Welcome. Grab a beer, and sit down … I have an announcement to make!
As you most likely immediately noticed, the random noise generator has changed a bit. Not the content, but the layout. What you probably didn’t notice (if you did notice, in an obvious way, let me know, because that’s most likely a bug) is that the blog is running on a different software now. We used to run on Movable Type 2.65, and now, the rng is running on WordPress 2.0.
Why the switch?
Back when I first set up the rng, I needed a blog software that would run without needing a database backend. The web site we had rented from the ISP-type provider just didn’t allow for MySQL databases, or more precisely: it would if you’d simply upgrade to their “professional” product, whic cost 4x more a month. That sucked. So I went with MovableType, which at that time seemed to be one of the most popular blogging engines, and could run without requiring a MySQL database.
As soon as that happened, blogging suddenly became ultra-mainstream, and comment spam started. With my MovableType installation, I had no way short of coding my own extensions to break the flood of spam coming through my virtual kitchen door. I could also not upgrade MovableType, since they had changed their licensing conditions, which would make my (previously free) type of installation suddenly one where I’d have to pay. For a while, I left it at that, blocked comments completely, and frankly, didn’t blog all that much anymore.
We are now running our site on a new web server hosted by another provider. Here, we can use MySQL to our heart’s delight. Thus, I have taken the trouble to set up the rng on the new server, using WordPress as my new blogging software of choice. In my opinion, WordPress has a number of big advantages up its sleeve: It’s FOSS (Free/open-source software), has a huge user base, is very user-friendly (I had my first install up and running within about 5 minutes), and supports themes and designs in a very nice way.
What’s next?
A couple of things are still a bit rough around the edges. I am using a custom theme that I modified from the WuCoco theme, and which will need some fine-tuning. The major “cool feature” of the old rng, the ever-changing pictures in the header, are back in a more complex and refined form, thanks to a crontab script, a really long ImageMagick command line, and a http redirect script (Don’t worry, I’ll publish more on how it’s done soon).
