Software and Opinions from Ian McKellar

13Jan/0815

A simpler mobile OpenID workflow?

Chris Messina posted today about the problems with current OpenID work-flows for mobile users. In spite of a long list of chores I was intending to complete today I had a bit of an experiment with an approach to solving this.

The main problem I wanted to solve was to allow a user to prove their identity without having to enter a password. Most mobile devices lack physical alphanumeric keyboards, and without that it's very hard to fill out password fields.

12Jan/080

Moving from Drupal to WordPress for blogging

I really like Drupal quite a lot. It's powerful and flexible, it's code is clear and well written and it's extension mechanism is one of the best I've ever seen. All this flexibility tends to distract me from actually writing blog posts. So I've moved back to WordPress. If you're reading this over RSS expect the usual disruption.

I first discovered WordPress late in 2003 from Mark Finlay, an Irish GNOME contributor. On December 24th 2003 he posted:

Everyone go look at Wordpress: Seriouslessly sexy blogging Software, looks like it's gonna kick MT's ass.

I did, and in the end he was right. Unfortunately he died January 10th 2004. WordPress always reminds me of the three months when we lost Ettore, Chema and Mark.

There were a few scripts around for moving Drupal posts to WordPress but they were all pretty out of date so I took one and updated it. It has a lot of commentary in it. Take a look: drupal-to-wordpress.sql