numbersix

So, brand new server, and finally brand new blog, but with existing entries! The previous platform was running on Linux with mySQL, new platform is FreeBSD with PosgreSQL. I fiddled around a bit doing an export of the mySQL data and trying to import it into the PostgreSQL tables, but between the two versions of Movable Type the table structure has changed, and it proved to be more work than I had anticipated.

I then stumbled across Movable Type's export/import facilities. This worked except that in the original blog there were a number of entries with 0000/00/00 dates. The new version of MT doesn't like this, so I had to make up a date for these entries. So far so good, I now had the data in the new blog, rebuilt the site and everything was looking good.

However I then realised that the archive system has been changed, the old one relied on the database row ID given to the entry which has changed in the import into PostgreSQL. Added to this, the order changed because of the date problems. This meant that the search engine hits on the old archive entries weren't working any more. Thought about trying to reorder the row IDs to match the old ones, but there were too many differences for this to have worked well. Ended up writing some Perl to parse the old entries, match them with the new ones and then create symlinks between the two. Seems to have worked!

All this, and having to deal with a 5 month old at the same time! Are my talents limitless I ask myself :)

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion. ~ Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in physics

Heard this recently quoted in a documentary by Richard Dawkins based on his new book The God Delusion. At first I thought his point of view a little too much, but I'm beginning to think someone needs to be saying these things now.

Converting films from my Samsung SGH-P300 to 'normal' mpeg (probably mpeg 2?):

ffmpeg -an -i foo.mp4 -r 25 bah.mpg

Haven't found a way of getting the sound across, hence the -an. orlando at numbersix.net if you have a solution.