Moving from MovableType 2.x to WordPress 1.2

First some background: I was running MovableType 2.661 on FreeBSD 4.10, with MySQL as the datastore, Apache 1.3.31 as the http server, with mod_perl and mod_gzip to make things easier/faster. The first step is to extract all your content from your existing MT instance. Navigate through your www.sitename.com/and/path/mt.cgi to the menu and find the export option (the menu looks like what you see below).

If you haven’t already done so go read this tutorial by someone on the WordPress team. If his best case scenario doesn’t quite work for you, read on.

First some background: I was running MovableType 2.661 on FreeBSD 4.10, with MySQL as the datastore, Apache 1.3.31 as the http server, with mod_perl and mod_gzip to make things easier/faster. The requirements for WordPress are here.

Go ahead and install it: it’s literally a 5 minute procedure, so if you set it up, tinker with it and tear it down again, you’re not out much.

The first step is to extract all your content from your existing MT instance.

Continue reading “Moving from MovableType 2.x to WordPress 1.2”

who do you love?

You have brought us to the verge of victory in so many ways: YOU have spoken out against the radical policies of the Administration and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives…. YOU have worked to elect new Democratic Members of Congress in heavily Republican districts in Kentucky and South Dakota…. https://www.democraticaction.org/getinvolved/donations/q2end Now we must work together to cross the finish line — to elect Members of Congress who represent Americans, not corporate special interests or extreme right-wing ideology. I ask you today to continue your help and support of Democratic House Candidates…. With your continued voice, we can move forward our Campaign for a New Majority – a Majority of progressive representation of all Americans.

A warm personal note from Nancy Pelosi:

You have brought us to the verge of victory in so many ways:

YOU have spoken out against the radical policies of the Administration and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

YOU have spoken out against the War in Iraq.

YOU have stood up to call for affordable health care.

YOU have worked to elect new Democratic Members of Congress in heavily Republican districts in Kentucky and South Dakota.

And YOU have re-ignited the Democratic Party.

https://www.democraticaction.org/getinvolved/donations/q2end
Now we must work together to cross the finish line — to elect Members of Congress who represent Americans, not corporate special interests or extreme right-wing ideology. I ask you today to continue your help and support of Democratic House Candidates. $100 today, small to some, and everything to others, will make the difference.

We must have the funds to provide resources to our candidates. We must have YOU. With your continued voice, we can move forward our Campaign for a New Majority – a Majority of progressive representation of all Americans. Contribute to our cause today.

Can I support the change I want to see by supporting a candidate instead of a party? Do parties matter to me anymore? To anyone?

I think they help some voters, as they can vote according to who they identify with, but I’m not so sure most people know who they like or what they believe in. It’s not at all clear to me that the working man, in his W-emblazoned pickup truck, is well-served by the GOP: I see them as firm believers in life as a zero-sum game, where corporations and capital can only win if workers lose.

Whether you believe in science and evolution or faith and creation by a supreme being, it’s a pretty poor way to live if the only way you can have to ensure someone else is a have-not.

must be harder than it looks

stevenberlinjohnson.com: Apple’s Ten-Year-Old Breakthrough: I think it’s pretty ironic that the most highly-touted feature in Tiger is one they’ve been trying to get into a shipping OS for almost ten years. Sometimes information society isn’t quite as fast as it’s rumored to be.

stevenberlinjohnson.com: Apple’s Ten-Year-Old Breakthrough:

I think it’s pretty ironic that the most highly-touted feature in Tiger is one they’ve been trying to get into a shipping OS for almost ten years. Sometimes information society isn’t quite as fast as it’s rumored to be.

InfoWorld: A tale of two Cairos: November 21, 2003: By Jon Udell: Platforms:

Microsoft’s 2003 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) reminded some observers of the same event in 1993, when the hot topics were the Win32 APIs, a rough draft of Windows 95 code-named Chicago, and a preview of a futuristic object-file-system-based NT successor code-named Cairo. The hot topics this year were the WinFX managed APIs, a rough draft of a future version of NT code-named Longhorn, and … Cairo. Now called WinFS, this vision of metadata-enriched storage and query-driven retrieval was, and is, compelling.

Continue reading “must be harder than it looks”

selective comparisons

Matthew Yglesias: June 20, 2004 – June 26, 2004 Archives

Then one day I lightened up.

It’s fun! John Kerry is like Hitler because he supports increased highway funding. George Bush is like Hitler because he likes to fight wars. Michael Moore is like Goebbels because he uses film to advance his political views. Bill O’Reilly is like Julius Streicher because he’s also a crappy journalist. We’ve recently noted that Bush is like both Hitler and Mussolini because he came to power in an irregular manner and that the Supreme Court is like the King of Italy because they picked a leader I don’t like. No self-respecting opponent of PETA should fail to note that Hitler was a big animal rights activist. I don’t hear anti-smoking activists bring it up much but Hitler hated cigarettes and had this nutty (at the time) idea that smoking is very unhealthy

Hey, this is fun.

reflecting

I was out of town for a few days, a (too) brief family trip to Oregon. Not too restful: we had a Coast Guard search and rescue operation for a possible missins surfer/swimmer on Saturday night (two Coast Guard Seahawks trolling along the coast from 9 til way late, then again from 5 until 7). It may have been a false alarm, but who can take that chance? (It was a false alarm, as it turns out.)

Then on to Portland to explore the Rose City, only to find the hotel we booked was under some renovation (the pool was closed, disappointing the younger set). And it was just noisy: late night/early morning dumpster collection, the aforementioned pool work (they are putting in a new one which entails demolishing the old: nothing that requires they start before 7 AM, of course. The hotel is a business travelers hotel, rather than a family place, so the usual clientele would never notice. )

Anyway, being away from all thing technical or interweb-by for a few days has given me some time to think about what I am trying to do with this weblog.

I think I’ve griped enough about the current political situation: there are more insightful minds than mine who are all over that mess. Historically, I have found that technical/HOWTO stuff generates the most traffic, for lack of a better feedback mechanism. (So a quick guide to how to migrate from MovableType to WordPress might appear soon, as if we need more information about that).

And as someone said somewhere, you write to learn what you believe, and I think that part of this has been rewarding. If I’ve done nothing else but that, I’m OK with it.

So posting may be less frequent than it has been as I refocus my attention.

new books

My first trip to Powell’s City of Books. I can see this becoming a *dangerous* habit.

The Spirit Level/Seamus Heaney

Sometimes a Great Notion/Ken Kesey

Electric Light/Seamus Heaney

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War 1890-1914

The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

And this doesn’t include any other book that other family members got nor a trip to Borders that we made . . . .

the Camera of the Long Now?

CNN.com – A dream of a 1,000-year camera – Jun 29, 2004:

The proposal: Position cameras above all major American cities and shoot one frame — a 24th of a second of film — each day at noon. The frames would be strung together gradually to create a continuous chronicle of each city’s development.

“It’s the same idea of all time-lapse photography, but over an outrageous amount of time,” Raimi told The Associated Press in an interview to promote “Spider-Man 2.” “So you could watch the city of Los Angeles rise, and maybe an earthquake might come in 300 years or a tidal wave.”

Echoes of the Clock of the Long Now project.

big-time choice of words

Cheney Dismisses Critic With Obscenity (washingtonpost.com):

There is no rule against obscene language by a vice president on the Senate floor. The senators were present for a group picture and not in session, so Rule 19 of the Senate rules — which prohibits vulgar statements “unbecoming a senator” — does not apply, according to a Senate official. Even if the Senate were in session, the vice president, though constitutionally the president of the Senate, is an executive branch official and therefore free to use whatever language he likes.

No one denies the VP the freedom of his rich vocabulary but there’s a time and place for everything and what might be permissible in a barnyard might not be so on the Senate floor.

But doesn’t this just dovetail nicely with excellent judgment we’ve seen so far?

a big win for WordPress

Ever find yourself stumbling over old posts and thinking to yourself, “that looks like a dog’s breakfast” but not having any easy way to fix it? If you have ever tried to edit content more than a couple of hundred posts back in MovableType, you know what I mean. something like ecto would be great but I’m not sure you want to load 2000 entries into it.

But if you use WordPress, every post has a little “edit this” link. So you can just fix it right then while it’s on your mind.

I’m liking that a lot: there’s a lot of crummy looking stuff from the early days of this little experiment and I’m happy to clean it up as I find it.