Tad's IT Blog
iphoneTad
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Homepage: http://blog.reevestech.net/
Posts by iphoneTad
Migrating a WordPress.com Blog to Self-Host: An Experiment
Aug 20th
I’ve got a couple of wordpress.com blogs that have gotten more popular and more extensive over the years, and which I’d like to migrate off of the wordpress.com hosted platform and move onto servers I control myself. Why? One word: plugins. Well, two words: plugins and stats. I just can’t live without my Google Analytics.
So, as I already know you can migrate the whole wordpress.com post/comment schema out of the platform and throw it wherever you like, I figured it’d be a well-documented affair of people out-growing their wordpress.com blogs and wanting to move to wordpress.org. Unfortunately, I’m not finding that to be the case.
The main problem I’m looking at is one of SEO. Some of these blogs I’ve got date back to 2005/2006 and have some major longevity with Google, meaning links they have carry some weight. I would prefer not to lose that SEO-juice when moving to a self-host platform.
So, I’m setting out to figure out the best way to proceed, and will catalog my results on this blog. Maybe I’ll be the only one that reads this, but if not, hope you can either (a) give me tips, or (b) learn from my mistakes.
First of all, this article on wordpress.com goes over how to redirect your wordpress.com blog to a new domain which you own. Hoping that works well as a first starting point.
So I don’t do this on my highest-pagerank domain, I’m going to start this out on a blog that I have that is doing great – but mostly from rel=nofollow traffic (i.e. traffic from Facebook / Stumbleupon / Twitter / etc, not pagerank-sensitive traffic from google). It’s my Scientology Parent blog – the one I use to catalog all the fun I’m having in my first year as a parent, using Scientology to raise my baby.
To proceed, I’m thinking this as a course of action:
- Pack up the existing wordpress.com posts/comment bundles from the WP-Admin link to make an export file of the current blog.
- Set up the new self-host wordpress shell site (any old theme)
- Import the old wordpress.com site into the new self-host site.
- Make sure all of the data imported & is working properly with the old permalinks.
- Get a good redirect plugin like http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/ or http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-htaccess-control/ to control the htaccess / redirect behaviour, so that requests coming in to scientologyparent.wordpress.com/permalink get 301 redirected to newdomain.com/permalink
We’ll see how this goes!
Fedora 13 Driver Support is Just Awesome
May 28th
I just need to take two seconds and rave about the driver support in Fedora 13.
Fedora installations on servers have always been notoriously painless for me, and for the last 5 years I’ve always had less trouble standing up a new Sun or Dell server on Fedora than on Windows. No driver disks, no nothing – just fire it up and it goes.
Desktops have been another matter entirely. If you read my other posts on ATI Radeon Drivers on Fedora, you’ll see I’ve had all sorts of issues getting Fedora (or any Linux distro for that matter) to work well with my 3D ATI cards and other assorted laptop drivers.

My HP Photosmart C4580 - just works on Fedora 13
Enter Fedora 13. One of the touted features of F13 “Goddard” is “…enhanced driver support.” Now, I had no idea what to expect, but I guess I just hoped it’d be better than before. Wow, how wrong I am. Driver installations are now just totally painless and are even better than a Mac in terms of “just working”. Specifics:
- 3D Drivers: For the first time I’ve ever encountered on any Linux distro, the machine fired up and just worked with the integrated ATI Radeon 3200HD controller that I have on my laptop. No install, no drivers, no updates – I just installed the stock, no-options desktop and it fired up the Radeon with no problems, and ran Compiz just by checking the little “enable desktop effects” button in CCSM. BLAM. Very pleased – that usually is a majorly painful process.
- Codecs: Totem and VLC are now nearly impossible to thwart in terms of codec support. I just fire up Totem, and if it starts to try to play something it doesn’t have a codec for, I just click the little “search” button, and it finds the gstreamer plugins it needs to play the media. DVD/CSS, h.264, WMV, etc all played without me having to hit up YUM. BLAM!
- Printer Support: This was a royal suprise to me. I have a wi-fi HP Photosmart C4580 printer/scanner. I just opened up the printer dialog and clicked on “add” and then under network printers hit “find”. It then proceeded to automatically find my C4580 on the wi-fi network, and automatically installed drivers for it. A test-page printed out with color support immediately and with no fuss. That took about 1/4 of the time it’s taken me to set that printer up on Windows or Mac. Amazing!
So, hats off to the Fedora team and the work that’s gone into driver support for this release. I’m truly impressed.
“Elbow Grease, Heart & Soul” – Freewinds Refit from MarineLink
Nov 17th
I just ran across an awesome article while browsing ScientologyToday, an article in the Maritime Reporter & Engineering News which goes over the complete refit and restoration of the Scientology Motor Vessel Freewinds.
From their pull quote:
In today’s “I need it yesterday” world, emphasis on quantity often overpowers quality, while the quick fix can supercede the correct one. Step back, take a deep breath and enjoy the fruits of a tremendous labor, a labor of love that resulted in the top-to-bottom renovation of a storied ship with a unique owner. — Greg Trauthwein, Editor
The article then goes on at quite some length about the amazing attention to detail that was paid to every last piece of the restoration of the Freewinds, including before-and-after photos of a number of sections of the ship (something I had never even seen before).
In elucidating the incredible attention to detail demanded by the project managers and the Captain of the Freewinds, the editor of this article was also floored with the amount of responsibility the ship’s own crew was taking in the renovations project.
Making the scope of the renovation all the more amazing: while the organization brought on a bevy of contractors to fulfill much of the heavy-duty fabrication and construction, it was the crew who was responsible for the intricate and laborious renewal and renovation, including a meticulous cleaning and rejuvenation of the engine room, the engine control room and the bridge (including the machining of the new stainless steel parts, overhauling the equipment, painting and polishing), all while the ship stayed in operation.
And I don’t doubt it. The crew of the Freewinds are some of the most amazing people I have ever met.
Converting HTML and KML Color
Oct 16th
This is a shorty for an ill-defined subject that I recently ran into when making a recent Bing Maps KML implementation.
When dealing with KML styles, the KML color space is defined differently than most web developers are used to. Instead of being defined in normal RGB hex, they are ARGB, or RGB with Alpha Channel.
In normal HTML color, one is used to hex representations like:
AABBCC
In KML, the first two octets are used to define the transparency or alpha channel, and then the next 6 are RGB in reverse order.
So, if you’ve got a KML color of
50AABBCC
This would then translate to CCAABB in HTML.
Just a note, in case any one else has been infuriated or confused by such.
Google Streetview Bug
Oct 9th
I was just doing some reading up & testing on the Google Maps API, and zoomed in to streetview only to find myself in the middle of a lillypad or a dirty fishbowl or something:
Supposedly, this is Missoula, Montana – though I think the locals would disagree with me.
Here’s the embedded version, which right now looks the same:
Right now, if I use the UI to navigate out of it, I can re-enter the real world, but then I can’t go back to the “green fungus reality” unless I refresh the page.
Any ideas?
Bing Maps: Suppressing the Bird’s Eye Popup
Sep 28th
When I was working on my last Bing Maps project for Webworld Technologies, my Microsoft rep told me, “…and as soon as you’re ready, let me know and I’ll give you a hack to disable that f’n birds-eye popup”. I didn’t know that was the official inside term for it, but like so many internal naming conventions that stick with you, I felt it was appropriately named. I think the Bing bird’s eye view is a fantastic way to visualize maps too, but the little “VIEW THIS IN THE COOL BIRDS EYE VIEW” popup that comes up every time you refresh the map is a bit far into the “annoying UI element” department.
To disable it, just do the following: right after invoke your map.LoadMap, hide the popup element as follows:
map.LoadMap(new VELatLong(38.865326, -77.074930), 12 ,’h’ ,false);
// Suppress popup saying Bird’s Eye available
document.getElementById("MSVE_obliqueNotification").style.visibility = "hidden";
That will get rid of that popup any time the map loads.
What do we do if both Gmail and Twitter are down?
Sep 1st
Whoa! 4:30pm EST on 1 Sept. Are aliens landing? If they were, I wouldn’t know – because both Twitter and Gmail are down at the same time!
Gmail gives me a 502 server error, then offers this as to the status:
Tried to then tweet about it, but then saw that tweets on the subject of “gmail” were coming in at a rate of approximately 4500 every 30 seconds. Then, when I tried to tweet on it, Twitter keeled on me too:
Thank goodness Facebook was still working….or are they next?










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