Category Archives: Computers

Switch to WordPress

Never one to stick with the same software for too long, I’ve switched the blog from Textpattern to WordPress. WordPress has been creating a tremendous amount of buzz the past few days after the big MovableType 3.0 Licensing changes came out. Initially, I had looked into WordPress for my blog, but the software seemed to “rough around the edges.” Let me tell you that right now it’s the slickest thing I’ve used. The backend is quick and loaded with features. And stability isn’t much of an issue since version 1.2 came out yesterday.

WordPress also has a large developer base and is licensed under the GPL. Textpattern, on the other hand, is developed solely by one person (Dean Allen) and has a non-free license.

The switch over was relatively painless, I used the import script provided by the WordPress installation to move all my posts over. (I did heavily modify the script to maintain post id’s, categories, and links—If you are interested in my modifications, shoot me an email at froe0071@umn.edu).

The style sheet was graciously taken from the WordPress CSS Style Competition. It is entitled Buddha and was created by Hadley Wickham.

Look for new features soon, like Asides, Since Last Visit, Style Switcher, and Stats.

Update: The import-textpattern.php script that I used is now available. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but worked well enough for me. I had to turn magic quotes on for the script to work (set_magic_quotes_runtime(1); at the top of the file).

Tontie

I stumbled across Tontie a few weeks ago. Let me tell you it is one addictive flash game. The general premise is that you use the numberpad to in a “Whack-a-mole” fashion, however it rapidly gets much harder than that. I never got past level 8 or so, although Dave managed to get to Level 11 a couple of times.

ieCapture

Daniel Vine came up with a remote browser-testing service so that those of us without Windows PC’s can test to make sure our websites look ok.

I checked this webpage out and while it’s not necessarily the prettiest thing (I forgot how horrible font handling was in Internet Explorer), it at least works.

Update: I just found out that this is the same guy who made the ever-so-cool iCapture, a similar program that shows how webpages look under Mac browsers.