Migrating from hosted WordPress.com to your own server

The problem is that you lose all of your search indexing if you just export it and start at your own domain.  However, here is a good writeup on the steps to avoid that.  It’s pretty simple if you’re willing to spend $10.

Basically, you buy a domain and host it through WordPress.com for a while, and then you setup your own server.  Doing it this way, WordPress.com will forward all of the requests to the old site in a way that search engines update their index with the new URL.  We’ll see how it works!

Increasing PHP upload limits

My hosting provider has the default limits for uploading files via PHP set pretty low (2MB).  To get around that, they allow custom php.ini files, but they don’t tell you where to put them or what to put in them.

Create a text file called “php.ini” and place it in the directory where the script is going to run.  I read that it a custom php.ini file is applied to subdirectories, but that was not the case in my setup.  The custom php.ini should have the following:

upload_max_filesize=100M
post_max_size=100M

Creating an XML document in WSH

This took forever to find, but I was hoping XmlTextWriter would work in Windows Scripting Host (I thought I found an example), but I couldn’t get it to work.  This is the only structured way I could find to create an XML document in WSH:

http://www.aspfree.com/c/a/Windows-Scripting/Creating-an-XML-Document-in-WSH/

(OK – found the problem.  XmlTextWriter is .NET only, and WSH is not .NET.  It’s been a while for me.)

Handbrake won’t convert camera movies

Turns out Handbrake doesn’t support 8-bit audio, which is the format used by most point-and-shoot cameras (including my TZ3, which, suprisingly, is still getting some play, mostly for video).  Luckily I just got one of these, which is a marvel of technology given its size.

Gmail likes its contacts more than yours

I’ve been running into a problem where Gmail stops auto-suggesting contacts in my Contacts list.  Turns out, it’s because it likes its own “Suggested Contacts” better.  More to the point, the “Suggested Contacts” are case-sensitive, while the auto-suggest is not, and the auto-suggest pukes on what it perceives to be duplicates.

So, if you have a contact in your Contacts list with the email address “friend@hotmail.com”, and they send you an email configured as “FRIEND@hotmail.com”, and you respond to that email, gmail adds the duplicate address to your “Suggested Contacts” list.  Then, the next time you try to send them a new email, gmail chokes on the duplicate, and you get nothing.

UPDATE: Looks like Google is working on it.

Price discrimination (in the economic sense)

One economics concept I seem to keep running into is price discrimination, although it’s rarely identified as such.  The context is not always pricing – more often than not it’s in regard to dealing with people (i.e., instead of a “one rule for everyone” approach, some leadership styles recommend a tailored approach for each individual).  Anyhow, I found a good overview of price discrimination.

I bought a new camera – Canon XS

I (finally) pulled the trigger on a Canon XS with EF-S 18-55mm IS Lens. It compared favorably with the XSi, and at a total cost of $452 from Abe’s of Maine ($473.95 – $10 coupon – 2.5% from MS Live Search cashback), it’s in my comfort zone for a technology I’m not really geeked out about (yet…).

Automated Gmail backup via IMAP

I’m pretty sure Gmail has some redundencies out there, but if you want a local copy of everything in case Google goes under, check out Gmail Backup.

Phone-based two-factor authentication for LogMeIn

I haven’t setup LogMeIn because I’m skittish about security.  PhoneFactor looks like a promising addition to the chain that could alleviate my concerns.  It provides a second-factor authentication (the first being your username/password) by requiring you to answer your phone before it lets you in.  If you (or, more likely, a would-be hacker) don’t have the phone, you can’t get in.

New theme, same blog

I was having trouble with the header tags (<h2>, etc.) all showing up as the same size with the old theme.  This new one flows the text much better.  See the DTB guide (which I just updated a little bit) for an example.