I had some work calls to make during my lunch hour, so I decided to catch up on Facebook while I was making small-talk. Despite current bullshit studies by managers with too much time on their hands who say multitasking is counterproductive, I can't fathom wasting my time by not doing multiple things at once.
And so there I was discussing ink limits for printing on plasticized board... when I lose my ability to speak. I somehow manage to end the call as my heart starts crushing my chest.
Long-time blogging friend, Tracy Lynn "Kap" Kaply, is gone.
It's impossible to reduce Kaply down to words. She was hysterically funny, yes. She was exceedingly kind, sure. She was delightfully raunchy, indeed. She was keenly observant, absolutely. She was craftily opinionated, no doubt. But to keep piling adjectives on her seems somehow a disservice when no amount of words will ever paint the whole picture of who she was. You had to know her to love her and, even though I didn't know her exceedingly well, I came to love her just the same. Your life was far more entertaining with Kaply in it than out of it, and I just don't know what higher praise I can offer than that...
You will note that she is wearing one of my "Try Evil" T-shirts. When looking for photos of her, it was almost impossible to find a recent image where she wasn't wearing one. She'd wear them until they were falling apart, then ask me to send her another one. And I always did. She told me that the T-shirt said everything about her that she wanted people passing her on the street to know. Adjective-free, of course.
I think the first time I met Kaply in person was back in 2007 at the first Daveattle blogger meet, but we had known each other online for years before that...
I'm pretty sure she introduced herself with "Yeah, I'm Kaply. Try not to fall down at my feet or anything embarrassing like that." Which is oddly typical of the Kap I would come to know.
It's more than a little sad to see that Kaply is the second person in this photo to leave us. Rick Leonard, another wonderful human being, passed on a while back.
People wonder why I act like a two-year-old most of the time. It's because growing up means your friends start to leave you.
And Kaply is somebody I just don't want to say goodbye to.
So I won't.
I'll just say that I will miss her.
Now if I could just figure out to do with all these fucking "Try Evil" T-shirts I had custom-printed in her size. It figures that Kap would go and die on me before she had worn them all. So typical. It's just like her to be sure that I had something hanging around to remember her by.
As if I could ever forget.
For better or worse, this blog is now running on WordPress.
Migrating was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. I was dreading converting all my templates because Movable Type has a far easier template language to work with. Much to my delight, it took me just under two hours. Much to my horror, the comments display looks like complete shit. And the comment form is wonky. I've spent around SIX HOURS trying to fix everything, but WordPress uses a stupid fucking HTML List Element to output comments, and all attempts to figure out how to style it have failed. I've read dozens of tutorials and read loads of documentation, but nothing works, and I have no idea why. So... something left to do, I guess.
Anyway... for anybody wanting to dump Movable Type and switch to WordPress, I have notes.
DATA
Movable Type's "Export" function has always been incomplete and terrible. They tried to fix this with a "Backup" function, but I was never able to get it to work. Ever. Part of the problem is that my hosting company, Media Temple, has a pathetically small time-out value for their Grid Hosting. If you have more than a couple hundred entries, this means Media Temple will never get to finish the job. So there goes my hopes of spending $49 at TP2WP.com for a quick and dirty conversion of my entries and comments to WordPress. Fortunately, Mihai at Pro-IT-Service has near-miraculous knowledge of all things Movable Type, and I was able to hire him to do the job for me for a reasonable fee (considering I have over 4,000 entries and nearly 52,000 comments!). He did a flawless job. Permalinks were preserved. Extended entries were merged to WP format. Categories were not only preserved, but he provided an .htaccess file update so that referrers to my categories would be redirected to a WordPress-friendly URL. Just like his previous work for me, Mihai totally delivered, and I couldn't be happier.
MIGRATION
My hosting company allows me to host multiple domains on my account. All I have to do is create a folder in my "domains" directory, point my NameServers to their servers, and I'm done. This made it dead-simple to install WordPress in an unused domain, then just rename its folder to "blogography.com" after Mihai migrated my data. All I had to do then was let WordPress know that its domain had changed and I was done. For some reason I thought it would be a lot more difficult.
STATIC
One of the things that I really, really liked about Movable Type was the option to go with statically-generated honest-to-goodness html files. You can do this with WordPress by using a clever plugin, but that adds a lot of overhead when you're working on converting your templates and are making lots of changes. For now, I plan on leaving things dynamic. But the security of having static html files that will still work even if your database craps out is something I'm too paranoid to resist for long. Even so, I am using the W3 Total Cache plugin so WordPress serves up pages more efficiently in the meanwhile.
SECURITY
Something you're forced to learn when switching from Movable Type to WordPress is that securing your site is a big deal. I learned this the hard way when I converted DaveCafe as a WordPress blog... and got hacked in four days. Yes, four days. I installed a bunch of security plugins to help clean up all the malicious code and my database, but was hacked again the following month. Eventually I just locked down WordPress completely by editing my .htaccess file so the back-end is completely inaccessible. Which means in order to work on DaveCafe, I first have to edit my .htaccess file. Then edit it back. Every time. It's a pain, but I only update the site a few times a year, so I can live with it. Obviously, this is not an option for a blog I'm updating every day. Enter the Better WP Security plugin. It seems comprehensive, so I'm hopeful. Then again, I've only been running for one day...
BACKUP
Back when I first began with my web hosting company, Media Temple, they had a backup tool included. But then they switched to their "Grid" service and backup was dropped. I never understood why. This is a BASIC FUCKING FUNCTION that even the cheapest hosting companies offer. Years later Media Temple managed to finally get around to it, but you have to pay for their premium "CloudTech" service to get it. At least you did. I have no idea what the situation is now. In any event, I'm done with dealing with this crap, so I'm using the WordPress Backup to Dropbox plugin to keep my data safe.
COMMENT SPAM
I frickin hate... HATE... CAPTCHAs. Every time I go to comment on a blog and I see I have to interpret some crazy-ass bullshit in order to post, I think twice about whether I want to put in the effort. To avoid this on my Movable Type blog, I used some javascript code called Obfuscator that passed code from the comment form to prove the comment was manually generated instead of a spambot. I haven't yet figured out how to use it with WordPress, so I'm relying on the included "Akismet" plugin to catch spam for me until I do. So far, so good. Akismet has blocked 32 pieces of comment spam in 6 hours. If this keeps up, I won't worry about figuring out Obfuscator after all.
SUPPORT
Going from a fringe product like Movable Type that few personal bloggers are using anymore... to a 10-ton gorilla like WordPress that everybody is using... well, it's quite an adjustment to make. I'm simply not used to having such a huge community available with instant answers to even my most bizarre problems. But the best part of WordPress is ACTUALLY DOCUMENTATION! Movable Type always had shit for documentation, and it's wonderful to not have to worry about putting up with outdated, shitty docs any more.
DEVELOPMENT
Another reason I'm ecstatic to finally be rid of Movable Type? WordPress has an active development community. Plugins are plentiful and current. You can extend functionality in just about every conceivable way. Finding new themes for you site design is easy... whether you want something free... or to pay for something more. And the apps! WordPress is well-supported because so many people are using it. My third-party blogging software, MarsEdit, barely supports Movable Type. Subcategories never worked right. A lot of features weren't supported. But with WordPress? An entirely different story. Everything works flawlessly. I can use categories again!
PAGES
WordPress has an irritating schema that omits the ".html" extension on Pages. I have no idea why since they have no problems appending it to Posts, but there it is. It isn't too big of a problem... slapping some 301 redirects in my .htaccess file fixed the problem nicely. Which is a good thing, since Google's Custom Search refuses to work without it.
TEMPLATES
And now we've come full-circle to WordPress template-building. As I said, Movable Type has the upper hand here in a big way because they use simple tags. WordPress uses PHP code snippets. Which makes getting anything out of WordPress a bit more difficult (and, in the case of formatting comments, a hell of a lot more difficult). Still, once you get the hang of it, it's not too bad. Just not as easy as it could be.
LINKS
When you've been blogging for 11 years, you're bound to accumulate a few broken links. Thanks to a plugin called Broken Link Checker, I now know I have 1,214 of them. Most are from people who left comments linking to their blog... which no longer exists. Kind of sad to see so many sites having died. I remain amazed mine isn't one of them.
CONCLUSION
Ultimately, I'm happy with the move. If the plugins I'm using will keep spammers and hackers at bay, I'll be very happy. My only regret is that I didn't do this much sooner. If you have a solution for migrating your data from Movable Type to WordPress, this isn't a difficult decision to make. The resources, tools, and activity benefits are pretty much a no-brainer.
And now I should probably work on getting my Archives page running, my comments formatted, and my comment form working... but it's past midnight and I'm all WordPressed out for the night.
P.S. Originally, I had coded big purple X's before all my posts on the WordPress blog so I could easily tell which site I was working on. After a couple hours, I actually grew to like them there (especially when scrolling through a long list of posts) so I think I'll keep 'em!
In my earliest days of blogging (back before it was even called "blogging") there wasn't any software to help you out. My first blog, "DaveWorld," was entirely coded by hand. Any time I wanted to add something, I'd have to manually edit the HTML code. This was a cumbersome process that was way too much work, so the blog died a slow death and was eventually deleted. My second effort, "DaveBlog," was created on the Blogger platform. This made things easier... but writing was still a chore. And customizing the look of your blog in any meaningful way was nigh impossible.
Then the husband and wife team of Ben & Mena Trott came up with Movable Type and everything changed.
With Movable Type, all the technical crap required to run a blog vanished. Third-party blogging tools like "Kung-Log" made writing a breeze. And since everything ran on templates using a dead-simple coding language, customizing your blog was a piece of cake.
Blogography was born, and I have Movable Type to thank for it.
Eventually Movable Type was sold. An Open Source version was released (and powers my blog to this day), but the focus of the platform was steered towards "professional" and "enterprise" environments, so development of the "free personal" version stagnated. An effort to create an independent version (called "Melody") died. Third-party support dried up.
Movable Type as a viable platform for small bloggers like was coming to an end.
And now the Open Source version is being suspended.
In order for me to keep using a supported version of Movable Type, I would have to purchase a 5-user "Pro" license for $600.
Well fuck that.
So now I am forced into something I should have done a long time ago... changing blogging platforms. I toyed with the idea of switching to Ghost, which looks to be coming along brilliantly, but my only real choice is the 10-ton gorilla of personal blogging: WordPress.
Which is not easy.
My webhosting company, Media Temple, doesn't allow software processes to last long enough to export all my data. So I have to hire a third-party to convert my entries and comments.
And, of course all my templates will have to be converted. The cost to hire somebody for the work is outrageous, so I'm having to do it myself. It's not rocket-science, but it's slow-going. Very slow-going. Everything I learned when building DaveCafe on WordPress has long-since been forgotten. And so I'm starting from scratch.
And so there goes my weekend. But the blog must go on.
Yay.
I have no opinion on ketchup brands. Heinz, Hunts, Del Monte... whatever.
I have a very serious opinion on things that matter. Like taco sauce (La Victoria), cola (Coke), toilet paper (Charmin), and handbags (Dooney & Bourke).
And while having opinions is all well and good, sharing opinions can sometimes get you into trouble. Well, not "trouble" per se... but opinions can certainly get you unwanted drama. Especially if you share those opinions with the entire world on the internet.
This morning I went to approve some comments on my blog. One of them gave me an error, so I clicked through to see what was wrong. My guess is that the comment was too long, as I was having to scroll through pages of it before I got to the end.
Apparently somebody took issue with my opinion that Lost was one of the shittiest television shows ever to air on television because, after a great start, the writers didn't know what they were doing or where the hell they were going with the story. The point of the comment, if I had to guess, is that I am "too stupid" to understand how great Lost is, so my "opinion is invalid."
And so I started dicing up the comment so I could get it to post it over several comments... all so I could type some snarky one-sentence response to their ten-page rant. But then I realized just how much I don't give a crap over this person's opinion of my opinion, and just deleted it. That'll teach you to call me stupid, you stupid-head!
Or probably not. Because internet, and all that.
Just five years ago, I would have not only figured out a way to post that comment, but would have written an equally-long point-by-point response justifying my opinion. I don't know what's changed in me since 2009, but I can't fathom doing that today. I just don't care enough to put in all that effort over a television show that ended ages ago.
Especially a show that ended so badly.
Oops. There I go again.
"Dave 2 will be the first to admit that his blog is mostly crap. But there's some interesting stuff in there if you're willing to dig through all that crap." — StuckyTruth
"Too much work." — Sam R.
If that doesn't sum up Blogography, I don't know what does.
Thanks for putting up with my crap, fearless reader!
For those who only read one of my posts each year... or anybody wanting a recap of the past year here at Blogography... this post is for you! As usual, I've jettisoned loads of the usual junk so this entry is "mostly crap" instead of the "total crap" they usually are.
It wasn't the greatest year for me, but there were some definite highlights worth remembering. I'll probably stick mostly to those...
JANUARY
• Wrote a five-star review for one of the greatest books ever written...
• Made a case as to why Scotty (from Star Trek) is one of the baddest mutha-fuckers in the galaxy...
FEBRUARY
• Threw my tall hat into the ring in an effort to become the new Pope...
• My second tattoo! Had the first part of my forearm band inked...
• Partied like a rock star at Jester's birthday party.
• Had one of my photos appropriated by the disgusting homophobic bigots at the "National Organization for Marriage."
MARCH
• Wrote a rap about my bitter disappointment in receiving a Eggo waffle that was half missing.
• Finally found a broadway musical I didn't hate in The Book of Mormon...
• Took my first of two trips this year to one of my favorite cities on earth... New Orleans, Louisiana.
APRIL
• Celebrated the earliest years of my impeccable fashion sense...
• Flew to Salt Lake City to take in the latest brilliant tour by one of my favorite bands, OMD, with Marty of Banal Leakage fame.
• Flew to Los Angeles for a job and ended up getting to be Virtual Iron Man at Disneyland...
MAY
• Took a quick work trip to Washington, D.C. and ended up wandering around the city... and fighting Mr. Shiny over hummus.
• Flew to Pittsburgh to spend time with one of my most favorite people on earth...
JUNE
• Had a life-changing experience when Becky and I went to see Ke$ha LIVE in concert...
• Flew to Boston for one day to attend a party for a friend... and find a few surprises.
• CONGRATULATIONS BLACKHAWKS ON YOUR STANLEY CUP WIN!!
JULY
• Flew to Atlanta for some work... and say a farewell to Dante's Down the Hatch restaurant with my bloggity friends...
• Had a stop-over in DutchyLand for a trip to Maastricht and one of my most favorite foods on earth...
• Finally made it to the city of Helsinki for a quick vacation (and another Hard Rock Cafe visit)...
• Took a day-trip to the city of Tallinn in Estonia (and visited The Depeche Mode Bar at long last)...
AUGUST
• Flew to Las Vegas for my very first Elvis Wedding Experience...
• Back to San Francisco for Part Two of my forearm band ink...
• Found out that if the heterosexual thing doesn't pan out... apparently, I've got other options...
SEPTEMBER
• Off to Tampa to see my favorite band of all time, Depeche Mode, with a Certifiable Princess and her prince...
• Off to Philadelphia to see my second-favorite band of all time, The Pet Shop Boys, and hang out with some bloggity friends...
• Ran down some of my favorite recent video finds on the internet...
OCTOBER
• Took a vacation to Southeast Asia... starting in Saigon, where I became a millionaire (and got to check another Hard Rock Cafe off my list)...
• Flew north to Hội An to experience an all-new culinary adventure...
• Went on an amazing photographic adventure in the Vietnamese countryside...
• Explored the famous caves of the Marble Mountains...
• Flew to Hanoi, where I learned how to do tai-chi...
• Flew to Laos, for a bit of relaxation... and to see the beautiful sights...
• Finally had the opportunity to check Cambodia and Angkor Wat off my bucket list...
• At long last got to see P!nk live and in concert...
• Cry me a river, next-gen video game adopters. Wrote about videos games THEN vs. video games NOW...
• RED SOX WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!!!
NOVEMBER
• Money NOT well spent... my five most regretted purchases... EVER.
• Ranted against a massively flawed attempt at anti-GMO legislation.
• Disclosed Ten Things You Probably Don't Know About Me.
• As if flying wasn't bad enough... I'm completely against allowing mobile phones in-flight. The homicide rate on planes would suddenly be horrific...
DECEMBER
• Was devastated that Saltalamacchia left my beloved Boston Red Sox for Miami...
• Flew back to New Orleans, again, because I just can't help myself.
• RW and I closed out our third stellar year with our ninth issue of THRICE Fiction magazine!
And... that's a wrap for 2013!
Thanks to everybody for stopping by. I hope your 2014 is a very good year!
As somebody who travels quite a bit... and encourages others to travel too... I'm always happy to help out when people want tips or information on visiting the places I've been. Generally, this involves pointing them to an entry here on Blogography but, since this isn't a travel blog and I tend to write about places in broad strokes, I'm happy to pass along more details if I have them.
Usually, people who contact me are very nice and grateful for the information.
But not always.
Sometimes there are problems because people don't understand the kind of traveler I am. I try not to waste a lot of money on lodging and dining, so luxury travelers get upset when I liked a hotel or restaurant that wasn't up to their lofty standards. On the other hand, I am not a budget traveler either, so cost-conscious travelers get upset when I liked a hotel or restaurant that is more expensive than they wanted to pay. And the list goes on and on. I'm a vegetarian, so I've gotten complaints that the menu wasn't to their liking. I usually travel solo, so I've gotten complaints that a place wasn't romantic enough for couples. I don't give a crap about coffee, so I've even gotten complaints that a location I recommended didn't have a Starbucks. You name it, I've had people take my experiences and complain that I suck.
So even though I am just trying to be helpful by relating my experience based on my interests, there's always going to be those who get pissed-off because it didn't relate to their interests. And that's fine. It happens.
But today's comment just has me baffled.
Somebody visiting Helsinki read about my little day-trip adventure to Tallinn, Estonia and decided to do it as well.
Then proceeded to inform me that I made Tallinn "sound far more exciting than it actually is" and that "the weather is horrible and we froze to death the entire time since you said we wouldn't need a jacket."
=blink=
First of all, I just wrote about what I did and posted photos of what I saw. I did NOT say "my every waking moment in Tallinn was like having a continuous orgasm while free-falling out of a plane"... so I'm not quite getting how I made the place "sound far more exciting than it actually is." My total assessment of the city was this: "All in all, a great way to spend the day. If you're in Helsinki for a while, it's a day-trip worth doing." And I totally stand by that statement. Especially since I had just posted words and photos explaining why I thought it was worth doing. If you don't feel that what I posted is "exciting" enough for you, why in the hell did you go in the first place?
Second of all, I visited Estonia in JUNE. You visited in DECEMBER... that's like the difference between summer and winter. In fact, that's exactly the difference between summer and winter. As if that wasn't enough, I didn't recommend that people "not take a jacket." On the contrary, I specifically said "I sure wish I would have brought a jacket," because the weather ended up being much colder than forecast. IN JUNE!!!
YOU VISITED IN DECEMBER!!!
It's enough to make me want to write back and say "Look, at some point, you kind of have to start thinking for yourselves, people."
But, I try to be a nicer guy than that, and merely said "Sorry you didn't enjoy Tallinn as much as I did. Perhaps if the weather in winter was as nice as when I visited in summer you might have had a better time of it."
And yet... yeah... if you're reading this Person-Who-Thought-Tallinn-Was-Boring... at some point, you really do need to start thinking for yourself.
Oh well.
You can't please all of the people all of the time.
Or, more likely...
You can't please all of the people at all of the time now-a-days.
Suuuuuuuuck!
Sometime last night, my blog done broke.
It all started when I tried to change out the Google Map on my Travel Map Page. Google provides a link to custom maps you can build... and it totally worked for a while... but now it's just showing up as a blank space and I have no idea what's wrong. When I tried to change the template, Movable Type crapped out, and the entire back-end to Blogography became non-responsive...
UPDATE: This morning (Saturday) I started re-installing components one-by-one until everything magically started working again. The map is still blank, but at least I can post to my blog again.
I fully admit that I'm a total hoarder when it comes to my travel. I save pretty much everything... receipts... ticket stubs... boarding passes... maps... brochures... everything. My thinking has always been that saving all this crap would make it easier to reconstruct my travels so I can remember where I was and what I did while I was there.
Then Blogography came along and all my travels were suddenly being documented.
At least for the past ten years that I've been blogging.
Yet I've still be saving everything out of habit. The problem is that all this stuff has been taking up space and I'm running out of room. And so I've been going through all my boxes of travel crap and throwing out most of it. There's no need to keep a receipt so I can remember the name of that pizza restaurant I like in Cologne, Germany... I just have to Google my blog, and there it is. I don't have to save the ticket stub from the Pet Shop Boys' first concert in Seattle to remember when that was... I just have to Google my blog, and there it is. Having your travels indexed on the internet is just so handy.
But what about my travels before I started blogging? I can't Google a box of crap, so what to do?
One of the ideas I'm toying with is creating blog entries for my earlier travels, then back-dating them. I'm not sure how I feel about the idea though. Is it cheating to have a blog with entries that pre-date blogging? Do I really care? I suppose I could start a second blog for my early travels, but I can't help but think that having everything in one place would be a better way to go.
I just don't know. Guess I'll think about it for a while and see where I land.
All I do know is that I'd love to throw out all this crap I have piled up which covers my travels from 1983 to 2002.
Well, crap.
Forest fires are raging ten miles away so the air is choked with smoke. Which means I will be spending my days with stomach cramps and queasiness. I don't know why smoke affects me like that, but it does.
Every year.
Hmmm...
One of the curious side-effects of having a blog that spans a decade is being able to look back and see what you were up to ten years ago. In my case, life was all about my motorcycle. That's a story that doesn't end happily, but it was an interesting time in my life.
And a fun one.
Which is why I should probably make a point of revisiting my archives more often.
When I'm not having fun in the present, I can always re-live it in the past.
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