It appears that I may have lost all the Other Crap posts of the past six years. There may be some hope, but it doesn’t look good. That database was corrupted. As of now, I’m starting from scratch with a new host.
I mention this for two reasons.
1. I’m sure you were wondering why the site has like five posts instead of 23,000.
2. I want you regulars to realize why am I going to re-post some of the best material from the past. I know that people don’t like repeats, but I kinda need to fill things out again, so if you’ve seen it before and don’t want to see it again, just be understanding and ignore it.
Anyway, the present and future continue as if nothing had happened, but the past is gone.
Just as in real life.
Except on the Wayback Machine, which has collected a pretty decent percentage of what has appeared here. According to their count they have preserved a record of 34,915 distinct URLs from Other Crap!! That dates back as far as 2003.
If you’re missing the great old material, I should mention that the subscription site still contains everything that has been published there since 1998!!
(If you are a member of the Fun House site, have some patience. I fell a little behind because I’ve been dealing with this database disaster.)
Thanks for all your hard work keeping this site going. I visit it daily and always find something of interest.
It’s a real bummer when IT goes wrong!
Thanks again.
Seconded. It’s valuable. You’re a person with brains, but a sense of humor, & of proportion, & when you do take a position, it isn’t a stance, it’s a thought. We like stuff, because we’re human. We know some stuff, we don’t know lots of other stuff, so we share. That’s what you do, what you let us do. In your little establishment. It’s a really cool service. Wishing you success in your latest travails. There’s other players in your niche, but you’re egregious amidst them. May it continue. Thanks.
In 1921 a fire at the Commerce Department destroyed almost all the records of the 1890 US Census. Piles and piles of valuable information gone forever, But this is 50,000 times worse. (I expect we’ll be hearing from the conspiracy theorists any moment now.)
Wow, I did not know that. The 1890 Census was the first to be automated, because the 1880 Census had taken something like 8 years to compile. A man named Hollerith invented the punch card, and machinery for reading them and tabulating and sorting them. The 1890 Census got done in something like 3 years or less.
The punch cards went on to become IBM cards. Hollerith made them the same size as the paper money of his time, because there were already racks and devices for handling that.
I think the currency shrank during the 1920’s, but the cards did not change, of course.
As for the 50,000 times worse figure you estimate, I fear that is far too low. When I think of all the keen insights and delightful bon mots I have posted here, the loss to humanity is almost too much to bear. Oh, and some other people posted some decent stuff too, I guess. And the naked chicks.
The currency size change happened in 1929, to save money on paper. Soon thereafter, of course, came the stock market crash, and all the people who had cash set aside for a rainy day found that rainy day happening at the same time, and promptly dug up their Mason jars or cut open their mattresses or whatever, and as a consequence the older, larger currency went out of circulation fairly quickly.
And yes, I was conservative on my figure of 50,000. I didn’t want to be accused of hyperbole.
Perhaps the only thing to compare it to is the loss of the Library of Alexandria.
If I had to pick which one I’d want back–well, not that hard a choice, really.
That choice is like mounting a new King Lear with either Daniel Day Lewis or Shatner. You know that Lewis would produce a lasting cultural treasure, a monument to all the best the human race has achieved in the field of theater. But you’d have to go with Shatner.
Imperfect substitute, but the internet archive has am image from a few weeks ago:
Many thanks! I had forgotten about that service. They do an incredible job. I wasted a lot of time (quite enjoyably) going through The Wayback Machine. Thanks to them, I’ll be able to recreate some things that I spent a lot of time on.
It’s OK. We need to live in the present…whether we like it or not.
It’s a bit strange that you’ve invested so much effort in this blog, but you don’t have a regular automatic backup of your database which is a basic security practice.
I don’t think this is any ordinary failure. Given the magnitude of the catastrophe, I think this is some kind of probe by SkyNet to test humanity’s resilience in the face of overwhelming disaster. If UncleScoopy cannot restore the site, expect an all-out nuclear strike next.
But it’s crap! 😛 Please tip the waitresses …
I know it said you use mysql – just a tip for the future: if you move you mysql onto aws aurora, that system automatically backs up your DB every night for a set period of time. I store a week’s worth for example. Maybe you already had a system like this in place, I don’t know, but if not I hope that helps.
While either would likely work, Amazon RDS will also backup automatically every night and cost less. For what this site is, a Single-AZ RDS deployment is probably sufficient for Scoopy’s purposes. If he needs higher redundancy, like 2 or more instances, then Amazon Aurora IO Optimized is a best bet for predictable bills. In that case, Aurora storage is a single volume vs. RDS’ 2 volumes required for Multi-AZ.
Scoopy, thanks for keeping this site up and running in the face of it all!
Thanks for all of your work putting together this site. An extremely worthwhile public service. 🙂
Oof, that fucking sucks.
What ever happened to backups?