Posts from September 2006

Choose domain name which is taken. Choose another domain name.

Sign-up with Dreamhost despite recent bad press. All the other hosting providers look similar and all have supporters and critics and, to be fair, Dreamhost were quickest (and most helpful) to reply to a simple technical enquiry.

Payment processing takes a long, long time which is a little disconcerting.

Install WordPress 2.0.4 using One-Click installation. Shortly receive email stating 'Blog creation failed. Please try again later' which is worrying.

Repeat installation of WordPress which is successful.

Export existing blog from WordPress.com into XML.

Import XML into a local installation of WordPress 2.1 alpha (includes all comments).

Import XML into new blog. Everything imported successfully apart from the comments.

Install TechSailor plugin. Delete some posts with comments and repeat complete import. Existing posts are skipped and import includes comments for some posts but not others.

Delete complete WordPress installation, recreate mySQL database and empty blog.

Install TechSailor again. Import XML which works fast and without error. All posts, all comments, all categories are present. In fact, everything is intact.

Change theme to the stunning Barthelme which was the main reason for all this effort.

Upgrade Barthelme to the latest version (1.2.2).

Notice that the 'About' page wasn't imported and recreate.

Change permalink format to include name/date as used on WordPress.com.

Install widget support and configure sidebar widgets.

Activate Akismet plug-in (needs WordPress API key).

Install Google Analytics tracking code.

Stake my claim on Technorati.

Respond to amusing comment accusing me of blatant plagiarism.

Delete WordPress blog. Suddenly realise I didn't put up a closing redirect entry. Oh well.

Put kettle on.

Someone ripped my blog off. And it looks better than mine. Thats it. Its over. Finished. Goodbye.

Apart from the vi shortcuts, I was slightly underwhelmed by Google Reader when it was released last year.

Imagine my surprise, when I just used Google Reader to quickly check that I had reinstated full text feeds for this blog. Unless I see it with my own eyes, I just don't believe it.

Google Reader launches with a modest splash screen with some exciting announcement (which I immediately skipped) and I was greeted by some unexpected and welcome changes to the interface.

All my feeds appear in a hierarchy grouped by 'label'. However, I must admit I am confused. They used to be 'labels'. Now it appears 'labels' are dead and my categories are 'folders' or 'tags' depending on the context.

Google has also added:

• Shared articles (but not grouped feeds)
• Reading feeds via bookmarks which is an interesting idea
• Integration with Google Homepage
• Quick subscribe
• Support for mobile phones (err, no thanks)

Even more strange is the fact I have happened upon something brand new all by myself.

Nothing on the blogs which I just scanned a minute ago. Nothing on Technorati. Nothing from Robert Scoble. Nothing on the RSS related blogs. No text message from the wife. Nothing on the Google blog. No IM from my son. Nothing on the Google Reader blog. Nothing on digg. Nothing on reddit. Nothing on del.ici.ous.

This is it. I am finally going be famous. My 15 minutes is here. I am going to be dugg and the WordPress servers will creak under the strain.

Apart from the fact it took me 7 minutes to compose these words, by which time this exciting Web 2.0 development will be yesterday's vinegar stained fish'n'chip paper.

There I was - teetering on the precipice of getting my own domain name, a hosted blog, Website, anonymous FTP server, message board, Wiki and countless other stuff I would never use.

A fully hosted solution (with unlimited bandwidth) on a Linux platform, the bleeding edge versions of mySQL, Apache, PHP and WordPress, a 'control panel', SSH and the prospect of sharing my wonderful set of feeds to my adoring public using Gregarius.

The domain I had set my heart on was 'www.mrbrightside.com'. When I went to buy it, I discovered to my disgust that someone (a female in Doncaster) currently had control of this domain.

I didn't even know idiots speculated on domain names so this was a terrible shock but this article was most useful. Then fate smiled upon me to overcome this minor setback.

When I consulted the 'whois' entry, I found that the domain had recently expired. On 16 September 2006 to be precise. How very exciting ! This surely means I am destined to succeed after all.

All I need to do now is to wait patiently until the domain is released back to the Interweb so I can register it. The only outstanding question is whether I sign up for 1, 2 or even 10 years.

I was excited. I was confident. I started to research various hosting providers in the US and the UK. People I trusted used DreamHost and were blissfully happy with the service.

I was poised with my credit card, polling the domain name every 30 seconds. I had to take compassionate leave from work citing 'illness of someone very close to me' in this dogged pursuit of 'mrbrightside.com'.

In my spare 29 seconds, I busied myself researching the themes, plugins and applications I would be using in this brave new world.

Then, suddenly the status of 'www.mrbrightside.com' changed to 'Locked'. Apparently this means that the owner has not responded to multiple emails, phone calls and final demands to renew his interest and the release of the domain name is now imminent.

Fantastic. Only Brandon Flowers can stop me now.

Then, as always, fate intervened again but this time she wasn't smiling.

The wizzened old hag from Doncaster returned from market in Malton and finally decided to renew the domain even though it cost her more money than if she had acted two days earlier. Maybe Yorkshire folk aren't so mean, after all.

Then the blogosphere erupted, moaning about the appalling level of service provided by Dreamhost - downtime, poor support, bad communication, slow connectivity, veiled threats, termination without due cause.

Phew. What a relief. That was a narrow escape. Fate was really saving me from a disaster.

So, on reflection, I decided to take the easy option - put my wallet away and do absolutely nothing.

When you turn to the light and start to fully embrace the River of News, the sickening realisation slowly dawns that you might actually have been mistaken and partial feeds may just have some redeeming features while full feeds are indeed the work of the devil.

Full feeds potentially interrupt the flow of the river. The title alone isn't enough to determine whether the article merits further consideration. Expanding the article should give you just enough to determine whether you want to read the full text.

This effect is spoiled by the lengthy verbosity of the full text feed for articles you are not interested in whatsoever.

The ideal compromise would be a 2 line precis of the article but Peter Scott is the only blogger in the universe who is thoughtful enough to do this.

BBC2 Friday night. A repeat but memorable for some great footage, interviews and these two quotes from Mark E. Smith

John Walters wrote me a letter and said, you know, 'you are the worst group I've ever seen in the [laughs] in the history of mankind' [laughs]. He was good like that, John Walters was. You ever meet him? No, he was f**king fantastic. He said, 'you were the worst, tuneless, rubbish I've ever heard', you know, 'even worse than Siouxsie and the Banshees'. This is what he wrote 'you're even worse than Siouxsie and the Banshees. I didn't believe it was possible.' You know what I mean? [laughs] He was a gem, what a gem. He said, 'please do a session' [laughs].

All the group stayed up to watch the Old Grey Whistle Test. Not that I would, personally but you couldn't see the group, that was the funniest bit. They stayed up to watch it with all their parents [cackles]. And all you could see was like Michael Clark baring his arse on the f**king screen, you know. F**king great. It was dead funny.

Google recently announced some enhancements to the Notebook and I must admit that, while the concept left me cold initially, I am now starting to make more use of this software.

While I use Blinklist for shared (more permanent) bookmarks, I tend to use Google Notebook for snippets, jottings, interesting links and, err, notes that I may need to access from both home and work (in fact potentially from any computer).

For example, yesterday I had a query about my online tax return and was forced to call the pension administrator followed by the Inland Revenue and jotted down answers to my questions.

Previously, I might have emailed myself the notes from work to home so I then could write a followup letter. This would mean the information was accessible from work (Sent) and home (Inbox) but having it available on a Google server is preferable and less typing.

I used to keep draft blog postings in WordPress but didn't like the drafts cluttering up the dashboard so now these random thoughts also get stored in Google Notebook.

Obviously, all of my notebooks are private but there is some interesting information out there lurking in shared notebooks that isn't accessible from conventional sources.

I have an increasing tendency to skim all my RSS feeds in Netvibes just to finish reading them as quickly as possible and not really reading (or enjoying) the content.

My therapist recommended some diversion therapy; install the Gregarius aggregator locally on my PC, import my OPML and experiment with Dave Winer's controversial ' River of News' concept.

Now my previous experiments with Joomla and subsequently WordPress and Drupal have been made incredibly easy by Wamp (a packaged distribution of mySQL, PHP and Apache).

And so it proved again. A mere 7 minutes to get Gregarius working. A further 29 minutes to fail to work out why Netvibes has chosen to resurrect and export some dear, dead departed feeds (with Japanese writing) from beyond the grave.

Gregarius has the conventional two pane (feed-article) view and you can quickly review all articles from all blogs in reverse date order. You can then choose to expand any articles of particular interest.

Of course, for the full cascading river effect, I had to collapse the feeds and remove all tags, folders and categories to simply let all feeds flow as one raging torrent. There are no Oracle blogs anymore. You are all fighting for a place on the raft.

The default Gregarius theme is a little monochrome for my liking or maybe that is the default 'Newspaper' view (black and white and read all over) but there are other themes available to liven up the RSS experience.

So now I am no longer skimming my 81 feeds but blissfully wallowing in this river of news.

All of this excitement is almost enough to encourage me to investigate pricing (again) for hosted PHP/mySQL providers so I can read the same feeds from multiple computers.

Richard Hammond, the 36 year old presenter of Top Gear and Brainiac, is critically ill in a Leeds neurosurgery unit with serious injuries after crashing at over 200 mph in a high-speed jet powered car, Vampire.

Let's hope he pulls through.

Rakesh Agrawal presents an interesting summary of a talk by Carl Sjogreen describing Googles approach to the software development process.

• Google Calendar was a relatively small project (3 engineers, 1 product manager).
• Google talk to real users ('Grandma in NYC') not techy geeks to find what users really want.
• Google 'eat their own dog food'. Lots of internal testing prior to public launch.
• Gap in the market. Lots of calendar products out there but none do what people want. Typical Google opportunity.
• Paper based calendars are the real competition.