Finally spent an hour doing diffs on the various entry-export data piles, and very happily, the WXR-format export routine seen here involving setting up a new index template is now proven to work. The missing entries in the export are simply the entries set to draft status.

So the next procedure is to work on correcting the stored copy for the Twitter archive entries and reimport them into the MT DB. Once I get them into human-readable format I’ll be good to migrate in earnest.

In other computey news I have been taking a javascript course from UW online. The class meets in a classroom downtown on Mondays at 6 and the lectures are presented in a distance learning format as well. It’s the first computer-programming class I have taken since PHP in 2001 and the first distance learning class I have ever taken.

I was able to take good handwritten notes in the PHP class. Handwritten notes are the gold standard for effective speech-based learning presentation, but the classroom standards and needs have changed sufficiently that I have found it to be completely impossible to take notes with a pen and paper, copy and paste code samples into an open note document on the laptop, follow along in the online presentation, ask questions via chat window, and develop and debug example code in the browser as the classes are being taught.

So I’ve moved on to all-typing note taking and consolidated the cut-and-paste doc with actual interactive note taking. However, and this is really kind of an issuer I think, the predominance of detailed presentation slides made available as PDFs largely obviates the need to recopy the data as it is presented. This is inherently unfortunate, because it means that rather than reiterating the data presented in my mind prior to consigning it to a record-keeping medium, I am largely preoccupied with making sure my interaction with the available text preserves it accurately in a mechanical sense.It certainly speeds up the presentation of the material but it must necessarily degrade the quality of apprehension needed in order to effectively capture it.

I suppose this reflects the way we use and have integrated computers into our day to day lives as information retrieval and sharing devices – I would imagine that hardcore date-based memorization in disciplines such as art history is essentially de-emphasized outside the area on an individual’s academic concentration, where the dates will be memorized anyway by necessity and exposure. For everything else, there’s wikipedia and more-vetted sources.