Greg In The Desert

At the end of last year Google did something with its page rank algorithm that caused my site to loose most traffic from Google. I thought the problem was due to excessive load times on my site. I used Pingdom to narrow the load times to a javascirpt from a Wordpress contact form plugin. The javascript took about 4 seconds to load and was loading on every page, including pages that did not have the contact form.

Once disabled the load times were down to a more reasonable level, although they have crept back up according to Google Webmaster Tools. As far as I can tell it’s images causing the load times. It was a good exercise for me to understand load times but it was a change made completely on Google’s part that caused the loss in traffic. The site not only got the traffic back but it increased a little. Also, when the traffic did come back the site had a significant increase in comment spam, so much that I had to turn off comments for certain posts.

Meanwhile, I took a much need break from the blog and completely ignored everything (except approving comments) and missed that TechCrunch linked to one of my pages. Causing a nice spike in traffic.

I started this blog in the summer of 2003 using iBlog for Mac and hosting using .mac. Eventually iBlog used Haloscan for comments and eventually iBlog died (technically it’s still available but it’s been at version 2.0 release candidate 3 for years). I have since moved this blog to Blosxom, RapidWeaver and finally Wordpress and changed the name three times.

I was able to transfer all of the posts generated from the other blogging systems into Wordpress through (mostly) automated methods. Using Applescript I was able to parse the contents of the rendered HTML files and exported to a text file that Wordpress could import.

I evaluated the various formats that Wordpress supports, including the wordpress WXR format but found the Movable Type Import Format the easiest to work with.

Getting the 1,100 plus comments from Haloscan proved to be more difficult. Haloscan does offer a XML export of comments, which required an inexpensive paid membership to access. Wordpress does not offer a Haloscan XML importer so I converted the XML file to the Movable Type Import Format using applescript.

Applescript has a XML parser built in but I found the XML parser to have difficulties working with the Haloscan XML file. Adding to the problem is that I started working on this about three operating systems ago in which Applescript has seen several changes. I stuck with a sort of brute force method of looping and parsing through each line of the content.

The script loops through each entry and outputs a dummy thread with no contents expect the title and includes the comment thread at the end. The Movable Type Import Format includes a NO ENTRY: 1 switch to signifiy this, but I’m not sure if Wordpress really needs it.

TITLE: AMREP Has Record Quarter
NO ENTRY: 1
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Johnny
EMAIL: XXXXXXX
URL: xxxxxxx
IP: xxxxxx
DATE: 09/14/2006 6:56:06 PM
It will slow eventually.  Everything in CA and AZ is plummeting and the west side is already over built and under occupied.
-----
--------

When Wordpress imports the Movable Type Import Format it looks for a matching post title that already exists. If Wordpress finds a matching post it adds the comments to the entry. If it doesn’t exist then Wordpress creates a new entry as a draft with the comments attached.

To make matters worse iBlog identified comment threads using a serial number like E554707186, Blossom identified comments using the title of the post with underscores and punctuation removed and rapid weaver used identified comment threads using a unique identifier like rw_unique_entry_id_403_page0. Most of my comments had post titles like these, except for a few that were generated by Bloxsom. I also had the added difficulty of my Haloscan XML file containing comments for two blogs.

I had considered writing a Applescript that could deterimne the real post title by reading through my website archives. That was going to take even more time so I decided to just import into Wordpress the way it was and manually move comments around from the newly created “dummy posts”.

Wordpress doesn’t have a built in capability to move comments to another post. For that I used the Restore Post Id plug in so I could identify post ids, WP Move Comments plugin to move individual comments and Simple Move Comments plugin to move all comments under a single post at once. I disabled the Subscribe To Comments plugin to avoid spamming the comments every time I moved a comment, but I’m not sure if that would have happened.

It was a good process for me as I got to delete comments that didn’t have any relevance and it allowed me to clean up and delete some posts. For one or two comments it was easier to move them one at a time, for posts with more comments I used the Simple Move Comments plugin which moved them all at once.

It’s a good time for users of Haloscan to consider doing something with their comments. Haloscan is discontinuing their free service and replacing it with a paid Echo service. For those that don’t upgrade, their comments will be deleted. The good news is Haloscan comments can be exported for free. On 14 December I received the following email from Haloscan

Exciting news, as we’ve mentioned on our blog, Haloscan, the legacy comment system that JS-Kit acquired last year, is getting upgraded to the new Echo platform.

You are receiving this email because, according to our records, you are (or have been) a Haloscan user.

This transition will happen in batches of users over the course of a couple of months. You are in the current batch!

We encourage you to log into your Haloscan admin dashboard right away. You will be presented with 2 options.

Upgrade to Echo for $9.95/year – all your comment data will be transitioned over automatically.
Export your Haloscan comment data for free and turn off their service
Please make sure you make a selection within the next two weeks to ensure uninterrupted service.

Sunset Magazine’s Fresh Dirt blog has and article about a couple in San Diego who replaced their pool with a Bocce Ball court. I found this interesting because the people I know who play Bocce Ball usually play on any surface they can find.

The Bocce Standards Association website has information on the international standards of a Bocce court. At 76 x 13 feet, it’s something I could fit in my back yard. I may have to try building one.

As I try to get back into posting interesting iPhone applications, I am still surprised at the amount of crap that is available to the iPhone store. Mac users always complained that sure, Windows has a more software available to it but most of it is crap. I think that is true with the iPhone.

The Wordpress App is not one of those crap applications (that is, is you have a Wordpress installation you can use it with). I’m not sure why they created an all new iTunes entry for the 2.0 app when both the 1.0 and 2.0 apps are free.

Although I find the iPhone to difficult to write entire blog posts on, the Wordpress app is great for creating basic drafts that get me started, fixing existing posts and managing comments.

Wordpress 2 is available on the iTunes store for free.

WordPress 2 is the only iPhone app that lets you write posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. With support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress, users of all experience levels can get going in seconds.

What’s new in version 2.0:

- A new, more efficient user interface that makes it faster to switch between comments, posts, and pages.
- Various user interface refinements and bug fixes
- New Comments interface, with Gravatars and the author URL shown in the comment list
- Passwords are now stored in the keychain
- Posts are now automatically saved and restored if network connection is lost during publishing
- Added persistence, so the app re-opens in the blog you last used
- Added an interface for manually entering the XMLRPC endpoint for non-standard setups
- Fixed rotation-related visual glitches
- Fixed errors where malformed XML prevented access to XMLRPC endpoint
- Fixed edge case where local drafts were sometimes not saved
- Fixed the order of photos so that they’re displayed in the order they’re uploaded

For support, please visit our forums at http://iphone.forums.wordpress.org — we aren’t able to respond to support requests submitted in an iTunes review.

The Albuquerque Police make it to Fail Blog.

The long awaited Tron sequel will be released in 2010. Tron Legacy is the sequel to the original Tron that came out in 1982. In 1982 no one could have imagined that I would be writing about the sequel to Tron on my Blog.

The press release from Disney says the film will be the same as the original but with some new characters.

Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), looks into his father’s disappearance and finds himself pulled into the same world of fierce programs and gladiatorial games where his father has been living for 25 years. Along with Kevin’s loyal confidant (Olivia Wilde), father and son embark on a life-and-death journey across a visually-stunning cyber universe that has become far more advanced and exceedingly dangerous.

YouTube has made every single copy of Tron Legacy non embedable. Which means I couldn’t use their version on my site. Exactly how that’s supposed to help promote the movie I don’t know. Thanks to TrailerAddict.com for making a embedable version.

• Report on DIA jet: "massive gust of wind" – The Denver Post – The captain of a Continental Airlines jet that went off the side of a Denver International Airport runway last December during takeoff said the plane suddenly veered to the left "as if hit by a 'massive gust of wind,' or as if the tires had hit a patch of ice and lost traction," according to a report issued by air safety investigators today. Continental Flight 1404 traveled over fields, an airport taxiway and a raised service road before coming to rest near a DIA fire station.
• Pay-as-you-drive insurance, privacy, and government mandates – Ars Technica – The proposal centers on a simple idea: infrequent drivers are less of an insurance risk. By pricing policies according to the mileage driven, insurance companies can offer discounts to lower-risk infrequent drivers, and put an appropriate cost penalty on heavy drivers. The state estimates that 30% adoption of PAYD insurance nationwide would reduce miles driven by at least 10% among subscribers, and save 55 million tons of CO2 over the next ten years. The benefits of such a system could be quite dramatic, as California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner is sure to emphasize.
• Tornado watch in far SW Colorado – The Denver Post – A tornado watch continues in effect until 9 p.m. for far southeastern Colorado, including Baca, Brent, Crowley, Kiowa, Las Animas and Otero counties. An earlier tornado watch for the metro Denver area expired at 7 p.m.
• EU fine gives Intel first loss in 22 years – New Mexico Business Weekly: – Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel posted a loss of $398 million, or 7 cents a share, compared with net income of $1.6 billion, or 28 cents a share in the same period last year.
• Consumerist – Unruly Teen Charges $23 Quadrillion At Drugstore – Visa buxx – Kids these days! Hawkins writes, "My lectures about financial responsibility appear to have failed: yesterday [my teenaged daughter] charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 at the drug store." You would think Visa would have caught the error and addressed it, if you were high. What Visa actually did was slap a $20 "negative balance" fee on it, of course.
• Scientists Discover Light Force with ‘Push’ Power | Science Blog – A team of Yale University researchers has discovered a “repulsive” light force that can be used to manipulate components on silicon microchips, meaning future nanodevices could be controlled by light rather than electricity.
• Apple rejects bird chirp, search query apps over Internet content | iLounge News – Apple has rejected updates to two more applications—FastFinder from Bananas Design and Chirp! Bird Songs from Spiny Software—due to what the company considers to be an inappropriate rating based on the apps’ ability to connect to the Internet
• ABQ will soon have a loan program for solar energy systems aimed as easing up-front costs – New Mexico’s largest city has made quick work of legislation passed earlier this year to boost consumption of renewable energy — such as the installation of solar energy systems on both residential and commercial rooftops. The key component allows municipalities to create special districts through which loans for installation of the systems are made to property owners who then pay off the loan through a property tax assessment rather than through making monthly loan payments.
• House cats know what they want and how to get it from you – Anyone who has ever had cats knows how difficult it can be to get them to do anything they don't already want to do. But it seems that the house cats themselves have had distinctly less trouble getting humans to do their bidding, according to a report published in the July 14th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The rather crafty felines motivate people to fill their food dishes by sending something of a mixed signal: an urgent cry or meowing sound embedded within an otherwise pleasant purr. The result is a call that humans generally find annoyingly difficult to ignore.
• This Young House Is No More, And Our Entire Blog Is Moving To Young House Love As Of Now! | Young House Love – On July 7th, as many of you know, we were busy celebrating our two year wedding anniversary. But on July 8th we got a nice little present in the form of a cease and desist letter from a prominent home improvement magazine/TV show which bears a few similarities to our old site’s name (you guys can figure it out, right?). Don’t they know the two year anniversary present is cotton, not paper? Anyway, they basically ordered that we immediately surrender the use of our old name and URL because they believed consumers were getting confused and may think that Young House Love was in some way related to their brand. Picture us scratching our heads. In almost two years of blogging under that moniker not one person has ever asked if we were related to that company.

If your like me and are a Quicken fanatic and are like me a Mac user, then you have most likely been anticipating the latest version of Quicken that was due to be released summer of 2009.

I have bad news for you. An Intuit Quicken blog post says that the next version of Quicken for Mac (Quicken Financial Life For Mac, or whatever they call it) is now slated for February of 2010. It was first supposed to come out in 2008, then 2009 and now 2010.

Intuit will release a new version of Quicken for the Mac platform in February 2010.

I don’t know why I’m having a hard time believing Intuit. They must have one programmer who is new to Mac programming working on Quicken for Mac.

The one killer feature that keeps me using Quicken 2007 is the integration with financial institutions. I can write checks and schedule transactions with all of the banks and credit cards I use and have all of my information in Quicken up to date. I almost never have to visit the individual website of any of these banks and rarely write a paper check.

There are a number of better application than Quicken for the Mac but none of them have this integration with banks that is a huge time saver.

I have attempted to sign up with Intuit to be a beta tester for years and have never been selected. They have a new program called Quicken Inner Circle that might get me closer.

I’m glad Brent Simmons posted an updated on NetNewsWire for Mac and iPhone, my RSS reader of choice, on his blog at inessential.com. I was getting ready to post a pithy comment on the Newsgator forums about the lack of progress.

Brent says that NetNewsWire 3.2 for mac and NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhone are in competition for release. Although he does not give a time frame for either. He describes NetNewsWire 3.2 for Mac as not a major upgrade except for the Google Reader synchronization options and NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhone as a huge upgrade.

He goes into some detail about iPhone performance and NetNewsWire 4.0 for mac so if your interested I would read his post.

It’s been rainy in Rio Rancho the last few days and it looks like there could still be a few more days of rain. I’ve been too busy to sit down and write blog posts but that should change soon.

I haven’t kept up with replacing the roof shingles that blew off in the spring winds and managed to get a hole in the roof. Yesterday I noticed dripping from the garage ceiling and I found that the tar paper under one missing shingle had given out causing the leak. I was not pleased with having to get on a wet roof to make the repairs.

Before the rain started I have been doing quite a bit of work outside including some landscaping and laying pavers, I hope to have a blog post written about that later.

Thanks to the high humidity, available resources and delay of my travel plans I was able to get the self leveling concrete installed in the master bathroom. Although it didn’t come out perfect it’s good enough and moves the project along to some things I an do by myself.

Some of the weeds in the backyard were cleared and burned (rain makes for good burn days in the City of Rio Rancho). I have a new visitor to the house and found about 8 months worth of missing blog posts I had to manually post to the site. It’s now too muddy and wet to do further outdoor work so I hope to have some blog posts about these events up in the next week.