A Random Pattern

I’ve imported all my old posts from Blogger, as well as my posts on WordPress.com. The importer for Blogger was…wow! Amazing! If you are using WordPress 2.0, ignore the links you’ll find from Google on using scripts, Justinsomnia, etc. Instead, just use the importer built into your WordPress (WP) dashboard.

I also found the theme I liked from WordPress.com, Rubrics. It took a little searching, but Tom Raftery updated it for WP 1.5 and it seems to work fine on my WP 2.0 installation. I don’t know that it will be my final theme, but it’s certainly way better than the default.

I also found HemingwayBright, which looks like it might be really nice, as well as a modified version called Hemmed (included by default with Dreamhost hosting, among other themes). Expect to see these themes tried out, but hopefully I’ll decide and clean one up pretty quickly.

Speaking of WP Themes, I’ve found some really good reading material for newbies on this wordpress site. Seems to be someone who writes a lot about WP, as far as I can tell.

Final thing: for now at least, I’m offering a nice discount on Dreamhost hosting. Use the promo code “randompattern” (without the quote marks) for a 10% discount (capped at $30). Why would I do that? Well, Dreamhost will give me money for referring people, and I’m just sharing it. So, good deal for you if you’re going to host anyways, and good deal for me because I’ll make some money – which will certainly help me to produce better content.

I’ll return to my regularly scheduled Ubuntu posts shortly.

I haven’t posted much this week, but a lot’s happened in the background. Here’s a quick summary, and you can expect me to return to a more normal posting schedule.

The Ubuntu box is back up – I ran a memory test, then rebooted a few times and it started up fine. During the memory test I discovered my RAM is bad, so that’s probably the reason for all the startup issues with that computer.

I also had a little trouble getting Remote Desktop working again, until I remembered to check my configuration for Firestarter (the firewall). Sure enough, I had momentarily lost power, so my laptop had a new IP address. I learned how to allow access to a whole range of IP’s through firestarter’s help site (though it was a little hard to understand). Here’s the short version: IP address/netmask. So if you want everything on 192.168.0.x to have access, add 192.168.0.1/255.255.255.0 to Firestarter’s “allow” list.

The frequent (brief) losses of power here probably don’t help any of my computers, so time to look into a UPS. Any recommendations for home use?

Today I finally got my own domain: ransomedhome.com. It’s a little raw right now, but I’ll be cleaning it up over the next few weeks, and moving everything there. In fact, I’m already importing my posts from here, and this may be my last post here (so update your bookmarks / feeds!) I will post a few more times to remind everyone of the move…

If you’re curious about string theory, or what in the world 10 dimensions mean, here’s a really nice graphical demonstration to confuse you explain everything.

That’s it, folks. More to follow soon.

Only been working with this for a few minutes, and all I can say is,

WOW!!!

This is WAY Better than Blogger!  There’s some parts a little slower or more complicated, so for the beginning blogger (especially if you’re non-technical) Blogger may be a better starting point.  But if you want to do much with your blog, you’re going to quickly find yourself too limited and frustrated to stay on Blogspot.  So if you’re serious, try out WordPress.

Oh, this is soooo much better! 

First Post! (on WordPress, that is.)

Those of you coming from my other blog on Blogger will recognize the signs after my complaint about Blogger – I’m here to check out WordPress. Still have to get a hosted service and all, but this will at least give me an idea what WP has to offer. From a brief survey earlier, it looks like WP would be better for me than MT (Movable Type – or Typepad), even though I’m not opposed to paying for good software. Anyone who wants to weigh in, please do.