Some time ago I made the switch to using WordPress as my primary blogging engine.  I hosted it myself and had mySQL and PHP for the infrastructure.

WordPress is a tried and true blogging engine so I was very impressed at its stability and performance.  One thing I didn't like, which wasn't really shortfall of the application, was my inability to customize and build my own themes.  The platform was PHP which made it very difficult for me since I really have no background in PHP.  I was "stuck" with off the shelf themes and the inability to customize the engine to my needs.

The other night I came across an open-source app called BlogEngine.net.  This is available for free from CodePlex and is developed by a community of dotnet junkies.  They leverage things like user controls, master pages, and other features of the .NET Framework.  Exactly what I was looking for.

The installation is straight-forward and doesn't require anything special.  The primary storage for blog pages and posts is in an XML file.  You also have the option to use a SQL database.  In my migration I am just using the default XML option.  It works for what I use it for.

There are a lot of extra capabilities built into the product that I don't use.  You can read more about those on their website.

I migrated my blog over to this new engine this last week.  The migration from WordPress was difficult since there are a not a lot of tools to do so.  The default tool does an export from either BlogML or RSS.  With RSS you can only export the post contents; this doesn't get your comments for you.  BlogML is a implementation of RSS that extends the structure to include additional information like comments and categories.

Like I said, I didn't have very good luck in exporting.  I basically was able to track down a WordPress to BlogML plugin for WordPress that replaces the existing RSS export capabilities.  The big problem I experienced was the export failed to pull all of my categories due to a database error and left all of my posts with no category association.  I spent most of the weekend fixing this.  That wasn't much fun.

I also worked on porting the theme I was using in WordPress to the new engine.  That was simpler, but there are still a few quirky things with the new engine when it comes to building out a stylesheet for the theme.

BlogEngine.net has have support for the Metaweblog API so you can use most blogging tools like Windows Live Writer.

As everyone gathers with their friends and families for the holidays, I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to you all.

This is my absolute favorite time of year.  I start listening to Christmas music on Satellite and local radio as it becomes available at the beginning of November, and start to get a little anxious as it winds down in the last week of December. 

"Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!"

- Charles Dickens

Happy Holidays & Merry Christmas!

I've had the MacBook Pro for one day now.  I got it up and running last night, installed VMware Fusion on it which allows me to run Vista inside the Mac OS. 

I have to say that between Boot Camp, which is part of Leopard, and VMware's Fusion, I'm pretty impressed.  Boot Camp was very easy to setup and in a matter of about 30-45 minutes I had Vista running.  Now with Boot Camp, you either boot into the Mac OS or Windows Vista.

What does Fusion do?

Fusion can actually read your Boot Camp partition and can use that as a virtual machine.  So, you can run Vista inside a window while booted into the Mac OS, or you can run it through Boot Camp where Vista runs natively.

Another great feature of Fusion allows you to run any of the Windows applications installed in the virtual instance outside of the virtual machine window so it looks like it is actually running on the Mac OS desktop.  Very cool!

Resume after being asleep is very fast, and the system responds immediately including the machine machine that was running when the system went to sleep.

A lot of need things and many more to cover.  I'm very satisfied with my initial experience.

I can't believe it myself, but I actually took the plunge the other night.

One of the things that had always appealed to me was the quality and design of Mac hardware.  Who can complain about a 5 hour battery life?  It's a defining experience compared to the 1.5 hours I get off of my Dell.  Of course with the extended battery (and additional weight), I can boost that up to 3 hours, and it only costs me an extra $200 ... but I digress.

Libby, a graphic genius by trade (and close friend) has always had a Mac.  I guess you could say, he was my inspiration for trying a Mac, or maybe it was our inability to share files.

Anyway, I had been watching Apple's refurbished items website and thought I came across a pretty good deal.  My choice was between the 13" MacBook and a 15" MacBook Pro.  Of course, in addition to their display size, they had their differences...One had 4 GB RAM, and the other had 2 GB, but other than those, the specs were fairly similar.  I was easily convinced that the 15" glossy display was the way to go with the MacBook Pro since if I wanted to upgrade to 4GB RAM at some point it would cost me about $150.  This seemed better since it also meant that I got a newer model, although refurbished.

I am curious to see how the MacBook performs with running Vista via Boot Camp.  I'll need to also be able to run Windows based apps, so vmWare Fusion looks like another good addition that I will have to add.

So, can I make the switch to Mac and still like it?  We'll have to wait and see...