Kirk Ismay

Just another WordPress hacker...

WordPress 2.7.1 Painless Upgrade

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I had the evening free tonight, and decided to burn some time upgrading my blog to the latest version of WordPress. I checked out the handy upgrade instructions, and then went to work.  In less than 10 minutes, I was all done.

I host my blog on a Debian Linux server at work, and did the upgrade via ssh. To get started, I used the BackUp WordPress plugin to backup my files for safety’s sake, then I disabled all plugins as instructed.  I should mention that all of my plugins were up to date before the upgrade, which is probably a good idea to prevent compatibility issues before they start.

Once I was done that, I ran the following commands using ssh:

$ wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip
$ unzip latest.zip
$ cd public_html
$ mv wp-includes wp-includes.old
$ mv wp-admin wp-admin.old
$ cp *.php .

$ rsync -Cav ../wordpress/wp-content/ wp-content/
WordPress 2.7.1 Dashboard Screenshot

WordPress 2.7.1 Dashboard Screenshot

With that done, I logged back in to my admin dashboard. WordPress prompted me to update the database, and I was greeted with the stylin’ new interface of WordPress 2.7.1.

Now I’ll have to find something else to do! 😉

Voting for Issues

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A little from Column A, a little for Column B

Canadians go to the polls today to vote in the Federal Election. I stopped in at the polling station after dropping my oldest off at school. So far, it looks like we’re in for another minority government under the Conservatives. Harper is going to have to play nice with the other kids for another term.

Between all the various activities competing for my attention, I didn’t really feel I had a great grasp on the platforms of the 4 parties running in our area. I did have time to skim their platforms, so I did have a general idea. I found that for each party, I liked some elements of the party’s platform, disliked others. So as I was driving to work today, I found myself wishing I could vote on the issues as well as a representative.

Of course, I figure that the ideal platform would be some kind web based system where the issues and proposed solutions could be discussed and voted on individually. This system would distill the issues into some kind of rough consensus, and then they’d be drafted into legislation by sponsoring members of the House. On the plus side, citizens could play an active part in the process. On the negative side, we’d probably have the same kinds of flame-wars we get on every other board on the Internet.

I’m still not sure if I’d have the time to follow all of the issues, but at least I might be able to follow the issues that are important to me.

First Post!

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Welcome to my blog!

This is my 3rd attempt at trying to maintain a personal web site. The last edition went about 7 years between updates, I just didn’t have time. I was looking at it one day and realized that according to it, I was still married and only had 2 kids instead of 3. Hopefully, I’ll try to keep this version a little more up to date. 😀

I’m using the WordPress web blog software, with a few add ons. The current theme is an adaptation of the Aurora them by Mathew Browne of MB Web Design, but I’ve swapped in an Earthrise photo taken by the Kuguya (SELENE) space probe found on Astronomy Picture of the Day. I hope to make further refinements on the theme later, time permitting.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to see you again soon!

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