Archive for April, 2008

Blogger to Wordpress; first thoughts

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

And thus I emerge, blinking, on the other side, having seen things I wish to never see again. Debates on the security risks of chmod 777. Regular expressions. 301 redirects and other such server-side horrors. In all, a testing transition, but one that must surely extend geek cred for another twelve months.

Of course, right now I’m lumbered with a design I don’t like, unsolved 404s on archives and longer-titled posts, and probably a decreased PageRank. Despite all this, I feel good about having made the switch. We all know that Blogger isn’t regarded as a suitable tool for professionals, and frankly I only stuck with it as a result of seven years of inertia. Luckily, Wordpress has already elicited a ‘wow’ or two from me (the Import feature was a thing of beauty) and I’m really excited to see what it can do. Early next week I’ll fix the last of the redirects and get knee-deep in CSS…

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"Scheduled maintenance"

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

Making a few changes here (notably, making the long overdue move to Wordpress). In an Agile* fashion I’m just going to put it live then fix things as I go.

So, for the next few days, you may find a few 404s or empty pages – these will be fixed once I’ve hacked around with my .htaccess. After that, there should be some substantial template improvements as I gently massage the default theme into something I actually like. Bear with me, and I hope you enjoy the changes.

*A convenient euphemism for ‘lazy’, in this instance.

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Learning to cook

Monday, April 21st, 2008

As with most people, when I get busy, blogging suffers. Instead, I’m unwinding by learning to cook. It’s been a long journey, levelling up on the slopes of Mt. Noob and now reaching the stages where I’m at least mildly competent.

Lessons learnt thus far: the sheer ubiquity of onions and garlic. What happens if you don’t watch your fingers when chopping said onions. The numerous types of vinegar (white wine, balsamic, malt, cider – I don’t even like vinegar). Why people spend £100 on a knife. The delights of thyme, parsley, cumin, turmeric, garam masala, bay leaves, parsley, oregano, rosemary, and many others. How to buy meat that isn’t pre-packed. How bloody expensive prawns, grapes, saffron and vanilla are.

As well as, obviously, the eating, I think I’m drawn to the alchemy of cooking. Getting the raw materials and following a recipe, however mechanically (I’m certainly not at the stage to remember them, let alone improve upon them) is a quite fascinating thing – seeing a concoction of unrelated, immiscible fluids emerge two hours later as a rather delicious casserole is remarkable.

My other surprise was just how much planning it takes. Getting all the right ingredients at the right time, particularly the perishable ones, takes dedication and an anticipation of where food will fit in with your week’s routine. It requires an application of Just-In-Time inventory that would rival a small factory. But yet, somehow, this hassle makes the whole process more rewarding.

What this all comes down to, of course, is an admission that I’m pushing 30. Now that’s out of the way, does anyone have any recipes to share?

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The FA Cup

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

Sunday’s FA Cup semi being Cardiff’s biggest game for 81 years, it’s also the biggest game I’ll have been to – and it’s dominating my thoughts right now, even though there are a dozen strange and wonderful things going on around me. It’ll also give me a chance to exercise my architectural fetishism re: stadiums (no, not stadia). Much as I love the Millennium, the cachet of Wembley is hard to resist.

You know, I find myself having more of a sentimental admiration for sportsmen and women as I get older. The dedication of one’s life to a single moment: very noble. I’m not sure I could say the Cardiff City players quite fall into this bracket yet, but two more victories and I just might change my mind…

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