The Governess says she feels like the Jenny Lewis album is a retread. I can't really speak to that, having not heard the album (although I haven't heard anyone say they really love it, aside from RCR). But I, too, have been trying and failing to find a new album to love.

The Subways? Too hard a sell. It's The Killers all over again. Also, there's the fact that the album is just OK.

How about the much-hyped Arctic Monkeys? I'd like to think that I'm past the point in my life where I have to dump on Next Big Things in order to make myself feel better about my own occasionally deeply suspect musical taste. Maybe I'm not. But the AM album just doesn't do it for me. It sounds like Dischord-influenced high school bands. If I lived in the UK and had an email address ending in @nme.com, I could see why that'd sound like the fifth best English album of all time to me.

Okay, actually, no. I can't possibly conceive of that. But I can understand the enthusiasm. And I've only listened through the thing once. Maybe it's a grower. It seemed pretty boring on the first listen. It struck me as a less-catchy Bloc Party done in self-satisfied keys. To be fair, I said similar things about the Wolf Parade album after the first couple of listens, and now I'm deeply, deeply sorry. But for now: pass.

Yet! I'm hopeful that salvation is at hand. The Islands album drops in not too long (or, here on the internets, not too long ago), and not only features prominent ex-Unicorns, but also cameos from Wolf Parade and Arcade Fire members. Canadag, yo.

Anyway, I've secured through the (in)appropriate channels. So far, not an Abominable Snow level of catchiness. But it's definitely interesting and definitely good. And Nick Diamond has earned multiple listens on the strength of this alone. March 9, people. With Metric, who I am assured are good, or at least attractive.

Among the many things I like about my new job is that it's given me the opportunity to learn a bunch of new technologies. Email triggers, .htaccess files, SVN repositories, XML, and of course the power to raise the dead (from the command line!) — lots of good stuff.

And useful stuff. For instance, this morning I finally fixed out broken archive URLs. Movable Type 2.66whatever built entries in the format

• /blog/archives/000001.php
• /blog/archives/000002.php
• etc.

But since the upgrade to 3.2, we've switched to a more useful format, oriented around a value that MT generates called the basename (which is basically an abbreviated, URL-safe version of the title). The new URLs look like this:

• /blog/archives/2004/01/22/round_the_world/
• /blog/archives/2005/12/16/sweet_nostalgia/

The problem is that there are still lots of links to the old URLs, both within entries on this site and elsewhere. That's no good, since they don't get rebuilt when new comments are added, or when their entries are updated, or when we redesign, or when anything else happens on the site.

But now I can do something about it. And since it took me a few hours, and since it might help someone else, I thought I'd post my solution.