t0dd.net

Come…to the dark side

by todd on 10/03/09 at 9:24 pm

In September 2004 I was trapped in the Oakland airport and I came up with the idea for a blog. I say trapped because until the airplane shows up, ejects it’s passengers and leaves with you on it, is there any other way to describe it? I was also feeling vaguely trapped because it was a Sunday night after a Raiders game. To say I don’t like football is a vast understatement. To be surrounded by drunken Raiders fans after a losing game…is it any surprise I retreated inside my own head to pass the time?

The idea was simple. Take a picture of whatever I was doing, from my new cameraphone, every day at the exact same time, and post it to a blog. This wasn’t an original idea but my original take was that I would do it all from the phone. Take the picture, write the post, post to the Internet, all from the handset. There was no software at the time to do what I wanted to do. Luckily I had a laptop, knew how to program PHP and had a couple hours to kill. Thus 606diaries.com was born.

The site looked like crap (most notably lacking a single image on the entire thing) but it had an efficient database design and did exactly what I wanted to. It was a fun diversion and I ended up liking two things about it way more than I thought I would. I loved to blog on a regular basis and I loved tinkering with the software.

Almost immediately after I started blogging WordPress 1.5 was released and I began to get pressure from my various blogging friends to make my blog a WordPress blog. There were other suggestions as well but give me a break. I didn’t like WordPress but the other options at the time were just putrid. You couldn’t post to WordPress at the time from email, anyway, and I didn’t really feel like porting my email posting code over to some new codebase. I also knew my email posting code was a filthy, dirty hack and I didn’t really want anyone besides myself to see it so writing a plug-in for WordPress was definitely out of the question. Over the years WordPress got steadily better but I secretly gloated at every new exploit and hack that showed up. My code might not have been perfect but since it had an installed base of 1 it was unlikely that anyone was going to systematically discover any exploits in it. My code worked, the site looked OK and any new functionality was a dirty, filthy hack away.

Then -he- changed everything.

My dear friend, John Hawkins, one of the people pressuring me to change, hosted WordCamp Las Vegas in January 2009. I went to be supportive and help out as necessary but I felt a little like an interloper, an outcast, unclean. For two days I sat and listened to talks about plug-ins and SEO and user experience and XMLRPC interfaces. The thought of having to replicate some of the fantastic functionality that already existed or was on its way for WordPress, frankly, unmanned me. There was no way I could compete with hundreds of contributors to WordPress around the globe. In my mind I had already started to plan the conversion. I hadn’t acted on it though and then he asks me for some help on a WordPress plug-in. Even though I’m not a user I’ve still helped him hack together a plug-in before but there was this moment in our chat…looking back here it was. The germ of an idea was obviously growing

toddh: I’ll also have to see what the state of the 606diaries-like functionality is. Maybe it’s all good now. Who knows
Hawkins: he he. that would be cool if you could move it over.

The nerve…

He totally slow played that.

What followed was a whole lot of conversation back and forth. Helpful advice here and there about what theme to use, what plug-ins to try. Next thing I knew I was spending hours porting over my existing design into the WordPress theme I had picked. It was frustrating to say the least. See for yourself

Hawkins: uh, those images are a bit tall.
toddh: I will stab you, don’t think I won’t
Hawkins: oh, on my screen they were showing up more than 1 full screen height tall.
Hawkins: the “I will stab you” comment is classic.
Hawkins: mainly cause I don’t think you are kidding…. at all.

And he’s right. Sometimes the entire conversion process just seemed like too much work. It didn’t matter though. Much like I loved the original hacking of my custom software I was solving new and interesting problems now with WordPress.

Hawkins: there will, eventually, be a point where you love me for making you switch to WP, right? right? hello?
toddh: …we’ll see
Hawkins: Just think of how much I have helped you learn…
toddh: forced to learn
Hawkins: helped/forced, tomato/ketchup
toddh: At times it was like being chained to a desk with my eyelids taped open, reading W3C documentation
toddh: Oh, that’s a shitty analogy because except for the tape THAT WAS ACTUALLY HAPPENING
Hawkins: Oh ya know what, I have a suggestion for ya…
Hawkins: don’t upgrade. you should leave 606 the way it is.
toddh: I hate you
Hawkins: Or, better yet… have you ever tried Movable Type?
Hawkins: Drupal?
toddh: I think Warren Ellis said it the best in a recent twitter message “get out of my fucking office or i will stab you right in the fucking gizzard STABBY STABBY FUCKING STABBY”
toddh: you can modify those words as necessary to fit our current situation
Hawkins: I can’t tell you the level of enjoyment I have in our little conversations here.

Days of hacking later, it’s finally coming together

Hawkins: ok, here’s my suggestion… remove the >> from the recent comments on the right. Just leave a trailing … and have it link to the comments on the full post page. It’ll save you the trouble of the images breaking crap. And, it’s how I would expect it to work as a user, anyway.
toddh: LOL, easier said than done. I can’t find the damn >>
Hawkins: oh, and you still need to fix the color of the footer. Oh, and one other thing I was thinking…
toddh: Need I remind you “STABBY STABBY FUCKING STABBY”
Hawkins: have you tried searching for “raquo”
toddh: That I have not
Hawkins: the urge to stab should subside if I’m right.
Hawkins: right?
toddh: jesus christ it’s in this plugin 89 times
toddh: that’s not an exaggeration
Hawkins: you can NOT blame that on me!
toddh: and yes, I have less of an urge to stab you because now I know how to delete it
Hawkins: FTW!

The rest is history. My beloved 606 is converted and we embark upon a brave new world. Throughout the entire process I was also imagining this site as a secondary blog. Less a structured, single-purpose blog and more of a regular multi-purpose with longer posts, product/book/movie/restaurant reviews, rants and general bloggery. I knew the first post I was going to write too. Unfortunately I had made the mistake of mentioning this to Hawkins. Not content to merely drag me kicking and screaming into the WordPress world, with constant listening to threats of stabbing by me, he continues to poke the bear.

Hawkins: I am still waiting for your post on t0dd.net about the process of switching to WP on 606 and all the threats to stab me.
toddh: I know me too. Yet every day I wake up and it hasn’t magically written itself :-/
Hawkins: it too must be an asshole then.
toddh: that it is

If he shows up stabbed and I’m implicated. This blog post is my record to the world. It will be totally justified and no jury would convict me with this as defenses exhibit A. Right?