Nothing to Declare

Never reconfigure your computer before Christmas, or you won’t post a blog until the third week in January. So goes the adage - and well, look, it’s true!

More to follow

Well I’ve just upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress. I won’t bore you (i.e. I can’t be bothered to list out) the entire blow by blow account but here’s the lessons learned:

- Check your ISP can support it - in particular MySQL 4.0 and above - there was a helpful message at the end of the installation process to this effect, at which point I found I didn’t have it. Which brings me to:
- Absolutely, definitely, completely do make sure you back things up first! Take an FTP dump of the Wordpress tree, plus a MySQL export, that should be enough. To be sure you can revert to the previous version…
- Possibly test the restore process before committing, I had the rather alarming message to the effect that MySQL could only re-import export files less than 2 Meg in size. Phew - mine was.
- When upgrading, follow the instructions how to copy the directory tree. Don’t do what I did and overwrite the wrong bits (refer back to “make sure you back things up” )

That’s probably it - apart from a few hiccups the whole process was remarkably smooth. I’d like to tip my hat to the folks at Easily who were both highly responsive in tech support (thanks Francois!) and who did the upgrade when they said they would.

There, you never know I might even start posting again!

P.S. Just noticed I’m getting an SQL error in my links listing - oh well, I’d better sort that as well.

As Christmas vanishes inexorably into the past, like the dot on the TV screen (get the allusion in quick, before flat screens make the dot a thing of the past as well), 2007 begins and it’s all change, change, change. I’m moving companies from one set of buddies to another, books are finished and I’m planning all kinds of exciting things for the year, we’ll see which ones come off! More soon… no, really!

I’ve done a clean install of Wordpress 2.0.5, and it looks like I have comments back. So, if you were one of the three people who tried to comment on a post in the past 6 months, you should be OK now (I know, I know, it helps to post). I won’t install anything clever unless I’m sure it doesn’t break anything. Honest.

I’ve been asked why comments aren’t working on this site, I’ve tried to fix things but the answer still eludes me. Something to do with .htaccess/xmlrpc/other php files and the fact the blog is in a “wordpress” subdirectory. Normal service will be resumed… but in the meantime, do please email me and I’ll post comments that way. Anything(at)joncollins.net should reach me.

Its time for my next step on the journey that we call blogging. I blog to experiment with the medium (I’ve never been into experimenting with the small and large), and I’m going to try out a couple of new things around the principle of themes.

The first is to de-theme this blog even further - it will be about everything and nothing, a stream of consciousness as pure as my impure consciousness can make it. If it comes across as a self-indulgent mess, so be it - there are things I can learn from that (and you don’t have to read it ).

The second is to extend my sensible blogging into more thematically coherent places. These are (or will be):

- Enterprise Information Technology - I’ve already started to blog (though I could do more) over at the Macehiter Ward-Dutton web site.

- Consumer Technology - plans are afoot - watch this space

- Music and media - plans are, well, planned!

Realistically, this is all an experiment - I have a number of theories that I’m testing out, notably comparing multi-user and single-user blogs, and curiosities around themes. There’s also a navel-gazing perspective around linking one’s blogging closer to one’s personality. In my case I’ve never been consistent about anything for long, and blogs are by their nature fixed points of reference, so I’m interested to see how that can work. Anyway, more news soon!

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Wordpress has moved from the version I’m on (1.something) to 2.something - it was 2.0 but there were so many bugs in the initial release that a new release was issued some days later. Eager to experience the benefits of the upgraded version and in the name of research and growing my understanding of what’s out there, I’m going to take the plunge over the next few weeks and upgrade. I expect one of several outcomes:

- it all goes horribly wrong, and I shall be left with a gaping hole where my Web site used to be
- it all happens as smoothly as manure sliding off a well-oiled shovel
- something in between

I will of course be backing everything up, but even that offers no guarantees in my experience. Oh well, all part of the fun.

As I was looking at the Wordpress site the other day, I noticed that Wordpress was now hosting accounts - for free I think. Strange - on the basis that I would have paid, I would have charged. There’s a business model (if anyone asks how to make money out of free online software, hosting has to be the first answer - but not if everyone gives it away). As a side note, its “powered by Automattic”, a spin-off company from Wordpress that claims on its front page, “Blogging is too hard.” Insightful… but anyway. There were a couple of Wordpress hosts at the time I set up this site, but I didn’t know either and doing it myself seemed to be the best option. Now I’m not so sure - after all if it’s good enough for Scoble its good enough for me (how much influence does this guy have?)

There’s still some things to do in blogging that currently pass me by - tagging for example, trackbacks and so on. I hope that Wordpress 2.something will offer a suitable base for my continued education. I also notice - this is as much a bookbark as anything - that Yahoo seems to rapidly be hoovering up some of the better blog-related companies, Flickr and the like, and has forged partnerships with both Wordpress and Moveable Type. To inner-circle bloggers this will be nothing new, but to mere initiates like me, its very interesting particulalry given that Google still hasn’t really got its own blogging act together.

In the meantime, anyone know of any better RSS readers than Pluck for IE (which seems to have wheedled its way back onto one of my machines) and Sage for Firefox? I’ve tried a few and they’re all either too primitive or too buggy for my liking.

A couple of people have tried to put comments on posts, for some reason they can’t at the moment, but I can’t see why. There is an upgrade to Wordpress, I shall be implementing this shortly.

Update: I believe I’ve resolved this now.

Flying to Vancouver. At least, that’s how it feels at the moment – a nine-hour flight gives the impression that a whole day is passing; as we near the end of the journey however, we change our watches and find the whole day is only just starting. It’s a sensory illusion – the day that is, not the flight – entirely constructed in the imagination, bounded by sleep.

In other words, before I waffle on too much, a long-haul flight offers a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the most banal. Day dreaming is positively encouraged, given that there’s nothing else to do (the three films have finished, the cards are filled, the email inbox is up to date etc). Soon, a slice of pizza will arrive and offer a way out of the doldrum, itself a little surreal given that it is only – now – 9 in the morning. Pizza for breakfast, whatever next.

So, it’s been a while since my last entry to this blog. Three months, if I’m not mistaken, and with good reason as all my spare writing energies were engaged in finishing the book. This is now done, and is (I understand) due out in a matter of a few weeks. I’m still in too deep, a bit like decorating a room I can still see every brush stroke. Already however, the details (and the painfully long hours) are starting to fade.

Which is good.

I’ve created a puzzle I’m calling Alphadoku - ambitiously, I’ve also registered the domain. I know this is based on the Sudoku principle, if anyone’s seen anything similar I’d appreciate knowing but I haven’t seen anything like it myself.

See here for more information.