A couple of weeks ago, Piers and I noticed some odd system messages on gnu.pipetree.com’s console. It looked like we might be under attack. Following some oddness all round, including the network interface not coming up after a reboot, we decided that the best thing to do was a fresh install of everything. So after a quick dash out at lunchtime to buy a new HDD and install the OS and applications, we went down to see the friendly and helpful folks at Mailbox and performed surgery on the patient.

Now back up and running, we’re slowly reconfiguring stuff. A move to using Moveable Type as a shrinkwrapped piece of commodity software seemed like a good idea. I like tinkering as much as the next person, but I think we’ve reached a level where certain applications should ‘just work’ – after all, I don’t worry how Apache works inside (much), why should I spend time hacking on blogging software? I should just write. Moreover, fewer Internet cafes offer anything more than web access, so I need a web-based front end to things more and more (I’m still holding on to Mutt for now, though).

Anyway, Robert had recently started using MT, so I thought I’d give it a go. I tried WordPress too. WordPress was a breeze to install and get going with – 10 minutes all told. But it didn’t seem to have ‘proper’ RSS (1.0) [Later: I found Morten talking about how to turn RSS 1.0 on], and I couldn’t immediately use it with some other software and applications I had in mind. MT was more of a pain. I just about managed it in an hour, but that involved looking at Perl code, tailing server logs, and lots of head scratching. Not very impressive. But now it’s running, I’m happy.