Ask An Expert!

[Billy's Little Trip]

It is indeed cactus. Or completely rooted may be the correct term

The pool dude was just here. The impellor shaft had sheared. Need a new pump.

If the shaft thread has stripped, you need a new motor (dry end). If the impeller has spun, you need a new impeller (wet end). But needing a whole new pump is your choice, not the pool dudes choice. A new pump means re-plumbing a whole new pump.
There are advantages to getting a whole new pump.
#1. A manufacturer warranty
#2. More energy efficient if the old pump is over 5 years old (this may only be a U.S. thing)

BUT, a new pump is 3 or 4 times more expensive than just replacing the bad parts.

Another bit of info. It's very rare for a motor shaft to strip the threads. Motor shafts are case hardened stainless steal. Now, impeller threads strip easy, they are brass. With that said, ask the guy to show you the motor when he does the work. I'll guarantee the motor shaft is perfect.
.

(...I didn't see this post before)

No - the shaft had actually sheared - broken in half - it wasn't any thread stripping. Anyway, the bloke whipped the old pump out and put a new one in that afternoon. Cost about $500. Even if it was fixable - I doubt any repair dude would even get out of bed for much less than that (and it was more that 7 years old)

I do new pumps for around $800, (depending on HP) so that seems fair.

[Sober]

LOL WHAT IS A PM?

LOL WHAT IS INSTANT MESSAGING?

LOL WHAT IS A TELEPHONE?

[fluffy]

Is there something different you need help with, Sober?

[Spud]

I need an expert.

I am trying to use imagemagick with php to add some text to an image.

Here is some working code:

Code: Select all

$location='/usr/bin/convert'; 
$command = '-draw \'circle 100,100 200,200\';
$convert=$location . ' ' . $inputImage . ' ' . $command . ' ' . $outputImage;
exec ($convert); 

That draws a circle onto my input image, and outputs it to my output image.

When I change the command to this:

Code: Select all

$command = '-draw \'text 100,100 "TESTING"\'';

Nothing happens. No text.
I have tried escaping the quotes differently, etc., but with no luck.

Anyone know how to do this?

SPUD

[fluffy]

Often ImageMagick has trouble with text drawing on systems which don't have X11 installed. If you're doing this on Dreamhost, that's probably your problem.

If you're just doing fixed text strings then I recommend just making a transparent .png and using 'composite' instead.

[Spud]

I do not actually know where the site is hosted. I just have ftp access to it. Perhaps I should move it to a server where I have control... I had thought of the compositing trick, but the text is not fixed. I need to put your name on a certificate.

Can I install X11? What is it?

SPUD

[fluffy]

X11 is Linux's GUI. You can't install it as an end-user.

[obscurity]

I'd slap an 'echo $command' line in there so you can see how it's interpreted the line/whether your quotes are being correctly escaped etc. (if it's being run from within a script rather than at the command line, redirect the output of the script to a text file you can then look at)

[Spud]

Thanks for the tips. Actually, I solved it by moving it to the dreamhost server, where it works just fine.

SPUD

[obscurity]

Actually mine wasn't a very good tip 'cos I wasn't paying attention when I read your initial post and thought you were talking about shell scripting not php. I dunno off the top of my head what the php equiv of echo would be, and redirecting to a file would be silly when you can just spit it out into the output html anyway.

[Spud]

s'ok obs. I got your gist.

[fluffy]

Huh, it looks like Dreamhost has X11 installed. Weird.

In the past I've had a lot of trouble trying to get ImageMagick to draw text, and as far as I can tell it's because it tries to use X11's text-drawing stuff. If X11 isn't available, it just silently fails. In particular, I've had CGI scripts using ImageMagick for this exact same purpose which ran just fine on a Linux desktop but would fail on a webserver, with identical versions of ImageMagick - the main difference being the server didn't have X11 installed.

I wonder if Dreamhost has X11 specifically to make ImageMagick text functions work...

[Spud]

Well, I doubt if they have X11 installed just to make ImageMagick work, seeing as how they are running with version 6.2.4 of ImageMagick, which is two years old. -distort was added in 6.3.5, and that's (of course) the next feature I need. Dang it.

[Caravan Ray]

Point of order Mr Chairman - from the opening post of this thread....

I think there should be a thread where we can draw on the non-musical and non-computer related skills of Songfighters

[fluffy]

Well, I doubt if they have X11 installed just to make ImageMagick work, seeing as how they are running with version 6.2.4 of ImageMagick, which is two years old.

Er, X11 dates back to the early 80s.

[Spud]

Ah, but Dreamhost does not, and neither does Imagemagick. My point was that they are not going out of their way to make Imagemagick work optimally.

[fluffy]

My point is that there is absolutely no reason for them to install X11 on their server except to support text rendering in ImageMagick, which is the only major application which is used by webservers which also has a dependency on X11.

[Spud]

You're the expert.

[roymond]

My point is that there is absolutely no reason for them to install X11 on their server except to support text rendering in ImageMagick, which is the only major application which is used by webservers which also has a dependency on X11.

I don't know about X11 and whether it's required or exclusive to ImageMagick support. However, having ImageMagick available on a server is a huge attraction, so I wouldn't doubt it's utility and inspiration for doing what's necessary.

[fluffy]

Well yeah, it's not like I'm complaining that they have it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is the case.

[signboy]

I had a roommate who was silly enough to buy a mac, and as far as I can tell, x11 is for installing scorched 3d.