Dear readers,

As you can see, Slash7 is almost back to its former beautiful glory. Once I write some custom liquid plugins for Mephisto to handle the rest of the sidebar, and customize some section templates, it’ll be all the way better… and perhaps even better than before.

So you wanna be a convert…

If you’re curious about switching from Typo to Mephisto, there’s never been a better time. My conversion process was a little bit painful, but do-able. I found some bugs in the conversion scripts (so you don’t have to!), and Rick Olsen, being the world’s most generous and timely soul, fixed them right then so that I could enter the fold.

My suggestion for conversion goes something like this:

1. Dump your Typo database using MySQL dump, or whatever tool your RBDMS of choice offers. For example, in MySQL, you would type: mysqldump -u username -ppassword typo_db_name > backup_file_name.sql.
2. Get Mephisto, create a new database with your backup file (create the new database; load it up with mysql -u username -ppassword new_db_name < backup_file_name.sql).
3. Set up Mephisto’s database.yml file with the info to access new_db_name. Set it as the development environment DB.
4. Go to Mephisto’s directory and run the converters, like thus: script/runner "Mephisto.convert_from :typo" -e development
5. Rename the default theme (in RAILS_ROOT/themes/) to site-1, because that seems to be the actual default theme name.
6. When all this is done, start Mephisto up in development mode (preferrably using Mongrel)

Caveat: these steps are from memory. I should have written this down when I did it, but I was too busy doing it. Mea culpa But as long as you work off a copy of your database, you will be fine. At most, you lose a few hours of your life. Never, ever work off the live database.

Now you’ll have to work on your theme and whatnot… which is a whole ‘nother story.

In which the author offers temptation…

I’m also working on something secret and delicious which I shall be posting tomorrow. Indeed, on a Saturday.

Why Saturday posting? you might be asking. (I know you’re not actually thinking that at all, but play along with me for a moment. Please?)

In which the author whines about cruel Fate…

Well, remember how I wrote that I’d sprained both ankles in New York? This was strictly true, since I twisted them both and they both hurt, except that my left ankle was really only just a bit twingy. I’d been able to walk on it the entire time with only annoying discomfort (even though it was compensating for the right), and so on. By yesterday evening, I felt good enough to walk normally, and I noticed that the less I favored my more-sprained ankle, the better my whole body felt.

Apparently I was being premature, because in the parking lot of my local grocery store my left (barely sprained, all-better) ankle suddenly buckled under me and sent me careening towards the curb. Not only did I sprain my left ankle quite severely, but I banged up both my shins.

Now I really can’t walk at all, or get out of bed without help, or even straighten out my left foot. I thought the sprain I gave my right ankle last week was unpleasant, but this is a whole ‘nother ballpark.

At least this leaves me with lots of “sofa time” that I can use to be constructive.