Clusterflock: Migration to WordPress
Hello Flockers. I wanted to drop in and give a little bit of an update of the things going on behind the scenes here. First, hopefully you have noticed a much improved posting and commenting experience and a lot less 500 errors. Andrew was able to make some changes in the back end to alleviate the cause, at the expense of a few archive pages not being generated.
To help move this forward, I’ve put out the idea of migrating Clusterflock over to WordPress from MovableType. I think WordPress will work better for how Clusterflock operates overall, especially the commenting experience. The posting experience will remain mostly the same, except a lot faster since WordPress doesn’t generate static files for posts and instead dynamically generates a page when requested.
The concern I had in making this happen was brining over the 7,000+ posts ( Deron’s way over 3,300 btw ) and 10,000+ comments to the WordPress platform. Luckily, they provide a way to do so. I took a backup of Clusterflock from Friday and was able to import every post and comment up till when I took the backup, which is great.
There is one more major technical hurdle that needs to be cleared before I’d feel comfortable switching us over, and that is making sure all the old permalinks work. I’ll be working on that the next couple of days.
Once complete, there will need to be a plan for the conversion. This will most likely involve creating a “no posting” window and maybe redirecting everyone to a “maintenance” type page while the data conversion and setup process completes because I’d hate to lose a post or a comment. More on that as things progress.
If any of you have questions or concerns ( how corporate ) please feel free to let myself, Andrew or Deron know.
Now back to your regularly scheduled flocking.
Evolutionary Game Theory
In the end, game theory is really a first step in understanding complex interactions. The next step is developing an evolutionary theory of games where actors inherit a tool box of strategies from previous generations of players. Already, there is a fairly well developed genre of game theory taking this approach, but I welcome the day when it becomes refined enough so that it can account not just the strategies of leading poker players, but how these strategies emerged from generations of competition.
Challenger Disaster
22 years ago today the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded after takeoff. I was in the 2nd grade and at my school, we didn’t watch it. I didn’t learn about it until when I got out of school. I was in shock, but at the same time, I hadn’t paid much attention to the Space Program. It was this event that got me thinking about it and how amazing ( yet dangerous ) it must be to try and make it to space. It’s sort of a sick irony that a disaster of this level, one that I think still cripples NASA today, is the thing that got me thinking about science and engineering and exploring beyond our grasp.
Amazing Hockey Goal
Even more amazing: the kid is 9 years old.
Amy
Falcon City
This planned city in the United Arab Emirates (built in the shape of a falcon!) will have larger-than-the-original replicas of all 7 ancient wonders of the world, a theme park, a gigantic mall, a 24-building plaza, and a 1,000,000 square-foot park. It seems like the kind of place a Bond villian would build.
Link, link to presentation video (WMV)
Layer Tennis Season Finale
Here it is Sunday night, January 27, and the Layer Tennis* season has nigh on come to its close. The final match was on Friday, but I believe that the polls are still open to accommodate those who’ve yet to cast a vote in favor either of CHRIS GLASS or Shaun Inman.
*That’s Coudal Partners‘ Layer Tennis, presented by Adobe CS3. Just in case you were thinking of some other live design event.
The Death of John Thatcher, 28 January 1782
I put my hand against the door, it would not above half open; the passages leading to these houses, are inhabited by hard working persons, the premises belong to my master; there is a long passage, you cross a yard, it is no thoroughfare where the man was, it leads to the house, there are three passages, the alley is a thoroughfare that leads to them; I was then without a light, I went up stairs for my candle, I went down, and found a man laying on the ground with his breeches down, I took him by the hand and touched his forhead, found him very cold, and no appearance of life at all, with his breeches down, I did not examine into the cause of his death, I was frightened and went out of the passage to my master . . . .
From the testimony of JOHN BOTHWELL sworn, The Proceedings of the Old Bailey.
Dear clusterflock
The things that saved us.
Einstein’s Rejoinder
Upon being presented with a book of essays called something like “The critics against Einstein” (that is a paraphrase) he replied with something like “If they were right, one would have been enough.”
Fog and Train
Dallas has had heavy fog for the last two mornings. Yesterday I was driving through it with Mia (she’s 6 1/2 now) and she asked: “Is fog still white at night?”
Then we passed a seemingly endless freight train, stopped beside the road we were traveling. “It’s so long it doesn’t have to move,” she said.
A brief introduction to Ronnie Lane
Most notable for having been a member of The Small Faces and Faces, Ronnie Lane was one of those select musicians who could create new songs which felt immediately timeless and eternal. Start with “Annie”, from Rough Mix (Pete Townshend/Ronnie Lane, 1977), whose haunting beauty will, I predict, find the hole in your soul and then fill it. Next turn 180 degrees to the raucous Lane of “You’re So Rude” from Faces’ 1971 LP A Nod Is as Good as a Wink. . . to a Blind Horse. Charming, “naughty”, rollicking. Then sample “Last Orders Please” from the same LP along with “Ooh La La” (from the 1973 Faces LP of the same title), both of which will take you 90 degrees back toward the gentler Lane. Finish up with “Harvest Home”, from 1975′s One for the Road, a delicious instrumental which proves that Lane’s powers survived even the absence of his utterly marvelous voice. Go on now.
Fall Out Shelters (Deal, Kent) Ltd.
“These shelters are designed to withstand great stress and are virtually indestructible. They will protect their occupants against all known nuclear hazards. They are both blast proof and fall-out shelters. Fall Out Shelters (Deal, Kent) Ltd. build every type of nuclear shelter to suit most areas and conditions. They are constructed only of the best materials and are tested at every stage of manufacture.”
Obama’s South Carolina Victory Speech
Among the current
Among the books I’m currently reading are two PBs. No, not paperbacks, but rather:
A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Franklin
Made up Porn Title
Titty Titty Bang Bang
Writers Guild of America
“I ask you,” one writer noted, “which is more important to a movie — a script, or half of Reese Witherspoon?”
The studio suits thought for a second.
“Which half?”
can a camera’s owner be found using only the photos as clues?
“I thought, with all this data in the camera, there’s no way we’re not going to get it back to them,” Nancy Ascher says now. “I was hoping it wasn’t going to take a trip to Ireland, flashing their pictures everywhere.”
photos of photographers
Delete
I work for an enterprise level integration company that is looking to attack the long tail of the market for point to point integration solutions.
Picture of the day
Barack Obama at a roundtable, Charleston, SC, January 25th (via)
No point to this, except: What a great photo.
Follow the link to see some good suggestions for captions.
it is what it is
Pets and Religion
People who feel lonely are more likely to believe in the supernatural, whether that is God, angels or miracles, a new study finds.
Picks
I was in the bookstore today (used books), and I saw a man moving about from shelf to shelf in a brisk and deliberate fashion. He was reaching here and there to tip books out a bit with his index finger. I wondered how browsing in this way could possibly be effective, since he wouldn’t have had time to do more than look at the title. Near-sighted? I wondered. Then he came over to the poetry section where I was. He tipped out a book and said–”At right there’s a good one.” Then he went back to work, leaving the shelves looking like piano keyboards.
Oh–the book he recommended: poems by Jewel. I pushed it back in.
