PapaScott

Converting Manila

Back in April 2002, I converted my Manila weblog at editthispage.com to Movable Type using XML files exported from Manila and a simple Perl script (using XML::Twig).

This month (2 weeks before the weblogs.com outage), Susan Kitchens found my old script and asked me about converting her Manila site http://www.2020hindsight.org (after she had painstakingly extracted her site into XML). I thought that the Movable Type Import Format would be a good target, since it can be imported into many different weblogging systems.

However, Manila had become more complicated in the meantime, and I was unable to quickly apply my script to Susan’s files (i.e. I’ve gotten stuck), and I’m short of time. Since a number of people had publicly offered to help export Manila sites, people with a probably a better understanding of Manila and XML than I have, I decided to plea for help via a Wiki page entitled ConvertingManila. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

New Religion

I take it back. Rooney (45+1, 68) is God.

Auf die Palme

Our new cat Nena had a unique way of celebrating Midsummer this morning. She decided she wanted to be let outside at the crack of dawn, which at our latitude was 3:30 am. She’s learned that she can wake us up by rustling through the potted palm in our bedroom. Very much annoyed, I brought her downstairs, threw her outside and went back to bed.

My wife, however, couldn’t get back to sleep and went downstairs. She must have let Nena back in, because at some point the cat was back upstairs rustling again through the palm. This time she was clumsy, toppling the palm with 20-liter pot and potting soil onto the floor with a crash. Needless to say, the night was now ruined, as well as the day. Tonight both the palm and the cat will be set outside.

Auf die Palme bringen: to drive (someone) crazy.

Null Number

Latvia 0:0 Germany After looking brilliant against Holland, Germany today just looked tired and frustrated. But look on the bright side. They have now doubled their point count of Euro 2000.

DSLed

Much to my surprise, our DSL connection was activated on schedule today and the splitter arrived with today’s post. Alas, our ISDN NTBA and DSL splitter are in our basement washroom, where I have no ethernet cable, so we can surf from the washing machine but not from our desktop PCs. I’ve put our WLAN access point in our entryway under the coat rack, with a cable to the basement, so we can at least use our notebooks until I can cable things correctly.

Expert Opinion

We had our appointment today with the speech expert from Hannover. She approved Christopher the speech therapy kindergarten in Winsen, which was what we wanted. The costs will be split between the county and our health insurance. Now that the plans are concrete, I can make arrangements to work part-time starting in August and maybe do some free-lancing with the extra time I’ll have at home. I’m happy that I won’t be forced to leave work.

While Christopher is making improvements in areas like vocabulary, his fluency of speech (Redefluss) is still jerky, sometimes lapsing into stuttering. It will be good for him to be in a small group of his peers. He won’t be starting until fall, but the kindergarten has already invited us to their summer party this weekend. They are hoping for warm weather for water games.

Where I Won’t Be

I won’t be able to make it to BlogTalk in Vienna next month. I have to do the child care thing at home, as my wife has to be in Lisbon on the 4th. Her company is sponsoring a football tournament there or something.

Egil Aarvik

A couple of years ago, I posted about the possibility that a distant cousin was married to a member of the Norwegian royal family. My great-uncle who told the story has since passed away, and among his effects was a newspaper article about Egil Aarvig (1912-1990), Norwegian politician, newspaper editor and chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. My grandmother’s maiden name was Aakvik, so it could very well be that we are related to the late Norwegian politician. Whether he had married into the royal family is yet unclear.

PS: Mena Loves You

New lower pricing for Movable Type, and fairer licenses. Especially cool is the free license for small non-profits.

Pardon Me?

Did Holland really leave both their defense and their midfield at the hotel this evening? Did Germany really play the best 45 minutes I’ve ever seen them play? Germany leads Holland at halftime 1:0.

Update: Final 1:1. But a good result, and very entertaining to watch. Holland was lucky to tie, and Germany could well have won.

Tip Me Not

I joined the Euro pool at zeit.de (pointed to by Jim, and after the first 3 days my result is so remarkable that I should post my picks here, so you have an idea of what’s not to happen. I have one (un, eins, uno) point, and it took a herioc effort by Zidane to achieve that. Yesterday, for example, I picked Italy to win and Sweden to tie. Today I’ve picked the Czechs and Holland to win, so things are looking good for a couple of upsets.

Meanwhile Nico is complaining about the announcing talents of Reinhold Beckmann. They must not get ZDF in Lummaland, because there’s nobody worse (not even Faßblinder) than Johannes B. (as in Brainless) Kerner. Meanwhile Neil is going on about the wonderful German announcers, which I guess means the British have it even worse than anyone had imagined. (I personally use a face-recognition system on my TV that activates the mute button whenever Beckenbauer’s face appears on the screen.)

Grill It (Like A Polaroid Picture)

I’ve been preoccupied this weekend by my wife’s birthday celebration, work matters, hay fever, and Euro 2004, but I would be remiss not to mention BlogGrill in Hamburg last Thursday. I was there. I did man the grill for a time (after expressing doubt about the grilling skill of urban Germans and the equipment used). I did not introduce myself around, and thus missed half the people who were there. Next time we need name tags, maybe stickers that say “Hi, my URL is….".

The main impression I gained is that an amazing number of north German bloggers once worked for McDonald’s.

Zidane is God!

France 2:1 England Zidane (90+1), Zidane (90+3)

Update: Haiko and I did not coordinate our blog entries on this match, even though it may appear that we did.

Euro Election

David laughs, Nico cries. In today’s Euro-Parliament election (results presented between Euro 2004 matches), with less than 22% the SPD has its worst national post-war result. They have less than half the vote of the Union (45%). Maybe Schröder should think about buying the rights to Project 18 from the FDP.

What I find worrying is that some of those SPD voters are heading to the ex-communist PDS. Over 6% in the Europe vote, in today’s state election in Thuringa over 26% (SPD just 15%). Fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the former SED should by all rights be in the dustbin of history. The failed German reunification is keeping them alive.

Sherpas for WordPress

Shelley had a bad experience with the new WordPress bug tracker Mosquito, and Matt (among others) thought she was being a poor sport about it. Nonetheless, Shelley does have a good point. To be successful, WordPress has to provide support to users that is both effective and understandable.

Bug trackers are a subject near and dear to my heart, since maintaining them is one of my main responsibilities at work (using Mantis, the same software behind Mosquito). My bug trackers at work take a relatively closed approach. The customer communicates solely with a supporter, not directly with the developers. The support is able to solve most problems on his own. If he needs help, his communication with the developers in the tracker are flagged as “private", and are invisible to the customer. We thus use Mantis as both a support tool and a development tool, but the two functions are kept separate.

The supporter is the main link in the process. He acts as a sherpa between the customer and the developers, and decides whether the issue is a customer-side problem that he can help the customer solve, or a software problem that requires a developer (or a feature request that needs to be negotiated into the software spec). The customer doesn’t really care what kind of problem he has, he simply wants it solved.

I’m not sure if this model can be applied to an open source project. Sherpas for open source are few and far between. But without them, an open-to-all bug tracker can disintegrate into chaos. Support for WordPress is probably best given in a forum rather than a bug tracker, with real people and plain language. Technical projects like Samba or FreeBSD can take a ‘apply the diff and see if it works’ approach, but WordPress probably needs to act a little more commercial to serve its users well.