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How to use Git with InstantWP

If you are using the amazing free InstantWP WordPress development package often, then you might start wondering how to properly use it with Git version control. The difficulty is that trying to add the entire Linux Alpine virtual operating system to Git is too heavy, but adding only the contents of the Theme folder will not keep track of your posts and other database related content. I will outline the steps I used to get Git working with IWP below:

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Run a simple lightweight Python server

When you are developing websites you often run into the need to test them on a server environment, because browsers block websites with certain features from running locally.

Here is a really quick way to run such a website in a server environment using Python 3 (which you probably have already installed on your machine anyways).

  1. Open the command window where your website root folder is. One easy way of doing that is simply typing “cmd” in the Windows Explorer address bar.
  2. Type this command in the command window: 
python -m http.server 8000
  1. Now simply go to http://127.0.0.1:8000/ in your browser.

If you are getting errors regarding script files with that simple version, you can also try this longer code:

python
#Use to create local host
import http.server
import socketserver

PORT = 1337

Handler = http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler
Handler.extensions_map.update({
      ".js": "application/javascript",
});

httpd = socketserver.TCPServer(("", PORT), Handler)
httpd.serve_forever()

And open that with:

http://127.0.0.1:1337/

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Hair modeling tips for Blender

I have recently been doing hair renders in Blender and thought I would share some key tips that I have learned along the way:

  1. Use multiple particle systems. If you put all your hair in just one particle system, it becomes really tedious to edit the hair. You’ll end up combing hair that you didn’t mean to etc.
  2. Place the hair manually in hair edit mode (with the add hair brush). So set the initial amount to zero in the particle settings. Comb after every round of hair.
  3. Use simple children instead of interpolated, they are much easier to handle in the edit mode.
  4. To make the interpolated children more fluffy, increase the “radius” value.
  5. Be careful with the Path –> steps value, large values made my Blender crash.
  6. Use the Hair BSDF if you are rendering with Cycles. As of now that won’t work for Eevee so you’ll need to create your own shader for Eevee.
  7. Subdivide the roots of your hair in edit mode, because the hair needs more bend right where it comes out from the head. Also use enough keys when creating the hair strands.

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Dealing with a multiresolution .mov file

For the first time in my career I encountered a video file that had two different resolutions. The beginning of the video was SD resolution and after 15 frames it jumped to a resolution of 1080p. VLC player was able to correctly switch the resolution during playback and it displayed the two different resolutions also in the codec information window. But Premiere Pro didn’t understand the file properly and never switched to the higher resolution portion of it. That was a problem because I wanted to use the high resolution in my edit.

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