What?

I’ve migrated this site from MovableType to Tinderbox overnight.

The motive force, of course, was the recent Tinderbox Weekend. Firstly, it proved that the tool could do what do I wanted it to, and secondly it gave me enough of a nudge to my skills to have a moment of Tinderbox satori.

Right now there are a few things that are a different; some of these will reappear, and some probably won’t. The major one affecting you, reader, is the lack of comments. I’ve got a scheme to do this, but it’ll take a bit of time to implement. In the meantime, feel free to mail me with any comments you have. I promise I’ll fold them back into the document.

A site with Tinderbox is based on an entirely different concept than a MovableType site. There’s no easy way to zap off a note on the way to a meeting; the site must essentially be compiled out to static pages and synchronized with what’s on the server. The bottom line is that the site, technically, is slower. The comments system will also be slower; it will take time (in hours) for them to show up on the page. But slower is not entirely a bad thing.

Why?

Document. This was the key for me, and it required a paradigm shift. I’d been thinking of this as a way to chronologically record interesting thoughts and events in my life. It is that, certainly, but it is more. It’s a document, and in some way it’s the largest and most encompassing piece that I’ve produced in the past years.

So what? What does Tinderbox give me that MovableType doesn’t? Mostly it gives me possibilities. The structure is fluid, and ultimately is what I create. It’s creatively the difference between a piece of paper and an Etch-A-Sketch. The paper is harder to use, but holds more possibilities for expression.

As I go through this process, I find that certain ideas keep cropping up. I find myself starting to see my own behavior patterns, particular turns of phrase I default to. This is a painting done a stroke at a time; I don’t know where it’s going to end up, and I’m more interested than anyone else to see.

How?

In the spirit of sharing, I should provide some sort of documentation. This is coming, when a swatch of time opens up. The process was time consuming and non-trivial. I transfered almost 600 notes, and have preserved all the comments as well (they’re hiding while I clean them up). I re-implemented my template system. I wrote scripts to create redirects from the old MT permalinks to the new ones, to ensure that someone desperate for banjo rave won’t be thwarted. I did a lot of cut and paste. I did this with the indispensable help of Mark Bernstein’s sample templates, which got me out of more than a few jams.

Where To?

I don’t entirely understand how it came to this, but at this point I’m using Tinderbox for my personal, professional, and creative organization. To say that the tool is fascinating goes without saying. But interesting tools that are not useful in creating content and output are nothing more than curiosities. It’s obvious I’ve found an excellent tool; let us see where it takes us.