A conversation on Facebook led to my being pointed at a map of Anhalts, presumably assembled by Josh Feit.

It seems I have completed image-file migration, not hard at all as this implementation of the blog inhabits the same domainspace as the prior. My goodness, though, I sure didn’t exercise good asset hygiene. Well, I suppose that’s to be expected in an umpteen-year digital publishing project.

This blog’s been up longer now, about 13 years, than the entire time I lived in Seattle before standing it up, about 12 years.

Had jury duty this morning, in Shoreline. The courthouse is on Meridian at the north end of a park and I dove right by it at first. Once parked I joined a security queue and then eventually about fifty people in a courtroom. We took some forms and filled them out and eventually a court employee came out and gave us some instructions before beginning a disqualification process. First, people with medical reasons to not serve were excused (illness, doctor appointment, being elderly enough that you couldn’t hear, etc.).

Then, people with hardship commitment conflicts (childcare, self-employed).

Then, she asked everyone who “wouldn’t be paid” to star up and move to the excused side of the room. I reflexively did this because I literally would not be paid while on jury duty, with the exception of the $10 per diem.

After I had left the courthouse, I realized what she probably actually meant “wouldn’t be paid” by an extant employer. So I think although I actually followed her instructions to the letter, her instructions were flawed and I shouldn’t have been excused on that basis. Oh well.

Yeesh, just as Viv got home I went to look at the current theme and the site wasn’t rending properly at the domain root. Turns out I had forgotten that MT was on an hourly rebuild with a fixed path and it tossed out all its root-level files into the WP directory, overwriting the indexing.

Well, that’s what the bugshake is for.

Well, this is OK for now. Next week I’ll grind on themes a bit more.

Any given URLs in the form of <domain>/archives/<6-digit post ID>.html now redirect to <domain>/archives/<1 to 6-digit post ID> – I had to change the default URL format from <yyyy>/<mm>/<dd>/<post-title>, which is a shame.

But that should do it!

Skinning is next. I guess it’s OK to leave the book look behind. I suppose I’ll start by rummaging for a pre-made.

WP has definitively retained the MT post IDs and spot checking indicates that they are addressable via URL in the form of <domain>/?p=<1 to 4-digit post ID>.

So I just need to set up a rewrite rule in .htaccess – there are some varying approaches to managing the unpadded ID form – MT output six-character ID strings so post ID 39 was incorporated into the URL as 000039 and 5769 was 005769.

I keep waffling about whether I should concentrate on skinning this site first or if I should fix the URL redirects first. I guess since I need to move this site from the deployment address to the final address redirects come first.

I haven’t been writing here because of the long drawn out nature of the migration. I have written some stuff on FB that I should bring over. This is a list for me to refer to regarding topics for here:

• In October I went to Virginia for a large-scale gathering of my birth family. At least 200 people went. I was able to go with my parents (my adoptive parents, Clay and Neva), but unfortunately my wife could not attend due to work requirements
• My wife’s unhappy current situation and experience at work
• The recent death of one high school acquaintance followed hard on by the current critical illness of another

Links for reference to accomplish the URL rewrites needed to preserve old search-engine links and to combat general bit rot:

WP official info on MT imports (old but with a lot on redirects)

Mudita on the migration and redirects (2005 updated in 2010)

Basically, there are three components: using .htaccess, ensuring that the WP import has access to the old MT post numbers (something I don’t think I spent time on at import), and determining the best way to combine this data. One possibility is actually to do a cold .htaccess mapping on a post-by-post basis but that would involve forcing 404s to run through a text search of about 7000 lines which sounds like a bad idea.