Month: August 2004

Categories
Weblogging

MT and WP Tutorials

My thanks to the two people who have volunteered their sites for conversion from MT to WP 1.3: Steve from Rodent Regatta and Loren from In a Dark Time. I’d hoped for two more, but we’ll go with these fine gentlemen. As soon as WP 1.3 releases and I have a chance to upgrad my sites and make sure all is well, I’ll tackle their moves.

I’ve also had a couple of Movable Type 3.1 folks who have volunteered installations and space, but right now this beta is all hush-hush so I’ll give them credit later.

I’ve been asked why I’ve dropped the port-a-blogging business. Part of the reason is that I’ve postponed buying my camera because of changing financial circumstances. I had planned on putting book money into the fund, but the book didn’t materialize. The money that has been donated (for which I am grateful) will go to film and development; with my Nikon 995, this will do.

However, the main reason for shutting down the weblogging porting biz is that my charging any kind of fee-based service is just not a workable proposition with WordPress. It’s not that the community surrounding WordPress is inimical to someone charging for services associated with WordPress development; it’s that if the service isn’t offered for no charge when you start, it most likely will be within a week or so after starting.

Additionally, people are now getting paid to work in the Movable Type environment, where before they did it for thanks and tips and I sometimes wonder if that hasn’t changed the perception of expectations between ‘weblog developer’ and ‘weblog community’. Movable Type has moved into the arena of the fiercely paid, with an associated expectation of service on demand; while leaving other tools such as WordPress to be obsessively free, but still competing in the same marketplace.

It’s hard to find the words to say without sounding petty, but I’ll give it a shot: I love to tinker with tech and to write, and I enjoy helping others, and don’t mind that I don’t get paid; but I don’t want to feel obligated to do things this way.

I can’t beat the cost of doing things for free, and I don’t want to volunteer to help all people with all things related to WordPress. Nor do I want to become One with the Force, as it were, in order to get legions of adoring fans. I’ve been working with tech close to 25 years now; I stopped having love affairs with my tools back when when I thought Java was hot, only to find out it was just another pretty langauge now fat and bloated by eating too many constructs.

Instead, I’ll convert this small select group of folk, and write tutorials that might help others do the job themselves. Then that will be it for my development and writing online about weblogging tools. Somehow, somewhere along the way, it stopped being fun.

I’ll still write on technology–gentle PHP and might MySQL, Internet ins and out and gotchas, and twisty techs like RDF, with other bits of this and that thrown in; but only as the interest moves me, and that way we’ll all have fun.

Categories
Burningbird

Complementary or clashing

Yesterday I took several photos during an afternoon’s hot, humid shooting at the Botanical Gardens. The dragonflies were thick as ticks, and by the time I was done, my face was red, my shirt soaking wet.

When I uploaded the photos, into a post called Shape and Color, I tested the page in Preview using Fire & Ice stylesheet. The photos looked awful with the coloring and the photos on the side. I tried them with Route 66, and Burningbird of Happiness, but none of the stylesheets looked good. Even Random Shot, though relatively neutral in coloring, was too ‘busy’, with the photos on the side and in the post.

When I tried Lemon Shake-Ups, ahhh! Quick, close it! My eyes are bleeding!

None of my stylesheets is really set up for photos, especially when my photos can range from pink pastel to vivid orange and lime green. In addition, photos in the posts wreck havoc with that micreant browser, Internet Explorer.

I had planned on creating the Tin Foil Project for photo projects, and as my test weblog for upgrading from WordPress 1.2 to 1.3. However, in order to display some of the later summer floral shoots, I’ve decided to move up the time line. Check out the site.

I experimented with colors for the background, including the traditional black, white, and gray used for many photo albums. However, I felt that the black washed out the colors, and white was too bright–both created too much contrast at times. I also thought the grays reduced the brightness of the colors, or at least this is what I perceived from my inexpert viewpoint.

(ed. Or maybe what it all reduces to, is I wanted to try something new.)

I then remembered something my a karate teacher I had years ago in Arizona told me. He was a master carpenter, actually getting a MFA based on his furniture making. His thesis work was this incredible cabinet created for his dojo that featured inlay woods and hand smithed silver work – an amazing piece of craftsmanship.

Anyway, I noticed that one of the pieces he made for his home had a painted background behind the shelves rather than being finished wood. It was a pale gray/green color, relatively neutral in tone. I asked him about this at the time and he said that many cabinet makers will use a green backdrop because it complements most colors, without dimming them, contrasting too heavily, or causing the colors to seem to shift.

Considering that nature herself uses green as a backdrop for many of her brighter works, what he said made a lot of sense. So I spent today experimenting around with green colors, until reached what you see. Hopefully the photos are enhanced by the color, and the background images, which are transparent black & white merged into backgrounds the same color as the web page.

One issue I’m still dealing with is a slight margin of color around the images creating a faint line in the page. However, I think I can manage to eliminate it with PhotoShop.

The only time I’ll use photos at Burningbird, now, will be smaller ones complementary to a story. Any writing featuring larger numbers of photos, or photo posts only will be posted at Tin Foil. This means much of my photographical and sensory work will shift to that weblog.

(Eventually I’ll have functions that will list recent writing across all the weblogs (Practical RDF, Tin Foil Project, and Burningbird) ; comments, too, if I can manage it.)

If you have a moment, let me know what you think.

Categories
Plants

Roses, too

For those worried whether I am given completely over to technology and politics (you mean, there’s something else?), I am on a real kick this week to do floral photography. And butterflies, as the fall Monarch migration is about to start. And hot air balloons, as the festival is coming up in a few weeks.

Color. I want color. I think that’s why I switched my default stylesheet to Lemon Shake-Ups. As my roommate said when I showed it to him, “It’s certainly yellow, isn’t it?”

Color. I am desperate for color.

My need for color is inspired, in part, by my plans to start a balcony garden next year. I plan on growing vegetables and flowers, though I have to be careful of my use of space (making sure to leave room for the air conditioning unit and my roommate to lay out in the sun and develop skin cancer) but there should be enough room for me to grow cherry tomatoes, green beans, carrots, and mixed greens. Perhaps some herbs.

(The leafy greens are as much for my cat as they are for us.)

There will be some small room for flowers. In particular, I want to put in one antique rose. I didn’t think an antique rose would work in a balcony garden, but found out they can do nicely–depending on the plant. Lucikly we have several hours of sunshine a day, which gives us options.

Container gardening has become quite popular now. It’s a great way of having gardens in limited spaces, as well as controlling bugs and other pests (think rabbits). It doesn’t have to be that much work, not with the self-watering containers. And many plants have been especially bred for container gardens; I’ve even heard of a form of corn that can be grown on a balcony–but that would mean my roommate would have to sun standing up.

There is nothing better than carrots or cherry tomatoes fresh from the garden.

Categories
Political

But you’re a hater, too

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Last of the posts related to Malkin, I promise, but I did want to address one more comment from the “In Defense of Malkin” post. And then I’ll bid this particular topic of discussion good-bye. (I have a bet with someone that Malkin will be in the Technorati Top 20 by the time the election occurs–helped more by those who disagree with her, than those who agree–and wouldn’t want him to think I’m loading the boards.)

Jeneane left the following comment:

I think, quite frankly, she is a perfect example of not being able to take what she dishes out.

She writes – “What I take away from all this is that the Democrat Party waterboys in the media are in full desperation mode.”

What I take away from it is that the Republican Party sorority girls are in the “oops–I got caught chewing gum and twirling my hair” mode.

What continues to blow my mind is HOW any individual of any ethnicity other than REALLY WHITE can support the current administration, which has such a vehmently fundamental misunderstanding of the Bible that they really, honestly don’t believe some of us belong here.

How you can be anything other than REALLY WHITE FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN and still support Bush–I don’t understand. How do you parse Ashcroft, Rummy, Cheney, and George with who you are? I’m interested in hearing how.

Michelle Malkin isn’t white (her parents are immigrants from the Philippines), and is a vehement supporter of George Bush. Jeneane doesn’t understand this, or how anyone who isn’t white or fundamentalist Christian could vote for Bush. (Malkin is a religious conservative.)

I expect there to be any number of non-white, non-Christian supporters of Bush, for whatever reason. In nine weeks, I believe we’ll have one of the closest Presidential races we’ve had in history. Which means that unless we want to accuse half the country of being evil, stupid, or morally bankrupt, we’ll just have to assume that those who choose not to vote ‘our way’, whatever ‘our way’ is, will have good reasons for their vote.

My father is a Republican. He’ll be voting for George Bush. Though he is white, he’s not a fundamentalist Christian. He’s not evil, either, but he’ll still vote for Bush.

My mother is also a Republican, but this year I helped convince her to vote for John Kerry. Go me. Now, to Republicans, they shouldn’t assume that because my mother is voting for Kerry that she’s evil.

Now, me? I am evil. Bwahahahahaha!

Sorry. This isn’t to belittle Jeneane’s question because her comment is critical to our discussions now. I hope those who are not Christian and/or white and who are voting for Bush, in fact all people voting for Bush, will take a moment and respond–thoughtfully– to Jeneane in the comments or their own weblogs. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind hearing from folks why they’re voting for Bush myself. Those voting for Kerry are invited to do the same.

Among all the screamers on both sides of this fence, the intolerant and the angry and the unforgiving and those filled with absolute surety of rightness, there must be reasonable people who understand that those who choose differently are not evil or stupid. If not, I worry about what will happen in nine weeks when almost 50% of the country is disappointed when their man is not picked. We can’t continue to maintain this level of animosity.

The world will be watching this election, and many will be reading what we say. Those outside our borders should also be able to read why we’re making the decisions we are in nine weeks – but without the accompaniment of invective, and accusations of ‘traitor’ and ‘hater’.

In another comment about Malkin, I read, …Malkin is a hater. No different than any KKKer–that’s truly what makes her most unattractive.

So spoke someone who would be shocked if you quietly said to him, “But you’re a hater, too.”

Categories
Technology Weblogging

MT and WP: There and back again

Both Movable Type and WordPress should be having new releases in the upcoming weeks. Movable Type is scheduled to release August 31 (I can’t find this in writing–can someone point this out?); No announced date for WP 1.3, but forum talk has it that the current nightly builds are getting progressively stable.

With both releases, there is bound to be a movement between these two products. I imagine since MT has a larger installed base, there will be more movement from MT to WordPress. However,announcements about stronger comment spam prevention and dynamic PHP pages in MT 3.1 could be luring some old MT users back to MT from WordPress.

Currently I’m working on a WP to MT export script that will export WordPress entries into Movable Type format for import into MT. WP supports an RSS/Atom export, but that won’t work with MT 3.1 (or will it?) Before I can release it, though, I need to test it with MT 3.1. If anyone has a working beta of this product, and wouldn’t mind letting me create a weblog for testing, I’d be appreciative.

When 3.1 releases, I’ll port one of my WordPress weblogs to MT 3.1 and then write up the process as a tutorial here in Burningbird. I’ll cover how to export the data, import it into MT, and how to move the weblog’s distinctive look by converting between tool template elements. This will include merging stylesheets; taking WordPress’ single template and porting it into MT’s multi-template environment; how the commenting structure differs; and covering differences between the tools for functions to list categories, recent comments, and so on.

To do this, I again need access to a working version of 3.1 and someone willing to let me create a weblog in their environment, for demonstration purposes (we can get rid of it when I’m done with writeup, and taking screenshots.) I could download 3.1 myself, but I don’t have – and won’t have– a TypeKey.

When 1.3 releases, my hope is to port 2-4 current Movable Type weblogs into WordPress 1.3, writing up the process just as with the WP to MT 3.1 port: how to move the distinctive look, covering functional differences, what functions to use for sidebar information, and so on. By covering multiple weblogs, I should hit most of the major challenges people would face. I’ll also add any of my customizations that the individual want, such as per-comment moderation or fullpage preview, comment editing, and so on.

(I’ll first be upgrading Burningbird from 1.2 to 1.3, which means upgrading my modifications and plugins. When finished, I’ll do another code documentation generation and post links.)

For this, I need volunteers from among Movable Type users who are interested either in moving to WordPress completely, or seeing what their weblog will look like in WordPress. They’ll need to have both the space and extra MySQL database for me to create the new WP weblog, and to provide me access to their system. They’re welcome to follow along with the effort, but they can’t hover. Hovering people make me twitchy.

Finally, I need non-techs to read the tutorials as I write them and let me know when the writing leaves them lost, or my instructions aren’t clear. I know that techs will let me know when I’ve done something wrong, technically.

Hopefully, when I’m done, people–whether technical or not–can use these tutorials to move from WordPress to Movable Type, and from Movable Type to WordPress–not just moving the data, but all covering all aspects of the move, including look and feel. This will be the last time I cover moving between tools, and I won’t be following Movable Type after 3.1.

Disclosure: I don’t work for Six Apart, I’m not part of the WordPress team, and have closed my ‘port-a-bloggy’ business. I won’t be getting either a Six Apart t-shirt, or a WordPress thong (I have been offered a JournURL t-shirt). I am not writing this up for a major publication. No one will be sending me flowers or chocolates, and telling me they love me for this. I may or may not get extra links for this for a time, but it won’t make an overall difference in my popularity. I would need to talk about sex, become a man or Dooce, or switch to being a warblogger to do this.

All of which means that I’m not financially or emotionally dependent on either product, which one you use, or whether you move or not.

I am doing this because it should be fun, and probably more helpful than talking about politics (though I will continue talking about politics, sex discrimination, hikes, photography, and whatever else it is I talk about here). Also because my version of ‘open source’ support is to use and/or tweak software and then write about it so others can do the same. I also believe people should be able to move freely between tools, even if they aren’t technically inclined.

(My final reason is that if people continue to have problems with comment spam in MT 3.1 I don’t want to hear them bitching about it!)

(Just joking on that latter.)

(Sorta.)