The address of the bookstore Toby and I will be at this evening at 7pm in Columbus, Ohio is 1598 North High Street, Columbus, OH, not 1958 N. High Street. Please make a note of it, since I don’t want you angry at me if you can’t find it. I want you angry at Toby. Yes, it’s all his fault. Kill him and not me!

(Note: Please don’t actually kill Toby.)

Here’s a Google Maps link to the location. Oh, Google, is there nothing your technological tentacles can’t find their way into? Apparently not.

The topic over at today’s AMC science fiction film column: Why it’s difficult to make a sequel better than an original film — and how some science fiction franchises managed to do it. I give four examples; if you can think of any others, or heck, just feel like arguing with me about the subject, by all means add your comments over there. I like comments. Comments are love.

Okay, this one goes out to the IT geeks out there:

One of the problems I’m having these days is that whenever I use the “export” function — either on WordPress or Movable Type, which I actually do still have installed — it only exports about a tenth of the content in its respective MySQL databases. I suspect this has not a little to do with 1&1′s decision to time out processes after a certain length of time. But what this means is that I have several databases worth of content (entries, comments, etc) and no reliable way that I know of to fully extract that content, so that I might, say, combine it all into a single database so all my content will show up on the same platform (which would be useful for me, and also to folks who might, say, want to read that content).

So: if I have a database full of Movable Type-formatted data, and a second database full of WordPress-formatted data, what can I do that I can extract the data from both databases, put them into the same format (preferably WordPress Extended RSS) and then pour both pools of data into a third database without running afoul of script timing limitations on my server? Is there a way I can download the databases and do the extraction and collation on my own computer (Windows Vista box), thus not having to bother with 1&1′s pissy script throttling — without having to reformat my computer to look and act like a server? And once I have this third database, how might I plug it into a WordPress install and have the data show up as entries/comments? Is that possible aside from using the “import” function on WP (which I suspect will run afoul of the same script timing issues)?

Basically, I’d like to try to port all the entries and comments I have into a single database, and have that database populate a WordPress install, without having to pay some poor bastard to cut and paste it all (cutting and pasting which would probably not preserve comments). I’ve got a decade’s worth of stuff. It would be neither cheap nor easy to cut and paste.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Need clarification? And before you make the offer (and some of you would), I’m not actually looking for someone to do this for me right now, I’m asking if this is something I could do, easily or at the very least if I have a willingness to do some moderate hair-pulling. If the answer is “no,” or “well, it will take a lot of hair pulling, actually,” then I’ll look to hire someone. But if I can do it, then it’s probably better for everyone (don’t worry, I’ll download my databases and work from copies. Me not stupid).

So, if you have expertise in this area, fire off a comment. Thanks.