This blog originated on TypePad in 2005, and since then I’ve quietly posted personal stuff here. About half of it is travelogues with the missus, and the other half is random junk that was on my mind. Starting in 2015 or so I was posting more on FB, and less here, but I still would at least log our trips here for quick reference.
Over the years, the TypePad platform got worse and worse. For example, the search function here broke years ago, as did the archive listing function, so I couldn’t even find my own posts! Sometimes a targeted Google search would take me to them, sometimes not. Nonetheless, despite the troubles, it was never bad enough for me to migrate off the platform.
After circling the drain for a few years, TypePad shut down for good on Sept 30th, and they gave us 30 days warning. After some hunting around (and finding several really terrible solutions), I came across this guy’s TypePad python scripts, which hoovers up the content from TypePad, including images, then massages it into WordPress-importable form.
So, this month I worked on that move, starting with the capturing of the old blog’s contents, including images; obviously that was the critical action to be done before Sept 30th. After I safely had that on my computer, I then set up this new website, and worked on importing/uploading all these old posts into it. As I type this, that basics are all in place, and all 219 (!) posts are now visible here. Hey look, search works again! The image handling isn’t great; it lost the text wrapping we were doing, especially in our image-heavy travelogue entries; it also lost the click-to-enlarge function, and I’ve put both on the todo list.
A major omission is the comments on the posts, which are all missing — for now. I do have them downloaded, but will need to manually upload them. Most critically, on a few posts (OK, maybe only one) I came back over the years and logged some more things via comments on that post, and I definitely want to restore that.
Et cetera et cetera. Thanks for stopping by!