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A couple months ago, I wrote about a new ability developed for WordPress.com that allows you to export your Vox blog to a WordPress blog. I was really excited about this at the time, because I’m always in favor of services allowing you to take your data with you when you want to leave – nothing is more frustrating than devoting time/energy to a project/blog/site and then finding yourself with the choice of either staying locked-in to your current situation or giving up all your work and starting over fresh.

At the time, I mentioned that the only way to port from Vox to a self-hosted WordPress blog (i.e. on your own domain, not a WordPress.com sub-domain) was to use WordPress.com as an intermediary – exporting from Vox to WordPress.com, and then exporting a WXR file and importing it into your other blog.  While this technically works (I tried it out), it’s a little messy and leaves all the pictures hosted on the WordPress.com domain site, instead of pulling them into your self-hosted site.

Brian Colinger, a developer of WordPress.com and WordPress plugins, contacted me a few weeks ago to let me know that he’s now developed a WordPress plugin that you can install on your self-hosted domain that will do the same export functionality as before, but this time directly to your self-hosted blog.  Yep, now there’s a Vox exporter to self-hosted blogs!

The process itself is pretty easy, and Brian’s post gives step-by-step instructions, so I won’t repeat them here.  You have to install the WP_Importer base class plugin first, and then Vox Importer plugin.  Pretty soon, you’ll be pulling all your posts over to your own self-hosted WordPress blog!

Just like the ability on WordPress.com, this importer should:

• Imports posts AND comments.  Comments are captured exactly as left on Vox, and the link to the commenter goes back to their Vox blog URL.
• Imports photos from Vox into WordPress.  Yes, photos will be native to WordPress, so they won’t just link back to a photo hosted by Vox.
• Imports tags from your blog.  No option to turn this off, but all tags are carried over and used as tags on the WordPress blog.
• Imports ALL posts, not just those made “public”.  Adjust privacy settings before or after you import to account for the fact that WordPress doesn’t have all the privacy modes that Vox does, but you get all your content carried over when you import!  NOTE: If you don’t want a post to be public on your WordPress blog, make it visible to “YOU (hidden)” only before you export/import.  Then it will show up as “Private” on your WordPress blog. All other privacy settings (neighborhood only, friends and family, etc.) will appear on your new WordPress blog as public, accessible-by-anyone entries until you change their privacy level from within WordPress.
• Maintains formatting from your Vox blog – bullets, numbering, centering, font colors, etc all carry over 1:1.  This may cause some minor issues on your WordPress blog if the layout doesn’t support (e.g. white font on a white background), but you can edit this after the fact to suit.

Hat’s off to Brian for another job well done! Stop by his blog and leave a comment for him on the post if you end up using the plugin, and let him know how it went.  Also, if you have any further questions/bug reports, be sure to let Brian know so he can fine-tune this plugin for all the folks out there that had no choice but to remain with Vox, lose their work, or laboriously copy it by hand to another platform!

Not only are the spammers coming after you in blog comments as well as through your email, but now they’re telling jokes!

I was cleaning out the spam comments on my blog when I came across one that I actually enjoyed – unlike the linkfarm/gobbledygook/viagra ads of most blog comment spam, this one contained a joke that was not half bad:

Moishe had been single for a long time. One day, he excitedly tells his mother that he’s fallen in love at last and he is going to get married. She is obviously overjoyed.

Moishe then tells his mother, “Just for fun, Mum, I’m going to bring over 3 women and you try and guess which one I’m going to marry.”

His mother agrees.

The next day, Moishe brings 3 beautiful women into the house and sits them down on the couch and they all chat for a while. Then Moishe turns to his mother and says, “Okay, Mum. Guess which one I’m going to marry?”

She immediately replies, “The redhead in the middle.”

“That’s amazing, Mum. You’re right. How did you know?”

“I don’t like her.”

Obviously these kind of comments still aren’t going to make it onto my blog, but if the spammers can keep me laughing while I delete their comments, so much the better!

This week is my first week back in the office after a lengthy period off for Achilles tendon surgery and recovery.  I’m still  wearing a walking boot, but ironically am not allowed to walk on my leg yet.  I’m still crutching around and fumbling along, but now I get to add some stretching exercises into the mix to try to stretch out my sewn-up tendon and get it back to snuff.

The office is the same as usual, and everyone’s been very friendly and helpful while I’m getting back into the swing of things.  I have a desk full of papers to sort and either file or take action on.  I have an inbox full of emails to catch up on the same way.  I have a to-do list a mile long, but I’m feeling pretty good about the progress I’m making through all three, getting back on top of things and up to speed on the latest developments on my projects.

Yesterday, I decided to take a break after lunch and found some business card origami ideas.  You see, I’ve got a box full of old business cards from my old job, and being a hoarder of useless crap, I held on to them when I moved down to North Carolina a few years back.  Over the years they’ve sat in a desk drawer, gathering dust until yesterday, when I discovered all the fun things you can do with business cards you don’t care about anymore!

First, I made a business card cube, just to try my hand at basic origami.  Then I followed it up with the business card box, and filled it with some business cards that I’m keeping by my phone to use as scratch-paper during phone calls.  It took a little bit of time, but I’d label it about a 1.5/5 on a difficulty scale.

I might follow up with a couple other origami crafts today at lunch.  I especially like the idea of some of the 3D shapes (tetrahedrons, octahedrons, etc) even though they look to be a little bit above my skill level at the moment.  But I’ve got a lot of cards to go through and practice with to get them right!

You may think your company name sounds cool, but a few words of advice:

When comparing two different techniques, “The Old Way” and your method, AKA “The Legacy Way”, sound suspiciously similar.  In fact, you may not know this, but the word “legacy” actually implies your method is old, and possibly obsolete.  It certainly does not give one the impression that you are the the innovative, cutting edge, and successful process that you are trying to promote.

It’s probably too late to change your company name, but I’d look at hiring a different advertising firm in the future.  They seem to be a bit of a legacy themselves.

Check out the FAQ for the game RISK on the official Hasbro website.  Pretty funny stuff.  My favorite:

Can I attack the same territory more than once per turn?

Sure. As long as you share a border you can scare the crap out of your neighbors as many times as you like. In fact you can lull them into a false sense of security by wiping out someone else. Then, just when they have started their recovery efforts you can attack what’s left of their pathetic territory. Again. This is a perfect time to unleash your maniacal laughter.