Updating your WordPress Blog from WP 2.x to 3.0
I’ve successfully migrated two WordPress 2.9 blogs to WordPress 3.0. No issues. Here are steps to follow to do so safely: Phase 1: Backup Click on Tools > Export. The “Export” page is displayed. Click the Download Export File button. A “Save as” dialog is displayed. Save the file on your desktop. Click on Dashboard. Note the version of WordPress that you are running. The version number is […]
Snap
I just bit into a green bean, picked fresh from the box out back. I am 10 years old. I’m shucking corn on the tiny deck outside my parents’ kitchen. Errant strands of corn silk float lazily through the air to hang on the azalea bushes below. Inside, we have chicken cordon bleu with big, yellow ears of corn and green beans. Slabs of butter slide, kernel by kernel, down the corn […]
Visual Novels
As part of a Top Secret Project, I bought and have been playing several Japanese visual novels lately. (For those unfamiliar: a visual novel is something like a graphic adventure. The canonical example is a high school dating simulation, where the player talks with several girls in his class over the course of a few weeks, and whomever he spends the most time on becomes his girlfriend at the end. This is usually accompanied by a few […]
Five Awesome RPG Systems You Should Check Out
Role-players tend to find their “favorite system” and stick with it. While they’re more open-minded about other systems than, say, programmers are about languages, they often avoid new systems in favor of the familiar. So, here are 5 role-playing systems that are worth checking out: Fudge Technically, Fudge is a toolkit for making a system. The basics are brilliantly simple: Every character’s attributes, skills, […]
Professional Asperger’s
I’ve worked with quite a few folks who exhibit what I’ll call Professional Asperger’s. See if this sounds familiar: You stop by their office to ask a question. They look up with their lips pursed, give you a one-word answer, then return their attention to their computer. Consistently. In a meeting, a co-worker admits to making a mistake. This person literally boggles, and with a clipped tone reprimands […]
Another Science Fiction
Megan Prelingerhas done society a great service: by publishing a book of commercial space advertisements from the 1950’s and 1960’s. These are the great old illustrations of rockets, moon bases, and astronauts, each reproduced in full color on glossy paper in this book that would look perfect on a coffee table. Each illustration bursts with optimism. This was the era where we would go to the moon, we would establish bases, and we […]
Em-U-Late
Context: I built a vintage video arcade cabinet about two years ago. It ran Ubuntu Linux and the MAME arcade emulator on an old off-the-shelf PC I had laying around. About six months ago, that PC died. To be fair, it was at least a decade old. I bought a new PC and set it up with Windows XP. Using Windows presented several challenges, the primary one being Windows’ […]
Everybody Wave!
Last week, the Google Wave team announced that Wave is now open to everyone. It’s out of beta. Just head over to http://wave.google.com and sign in. This is a good time to go over what Wave is and how I’ve been using it. What Wave Is Wave is a collaborative communication platform. The creators started by wondering, “What would email look like if it were created […]
Beautiful Nightmares
I love poetry, though I know very little about it. I read arguably more poetry than most during my childhood, thanks to my parents and my home-schooling, but poetry’s always been a mysterious, otherworldly thing. Not something I can analyze. Which fits poetry well, now that I think about it. Such is the case with Galway Kinnell‘s The Book of Nightmares, which I finished reading a few days ago. It’s a themed […]