Category Archives: Technical Nonsense

A Brief Boring Technical Note

Hey, remember when I moved my site to a new host? That’s going just fine, no problems there. One tiny issue, though.

See, back when I converted my site from Movable Type to WordPress, I had to do so in a weird way so I didn’t wipe out all my old stuff. This necessitated writing a bazillion redirects so that any old links would point to the new pages, not the old ones.

Well, it seems that I totally forgot about this when I moved to a new host. The new host is not yet set up with all these redirects. Every post since 2006 is in the “system,” so to speak, but if you have an old URL for anything on this site (pre February 2011 or so), it will probably give you a “Can’t find that page, yo” message.

The good news is, my new host can do redirects a lot easier than my old one, where I literally had to go into the htaccess file, type out the redirect, and hope I didn’t destroy my site by accident. The bad news is, there are still four-plus years of posts that I need to do this for.

I’ve already done this for all of the 1999 Project posts, plus a few others that I know get consistent traffic. I will work my way back and eventually get through all of them. Again, everything that ever appeared on Scratchbomb (the post-2006 blog version, anyway) is here, up and available for your bemusement. Just a heads up that if you have an old link, it may not work for the next couple of weeks or so.

Of course, if you have one of those old links, you won’t be able to read this note. In which case, thank you for allowing me to waste everyone’s time.

Making the Move

You may have noticed I haven’t been posting much on this site of late. Or maybe you haven’t. Well, look, it’s been happening and we’re all just going to have to deal with it, okay?

The biggest reason is due to me writing a bunch of stuff for other places–be it at Amazin’ Avenue or the kinds of links you can see to your right (under MC Elsewhere). But there was another reason.

See, this site had been hosted by Go Daddy for a while. I can’t tell you why I chose them to begin with; perhaps I was swayed for their TOO SHOCKING FOR TV! ads. In any case, once you sign up with a host, it’s very, very easy to just stick with them until kingdom come. I even renewed my hosting account with them late-ish last year.

Then the safari kerfuffle happened, which caused many people to jump ship. I thought the whole thing was despicable, too, but I also thought I simply didn’t have the time to make a move. I felt stretched thin with my work, non-work, and family obligations, and adding a project like this to the pile seemed like pure insanity to me. I went through such an enormous hassle moving this site from Movable Type to WordPress in early 2011 that I didn’t have the stomach or the will to go through (what I assumed would be) a similar ordeal again. I felt crappy about my lack of action, but not so crappy that I did anything about it.

Then, SOPA. I’m sure you know what that is by now, and if you don’t, frankly, you don’t deserve to be on the internet. Suffice to say, Go Daddy was one of many high profile corporations who voiced support of SOPA, which I am one billion times against. I’m aware that A) SOPA is now dead, and B) Go Daddy eventually stepped back from their stance. However, they did so in such a tepid way you can easily see them changing their mind about this issue yet again when it’s convenient.

Because of SOPA and Go Daddy’s stance thereon, many people took their sites to greener pastures. And now, I was even busier than I was when Go Daddy did their last reprehensible thing. The pressure to make the move had never been greater, and the time available in which to do it had never been shorter.

One thing I keep harping on in my online writing (particularly at AA) is the media; specifically, their perceptions, their narratives, and the way they deal with the news. One thing that drives me nuts is how often members of the media take a certain tack because it’s the path of least resistance. Rather than investigate what is actually going on or the historical roots of whatever might be happening, they simply tap into what they think is going on, or what they think people will want to hear, because they’re lazy.

I realized that the longer I continued to host my site with Go Daddy, the closer I became to being one of Those People. I don’t have a right to criticize cheap expediency in others if I continue to support a company I disagree with immensely simply because I fear the hassle involved with leaving. Plus, there’s every reason to think I will be exponentially more time-crunched in the future. If I didn’t make a move now for schedule reasons, things are unlikely to improve on that front any time soon.

So I deliberately scaled back on the writing I did here at Scratchbomb, because I didn’t know how long the move would take and I didn’t want to add more stuff to the pile of things I needed to transfer. And because the less I wrote here, the less traffic I drove Go Daddy’s way.

Then I researched what it would take to get the transfer done, and it turned out it wasn’t that huge of a deal after all. So I got a new web host, moved my site over, and voila. There were a few hiccups along the way, but all were resolved in fairly short order. Now, the site you’re looking at is no longer hosted by Go Daddy. It all took way quicker than I thought, which makes me angry with myself for not doing it sooner.

I have to send enormous thank yous to Jeff Lyons, who walked me through the finer points of moving a WordPress site and answered way more questions than he really had to. He helped a lot back when I transferred my site from Movable Type to this environment, and he helped just as much now. I continue to be grateful.

It’s a small thing, really, which I should have taken care of much sooner than I did. But now it’s done, and I can write about the laziness and hypocrisy of others with a clean conscience. It’s a nice feeling.

A New Way to Like Me!

Once again, Scratchbomb has tinkered with that which was not broken. I’ve streamlined the sharing functions at the bottom of each post. You can still tweet all about it to your friends. THAT HAS NOT CHANGED! You can still like a post on Facebook. THAT HAS ALSO NOT CHANGED. But you can also now click the little Facebook icon to add a post to your wall along with a pithy comment.

You can also give Scratchbomb posts a Google +1. What’s that, you ask? I barely know! I do know that it may or may not have something to do with Google+, which I am signed up with even though I barely understand it any better than the aforementioned button. But everyone’s all excited about Google+, and let it never be said I can’t jump on a bandwagon with the best of ’em. In addition, there’s a brand new button to add this to Google Reader, if you’re into that sorta thing.

Finally, I’ve added a new dropdown menu that allows you to share a post on whatever weird other social media things you use, you weirdos. The most important thing is, this gives you a brand new way to tell the world how awesome I am. So please, use it early and often!