Recent Posts

Manchester City - Theatre of Comedy

• Pearce uses a cuddly horse
• Barton bares his mouth to Everton fans. A marriage made in heaven.

I have been pretty impressed with Dreamhost so far:

• Configured putty for SSH access.
• Installed Joomla (one-click)
• Upgraded to PHP5 (one-click)
• Installed MediaWiki (one-click)
• Installed Gregarius (all by myself)

The only minor issues I have encountered is that I can't disable telnet (insecure) and my analog stats didn't get refreshed today.

Dreamhost have a blog, a Wiki, support forums and any idiotic questions (after ignoring all of those) have all been answered promptly and courteously.

Well, you could at least sign the petition if you feel that strongly

I had a blind date this morning at 06.55. An early start admittedly but this lady would surely be worth it. The lady's name was Iris. I was supposed to meet her in Terminal 1 at London Heathrow.

Iris was flying in from Russia after a short courtship (19 hours) on the Internet. I even had an letter (IM) from Iris. Iris said she'd be waiting on the right before you reach the shops (which was worrying enough in itself).

So I slept downstairs on the sofa, snatched some sleep and I booked the taxi 30 minutes earlier than normal.

But, of course, Iris was nowhere to be seen. Stood up once again. Why. oh why, didn't Iris show up ? What's wrong with me ? Will I ever find true love ? I am disconsolate. I am a broken man.

Turns out that Iris only wants to date high flying, big earning, international travellers with BA Silver (or above) and isn't interested in peasants in flying to Newcastle. Even if they are staying in the Malmaison.

I recently read some homework (Religious Education) about the life and times of Jesus Christ that included the following gems:

• Jesus came to earth through the Virgin Mary
• There was another incident where Jesus was crucified

The WordPress rich text editor is pretty good but has an odd bug which is a little irritating. It keeps confusing paragraph end with line break

I tried Writely which worked but has no support for adding categories, omits the title and uses an obscure post slug so now I am trying Performancing for Firefox which has none of these limitations and works fine.

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. That's 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.