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Well I saw the new Harry Potter movie last night with my girlfriend and a friend.  We were over to the friend’s new apartment and watched Gothika (I’ll write up a review on this next).  It was still early and we wanted to go do something so since the friend is a Harry Potter fan we went to see the new movie.

Now I’ve never read the books and I’ve only seen the first two movies when they showed up on HBO so don’t expect any comparing or contrasting to the books.

Suffice to say it wasn’t a bad movie.  The core cast has defiantly matured and it is very noticeable.  Both in physical as well as vocal changes which could mean the end of this cast is not far off. 

The story was good.  I didn’t notice any obvious plot holes although I’m sure the hardcore fans will watch it 20 times and manage to nit pick every little detail. 

The basic story goes something like this.  It’s Harry’s third year at Hogwarts.  A murderer named Sirius Black has escaped from the Azkaban prison.  There’s a history between Black and Harry’s family and Black wants to kill Harry.

It’s a much darker story from the previous two movies.  There was far less humor and silly hi-jinks this time round.  Which I found a bit disappointing to say the least.  The first movies were very much kid friendly with the humor but this one was so much darker that I just don’t see it being as enjoyable.  Of course the hardcore fans out there will sit there and enjoy it just as much I’m sure.

Story aside the movie was very good at the special effects.  This is obviously an important issue considering that magic is a fundamental part of the story.  They did very well at not making the CG effects stick out like a sore thumb.  Many movies I can sit there and point out every CG effect because the computer work is just so different from physical special effects.  However, I was able to watch the movie and not really tell.

If I had to rate it I’d give it one thumb up and one down.  One thumb up for the overall movie and one down for the darker and less child friendly experience.  If you’re out wanting to watch a movie and liked the first two movies then go check it out.  However, if you didn’t then go find something else because you will end up bored.

Well I believe I finished updating the site… 

* I completed the final layout adjustments on the new site design.
This involved just cleaning up some templates to suit my taste as well as bringing in all the buttons and content from the sidebars of the old site design.

* All my old content has been brought into the new system.
Every single entry has been imported from the old website.  I didn’t loose a single bit of information.

* I’ve converted all the old pages to the new layout.
I’ve managed to redo all the static pages (my computer, reading list, etc) so they match the new site design.

* I configured the server to redirect any traffic going to the old site to the new site.
I used some fancy tricks with mod_rewrite to have any request for the old blog pages get sent to the new blog.

For example.  Here is the url for the first post I ever made with MT on the old blog:
http://www.alanbarber.org/blog/000001.html

Thanks to mod_rewrite I am able to send a user that requests that page to the post on the new EE blog here:
http://www.alanbarber.org/index.php/weblog/000001

This is done using the following mod_rewrite rule:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule   ^blog/([0-9]+)\.html /index.php/weblog/$1 [R=301,L]

This tells the webserver that if anyone tries to access the old blog posts send them to the new blog post and tell them that the url has changed permanently.

If you don’t understand don’t worry it’s not that important.  Suffice to say it does work.

Besides that mod_rewrite rule I use standard Redirect statements in my .htaccess file to redirect any requests for the category, monthly, rss feeds and non-blog pages (I converted the static html pages to php).

An example might look like this:
Redirect 301 /blog/archives.html http://www.alanbarber.org/index.php/weblog/archives/

Again this tells the webserver that if anyone tries to access the old archives page send them to the new one and tell them that that the url has changed permanently.

The 301 part says the url has changed permanently.  For browsers they just ignore the message but this is handy for search engines.  In theory a search engine should then remove the old url from their database and replace it with the new one.

All in All, there should be little if any lost traffic from the conversion.  Any attempt to access the old content should get sent to the new content.

I must say ExpressionEngine has turned out to be a very nice application.  It’s so powerful that in fact it’s almost overkill.  Then again that’s just the way I like it!  It’s nice knowing I have a strong solid base to build on for a change should I want too.

So I now return to my regular blogging schedule

Well it’s official… the blog is now powered by ExpressionEngine. 

As I stated in an earlier post after the big uproar about the new pricing structure of MovableType the fine folks at pMachines took advantage of the situation and gave away 1250 free copies of their ExpressionEngine bloging software.  I was one of those lucky 1250 and snagged a free copy.

So I’ve spent the last few weeks slowly learning EE and working to convert to this new system.  It’s very different from MT that’s for sure.  I’ll admit I still prefer certain features of MT over EE but the developers at pMachines are working on new features all the time.  I’m sure with time they’ll meet and exceed my ever wish.

There are three major areas worth focusing on in this post:
1) The template system is very different from MT.  Instead of separate templates for every page there is just one single template that morphs to fit the data that is requested.  As a result it can be rather overwhelming trying to get the page to display how you want for single posts as opposed to the homepage.

2) EE is PHP driven which means every page view is rendered on the fly from the database.  There are no static files that get rebuilt like MT did.  There are pros and cons to both styles but in the long run I believe on the fly rendering is better suited.

3) EE is way more complex of a package.  The amount of settings and features in EE blows MT out of the water.  I’ll be outright honest and tell you that this is not for the newbie or casual computer user wanting to start a blog.  Stick with the hosted services like LiveJournal because you’ll fell overwhelmed trying to work with EE.  However, if you’re up for a challenge then go ahead.  Challenges are fun!

Anyhoo, this is my first post and more of a test than anything else.  I still have lots of work to do on the site.  I need to convert over my other pages to match the new layout, there are still minor bugs and issues I’m sure hidden someplace that I need to try to track down, and I just need to spend time to learn more about EE.

As my girlfriend said when I said I was almost finished updating my site… Rock On!