I’m nearly done moving my domains and their blogs from the old ISP to the new one.  It hasn’t been that bumpy a ride–though it has been like getting lost in a part of the country you’re unfamiliar with.

By that I mean, if you’re lost in a place you know, you figure you’re going to get your bearings eventually.  But if you’re lost in a place you don’t know, then your brain’s restless urge to form patterns will fire right up, and you’ll be seeing all sorts of patterns that don’t support the meaning you lay on them.

This is why, in unfamiliar places, you keep seeing people who remind you of people you know. The small details — a pair of glasses, the set of a nose, even a gait — leap out from the whole, and your brain thinks, “That guy really reminds me of my cousin Frank.”  Your brain’s seized on one item and generalized it into a pattern.

In any event, while the changeover has been a bit tedious, it’s been mostly harmless.  The biggest puzzle is that somehow, a flock of accented letters ( Â , to be specific) seems to have descended on my past posts.  As near as I can tell, it shows up wherever I had had two consecutive spaces in the past.

(That’s an old typing-class habit, and I’ve been typing for more than 40 years, so it’s pretty deeply rooted.)

If you have any idea how I can root that out of an entire mySQL database, do let me know.

I’ve got some maintenance to do (the sidebar’s a bit messed up), but it’s good to be back.

Photo by Dano / Dan McKay.