mahiwaga

The though was “betrayal”
or maybe it was “onus”
The unpayable debt, the blood price
(And if I paid it, would I be free?)
My memories are of Atlas lifting the world on
                                                        his shoulders
Sisyphus rolling up the Stone.
The karyatid crushed beneath the load…

And does one lead to another?
The invariant path, the unbending road
That to carry this burden
was to tread these darkling paths alone.
And in the end everyone lets go
who really abandons whom?

(I thought that it was never worth trusting
because nothing ever lasts)

The vagaries of Time, of Distance
of the paths not taken
the branches pruned

How probability becomes inevitability
How change, how fortune
    becomes destiny

(Fixed and pinned down like a wiggling worm.)

If I had learned to let go
would it have made a difference?
(And all I’ve ever learned to do, is let everything go.)

Piling burden upon burden…

This is just a quick outline of the steps I took, which I hope to fill in as time goes on.

This route is really circuitous, mostly because the migration script included with Typo is apparently very CPU/memory-intensive, and Dreamhost’s sentinel processes always ended up reaping it before it could even import a couple of blog posts. It also requires the installation of random pieces of software you probably won’t normally use on your local machine. Be forewarned.

NOTE: My desktop computer is a Mac Mini PowerPC G4 running at 1.25 GHz with 1 GB of RAM installed, running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. These instructions should be equivalent for an Intel-based Mac, and should be reasonably adaptable for Linux, BSD, or other UNIX/UNIX-like systems. Unfortunately, I haven’t run Windows since 1999, so I can’t really help you there.

1. Export your Wordpress database using whatever method is most comfortable to you. I used myPHPadmin which is available by default on Dreamhost. Transfer the resulting flatfile to your local machine.
2. Make sure you have MySQL running on your local machine. Of interest, MySQL is installed by default in the Server version of Tiger, although turned off by default. It should be pretty easy to install MySQL on any respectable Linux distribution. On the Client version of Tiger, while you can build mysql using Fink or MacPorts, the easiest thing (read: the thing that involved the least amount of thinking and/or compiling) was to just download the binary distribution from mysql.com. The stable version as of this writing is 5.0.
3. Install CocoaMySQL. Obviously, if you’re quite familiar with dealing with MySQL on the command-line, there’s no need to do this, but since I’m not, this was the easiest thing to do.
4. Import your database from Dreamhost into your local copy of MySQL
5. Make sure you have a functioning copy of Ruby installed. Tiger comes with an old version of Ruby installed, so I tried compiling the newest release with Fink. Unfortunately, there are still some issues with compiling Ruby using gcc 4. While it will build without problems, Ruby will segfault randomly when run. Since I didn’t really want to screw around with compiling with gcc 3.3 and making sure all the relevant dependencies would play nice, I ended up installing Locomotive, which lets you run Ruby on Rails applications in a sandboxed environment.
6. Install Rails. Again, Locomotive will take care of this for you, but if you’re running Linux, or you manage to get ruby correctly compiled on Mac OS X, you can just install the gem like so: gem install rails --include-dependencies
7. Make sure you have svn installed. Subversion, a version control system, is readily available on all respectable Linux distributions and can be compiled without incident on Mac OS X via Fink or MacPorts or even just from source.
8. Download typo via svn. You can pretty much install Typo anywhere you like. Once you’re in the directory (folder) of your choice, type: ` svn checkout http://svn.typosphere.org/typo/trunk typo`{: .block} (see the Typo Trac for more info about grabbing the trunk versus the 4.1 branch.)
9. Create a new database for use with Typo.
10. Configure Typo to use the new database Edit config/database.yml (relative to the directory you downloaded Typo to) so that it’s pointing to your new database.
11. Format the new database with Typo’s schema. I used rake db:migrate Other ways (not sure if this is up to date) are described on the Typo Trac. These should work just as well on your local machine as it does on Dreamhost’s servers.
12. Run the Wordpress 2 → Typo 4 converter script. (If you’re using Locomotive, at this point you’ll need to create a new project and point it to where Typo is living, and start it.) Type db/converters/wordpress2.rb --help for help with the syntax with converter.
13. Export the Typo database on your local machine.
14. Create a new database on Dreamhost for Typo.
15. Import the flatfile from your local machine into the database on Dreamhost.
16. Install and configure Typo on Dreamhost exactly as above. From what I can tell, Dreamhost now has a current enough version of Ruby (1.8.5) and Rails (1.2.3) to run Typo properly, but if you must have the newest versions of everything, you can build it all in your home directory.

At this point, you should be able to point your browser to your site and create an admin account. All your Wordpress posts will be there, although the converter script turns all your entries and all your pictures into separate blog posts.

Right now, I’m running Typo out of the box without having to put in the hackery used to avoid getting 500 errors. Compared to a year ago when I tried Typo out, it feels a lot faster and more responsive, although it is still kind of slow. We’ll see how it goes.

One thing that I found irksome, and for which I couldn’t find an easy solution to on Google, is that Typo’s permalinks are formatted like so: http://domain.name/articles/yyyy/mm/dd/slug In contrast, Wordpress’s permalinks are http://domain.name/yyyy/mm/dd/slug. Personally, I feel that articles is unnecessarily crufty, but I couldn’t figure out an easy way to get rid of it. I couldn’t get Apache’s mod_rewrite to work with Typo either. So this is what I ended up having to do to at least keep my Wordpress permalinks alive. (Derived from WordPress to Typo Migration, Part II.)

In config/routes.rb, add this:

  map.connect ':year/:month/:day/:title',  
      :controller => 'wordpress_url', :action => 'redirect',  
      :requirements => {:year => /d{4}/, :month => /d{1,2}/, :day => /d{1,2}/}

This will require you to create a new file in app/controllers/ called wordpressurlcontroller.rb

app/controllers/wordpressurlcontroller.rb contains the following:

      class WordpressUrlController < ApplicationController
         def redirect
            year = params[:year]
            month = params[:month]
            day = params[:day]
            title = params[:title]
            url = "/articles/#{year}/#{month}/#{day}/#{title}/"
            redirect_permanently url
         end
    
        def redirect_permanently url
          headers["Status"] = "301 Moved Permanently"
          redirect_to url
        end


     
        private :redirect_permanently
      end

Now, I’m a Ruby/Rails newbie, so if there is a cleaner way to do this, or if there is a way to get rid of articles from the permalink, suggestions would be appreciated.

I’m still ruminating about the end of the Harry Potter saga. The mainstream media’s reaction has always interested me. They continue to be bemused by the idea of a novel taking the world by storm, and infiltrating popular culture. Never mind the fact that people were writing “Frodo Lives!” on subway walls 40 years ago, or the fact that The Lord of the Rings trilogy was extraordinarily successful, and, as far as wizards go, Gandalf the Grey is as well-known as Merlin, and is arguably the favorite and most-beloved of wizards amongst nerds and geeks world-wide.

I’m not trying to take away anything from J.K. Rowling’s accomplishment. It is not an easy thing to write one book, much less seven. And to have them become extraordinarily popular is a wonderful feat.

A quantitative comparison of the Harry Potter series versus the Earthsea Cycle.

Contrast this to The Lord of the Rings, which is only a measly 1,216 pages including the Foreword, Prologue, and Appendices.

Sources: amazon.com, wikipedia

But I think that literary debts need to be accounted for. Whether intentional or not, Hogwarts owes a lot to the Island of Roke, the center of Earthsea, which is the world created by the inimitable author Ursula K. Le Guin.

Interestingly, the titular character of the first book, Sparrowhawk, later known as Ged the Archmage, has a lot in common with Harry Potter. Which therefore means he also has a lot in common with Lord Voldemort. In fact, it seems more apt to compare Ged to Voldemort. Both were orphans, both were born with incredible power, both had massive egos, and both screwed around with the Dark Arts. But while Ged learned his lesson about playing with the Dark Side, and with this hard-earned wisdom eventually became the Archmage of Roke, slaying dragons, restoring kingdoms, returning balance to the Force, umm, to the balance, and even settling down with a woman, Voldemort went on to be a ruthless mass-murderer and was generally not a nice guy.

Which brings in another comparison: Anakin Skywalker. I suppose he falls somewhere midway in the continuum. While not an orphan, he was born to pretty crappy conditions, considering that he was a slave. But like Ged and Voldemort, he was born with incredible power. Like Ged (and presumably, like Voldemort), he grew impatient with his Master and felt that he was being held back. Like Ged, this eventually leads him to dabbling with the Dark Side of the Force. But whereas Ged learns the error of his ways, Anakin gives himself up wholly to the Dark Side. But whereas Voldemort dies a wondrously anti-climactic death, still convinced that he was going to win, Anakin redeems himself by showing mercy to his son, and, naturally, in the process, ends up dying.

To go full circle, you could compare Anakin to Severus Snape. Both grew up, again, in crappy conditions. Both were extremely gifted in the Force/in magic. Both (probably) turned to the Dark Side both to escape the fear, ridicule, and distrust of their peers, and probably to win back/save the woman they loved. But whereas Anakin marries Padme, turns to the Dark Side, contributes to the cause of her death, gives himself wholly in service of the Dark Side and the Emperor, then attempts to capture and probably kill, or at least pervert, his kids, Snape loses Lily to James, turns to the Dark Side, contributes to the cause of Lily’s death, but then ends up switching sides completely, giving himself wholly in service to Albus Dumbledore, and attempts to protect the son of the woman he loves. Both are killed by their respective Dark Lords (Anakin by absorbing all that Force Lightning from Palpatine, Snape by getting killed by Voldemort’s pet snake.) And while both end up redeemed, I think Snape gets the raw deal here. Anakin got what he deserved, but Snape just ends up screwed.

(For some reason, finishing Deathly Hallows has only reinforced my belief that I am going to someday die a pointlessly violent death.)

There was a point to this post, but it seems to have eluded me.

I don’t think you can really call it love, but still…

I think The Earthsea Cycle will always have a place in my heart. The three key fantasy novels/series that I am heavily influenced by are The Lord of the Rings, The Last Unicorn, and The Earthsea Cycle. And because of the accidents of time and space, I think I will never escape the popular culture influences of “Star Wars” or of the Harry Potter series. Not that the latter two don’t have any merits. It’s just that I simply don’t consider them to be in the same class as the first three.

The Lord of the Rings is undoubtedly a trite reference. Any fantasy writer born in recent times cannot help but be in debt to this master work of world creation. I mean, I guess I can see the point of people who don’t get much out of LotR, though, because the best parts of the magic are in Tolkien’s mythology, which he casually tosses tidbits of in the trilogy. Places like Gondolin, people like Fëanor and Ëarendil, stories like the tale of Beren and Lúthien, the lost land of Númenor. This stuff was gold. And these were just small crumbs of the entire legendarium. If you were so inclined, you could dig through strata after strata of interwoven legends, stories, and prophecies. Entire histories of ascendant and fallen nations. I mean, seriously, it has taken me nearly two decades to read through a good chunk of all the stuff he came out with, and I’m still not done. So no matter what, this will always be my point of reference, for good or for ill.

The Last Unicorn came out of the blue for me. I don’t really remember how exactly I came to read this book. It may be simply because Peter S. Beagle wrote the foreword to the first copy of LotR that I ever read. There is a chance that I might have watched the animated film first, all because of my sister, who naturally had a thing for unicorns and flying horses and ponies. (Think “Rainbow Brite” and “My Little Pony”. Disturbingly, there was a point in my life where I had a dream that melded plot points of “Rainbow Brite” with those of “Robotech” and “Voltron”. Which, in retrospect, might not make a bad story, though…) But Schmendrick is definitely one of my favorite magicians. And the story of Prince Lir, and even King Haggard, get me right there.

Even to this day, I keep learning new things about this story. First off, Beagle started off entirely in a different direction, more akin to the magical realism embodied by, say, Neil Gaiman, or (surprisingly) Douglas Adams (in his Dirk Gently series), or even J.K. Rowling. For starters, the Unicorn finds herself in present day England, wondering what the hell happened to all the other unicorns. She meets up with a two-headed demon expelled from Hell, and they run into other demons who resemble nothing less than cruel, heartless, calculating corporate types and marketroids, or perhaps members of the current Bush administration. I think it would’ve been interesting to see where he might have gone with that, but, then again, I guess we wouldn’t have the classic tale that he ended up giving us.

And, naturally, when I first ran into the story, I didn’t think much of the budding romance between Lir and Amalthea. But lately, I think about it, and it seriously just gets me right there. Talk about not being meant to be.

Which makes it all the more poignant in Beagle’s novella ”Two Hearts”, which brings us back several decades after The Last Unicorn, and King Lir is an old man who cannot remember where he is. The fact that the Unicorn still loves him, despite the fact that unicorns do not, cannot, fall in love with mortals, broke my heart.

But this post is getting overly long, and so I’ll stop here and talk about Earthsea later.

My soul→seethes, burns
                roils,
This vanity this self-deceit
stripped of all meaning
The noise of the teeming crowd
as wounding as the dead silence

We sing: (and the echoes, ceaseless echoes)
    like the sound of the waves on the sea
This forsaken memory

I cannot bear.

Awful gravity, enveloping silence
to be so empty. to be so empty
the soul shivers, quivers, rages in despair

I am cold.

And the silence is indifferent.

I did not think that Death would come so slowly
like dripping water upon granite.
one day then the next.
inexorably boring a fatal hole into my
crushed + splattered heart
ruptured + blasted
mangled + immolated

                                like rotting road-kill
                                infested with maggots

This ichor, this poison, this aching
This grievous aching.
I know now that there will be no happiness for me in this world.
By God’s Grace, let there be some token of joy in the next.