First of all, welcome to the new incarnation of my blog. Like most pMachine users, I talked myself into switching to Expression Engine. pMachine was discontinued a month ago, but current users were given a discount to purchase Expression Engine. I didn’t know if it was worthwhile since pMachine was serving adequately, and it didn’t seem like I really needed the advanced capabilities of Expression Engine. But, as always, I am a sucker for the latest and greatest: I broke down and purchased Expression Engine, installing it back on March 14.It’s been an interesting learning experience. Interesting in that I was afraid I had wasted my money. I was dismayed to find everything was much harder to accomplish with Expression Engine. Its designers tout how “powerful” the new software is; meanwhile I was missing how simple and easy to use pMachine had been. For instance Expression Engine does not allow font formatting in its titles. I needed to find a hack just to italicize (or to add quotations marks, as I did two entries below)! And the column on the right was very easy to create in pMachine, using a series of what are called “pBlocks”. Those modules have been done away with now. Instead, I had to create a whole separate blog and embed it into this blog. Before, it was as simple as going to the pBlock screen and typing a list; now I have to open up two blogs and edit and republish their entries.
Still, there are a few things I like and other things which look promising. I like the new look, even though it’s only a slight tweak of a default template. I like being able to assign entries to multiple categories. And I’m looking forward to moblogging — once I get a cellphone with which I can moblog.
I’ve been blogging here in secret for almost a month. The preceding nine entries will probably appear new to you. I didn’t want to make the changeover, or any public announcement, until everything was settled. Well, it hasn’t, but I’m changing over anyway. The original title of this entry was supposed to be “A Week With EE” or “Two Weeks With EE”, but as usual time got away from me. I needed to transition all nine-hundred-some-odd entries to EE’s way of publishing, but I only got halfway through. It’s less appealing to edit my own blog’s database now that I spend my workdays editing my workplace’s database. All the entries are present and accessible, mind you; but the first half have not been assigned any categories and their category icon ‘bug’ will be a broken link.
As I said, time got away from me, as usual. But also as usual, I don’t feel like waiting any more. I’m making the change now, out of restlessness, even though the new-and-improved blog isn’t really ready for it. But then again, how many people want to read my thoughts from 2002? (So few want to read my thoughts on 2005 that we’re probably talking negative numbers here.) Anyway…I hope you like the new look.
