Alex & Lizzy's (Travel) Blog

Well, I’ve transferred my blog over to WordPress. There are several reasons for this, and several effects…

My reasons:

1. Moveable Type‘s license actually says I can’t do what I’ve been doing really I think… (number of authors, providing service… something like that)
2. Moveable Type also changed its licensing arrangements as it updated to a new version (payment for most users). Whilst I respect their right to do this, I’d rather use completely free and open source software if I can. Means I know I can use it longer-term and, should I make a useful alteration, I know anyone will benefit from it.
3. WordPress doesn’t require you to rebuild every time you edit something, making everything a lot nicer when dealing with a lot of pages and when you want to fiddle with layout and things a lot.
4. Also I like playing with new things.

The implications:

1. All other blogs (except my old one) should continue to work, but I’m not bothering to link to them from my front page anymore. If you are an owner of one of those blogs and want to move over to WordPress, then I should be able to do that for you, no probs. I should be able to import your old entries and everything. I will delete the old MT ones at some point, because none of you really use them. Let me know if you want me to leave them be… or something.
2. You can now register on the site to post comments, should you so wish. If I start to get spam, this will become compulsory. I might look into allowing you to vote on things if you’re registered too – I believe this is possible.
3. I have had to fiddle around with the layout a bit and hack some scripts to make this all work, so please let me know (post a comment) if there’s anything not working that should be, or if there’s anything missing that you used to like.
4. Old links to archived entries will still work (old MT static files are still there) but won’t have the most up-to-date style, and in fact may be broken… I might look through old entries and update the links if I get bored.

So that’s about it. Quite productive for the length of one football match (Italy vs Bulgaria).

Well, officially today I ceased to be a student, and I even had to start paying council tax… humph Anyway, YAY! It’s all over. Oh, and yes, I passed.

Also today I went to the doctor to find out more about my “gastritis”, since it flared up again on Friday night. It turns out it could be one or both of 2 things:
Helicobacter pylori (thanks to Google for the spelling) which is a bacteria which in most people is harmless, but amongst some it causes stomach upsets, including gastritis.
What it could also be, and the doctor think this is more likely, is acid reflux. This is where there’s something wrong with the top end of the stomach (around the diaphragm) which allows acid to get back into the oesophagus. Hence the feelings of nausea etc etc.

So it’s good to be on the way to figuring out what’s wrong. Helicobacter pylori can be got rid of by antibiotics, but might take a while to see the results. The other isn’t so easy to sort and might be permanent Either way, another month (at least) without alcohol, spicy food or caffeine… ah well, there must be some other joys in life. Oh, and no fatty foods late at night. So there goes my last bit of pleasure

Anyway, I’m sure you wanted that much detail