Thanks to the instructions on tweaking my .htaccess file at John’s Weblog » Moved to WordPress, my bloglines link should still work.

However, while I do plan on keeping the ‘memekitchen’ domain for the foreseeable future, in order to keep all the links in the world still pointing to me, I do suggest switching to Inkblurt.com if you’re syndicating me.

Thanks!

I moved my web host from Pair.com to Bluehost.com. Why? Because it was insane not to. A cursory comparison of what they offer for the price makes it pretty obvious. (Bluehost vs. Pair)
But it’s also because I wanted to change from Movable Type to WordPress.
I really miss getting comments on a regular basis, and Movable Type has no built-in sophisticated methods for combatting this problem except for their TypeKey service, and spammers were even using that. WordPress has proxy checking and other things built in. But WordPress requires the use of MySQL, and to do that at Pair meant upgrading to a higher service level for another $100 — that’s just nuts when BlueHost is a very respectable outfit and offers better features at their basic level than pair offers even at their most advanced level of service.
I managed to get everything installed, though, very easily. I’m still not sure if I want to go about trying to be sure any possible “permalink” out there on the web will end up working for memekitchen and inkblurt, etc. I figure people can search for it on here if they get a 404 (I need to edit that 404 template — add to my todo list).
I have to say the WordPress interface is clunky compared to Movable Type, and there are some confusing things about it (for example when you’re editing or creating a regular “page” sometimes the tab tells you it’s a “post” instead, and the “post” tab/interface is used even when you’re editing other things that don’t quite count as posts) . Plus I’m hoping that a lot of functionality I was expecting might be found in their considerable PlugIn offerings.
Still, it’s free, so why not try it out?
Anyway, feel free to leave a comment. I want to see if activity can pick up now that people don’t have to register with a separate service. And I’m curious to see how much spam actually gets stopped by filtering out open proxies and such.

I’m going to be trying to move the blog and my site to a new host over the weekend. So if something weird happens here, that’s why.

I’m slowly migrating over to a new name here. Memekitchen will still work for email and for getting people to the blog, etc, but the new name is…

“InkBlurt”

Yeah it feels a little weird in the mouth. But I like it. It’s a little less high-concept than “memekitchen” and people will probably know how to pronounce it and not have to be familiar with meme theory to get the reference. Plus there are about a zillion other “meme-something” sites on the web now.

I was a little shocked nobody had this domain yet. Maybe I’m alone in thinking it’s a cool name?? S’ok … it’s mine and I loves it.

NOTE: This was relevant back when the blog was called “MemeKitchen” but not so much now. Still, I’m leaving it here for posterity.

On occasion people say “hey I read your blog, um, what is it again? ‘mee mee kitchen’?”

That’s when I am reminded what a geek I am, that I would name my blog after something only wonky people have heard of.

It’s actually pronounced “meemkitchen” named after the concept of a “meme” as explained here on Wikipedia:
Meme

To quote a little of the entry:

A meme (rhymes with “dream”, but comes from memetic and memory) is a unit of information that replicates from brains or retention systems, such as books, to other brains or retention systems. In more specific terms, a meme is a self-propagating unit of cultural evolution, analogous to the gene (the unit of genetics). The term was coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins in his controversial bestselling book The Selfish Gene. Memes can represent parts of ideas, languages, tunes, designs, skills, moral and aesthetic values and anything else that is commonly learned and passed on to others as a unit. The study of evolutionary models of information transfer is called memetics.