Jon’s Project Blog

Just got this blog back up and running. My host migrated to a better server and I had to recompile php and the works, since this runs on fastcgi. Anyhow, apparently I had compiled php with ipv6 enabled and wordpress kept on farting out the error message “error establishing database connection”, even though I had logged into the sql server via commandline multiple times and verified that everything was there.

After an hour of searching, I found the answer on the wordpress forums. The gist of it is, that the DB_HOST variable in wp-config.php had to be changed to 127.0.0.1. After this correction, the blog magically worked again.

Note, I am not leaving you dry. I’ve currently been working on a simple deluge plugin for personal use which I may release, as well as a simple MathML to latex converter using my MathML-in-gwt kit (GWT converter). Currently it can spit out a decent amount of latex, but I am still need to automate the compatibility of the symbols and such.

This is a greasemonkey script for firefox (not sure if it works with other browsers since it uses GM_openinTab). Simply put it can generate RSS feeds for old xanga entries, should you want to download them for archiving purposes for a diary perhaps, or should you want to migrate to another blogging framework. It took me around 2 hours in the wee hours of 4-6am in the morning to write.

I was trying to figure out why people were so into wordpress. It is pretty neat! Using WordPress’s rss import feature, I have demonstrated that I can import my old xanga entries for free and painlessly.

Install Greasemonkey script: Xanga2rss

Features:

• Handles Titles
• Handles Dates
• Handles Post content fairly well.

Instructions:

1. Get Firefox, Greasemonkey Firefox-Addon (If you don’t have them both).
2. Install using the above link.
3. Visit a xanga blog, and look for the “Generate XML” link on the bottom of the page near the prev,next navigation links. This will open a new tab with the RSS 2.0 feed which an assortment of blogs (including wordpress) can read and import.
4. For ease, I suggest you grab repagination, or antipagination depending on which firefox you have. Then right-click the “next” link, and goto repaginate, where you can combine shotgun amounts of pages into the current page. Go back to the first (actually never tried the other “Generate XML” links) “Generate XML” links and the resulting tab will hold all the posts.

TODO:

1. I would like to very much figure out whether or not it would be possible to import comments via rss.