Category Archives: general

general, site updates

Moving from Blogger to WordPress

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So far everything seems to be working with the new blog, so I thought I’d do a post about some of the issues I had moving everything over from Blogger to WordPress. Be forewarned that the steps I took below came from a mixture of skim reading websites, asking friends and trial and error, and should not be taken as me knowing what I’m doing. Enjoy!

1. Installing WordPress
WordPress has a “famous 5-minute installation” guide, though I’m not sure what it counts as installing because uploading 7-8 MB of files over FTP takes up quite a lot of that time. Anyway, putting WordPress onto the site was pretty straight forward – the one minor problem I had was I originally missed the security keys section of the WordPress configuration file, probably because the instructions that tell you to do so are written after a long list of options you are told to leave alone.

Once the blog was up I started looking for options to tweak. I tried changing the permalinks to be categorised by year then date, but WordPress didn’t have the access rights to the .htaccess file. I think this is because I uploaded all the files through ftp, and therefore all the rights to the WordPress files and folders were assigned the FTP user. This wasn’t too much of a problem at this stage because WordPress helpfully gave me the code it wanted to put in my .htaccess file, so I could do that myself.

2. Importing Blogger posts
The next step was to get all my old posts imported in. This was much less straightforward. There’s a handy import tool, but in order to use it WordPress wanted to create some new folders and ran into the same access rights issues as before.

What I did:

  • Tried to upload a picture using WordPress (which failed due to the access rights issue). Noted down the location of the folder it was trying to make.
  • Created that folder using FTP and granted full access for everyone to it (777 access). Uploaded the picture again – successful this time because everyone could now write to this folder (which would be a security risk if I had left it like this).
  • Connected to the actual web server (which fortunately I can get access to). Noted down the user that owned the picture I had just uploaded (this is the user that WordPress is using to interface with the server).
  • Removed the picture upload folders.
  • Created the folders WordPress needed for the import. On the web server changed the ownership and rights to give the WordPress user enough access over the folder.
  • Performed the rest of the import.

What I now think I could have done:

  • Manually create the folders WordPress wanted to write to using FTP.
  • Use FTP to grant full access rights to everyone (777 rights) on the lowest subfolder created.
  • Perform the import.
  • Use FTP to change access rights on the folder back to how they used to be and/or delete the new folders

WordPress doesn’t seem to put anything in the folders (blog posts are stored in a database rather than as physical webpages), so I’m not entirely sure why it needs the folders creating. My guess is it’s some kind of staging area to temporarily store the blog posts before converting them and putting them into the database. Anyway, the point is as far as I can tell WordPress needs access to the folder to perform the import, but doesn’t need access afterwards, so you can open up a security hole then close it later. I’d have to put a bit more thought into permissions if I wanted to use WordPress to upload files (e.g. pictures), but I’m happy doing that through FTP so it’s not a problem.

Now that I had folders WordPress could write to all I had to do was run the import tool. There’s a built in Blogger import option, so I ran that. It seemed to go fine, asking for my Blogger details then giving my website access to my Blogger account, but when it actually came to pulling data back it seemed to think I had three blogs with no posts in. Instead I went to Blogger and exported my posts from there, used this online tool to convert them to WordPress export format and imported them as WordPress posts. This worked fine for me, but something must have gone wrong when a friend of mine did the same thing as he somehow ended up with half of his blog and half a blog about baby care products. Moral of the story is check (at least skim read) through your posts to check that everything’s there.

3. Redirecting pages
Wanting to do things properly I decided I needed page redirection, so that anyone clicking a link to my old blog would be taken to the correct post in the new blog. I thought this was going to be reasonably easy because old Blogger posts were “/blog/year/month/postname” and new WordPress posts are “/news/year/month/postname”, so I thought all we had to do was take a request for /blog/blah and redirect it to /news/blah. Unfortunately there are a couple of differences in the way Blogger and WordPress post. For starters all Blogger posts have .html on the end of them, whereas WordPress doesn’t, which means a simple folder redirect doesn’t cut it. The following lines in an .htaccess file fixed this (thanks go to my friend Steve for writing this code)

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^blog/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([A-Za-z0-9_-]+).html$ news/$1/$2/$3/ [R]
RewriteRule ^blog/blog.htm$ news/ [R]
RewriteRule ^blog/$ news/ [R]

Second problem is that when you post to Blogger it cuts out short words such as “the”, “a” and “an” from your post permalinks (so my post “The cat, the player and the cupboard” was given the Yorkshire sounding permalink “cat-player-and-cupboard.html”). WordPress’ converted posts had the full title (“the-cat-the-player-the-cupboard”). I’m sure there’s some clever script you could write to go through all your posts removing these short words and their extra hyphens from blog links, but seen as I only had 30-odd posts I just changed the links on the affected ones manually to match the original Blogger links (minus the .html of course).

4. Making the final move
So I have a working WordPress install with all my previous posts imported in and redirects in place so that anyone trying to get to an old post will find the new version instead. As soon as I put the redirects in place visitors to my website should no longer be able to get to any of the pages of my old blog, but it’s probably a good idea to change all the links in the rest of the website to point to the new addresses.

The final issue is the RSS feed of the old blog. I don’t think you can redirect RSS feeds, so anyone reading posts solely through the old RSS will stop getting updates and therefore stop reading. So, the last thing to do is make a new post on Blogger informing people that the blog has moved and asking them to update their RSS feeds. Remember that people won’t be able get to the actual Blogger post because of the redirects, but their RSS readers will still pick up the post from Blogger’s feed. I also made a post on the new blog with a matching permalink so that if they click to view the post the RSS came from they’ll be redirected to a welcoming page on the new blog.

What I should have done from the start was use Feedburner to ‘burn’ my RSS feeds, then offer the Feedburner feed for people to subscribe to instead of the actual website feed. In other words, people subscribe to Feedburner, which then fetches the actual feed generated by my blog for them. If I had done that I’d have been able to point Feedburner at the new RSS feed and wouldn’t have lost any subscribers. I didn’t know about Feedburner when I started my blog, but that’s what I’m doing this time around.

* * *

Whew, that was a long post. I don’t know if any of that was useful, but hopefully someone will find it interesting. Now that I’ve got WordPress up and running I intend to blog a bit more often (which blogger hasn’t said that?) so we’ll see how that goes.

general, maintenance, site updates

We have moved!

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Welcome to my shiny new WordPress powered blog! Hopefully everything has moved and should be in the correct place, but if you notice any problems drop me an email.

If you subscribed to the RSS feed for my Blogger powered blog then unfortunately that feed will no longer work, but you can sign up to the new feed by clicking this link. If you didn’t subscribe to the old blog, please consider subscribing to the new one anyway!

general, maintenance, site updates

Blogger stops FTP, I’m off to WordPress

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Blogger announced on the 22nd of January (though I don’t read their blog so only found out by email today) that they’re discontinuing FTP and SFTP publishing services after March 26th. Unfortunately I rely on FTP to publish here because I don’t want to host my blog on Google’s servers.

I’ve not been overly happy with Blogger’s service, so this is probably going to be the catalyst for me moving to WordPress. I’m going to have to do some reading to see how that’s going to work/happen but it’s likely webpages, RSS feeds and so on are going to change so if you’re still interested in what I have to say watch this space for news.

art, games, general, my comics, reviews

Why you shouldn’t let me play free games

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Many thanks to SSH and his AGS Blog I downloaded my free copy of ‘Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal’ on ‘Talk Like a Pirate Day’ and spent the next several hours finishing it.

Unfortunately I wasn’t particularly impressed.

It wasn’t that it was a bad game… it’s just that it felt rushed, amateurish*, the puzzles and plot were all over the place, the interface was clunky, every line of dialogue was scripted (seriously, what’s the point of giving you four options to choose from in a conversation when Guybrush ignores your choice completely EVERY SINGLE TIME**) and it was a Telltale game, not a Monkey Island game***.

Feel free to disagree with me on any or all points, my arguments probably won’t stand up to fearsome interrogation. This post was as much an excuse to draw something with my tablet as a rant anyway.

– – –

*Except the graphics, animation and I guess the acting.

**I have a theory about this – in the classic LucasArts adventure games you could choose your response to a conversation from a number of options. Naturally you choose the one that you found the funniest, which means you’re tailoring the jokes towards your sense of humour. With Tales: Episode 1 Guybrush says the same thing no matter what you choose thus destroying all replayability, denying you control of the character and leaving you with the feeling of a potentially hilarious missed conversation.

***Monkey Island is about grog-drinking, unwashed, unpleasant, skull-digging pirates, hunting treasure and sailing to exotic Caribbean Islands. Pirates playing with dolls, scientific contraptions and frilly pink underwear do not belong here (or at most are only as background jokes ala Largo’s “laundry”, not shoved in your face as puzzles).

demos, games, general, movies, other sites

Runaway – not a road adventure

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A few days ago I got an email from someone who had stumbled across this post that I made on the AGS forums about an adventure game called Runaway – or Monkey Run? – by a German group called Pixel Team (not to be confused with the later Runaway adventure games by Péndulo Studios).

I’ve got a demo of this game from a CD collection and it has always intrigued me because although it’s rather buggy and has an awful interface, it also has several nice touches that seem to have had a lot of thought put into them. I spent a few free evenings recording videos and trying desperately to remember how to complete it (which I’m sure I’ve done, or nearly did).

I couldn’t figure it out, so here’s a video of the first puzzle to show a bit of the game in action instead.

Unfortunately I have not been able to find much out about this game (especially as searches for “Runaway” and “adventure game” find the Péndulo games), so I’m fairly sure it never got beyond this demo. If you have any more information I’d love to hear it.

The demo was released as shareware, so if you fancy playing it I’ve uploaded a copy here. It works fine under Windows XP using DOS-Box. If you manage to get into the keeper’s house (which I think is the next step from where I’m stuck) let me know how because I really can’t remember how I did it last time! If I manage to get much further I might put up a full playthrough.

Tip for playing:
When picking up items you can click the ‘Pick Up’ option, then the item. With the other interactions you generally have to click on the place you want to interact with, *then* click the verb…

demos, games, general, reviews

OneDollar’s Demos – Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships – Part 2

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Continuing on from yesterday’s post…

OneDollar Presents…
A biased and uncharitable review of Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships (Part 2)


I’m sorry but this isn’t a door lock, somebody’s just fitted an electronic game to your wall. I’d call your locksmith and ask for a refund.


Success – I opened the door! Now I can dress up in a diving suit, then attempt all the other challenges while still wearing it. According to George, Nancy has “…solved mysteries in every corner of the world”. The map shows the locations of all of Nancy’s mysteries, so “every corner of the world” actually means North America and four places in Europe. How cultured.


I can deduce one of two things from this book of instructions: either Sonny stole a monkey’s brain, or Sonny stole a monkey’s hairdo.


“You look just like this bird I met in England” sounds like another way of saying “We already rendered a parrot once, lets use it again”. I assume this previous meeting explains why Nancy shows no surprise at a bird that can carry on an intelligent conversation. Seriously, a bird like that should not be left sitting in an empty lobby, it should be on TV hosting a chat show or doing the weather or something.


George told me this golf cart needed water to work, but it runs fine. This is the person we’ve got repairing our one and only satellite phone? It doesn’t work on grass (after all, why would you want a golf cart to work on grass?) but fortunately most of this ‘ecotourism’ island is covered with winding tarmac roads.


After beating the monkey at his own game I get to choose a prize from a thrilling range! Don’t get too excited about puzzle solving though, Nancy’s quick to remind me that the parrot wanted fruit. If only this were a real adventure game, just think of the puzzles you could solve with an eye patch and a goldfish keyring…


This means 7-9-2-0-4 in international signals. Now there’s a fair chance that anyone wanting a sail is going to be using it to sail a boat, and there’s an equally fair chance that said sailor will know the international flag signals so really all this does is weed out the amateurs. Changing this code must be a real pain. Do they have a stock of little flags to put on the bin?


I found this picture hidden in the lobby. It brings home a stark realisation that somewhere, somehow a real game creator made this game and was pleased enough with it to hide a photo of his wife (or daughter, or sister or next door neighbour) in the background. Kind of touching, unless of course that picture *is* the game creator in which case its just creepy.


Having ticked off everything on the task list that the game will let me, all I’ve got left to do is to look for Bess. She clearly came to this beach but the demo won’t let me go there, so I guess I’ve been abandoned to drive the golf cart in circles around the map. Anyway, leaving the demo without a proper ending seems a good enough reason for me to do the same to this post.

End.

demos, games, general, reviews

OneDollar’s Demos – Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships – Part 1

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Time for something a little different (although I’ve done something similar before). I got bored on Sunday evening, fired up Steam and downloaded a demo of what I fully expected to be a rubbish game. What follows are my experiences.

OneDollar Presents…
A biased and uncharitable review of Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships (Part 1)


If there’s one thing that immediately made me want to play the full game, its the promise of “Mild Violence”.


Maybe they got the monkey to count them?


I always visit the options page before starting a game. Here I’m glad to note we are given not one but two resolutions: ‘small’ and ‘would fit comfortably on the screen of my phone’. Who is this game made for, those casual gamers who never found the resolution settings on their PC?


Although it’s meant to set the scene, this introduction raises more questions than it answers.
– Shouldn’t that be George and I? If you’re going to keep a journal at least learn to use correct grammar. (If not write a blog instead).
– Who on earth holds a father-daughter banquet? As a side note, arriving a day late to one of these things is never a good plan. I can only assume everyone will be dead, missing or replaced by a robot lookalike by the time Nancy arrives.
– An ecotourism resort that you can only reach by plane? Well somebody dropped the ball there. Does the cost of your ticket include carbon offsetting?
– Floatplane is a stupid name for a kind of aircraft. Not a question, just an observation.
– I guess this is the same journal Nancy will use to record all the grisly details of whatever ‘Mild Violence’-containing mystery we come across. I’m sure the red-purple frilly borders will offset that marvellously.
– “Shark Diving Resort” is possibly the worst name for a resort I have ever come across.
– Seriously, how big is this book? Judging by the size of those poorly paper-clipped postcards… erm… 29×33 centimetres closed. I’m not going to ask where she keeps it.


I have no idea what’s going on here but AHAHAHAHAHA! I’m just disappointed the actor didn’t read the “pppp” at the end of “Stooooopppp”. Also a nice contender for ‘worst water render in a modern game’.


If I were ever to kidnap someone, I don’t think I’d do it on a tiny, inaccessible island with no planes to escape with. Okay, so the story’s wholly unoriginal and the characters look like they were made in Poser, but we’ve already got intrigue, danger…


…and a task to “Win a game against a monkey”? I assumed the introduction was supposed to make me sympathise with the characters and draw me into the game’s plot, but why bother when five seconds later you’re going to a literal list of mini-games I have to play. There are many things that drive people to crime. Need, greed and apparently an insatiable urge to create treasure hunts. We’re dealing with one seriously messed up villain here… do you reckon you actually have to go diving for number 8, or is it just an excuse for them to watch Nancy dress up? Let’s not think too hard about that one.


George demonstrates how to fix a satellite phone: glare at it and shake it up and down. Also if you make the mistake of hovering your mouse over her…


“Hey George, can I talk to… ooh okay…”

Venture back tomorrow, if ye dare, for the terrible conclusivness of part 2!

general, maintenance, other sites, site updates

Feed fixed. Again.

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I moved my website between servers a while back which resulted in some slightly changed file paths. I remembered to change some Blogger details, but missed the feeds and archive paths. Because I post so regularly it’s only taken me a month to notice. Whoops!

Anyway, everything should be up and running again.

Also Eegra linked this video yesterday. It’s both hilarious and sweet.

game updates, games, general, my games

April whatever day

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So it was April Fools day today and I suppose I should have knocked up some fake screenshots of an awesome looking game and released them. Instead I just went “Huh? Oh” at several websites and the 6 o’clock news. Unfortunately there was no big AGS prank this year, though there was the odd smaller one pulled by various forum members.

Progress on mystery project since my last post has been one bug fix and one cool extra bit of code. The game is loaded with fancy and unneeded effects and rather lacking in actual game because fancy additions are quick to add and generally not very many lines of scripting, and once in they usually work first or second time. The main engine (if you can call it that) that I should be working on will take hours and hours and will need a lot of testing and fine tuning once done. Further delays may come in the form of this month’s MAGS competition which looks very interesting. If I can come up with a good, unique idea I may well enter…

On a completely unrelated note here’s a video of a water balloon being dropped in slow motion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XngQJzAmVm8&feature;=related.

general, maintenance, site updates

Slightly less feed issues

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Well, making that last post seems to have regenerated the RSS and Atom feeds (as I’d kind of hoped it would), so you can now subscribe to my updates again. Unfortunately the Blogger Reading List still isn’t talking properly to Google Friend Connect:

(And yes, I did try changing it to /blog, /blog/blog.htm and /blog/atom.xml)

It’s starting to look like I can’t do what I want to without moving my blog over to a Blogger host. What I wanted to be one process is now looking like two…

1) Subscribe to updates using the RSS feed or the Atom feed. Edit: Feed is now *here*.
2) Show that you’re following by signing in to the Friend Connect window.

If people do 1) it means I have no idea whether anyone is reading this or not, and there’s no motivation to do 2) (except perhaps to have another link to their blog somewhere). Also if people only do 2) it looks like they’re following updates but aren’t actually getting anything (unless they visit the site regularly).

I probably shouldn’t complain, after all its not like anyone *has* to read this. I’m just more likely to update regularly if I know I have an audience.

* * * * *

Anyway, information about new games coming soon!

(Also I’ll stop messing with the feed locations, so feel free to sign up – again if necessary)