I’m one of the first kids on the block to be playing with Movable Type 4.2, I’d bet. My upgrade went smoothly until I tried to publish a new post, when I got a nice error about using a MTArchiveNext tag without a date context. Saywhat? My templates worked a moment ago.

Long story short (and written mostly for Google): MT 4.2 automatically added a handful of “archive mappings” to the Entry Listing template. Those archive mappings include ones (like category archives—which I’ve never used) that do not provide a date context, causing my date-based tags to fail.

Aaaaanyway, let me know if anything else broke. Maybe next time I’ll think twice before trying to upgrade something at midnight…

I missed my target by a day or two. Oh well. Thanks to Marin for the new sidebar idea, as well as for help picking out pictures.

Feel free to hit “reload” on your browser if a giant ! didn’t just appear over your head.

[*giant ! may also be due to a fubared layout. In that case, hit “reload” until a different giant ! appears over your head.]

Internet Explorer users don’t get all the lovely alpha transparency that everyone else does (pssst! Use Firefox), but at least it still looks OK there.

…

Update: I now see the shortcoming of my IE/win workarounds, in sidebars that don’t extend all the way to the base of the window for short entries, and when the window is so small that horizontal scrolling is forced. I’ll have to work on those later; right now it’s time to sleep.

If you see this, then you’ve hit my new server. I AM A GENIUS!!!!

Er… ahem.

While I continue to unpack, you may continue to entertain yourself by… um… reading bash.org.

Yesterday I had a series of breakthroughs in the implementation of AWStats on my new server… which allows me to decide, on the spur of the moment, that tonight is the night I’m going to switch this site over to my new hosting provider, TextDrive. (I have no complaints about my old provider, Total Choice Hosting, either—I just got a deal that couldn’t be beat with TextDrive.) I certainly hope I’ve made all the proper preparations, ’cause there’s no real going back. So, if you experience any oddities here, write it off to the switchover.

Tonight’s probably not the best night to send me email, either. (Hopefully I’ve jury-rigged something that’ll work in the interim, but there’s no guaranteeing that my web-fu is really any good.)

While I’m busy pulling my hair out, entertain yourselves by watching GTA: Lego City. Good stuff.

I live! It seems that my (work) project became inflamed over the last weekend. I think I’ve gotten over the worst of it, but doing so kept me away from recreational activities that I enjoy—such as posting to this blog.

More this evening, I hope.

For reasons I myself am not totally clear on, I’ve decided to tempt the gods and transfer my domain name to a different registrar. I understand that these things usually aren’t that big a deal, but I’ve gotten burned for trying lesser things. If the site goes mysteriously dead (even more dead than the rest of the site already is), then that probably has something to do with it.

In the grand Apple tradition of upgrading a product and noting the change by tacking “Extreme” to the end of the product’s name, I present to you the upgraded brent//BLOG. I’ll let y’all figure out what’s different.

Note that I said “different,” not “improved.”

Update: Some unexpected fun, and I find myself in the latest, and best, ARG. THIS IS NOT A GAME.

Time to get my copy of Movable Type updated to a more-current version. If I’m feeling really feisty, I’ll see if I can add some anti-spam-comment plugins, too.

So, if things look really broken—that’s probably it.

5:24 pm update: The upgrade’s done, and I don’t think I’ve razed the site—at least as far as I can tell. I’ve also implemented a few spam-preventative measures, but just in case those fail: any links promising h0t chixx0r pr0n probably aren’t worth clicking on.

Good God have I written a lot for this blog. I’ve finished ironing out all the quirks I’ve found in the new blog layout, and have begun transferring all my old posts to the new system.

It’s going to take me for-bloody-ever.

I really want to be done with this change, though, so I’m going to try and power through. The major opposing force to this course of action is my body, already weakened by too many late nights and early mornings. Sleep sounds really good to me right now, actually.

Slow progress on the new blog. I’ve got the main page, the individual post page, and the monthly page layouts finished—leaving the archive page for me to tackle, and then a fun manual-import of all my old posts. I have an ambitious (for me) dream of what my new archive page should look like, but I suspect I’ll have to settle—for now—on something a bit more pedestrian.

Incidentally: don’t get your hopes up for a redesign associated with this move. I’ve been having enough fun getting Movable Type to conform to the current layout that I don’t feel the need to have the additional fun of tinkering with HTML and CSS again.

Another aside: it looks like I will lose a bit of functionality, for the time being. I’ve elected to drop the clunky JavaScript code that litters my (old) blog pages, but haven’t figured out enough server-side stuff to get my page titles to rotate along with the sidebar picture. Once I do figure that out, the rotating title will return.

Today was pretty much a non-event. Tomorrow morning is scheduled to feature a mandatory and important meeting, which might prove for some entertainment. (I’m not getting my hopes up, though, as the last meeting was incredibly dull and pointless despite being “mandatory.”)