. Spinning .

I believe that’s on Willie’s Teatro cd, and I’m feelin’ it today as I scan the posts on the Typepad Spinning weblog looking for images. I’m still back in 2004–not a good year–and it’s a hurricane of emotions that I don’t even recognize always as me.

The writing is better than I write now; at least in the entries on reality. Yet I think my fiction has improved over the past five years. It’s hard to discern the difference in the person and yet as I see this author slowly open up, it seems that as one reaches for the pearl, the oyster now clamps shut.

Have I said all I wanted to say, then? Should I have ended it there?

Well, there were quite a few ways to solve problem #2, that of moving the images from the Typepad blogs over to the WordPress sites, none of which were easy.

Since Typepad makes it impossible to export just the image files, which I could then save, and import into similarly named files, I really have to pull them out one by one. The problem with my images were also that so many of them are named “screen-capture.jpg” that I don’t know what would end up where, even if I did manage to organize the file structure the same and then change the permalinks to them.

What I’ve found to be the easiest then is to go through the weblog online (not through the post list since that reverts back to the first page) or I could do it through the export.txt file created during the export. Then I click the image and save the image as a jpg on my hard drive in a folder by year under the appropriate weblog. I’ve also come up with a system of making sure they’re going into the right post by renaming the images with the date and category: 020208nm.jpg would be February 2, 2008, New Media.

It’s going to take quite a while, but I already have January 2009 files done for both, and 2008 for Hypercompendia which has more images than Spinning on an annual basis, though Spinning’s been alive three or four years longer.

Still, I won’t be blogging at the Typepad sites anymore, continuing on here and hoping that everyone is willing to change any links they have to my old sites and in particular, links to particular entries.

One step closer to WordPress: Finally found a method of changing the blue links on the K2 RC7 theme here and on Hypercompendia:

For the links within the posts, add a line (in bold) in the #primary section:

#primary {
position: relative;
float: left;
width: 500px;
padding: 10px;
}
#primary a{color: #A34E29;}

* html #primary {
display: inline;
}

The same in the sidebar, or secondary section:

.secondary {
width: 200px;
float: left;
font-size: 1em;
line-height: 1.5em;
color: #666;
position: relative;
padding: 0 10px;
overflow: hidden;
}

.secondary a{color:#26D96E;}

#sidebar-2 {
clear: right;
}

I must have come upon a dozen different suggestions to change the color of links, and tried quite a few before stumbling upon the notion in a post somewhere thru Google that the K2 theme was default blue so it wasn’t in code on the stylesheet in the usual manner. I also realized that ‘link’ was only referred to as “a” and between that and the 3-digit color coding I was going nuts–remember, I’m not a coding person; all I’ve learned I’ve learned through working with Typepad. I think it’s time I study the html book I dragged out for reference.

This has been taking up all my time, all my brainpower, all my reading since I bravely embarked on the great migration to WordPress. I’ve upgraded the WordPress platform to 2.7 with no problems, remembering to save the old wp-config.php file amd the themes. Fiddled around with some themes while I was setting up the sidebar and ended up back with K2 Beta, but then upgraded it to K2 RC7 and find it remarkably easy to work with–except for one quirk: I cannot find the color blue code on the links to change them after looking through the CSS over and over again and changing any numerical (usually 3-digit) or spelled out color anywhere on the sheets.The new K2 is widget-friendly which has made the sidebar setup amazingly easy.

Got around the WordPress limit of importing no more than 2 megabytes of files (my files were 9 mb) by changing the php.ini file to reflect a larger limit of 15, and also by lying to the WordPress menu and naming a .htm file a .txt file and using the mt-export.txt  method.

All this stuff was done with Hypercompendia as well, so the sites are all ready to go except for two problems. One is the transfer of all the images (possibly need to do them one by one) to wordpress because even though the images are there, they are being pulled from the Typepad sites.

The other major problem is the permalinks which don’t transfer. While I’ve managed to fix the permalinks internally, in other words, the permalinks on the WordPress site do point directly to WordPress, I cannot seem to find good directions that work in this particular instance with this set of circumstances. Some of the great ideas are too old, some of the directions don’t apply to my particular setup. I’ve tried three plugins so far that sounded promising except they redirect from within the weblog itself only, not covering external links to the old weblog. Yes, I can certainly tell everyone I care about to change the site addresses, and I certainly don’t care about my Google ranking, but there are a few sites like Wikipedia, a couple high school English classes, various sites that link to a particular series on a work of literature or a review of software, and somebody in Poland who has graciously posted a review and links to the downloads of my own hypertext work.

So that’s where I am right now with this project and I can’t really put it aside both because of WordPress’ renewal date coming up and more, because I’m liable to forget all the mumbo-jumbo I’ve read in the past five days (believe me, you either get vague help or too much information but I’ve studied it all and tried most of it till my brain is fried). So it’s going to be either I figure this out and delete the Typepad weblogs, or I drop WordPress if I can’t find my way around the problems or learn to suck it up and live without a blogging past.

I’ve been excited about finally getting down to making this move from Typepad to WordPress but when I started the project back in March of ’08, I was too-skeered by some of the instructions to go beyond setting up the weblogs and putting a theme and a post on each. Once I got involved again with the move this week and actually exported the entries, set up some new plug-ins, transferred some of the categories and links, I realize it’s not as easy to move close to 6000 posts (5300 on spinning, 550 on Hypercompendia) intact.

I haven’t deleted the Typepad blogs yet, and I won’t until I’ve gotten all the problems sorted out. The two left are the redirections of the permalinks and I’ve been working on that problem for a couple days because there are a lot of different ways to do it, but none are the same and time and updates make a lot of the old suggestions I’ve found obsolete.

The other problem hit me like a ton of bricks. All the images, 5 years of images, have to be uploaded somehow to WordPress or once I pull the plug on Typepad, they will disappear. Oh yeah, they show up here now, but they’re linked to the Typepad files.

Nothing is easy. Unless I feel like finding and uploading all the photos, and redirecting the links, I can leave the old posts blank.

I’m beginning to think that maybe I should’ve just stuck with Typepad, or be willing to lose the last five years of my life and start out fresh.

Tee-hee. My bad.

After a wonderful but short meeting with Carolyn, a Vassar English Major who's into creative writing and great literature, I think I've figured out why I blog. I'm lonely.

I must have babbled on the whole time we spent together, and dominated any conversation on work-in-progress, story, style, authors, books read, books to read, etc. Maybe because attempts at igniting a writers group on campus have failed–there are only about three serious writers aside from myself who can and do put some time into it, and I've taken just about every English class there and haven't the nerve to move on to the next level, but it's like I'm either bottled up waiting for the next fool to pull out the stopper or I explode onto the blogging format of Spinning.

Really need to get a life or make up an imaginary friend.

…as I notice that I’ve just passed the 5,000th posting before the five-year anniversary of Spinning in late October. 

How could I have had so much to say?

Maybe it’s time to retreat, to go back to doing instead of writing about what was.  Noticed also that I’ve passed the 600 mark in twittering and that’s just been going on perhaps since February or so.  There are also hundreds of entries on Hypercompendia and those hundreds more on weblogs I’ve since shut down like Morning Stories and Talespinning and the first months of Hypercompendia that I wiped out in a tantrum.

I’ve got to get back into finishing up the setup of a real website that I started back in March.  Or maybe just get back to doing things that give me something to write about someday when I’m old and tired and smiling.  And willing to write about why.

Deleted my last three posts–two of them fresh from this morning–because they fell under the category of useless gripes.

You just get tired of it all, ya know?

…when one looks closely at one’s efforts and one’s stats and wonders to herself, Why do I bother?

Surely I’ve got better things to do with my time than exercise about 4% of my body and maybe 90% of my mind.  My literature reviews are mostly sought by students looking for a quick and easy way to write a paper without getting caught for plagiarism.  They’re not taken seriously by any great number of readers and the one time someone stopped and told me what a jerk I am for writing them at all just one friend and two nice strangers graciously said it wasn’t really so.  The writing usually goes pretty much unnoticed.  The reality may click off a spark of conversation.  And my very rare political rant or slightly less rare bitch on life in general are avoided like the plague.

I’ve dumped the Creative Writing weblog, saving just certain posts and imported them here to Spinning.  More fodder for the student cheat.

My writing of fiction is sort of losing its momentum and if I write anything at all, it’s in the hypertext format (which sends friends and family and the general public into a panic and they tiptoe away hoping I won’t know they’ve stopped by for a visit).

So even as I take my time in setting up a more official website, I wonder, Why?

It’s going to be one of them days: another bad dream involving my sister and then, upon checking the comments, this rather mean-spirited note, on my last post on William Gay’s Provinces of Night:

"I found your blog through Google while researching a subject. Your writings are meaningless, uninspiring and amateurish. You make out to be intellectual but you do not have proper grounding or specialize on any specific subject. Why do the likes of you crowd the internet with meaningless blog. Your half baked education seemed to be your handicap, but it’s not expensive or too late for you to get yourself a decent education and familiarize yourself with whatever subjects you want to educate the rest of us on. Take my advice, before you star pretending to be an intellectual, know your subject before you start dishing out your silly blog. Right now, you I find your blog boring, irritating and meaningless. You know nothing about literature or writing and you are making a fool of yourself. Don’t give up your day job."

I followed back to the commenter’s website, that of Judith Martin, and found some very nice original artwork and what appears to be a fashion portfolio.  A new kind of spam? Folks have tried the overly solicitous comment and they’ve become easy to spot, so perhaps this, filled with unwarranted negativity is the latest draw. (Though I wouldn’t feel it profitable to show your bad side to the world then expect them to buy your wares! Personally, I would be a bit fearful of dealing with one who attacks a complete stranger in this manner.)

But it looks legit–that for one reason or another, Ms. Martin found it necessary to linger at my site for half an hour and something touched a nerve so that she couldn’t hold in her contempt. I replied to her comment, but wonder: What inspires such vituperative response when simply clicking away would have sufficed? Did Ms. Martin really believe I will hold her opinion in high regard as an expert and quit blogging?

It’s an interesting phenomenon and I think that Mark Bernstein’s work on weblogging might be a good place to  help me understand the psychology behind the commenters as well as the blogging process.

Have a couple of websites set up but I don’t think they’re quite ready for transfer of the weblogs there just yet.  Need to set up the sidebars with links and widgets and stuff and just haven’t had the time to go about it as a project.  Still have a few months–quite a few months actually–to transition yet I would have liked to have had them set up before mid-June. 

Most likely this will be an mid-summer project instead, with less going on around me learning and writing-wise.  Too many pots are just as bad as too many fingers in a single one.

I believe that if I could conceive of Hell and choose its residential population, it would be only home to spammers.

just a test post to see if lunar’s suggestion to remove a file has worked to establish proper site page.

If you can read this, then I have successfully learned to set up a website with WordPress, Lunarpages, FTP, Firezilla, TextEdit, and a lotta luck.