please empty your brain below
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On my currently barely updated WordPress blog the Web address of a much repeated and vital for the reason of the blog link changed. I had to make dozens of changes manually. I then discovered that if I was willing to pay for the full service version of WordPress there was a widget that did it for you. I almost coughed up.
ap | 08.09.21 - 7:13 a.m. | #
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I suggest that you consider putting in your Will a request that your blog archive is donated to one of the many local history archives that exist in the capital. Your blog provides an important insight into life in the capital (and beyond) in the early 21st Century and I'm sure will be pored over by many social historians in the decades and hopefully centuries to come.
kerspatula | 08.09.21 - 7:25 a.m. | #
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Keep an off-site backup at best mate's or dad's.
Running_Correspondent | 08.09.21 - 7:32 a.m. | #
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I wonder whether the folks at the London Metropolitan Archive might be interested in providing a suitable location for your legacy output.
Frank F | 08.09.21 - 7:34 a.m. | #
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The three rules of backups:
1. Make them.
2. Check that the contents is actually recoverable.
3. Store it in a completely separate and safe place.
1 we all know sometimes don't happen.
2 I've seen violated - backups were "made" regularly but the tapes were actually blank (they contacted me for a fresh copy of some vital software - yes it *does* really happen in the real world, and also in fairly large businesses)
3 if the physical location of the main copy gets destroyed, you don't want the backup to go too. Not really relevant with google, but if you're serious about having copies stored, then have at least two, in two different physical places.
K. | 08.09.21 - 7:42 a.m. | #
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A really bad solar storm is also a possibility.
Don't forget that Google itself could disappear.
Still Anon | 08.09.21 - 7:53 a.m. | #
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I read that as "auto-paganation" and my thought process went in all sorts of directions!
Brendan | 08.09.21 - 8:11 a.m. | #
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I would pay good money for a book (on actual paper) of your top posts - perhaps even an annual print publication (‘best of DG 2021’).
Your legacy would be in the British Library and on bookshelves until the last reader’s descendants dump a pile of books at whatever charity shops look like in 80 years time…and your ISBN code would exist for centuries.
I do accept this would be a lot of work for you though.
Mike on a bike | 08.09.21 - 8:23 a.m. | #
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@K. Re your point 2, I would add "on a regular basis." Backup mechanisms change over time, and sometimes glitches occur!
Tim W. | 08.09.21 - 8:35 a.m. | #
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No doubt, GCHQ or the Met are checking every blog for signs of 'wrongspeak', so maybe they should be required to 'host' the backup for you.
I had not appreciated the potential problems and wish you continued success in providing this phenomenal site for many years
Ian J
ian J | 08.09.21 - 8:41 a.m. | #
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Thanks for the reminder to get PDFing again (though I have nothing like as much content to archive).
In the very early days of my blog (2006) I did print it out every month. I kind of wish I'd kept that up - it would be far too big a project now.
And I've already lost a load of photos from the blog - I used to use Blogpress when on the move, and all the photos on those posts have disappeared.
I've long wondered what will happen when Google can't pay their electricity bill.
Sarah | Homepage | 08.09.21 - 8:50 a.m. | #
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Last year there was much talk about the future of flickr, which made me start worrying as older pages on my blog still contain images hosted on flickr.
So I started the process of re-uploading all the images directly onto my server.
It took ages. And eventually I gave up. There's still around 140 articles to redo and I really am struggling to get the energy...
Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 08.09.21 - 9:32 a.m. | #
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Is there a Operation London Bridge-style protocol for if DG is unable to log in for whatever reason? How will we know if the worst has happened?
Anon | 08.09.21 - 10:08 a.m. | #
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The code for each post could be regularly saved on some online storage repository (preferably two) paid for in advance, together with all the image files and comments. A future digital archivist would likely have the skill to author a script that would convert the formatting, links, picture placement etc into whatever digital readers are using at that point.
James | 08.09.21 - 10:19 a.m. | #
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While thoughts of our mortality do seem to come up each time we become a year older it's a bit of a downer for a birthday celebration!!
I do like the idea of a Diamond Geezer Annual - available in all good bookshops each Christmas though!
Cornish Cockney | 08.09.21 - 10:20 a.m. | #
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The blog seems to be archived also on the Wayback Machine from 2003 onwards.
Andy Herts | 08.09.21 - 10:38 a.m. | #
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I second book form. Because when DG goes, like the Queen, that'll be that. No worthy successor; it'll all be over.
Matt | 08.09.21 - 12:04 p.m. | #
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Having worked in IT since the mid-1960s I've been involved in quite a few attempts to retrieve old data, sometimes after the owner has died. There are two recurring themes: lost or forgotten passwords and inaccessible media.
We'll all die some day and will probably become forgetful even sooner. Whatever your age, make sure someone - preferably younger - has some form of emergency access to your passwords.
And remember that anything stored on media (paper, discs, whatever) will decay, and anything held on a storage device (eg external disc drive) will not in practice survive the obsolescence of the physical interface.
Storage in the cloud is a partial solution, but if it's free it can (and will) disappear eventually, and if it's paid-for, it won't survive once payments stop being made.
Peter | 08.09.21 - 12:10 p.m. | #
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Does the internet archive (way back machine) have copies of your blog?
Simonguy | 08.09.21 - 12:13 p.m. | #
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The Way Back Machine appears to have copies of posts dating back to September 8, 2002 where there is a link to a post on December 31, 1999.The last capture was on August 19, 2021. The comment pages are blank though (at least the ones I checked).
JohnC | 08.09.21 - 2:27 p.m. | #
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There must be a market for a service where you can pay up front to have, say 10 Gb of data kept on a remote server (‘the cloud’) for a minimum period of 100 or 200 years? Of course even if you choose a long standing company such as Google or IBM they could still go bust during that period, but perhaps there could be an insurance fallback where the money to keep the server running, accessible and upgraded periodically is ring-fenced?
James | 08.09.21 - 5:19 p.m. | #
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Re:archiving of comments pages. It would be possible to create a script which freezes and transfers older comment pages into blogger's CMS as html, which would get round the loss of comments issue if the separate commenting service becomes inaccessible.
MilesT | 08.09.21 - 7:23 p.m. | #
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I would help to fund, and perhaps help find funding, for the preservation of all of DG’s blogs and their comments if this could be done, maybe as, or including, a complete printout. Wonderful if it could then be put with Mr Pepys diary for a few hundred years.
It is a valuable part of London and it’s setting. Yes, the LMA could also be a possibility.
Herbof | 08.09.21 - 8:24 p.m. | #
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Estimated size of diamond geezer if printed out: 50 paperback books (without photos)
diamond geezer | Homepage | 08.09.21 - 9:22 p.m. | #
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Maybe, what, £20,000 on good quality paper.
Crowd-funding a possibility but I don’t have experience of how that works. Head scratch.
Herbof | 08.09.21 - 10:20 p.m. | #
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"Is there a Operation London Bridge-style protocol for if DG is unable to log in for whatever reason? How will we know if the worst has happened?"
How will we know? Well if a new post hasn't appeared on the dot by 7am! (Joking aside I think DG does regularly get comments assuming he must have died if that doesn't happen).
Jon Combe | Homepage | 08.09.21 - 10:59 p.m. | #
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On reading the post with RSS/Feedly:
“This is the post on diamond geezer.”
Mmmmkay…
Turning to the website:
“This is the <blink>9000th</blink> post on diamond geezer.”
Ah! Blink and you’ll miss it, indeed.
(By the way, <clear="all"> is an odd bit of HTML coding to have on every page. Still, after all these years, it’s evidently [mostly] harmless.)
Stay strong, DG! <3
Rich G | Homepage | 09.09.21 - 1:05 a.m. | #
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"I've just downloaded a 19th birthday archive and it runs to 69MB of text and code."
Just 69MB? That seems very little.
dg writes: Does not include photos.
Blue Witch | Homepage | 09.09.21 - 10:54 a.m. | #
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You could post a link to the archive here and at datahoarders, then I or someone else could write a script to convert any links from one domain to another if you ever have to move the blog.
Jace | 10.09.21 - 6:31 p.m. | #
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Why not publish a book?
The Best of Diamond Geezer. A/two decade/s of London.
That would guarantee eternal life.
Steve | Homepage | 13.09.21 - 9:29 a.m. | #
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