industry, school, and profile languages.

A new module titled “Refine By” will include a list of the most relevant facets, based on the actual results of your original query.

The filters are generated in real time for every query by parsing all matching results and extracting the most important attributes. We then present those to you in an intuitive interface that lets you select one or multiple filters per facet. You can refine, expand or stumble upon insightful information by simply clicking on the search options that matter to you.

Faceted Search offers the following benefits to your search experience on LinkedIn:

• Enables True Guided Navigation: A list of filters are generated dynamically for every search in order to guide you through the optimal path to find the most relevant people

• Provides Intuitive Interface: Refining your search is easier than ever with an intuitive user interface that allows you to slice and dice search results by 8 facets

• Improves Precision: As LinkedIn continues to grow by the millions, increasing search space requires increased precision to help you find exactly the right people

• Increases Efficiency: Find talent, business partners, customers or a former colleague faster than ever before.

• Reduces Need for Complex Queries: It significantly reduces the need for complex Boolean queries. This was a particular need we heard from many of our power users.

Here is a quick video that highlights the key elements of Faceted Search:

We believe these improvements will help augment your productivity and we’d love to hear your feedback, questions and suggestions.

Welcome to The Alexandria Retrospective blog … we’ll be making posts here about new features on the Retrospective.

So if you have connections to Alexandria, Pineville and other Central Louisiana communities, we recommend you check here frequently.

And be sure to visit The Alexandria Retrospective on the web! There you can take journeys back to the simpler times in CenLA, and recall good memories via photographs, historic postcards, artifacts, stories, and memorabilia.