rinzai » Blogging

Back to WordPress

Raven Zachary — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:12:17 +0000

Ok – I finished up most of the migration last night from Chyrp back to WordPress. Before I can switch to a new theme, I need to remove all of the hard-coded header and footer modifications (e.g. Favicon, Meta Tags, Google Analytics, etc.) and move the data into Plugins and Widget text boxes so that the code is portable across Themes.

That’s my project for tonight.

To borrow an analogy…

Raven Zachary — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:34:50 +0000

WordPress has the momentum. Chyrp is going through an upheaval in its short history – the developer is moving away from PHP, a scripting language I actually can hack around in with comfort. As soon as I can find a few hours, I am moving back to WordPress. I’ll probably choose a WordPress theme resembling Tumblr (which attracted me to Chyrp in the first place). Thankfully, the number of posts I’ve added into Chyrp has been limited. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. I still think Chyrp has a huge potential. Keep an eye on the project – chyrp.net.

More than Twitter

Raven Zachary — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 02:00:08 +0000

The great thing about Chyrp is that I can go past 140 characters. I am treating this site a bit more like Twitter than I am like a full-length blog, so I don’t expect to see long posts here.As soon as the RSS module is released for Chyrp, I will be aggregating Twitter and Flickr here, and probably my open source blog entries, too.

Advice on Chyrp

Raven Zachary — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:53:35 +0000

If you’re considering a move to Chyrp, especially if you’re currently using Tumblr and want to self-host, I’d recommend that you wait just a bit longer. Chyrp is going through a period of rapid updates. Since I made the move to Chyrp on February 6th, there have already been several releases with various new features and bug fixes. Keeping up with new releases has been problematic for me not only due to the amount of time it takes to migrate a site (and re-add code changes for my theme), but also running into migration bugs along the way.The last upgrade was especially problematic (v1.1.3.1). I had a problem accessing the database and all of the ‘Feathers’ that allow for various posting types – pictures, sounds, links, text quotes, places, etc. broke as the author of these Feathers hasn’t updated them yet.Chyrp is going to be a very popular open source lifestream platform, it’s just not the best time for large-scale adoption. Give it a few weeks.NOTE: I am still a big fan of WordPress, and am using it for a number of projects. I just think that Chyrp is going to be a better platform for a personal site that’s somewhere between Twitter and a full Blog.

Moving to Chyrp

Raven Zachary — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:53:54 +0000

Rinzai.com has gone through a number of technology transitions since its launch in the mid-90s. From many years of hand-coding to WordPress to Apple’s iWeb and now to Chyrp. Please check back for more content as I am in the process of migrating the site.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.2

Raven Zachary — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 01:30:25 +0000

I was finally able to upgrade rinzai.com to WordPress 2.2 today. I ran into a few small problems with outdated plugins, but the entire upgrade process took less than an hour. The primary reason for the upgrade was the Twitter Tools plugin from Alex King, which will allow me to auto post tweets to my blog in a daily archive. Many thanks to Brian Cors for the recommendation.

Goodbye, moblog!

Raven Zachary — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 07:32:16 +0000

I am retiring my moblog hosted at Blogger. Why? Flickr is working just great from my phone, thank to ShoZu. The built-in Blogger integration on my Sony Ericsson K790a phone isn’t any better than using the ShoZu client to upload directly to Flickr. It is a pain uploading to two places and Flickr is the better user experience.

It’s time for a moblog

Raven Zachary — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 17:45:00 +0000

It’s time for a moblog. With my Sony Ericsson K790a (Amazon) phone on order, I will have the ability to post photos from my phone directly to Blogger. I should be receiving my K790a in a week or two – the phone is just now being released in the United States.

The site, ravenzachary.blogspot.com, used to be my open source blog. I retired the site in April with the launch of The 451 Group’s open source blog – 451 CAOS Theory. I am resurrecting this site for use as my moblog because the K790a has built-in support for posting to Blogger. While my preference would be to post photos directly here or to my Flickr account, the easiest solution will likely be to post to Blogger.

Posting from ecto

Raven Zachary — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 18:24:51 +0000

My first blog a few years ago was built using iBlog, a blog publishing tool for Mac OS X. I loved the desktop experience for composing new entries – offline authoring, easy editing, spell check, drag and drop photos, etc. For me, this was a more natural way to approach blogging than entering new posts into the browser interface. The problem was that it did its own HTML output, so using iBlog with a popular blogging package such as WordPress, wasn’t possible.

I decided to go check out ecto today, after hearing several people recommend it. This is my first post from ecto, and so far, I am pleased with the experience. I was able to drag the image (the ecto logo) from my web browser into the post and modify the layout settings. The hyperlinks in this post were created by selecting the text and adding the associated URL for the link.

There is much more to explore in ecto, but at the cost of $17.95 and available for both Mac OS X and Windows, it looks like a winner. Go check it out.

Migrating from Blogger

Raven Zachary — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 17:06:58 +0000

I have successfully migrated my Blogger posts to WordPress using the built-in migration tools. Very slick – I encountered no problems. I did go back and re-categorize the entries after the import, but that was it.

I am going to be shutting down my Blogger site in the next few weeks and redirecting the traffic here. I have some email subscribers to my blog and need to figure out how to move them from FEEDblitz.