Green Complex » Guides

Find almost any image’s source on the Internet

Jason Green — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:09:36 +0000

Ever see a really neat wallpaper but it was the screen shot of someone’s desktop? Wish you could find the source on the internet?Or maybe you have an old image and can’t remember where it came from? Well this just happened to Shawn on http://lofitribe.com/church-art-for-the-ugly-hero/ and finding the source image is actually very easy, thanks to a free service called “Tin Eye” As of 2010-01-21, TinEye claims to have indexed over 1,276,899,174 images for comparisons! Usage is simple: First right click the image you want to find the source of, and click copy image location (In Firefox or Chrome) and paste it into the right hand box on tineye.com and press enter. It’s that simple! To reiterate (Some people like step by steps)

Tineye.com The Image Search Engine

First get the URL of an image, or have one ready to upload.
Then go to http://tineye.com and upload the image or paste the URL to a hosted image.
When checking out the results, I often click on biggest to try to find the source.
Pro Tip: If there is not many results, then find the biggest you can, and get it’s URL and search for that one instead. Often you’ll find that this provides better results if your source image is small or blurry. – I’ve done that many times

I’ll post a Screencast tonight!

Wave Search Commands

Add Thumbnails to FB Recommend Social Plugin

Jason Green — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:30:50 +0000

Adding icons from your wordpress posts to the Facbook recommend widget is really easy.

Thumbnails on the Facebook Recommend Social Widget

Adding thumbnails to the facebook recommend
or like widget in wordpress is super easy if you
already use a custom field to store the
thumbnail location for each post.

This is a great way to add thumbnails and can really
make your website stand out on facebook.
You can look at the live example on my website,
on the right where my widget is or
on the screenshot on the left.

See all the icons right there in the feed?
It’s actually really easy with wordpress!

Ok, lets get started:

Start by pasting this code in your header.php
file that is found in your theme’s folder.

Inside the section somewhere,
preferably at the top in header.php.
(*Note this code may need some Modification for your specific theme*)


|Custom Tagline"/>
Green Complex"/>
ID, 'thumb', TRUE); ?>

Make sure to make any changes you need in the bold sections to tweak it just right!

For those webmasters who want to know what’s going on, I’ll walk with you line by line.



-This is just a comment, good code is always commented
|Custom Tagline "/>
-This Line checks if the page is a post, and if so, it takes the name of the
post and sets that as the meta tag og:title, which is where facebook gets
the page title from (Don't know why the real title tag wasn't good enough)
A Custom Tagline is optional and you could add a little tag line to the
end of every status update like - lol or something.
Green Complex"/>
-This line sets the site name. The user's status will now
say Jason likes (titleofpost) on Green Complex.
ID, 'thumb', TRUE); ?>
-And here we grab the image link from the posts custom field.
 Where it says 'thumb' you will want to change to whatever custom field
you use for your post images like 'image' 'large' or 'thumbnail'

-Then we take the custom image url at return it in the
 meta tag for facebook to pick up, and add to the recommend widget.
 (It should return something like http://site.com/image.jpg)

And that’s it in a nutshell! Adding the images will customize the like experience a bit more for the user

and increase the chance that other readers will check out other stories on your site too. Great stuff!

If this post is a little rough forgive me, I’m still settling in to my new site design!

Get the logged on username in .VBS

Jason Green — Tue, 18 May 2010 19:10:57 +0000

This uses a simple vbs script I made (Using a function to get user input from Rob van der Woude) to get your input for a computer name or ip address on your Windows Domain, and returns the currently logged in user.

This makes a nice icon you can click anytime, and with a single line type (or paste) the computer’s address and voila’ you get a nice alert box with the currently logged in username! Just copy paste the following script into a new blank txt file, save and rename to WhosloggedIn.vbs It’s as easy as pie! The script leverages the WMI to ask for username. Many enterprise managment applications have similar features, but are slower to pull up. This is for those quick access trouble calls where you need it quick, and dirty! Script could be used as a base for expanding into collecting all the currently logged in users across the domain, and what computer they are logged in to.

'Get remote logged in user vbs script written by Jason Green http://green.cx
strComputer = UserInput( "Enter Computer Name:" )
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colComputer = objWMIService.ExecQuery ("Select * from Win32_ComputerSystem")
For Each objComputer in colComputer
    Wscript.Echo objComputer.UserName
Next
Function UserInput( myPrompt )
' This function Written by Rob van der Woude http://www.robvanderwoude.com
    ' Check if the script runs in CSCRIPT.EXE
    If UCase( Right( WScript.FullName, 12 ) ) = "\CSCRIPT.EXE" Then
        ' If so, use StdIn and StdOut
        WScript.StdOut.Write myPrompt & " "
        UserInput = WScript.StdIn.ReadLine
    Else
        ' If not, use InputBox( )
        UserInput = InputBox( myPrompt )
    End If
End Function

*Please not that this requires administrative authority on the client machines. Which in a domain, shouldn’t be a problem.

Secure your Facebook from Hackers

Jason Green — Fri, 14 May 2010 17:30:46 +0000

Get notified anytime someone accesses your facebook account. Simply use this shortcut to go to your account security settings in facebook. http://r4d.us/fblockdown and then go to “Account Security” then Choose “Yes” and check the SMS box if you want to get a text message anytime someone logs in to your facebook account from an unknown computer. (You then will need to authorize each computer first by logging out, and back in at each pc)

Now the Next time you log in, Facebook will ask you to authorize the computer.

Now if a hacker logs into your facebook account from an unknown computer / location,
you will be notified instantly!

Step 1: Enable the new feature in Account Security

Step 2: Log Off, and then log back in to Facebook

Step 3: Verify: Under Account Security you should now see your computer Listed.

Now if anyone attempts to access your facebook from an unauthorized source, you will be notified!

Effectively block Comment Link spam

Jason Green — Thu, 13 May 2010 22:33:34 +0000

Effectively blocking Comment Link spam in WordPress

A simple little wordpress setting can save you a lot of headachs in regards to WordPress Spam Comments…

So I noticed about 330 Spam Comments that needed moderation in my WordPress the other day and that’s when I hit my limit. I hate spammers, and link spammers are the worst. They spam links in comments trying to “Steal” your page rank, or piggy back off of it or whatever. To boost their sites rank in Google. That is the dumbest thing they could do however, because if Google sees 1,000′s of blog comments linking back to your site overnight, Google will ban you. So what’s the point? Why do they do this?

They buy spamming software for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars, with the promises that Google will love their website and they will make ten times what the app cost. LOL If that were true, why would they DARE to sell their own software? Why wouldn’t they just dominate Google and rule the world? Because they already have! They used the software back when it worked, after the big “G” stopped them, they needed a new source of income. So they go fishing for suckers. It’s those poor dumb sheep that listen to what these “Black Hat SEO Elite” preach and buy into their crappy comment link spamming software.

So if it’s so rampant how do we fight back? Easy, NO links in comments. Period. Not this No Follow crap either. How easy is it to do this? In word press admin go to your Settings section in the lower left. Then scroll down to the black list text box, and copy paste this in to it.

.a
.b
.c
.d
.e
.f
.g
.h
.i
.j
.k
.l
.m
.n
.o
.p
.q
.r
.s
.t
.u
.v
.w
.x
. y
.z

(One per line) And finally save your settings. This will block any comment that has a .com .cx .ru . anything

Yes, if someone types a sentence and doesn’t space between them it will block it, but IMO that’s worth the effort to effectively eliminate comment link spam. Can they still spam you? Yes, absolutely, but plain words aren’t as bad as them dragging your Page Rank down and making an association from your site to theirs.

XBOX 360 Repair

Jason Green — Thu, 13 May 2010 05:50:07 +0000

Here’s a cool little guide I found that takes the long way around installing washers on the Xbox 360 Heatsinks to fix the RROD. I’ve done the repair 3 times my self for me and friends, so I can vouch that it works. I only had one time it didn’t work, and that Xbox was totally wasted. The guide has a little humor in it so it’s actually a good read even if you’ve never repaired one.

Fix the Red Ring of Death! (without towels!) – More cool how to projects

SEO 101 | The Basics

Jason Green — Fri, 07 May 2010 23:00:14 +0000

Outside of doing on page tricks for SEO, one of the most basic and fundamental SEO tips every webmaster should be aware of is

utilizing the tools of the trade. Every webmaster should be using Google Analytics, but are you really using it? I must admit that sometime I get blinders on to what is drawing people into my website, but as a publisher funded by on page advertisements, I forgot some of the basics to making sure your page in ranking good in the search engines.

Step1: Look at you Search Engine stats in Google Analytics:

(Click for Larger View)

In the chart under the line graph, on the right Choose Performance view, and it should look like this:

The reason for viewing the performance is seeing what is working, how well it’s working, or what’s NOT working. In my case I noticed Bing was NOT working. So what do we do from here? Well in case you hadn’t figured it out, Step 1 was Identify the Problem. in this case it was bing. So let’s goto step two.

Step 2: Finding a solution

Bing is bung so we need to get that back in working order, so first thing, lets head over to http://bing.com/webmaster and see if we can spot a problem. In my case, the Authentication failed. A wordpress Update or something must have deleted my authorization file from my server. A quick re-upload and I’m back in bing! Bing’s webmaster tools are like a dark mirror to Google’s but it readily hands out information that’s a little buried on Google’s webmaster tools. It’s also important to use a sitemap. Please not that a rss feed is NOT the same as a sitemap. I recommend using a wordpress plugin to make the site map automatically and on the fly. Google Bing and Yahoo will grab it, IF you have set up a webmaster account with each one of them, so I recommend doing that.

Bing has about %6 Search Engine share at the moment, and it’s on the rise. This means I should see a welcoming %6 increase of Search Traffic from bing over the next few weeks. I’ll repost with more images if that’s true..

That’s it! Pretty basic overview with one sharp little point. Anyone can overlook the basics, so check out your stats every now and then, and try to look for areas you can improve. Search engine rankings are important for getting the good paying ads on Google.

How to add FB Like to every post

Jason Green — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 05:29:08 +0000

How to add the Facebook “Like” button on every post in any theme.

It’s quite simple actually, I’ll guide you through the whole process after the jump…

Getting Started adding a FB Like button to all posts in your theme:

Open one of the template files for your theme where you would like the button to be. Let’s say we want a button after the title in every post, so we would need to edit single.php

Where ever you want the code to appear, just drop in the following line of code: (Remove all the line breaks, this is a one liner.)

&layout=standard&show_faces=false&width=300&
action=like&font=segoe+ui&colorscheme=evil"
scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" 
style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:300px; height:30px">

Valid options for show_faces is true or false. True Shows faces and False doesn’t. Pretty simple.

Colorscheme is light, dark or evil. I choose evil, but I’m not sure what’s evil about it. Looks just the same as light does to me.

Obviously the width and height need to be adjusted to your theme and the placement in your theme to suit it best.

*In the code above, anything marked in this color is what you can change to customize it, or use the customization wizard located at: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like If you make your own using the wizard, don’t forget for the to add the Pink code after you generate your button, for the URL just put in blank.com and customize like you want. Then replace blank.com with for using in your wordpress theme.

How to “Hack” your Canon Camera

Jason Green — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:36:36 +0000

I went over CHDK in another post, so here is a simple quick guide to actually getting it on your camera.

CHDK = Awesomeness from a small Camera

This guide will get you started using CHDK. This guide assumes CHDK is already set up on your camera’s SD card. A Guide for that is here. Think of CHDK like software, except it is run right on the camera! With a couple of button presses, you can access some astounding features usually only found on $1000+ cameras (and if you don’t like what CHDK does, turn the camera off and on, and it’s gone).

₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪

These features include:

Shooting in RAW
Fully manual Control of: exposure, shutter, aperture, ISO and focus
Bracketing of exposure, aperture, ISO, and even focus
Motion Detection
Live Histogram
Zebra Mode

This software is called CHDK, and detailed user guides can be found at:

What is CHDK http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK_in_Brief
Basic Usage Info at http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK_firmware_usage
Detailed Usage Info at http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK_firmware_usage/AllBest
Detailed Usage Manual as PDF http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/chdk/images/e/e7/CHDKmanual.pdf
Detailed Usage Manual as PDF New? http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/File:CHDK_UserGuide_April_2009_A4.pdf
Quick Start User Guide as PDF http://drop.io/chdk_new_UserGuide_booklet_pdf

Loading the CHDK Software:

Put the camera into playback mode (not stills or movie mode).
Turn on the camera.
Push ‘Menu’, then Up (ISO) so that ‘Firmware Update’ is selected. Push ‘Set’ to select it.
Push Right (Flash) to highlight ‘OK’, then push ‘Set’ to select it.

The CHDK should now load. NOTE: This is not actually a firmware update – when you turn the camera off and on again, the CHDK software will no longer be loaded.

Note: You can copy the CHDK software to another SD card if you like. However it will not work in another camera.

Intro to Using the CHDK Software:

Once CHDK is loaded (see above), the on-screen display information will be changed, and potentially the camera’s operations will change, depending on how CHDK has been set up (see ‘Default Settings’ below).

The main concept to understand when using CHDK is that to change its settings, you also need to use the buttons on the camera, but you cannot use the buttons both for CHDK and for the normal camera operations at the same time. Therefore, when it is first loaded, CHDK will be running (in the background as it were), but the camera buttons will affect normal camera operations – not CHDK. To change from ‘normal’ mode to ‘CHDK’ or ‘Alternative’ mode, push the button (the one with the printer icon). Now the text ‘’ should appear at the bottom of the screen, and the buttons will control CHDK instead. Note, this only works if CHDK has been loaded (see above).

When you are in mode, you can push the ‘Menu’ button and it will display the CHDK settings menu. You can navigate this menu with the directional buttons on the big circular button (ISO, Flash, etc) and push ‘Set’ to change things. Push ‘Disp’ to return to the previous menu. To exit the Menu, push ‘Menu’ again. There are many, many powerful options in the CHDK settings menu, most of which are self-explanatory, however, you can refer to the user guides listed above for more info.

If you are in mode and try to take a picture (i.e. push the shutter button), it will not work as expected. This is because in mode, the shutter button is designed to run a custom script instead. By default the script is empty, but you can load a new script under ‘Scripting’ in the CHDK settings menu. So the main thing to remember is that if you want to take a picture, turn mode off first.

Summary of Shortcut Keys (and Other Handy Ones):

In Playback Mode, Turn on, Menu, Up, Set on Firmware, Set on OK – Loads CHDK.
+ MENU – Displays the main CHDK menu
- DISPLAY Button — Return to previous menu
+ “+/-” – Toggle Saving Raw.
+ SET or FUNC/SET – Display the Script menu
Full Shutter press – Executes the selected Script
Half Shutter + Left – Toggle Zebra on/off
Half Shutter + Up – Toggle Histogram on/off
Half Shutter + Right – Toggle OSD on/off
Half Shutter + Down – Toggle Overrides on/off (IF “Disable Overrides” is ON or Disable).
When in MF (Manual Focus) mode and in
mode,
- you may press the UP navigation button to instantly set MF (manual focus) distance to infinity.
- Press the DOWN navigation button to instantly set MF distance to hyperfocal distance (based on f/stop and zoom focal-length).

Default Settings:

The CHDK software has been set up to do the following by default:

Saving photos as Raw is turned off (they are 10mb each). Turn on/off RAW by running the CHDK software (see above), then when in mode (see Intro to Using the CHDK Software) simply push the +/- button. While in Raw mode, the word ‘DNG’ is displayed in the bottom-right corner, along with the number of Raw files that can fit on the card.
When Raw is turned on, for each photo taken it will save a .jpg (a standard image) and a .dng (the Raw file) both with the same filename. It saves Raw images in the DNG file format, which is a standard format, and can be opened by software like Adobe Photoshop.
Show a live histogram, both while taking photos and while viewing existing photos. This help you gauge the distribution of brightness of pixels in the image.
Show zebra stripes, both while taking photos and while viewing existing photos. This helps you avoid taking over-exposed photos – any area of the picture that is overexposed will have animated stripes running through it to warn you. Overexposure is where the brightness of the pixels is higher than the maximum, so these pixels appear pure white, resulting in loss of picture information. The easiest way to deal with overexposure is to decrease the exposure (in Photo mode, push ‘Set’ to get to the photo settings, choose a non-auto setting, then go to the +/- area, and decrease the setting from 0 (neutral) into the negatives (e.g. -1).

 [Guide courtesy of chdk.wikia.com]

CHDK for Canon Cameras, Getting your feet wet

Adding stats to your site

Jason Green — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:52:27 +0000

For a while now I’ve been using Quantcast stats to help monitor my site’s traffic. I also use Google Analytics to study what my audience really likes the most. I’m hoping to attract some advertisers
soon (Don’t worry, nothing like those evil ads that put underlined links everywhere) just two simple 125 x 125 ads on the left over there. But in an effort to help advertisers what exactly the kind of site they are looking at here is, I’ve made public some of my Quantcast stats on the Advertise with us page, under the Contact menu at the very top navigation bar of this site. (Here) Quantcast can determine, with surprising accuracy, if you the viewer is Male or Female, and your income, by using a complex system of cookies, and recording your ip address. But fortunately, your identity is safe, your simply stored as a visitor, nothing that actually identifies who you really are.

My Weekly Visits

The “How” it’s done

To get started, you must first sign up for a quantcast account here. Then after that, setup your sites to get “Quantified” by adding some code to the bottom of your html (Just like Google Analytics)

Then, goto your specifics site’s settings, and you’ll see some charts. Change the settings and customize the charts to what you specifically want, and then click on embed right underneath the chart, and copy/paste that into your website. Do this for each chart and make a new report styled page, just to show off your stats.

I believe this looks quite impressive, but best of all, useful as well.

Green Complex Daily Visitors