Posts

a very British death

An inquest has reached an open verdict on the death of a judge, six years ago.

This story caught the media interest in the UK because

1. The victim was a judge hence plenty of scope for pictures of him wearing his robes and his silly wig.
2. The victim was having an affair with a glamorous mistress.
3. The storyline was identical to an episode of ‘Midsomer Murders’ aired in March 2003.
4. The wife was arrested but later released without charge.
5. The mistress was also under suspicion for blackmail.

However, what I found interesting (it’s not really appropriate to say hilarious) about this case was the sequence of events after the judge told his wife of the affair and the fact he wanted a divorce. After dropping this bombshell to his wife of 34 years, he then went upstairs to, wait for it, change into his gardening clothes and prepared to mow the lawn.

how to migrate a WordPress blog to Django

There is currently no utility to migrate existing blog content to django.

However, conversion of an existing WordPress blog is pretty straightforward.

Firstly, simply export the following tables from the WordPress database using phpMyAdmin

• wp_posts
• wp_comments
• wp_terms
• wp_term_taxonomy
• wp_term_relationships

Import the tables into the django database.

Then run the following SQL statements which migrate posts, comments and categories and assume a WordPress 2.3 schema and a blank django blog. If you have already created content in django, minor changes will be needed. My WordPress blog only uses categories which simply get converted to django tags.

Arsenal v Sunderland

I was lucky enough to accompany Norman Junior to the Emirates Stadium yesterday to see Arsenal thrash Sunderland 3-2. An ex-colleague has two season tickets (Section C, Row 4) and kindly offered them to me.

Although Arsenal aren’t my team, it was still great to go and see a match as opposed to my usual viewpoint perched on my barstool.

The Emirates Stadium is really impressive. The view for all spectators is superb, there is plenty of legroom and the seats are actually padded.

review of 'Control'

I went to see ‘Control’ last night which is a film directed by Anton Corbijn about the life of Ian Curtis, lead singer with Joy Division.

The film is based on the book ‘Touching From A Distance’ by Curtis’ wife, Debbie and is as much about the disintegration of Curtis’ marriage when he embarks on an affair with a music journalist, Annik Honore, as the story of Joy Division.

The film was brilliant and, in particular, Sam Riley’s performance as Ian Curtis was exceptional. The visual likeness was uncanny, the butterfly dancing, the eyes, the clothes, even the way he clutches the microphone. Everything about Riley’s performance was perfect.

charitable works

Many years ago, Norma and I bought my son a Formula 1 racing car. The car cost £230,000 and the wrapping paper cost £47.50. It was really difficult to conceal the present prior to the big day and the mystery gift somewhat dwarfed the other presents around the Christmas tree.

No seriously, this particular Formula 1 racing car was actually a child’s bed. The racing car was fantastic, tastefully coloured in white and red with large black (wet weather) tyres and the headboard was the cockpit.

upside down season

I’m confused.

Arsenal are playing like Chelsea.

Manchester City are playing like Brazil.

Manchester United are playing like Manchester City.

Chelsea are playing like Northwich Victoria.

Tottenham are playing like Wigan Athletic

Derby are playing like Watford.

Chelsea players are haranguing match officials like Manchester United.

Emmanuel Adebayor is playing with the swagger and arrogance of Thierry Henry.

In fact, I am so confused I am taking a day trip (and prawn sandwiches) to the Emirates Stadium next Sunday to watch Arsenal versus Sunderland.

FAC51

Enjoyed this BBC4 program on the history of Factory with lots of interviews with Tony Wilson, Peter Saville, Vini Reilly, Shaun and Paul Ryder, Stephen Morris, Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner.

So many amusing anecdotes and quotes:

New Order insisted on playing live on TOTP and, unusually, ‘Blue Monday’ promptly fell down the charts thanks to their abysmal performance (Sumner’s appalling vocals).

Martin Hannett’s unconventional approach to production: ‘He used to piss the drummer off so he would hit the drums harder.’

last django in London

The problem with installing typo is that, during the research for hints and tips to get the software installed, configured and running on a shared server environment at Bluehost, you Google across like-minded obsessives individuals who have also successfully installed typo in 30 seconds flat.

These people are technical types who sneer at PHP and lie awake at night, worrying about Ruby’s scalability. These geeks tend to be obsessive characters who have now tired of typo and have subsequently migrated to a brand new exciting platform called django.

WordPress 2.3 and Typo

I have upgraded this blog to the recently released WordPress 2.3. However, I have deep rooted concerns that the new tagging functionality will simply overload my tiny brain.

The WordPress upgrade went smoothly enough although the editor now reports a missing table (wp_post2cat) which is slightly irritating.

Also, I sense increasing disquiet amongst some long standing, intelligent and loyal WordPress users so I took the precaution of installing YABP (Yet Another Blog Platform). Please put your hands together and welcome Typo (powered by a delightful lady called ‘Ruby on Rails’).

a rush of blood

I’m not normally a sucker for these free, pyramid style, link exchange schemes to drive more traffic to your blog but as simply everyone is not just talking about it but actually doing it, I thought I’d better add BlogRush to this blog.

Now, I must hurry into town and join the lengthy queues at Northern Rock to withdraw my 1 million pounds life savings. To be honest, I think this media fuelled panic is a little overblown and as I have a contrarian investing style, I have just purchased £5,000 worth of NRK shares at £3.10 waiting for the ‘dead cat bounce’.