Server move
I got this from Prime Hosting (the company that is hosting this blog) today:
This Thursday, 26th February 2009, we are moving our servers from London to Manchester. Since December 2008 our parent company has been building their own data centre based in Stretford, Manchester, the building is now ready for live servers.All servers (web hosting, dedicated servers, co-location etc) will be taken offline from 10.30PM Thursday. We anticipate the physical move will last between 6-7 hours from turn off in London to turn on in Manchester. We have hired a van in order to move the servers in one drive, the drive from London to Manchester, traffic and road works pending, will take no longer than four hours.
Our windows services will be moved at a different time yet to be decided so are unaffected on Thursday and will remain online.
For detailed information on the data centre, including build progress pictures, please visit www.manchesterdc.com.
Summary points:
- Funded with the companies own cash and angel investor – No debt
- 20G redundant connectivity back to London
- Capable of holding 145 racks, initial phase is 29 racks
- On site offices available for rent on the first floor
- 24/7 on site security and support staff
- Cold-aisle containment ensures the building is very efficient and uses less power for air conditioning than traditionally built data centres
- Newly built detached office building
- Professionally designed and fitted out by data centre builders inssudlows.co.uk
The construction of our own facility is a watershed moment for all those involved in the company. It provides us with a very secure facility to house our existing clients and huge expansion space for new services. The inclusion of on site staff will also enhance our support capabilities.
Two annoying blogs
As I hinted to in this blog posting, I’ve had problems with two RSS feeds that I process in the What Others Are Saying box on the right.
I had fixed them once, but I then upgraded to a new version a bit too quickly and lost my modifications. 
So now I’ll post my changes here, so that they’re saved for posterity.
First of all, my beloved Phyllis insists on writing her titles in all-caps, which looks crap when mixed with other postings. This code takes care of this:
if (stristr($url, 'phylsblog'))
$title = ucwords(strtolower($title));
Secondly, John Wells’s blog stores the date in the title field in a non-standard format, and the title in the description field:
if (stristr($url, 'phon.ucl.ac.uk')):
$day = substr($title, 0, strpos($title, ' '));
if (strlen($day) < 2)
$day = '0' . $day;
$month = substr($title, strpos($title, ' ')+1, 3);
$month = $months[$month];
$year = substr($title, strpos($title, ' ', 4)+1, 4);
$issued = $year."-".$month."-".$day." 00:30:00";
$title = $item['description'];
endif;
Wordpress upgraded
I’ve just upgraded WordPress to version 2.6.2 (from 2.6.0).
I used the Automatic Upgrade module, and it did everything for me – I just needed to press next step repeatedly.
As far as I can tell, everything is working well. Let me know if anything seems to be broken.
What others are saying
You might have noticed that I’ve added a new feature in the top right corner of my blog: What others are saying.
It’s using the homonymous WordPress extension, but I had to make a couple of modifications.
First of all, I wanted the most recent postings, whatever their source, not just one per blog, so I needed to comment out a break, but this was easy as it was already explained in the source code (but I think it should have been an option so that you wouldn’t have to mess around with the source code).
Secondly, for some bizarre reason it would at first only read the feeds for Phyllis and Dougie’s blogs, not for any other sites. I spent several hours last night trying to find the bug, but to no avail.
Today I found a solution: It turns out the RSS reader module included with WordPress is out of date, but one can get an updated version out of the FeedWordPress extension.
Thirdly, I needed to add some code to downcase Phyllis’s feed to make it match the rest.
Now I just need to convince John Wells to fix his feed. 
Wordpress plugins
Now I’ve been Wordpress for a wee while, so I thought this would be a good time to list the plugins I’m using:
- Category Cloud: Produces the “label cloud” which lists the labels I’m using in different font sizes.
- Random Posts: Lists links to random old posts.
- Similar Posts: Lists similar posts to the one you’re looking at.
- Twitter: Shows the latest status messages from Twitter.
- Wordpress.com Stats: Gives me some stats on who’s reading my blog.
- Wordpress Mobile Edition: Ensures my blog can be read on a mobile phone
Are there any other plugins I should be using? Let me know which ones you like if you’re using Wordpress, too.
Succesful move
As far as I can tell, the move to this new site has been successful.
Perhaps I’m being optimistic, but at least my traffic statistics package tells me that I’ve had 83 views since last nice, which is roughly three times as many as usual for that amount of time.
And how did people find it? For instance by searching for “iskaffe”, “all junk for sale”, “3 dages feber”, “normal weight”, “warehouse humor”, “udslæt”, “belly button men” and “spider man wegge”.
It’s amazing how people come to my blog to learn about things that I didn’t even know existed!
Move completed!
I’ve finally completed moving this blog from twid.bibulus.org to the new address, blog.widmann.org.uk.
I didn’t just change the address, but I also moved it to a different hosting company, Prime Hosting, and I switched from using Blogger to running my own WordPress installation.
I’m sure quite a few things aren’t working perfectly yet – in particular, I’m a bit anxious as to how the redirect from the old site will work – but I hope most readers will appreciate the new site.
For a start, I think the new site looks better, and there are nice new features on the right, such as a label cloud and a nice calendar. Also, the search works much better.
Please let me know whether you’re missing any features from the old site, and any other ideas for improvement!
Under renovation
I’m planning to move this blog to a different location, using different software and doing a lot of fancy things in the process.
Unfortunately, I think I’ll need to freeze this blog in the meantime, which will mean no new blog postings and no access to the comments.
It shouldn’t take too long, but of course there might be some unforeseen problems.
I haven’t yet decided when to start the conversion, but if the blog suddenly seems eerily quiet, that’s probably what’s up.
A story-writing meme
On my way home from work today, I got an idea for how to use memes to write a lot of short stories (or perhaps even War and Peace-sized novels).
So here goes: I write the ending, and I then nominate five people to write the immediately preceding paragraph (or two, if they’re keen). They should blog their contribution and finish it with a link to this posting so that readers can read the whole thing in sequential (rather than historical) order. Finally, they should then nominate five people of their own to write text preceding theirs.
Here’s the ending:
Lucinda poured herself a glass of red wine and went outside. She opened the letter and read it one last time. She then lit a match and set it on fire. When the letter had been reduced to ashes, she went inside. She had made the right decision.
I nominate Phyllis, Dougie, Sebastian, Niels and Trine (skriv bare på dansk).
Page 123
Sebastian is participating in a blogging meme with the following rules:
- Pick up the nearest book.
- Open to page 123.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the next three sentences.
- Tag five people and post a comment here once you post it to your blog so I can come see!
I’ve tried to track it back by following links from Sebastian’s blog, but the oldest one I can find (without using Google or similar) is this one from 2nd March, and that’s not the original one.
Anyway, I think it allows me to play it, too, although I haven’t been tagged.
My nearest book is The Blair Years:
TB had been working on the devolution argument and he said he was adamant he was going to make clear his view there should be no tax rise, there should certainly be a referendum and it should be made clear that Westminster was the ultimate constitutional authority – power devolved is power retained. George Robertson’s reaction was not dissimilar to Donald [Dewar]’s, that yet again TB was provoking unnecessary fights, though when you got onto the substance of the arguments, they were not far apart. TB said he could only promise what he intended to deliver, and this was the best way to do it.
Who should I tag? Of course Phyllis and Dougie, and perhaps Mailund, Wegge and Rasmus.