Eagle eyed readers may have spotted a few issues with this site over the last couple of weeks. At first it was flaky and randomly unresponsive. Then it fell over entirely. This was down to my old hosting company who – and I say this with no malice or hyperbole – turned out to be a useless shower of bastards. Multiple support tickets filed generated zero response, so I can only assume they’re about to go belly up and everyone competent has either been fired or quit.
Fortunately I managed to move the site to a new host who have been both responsive and amazingly helpful to date. Unfortunately, the only site back-up I had available to restore was from 2 years ago. Meaning that the last 2 years of posts – around 350 of them – have vanished from the site. You’ll observe that the post previous to this one is dated from December 2020. Potentially I could rebuild content using the Web Archive Site, but I suspect I’m just going to move forward from here. Life is too short to dwell on past screw-ups.
Apologies to everyone whose comments over the past two years have been lost. I promise to implement a better backup strategy moving forward. Hopefully normally blogging service should now be resumed. I’ll start this new era with an image from the artist Faun Songs. It features a young lady doing to a young man what I feel my old hosting company just did to me. Only without any lube, foreplay or happy smiles.
Welcome back! I’m very sorry to hear you’ve lost much of your archive – I’ve just checked in my rss feeder and discovered I can see all your posts (words plus some images, although no comments) back to 2013. Let my know if you’d like me up arrange to get you your words back, at the very least, and we’ll figure out a way to do it.
Thanks! Really appreciate you checking and giving me that option. I think at this point I’m just going to move forward, with maybe the occasionally link into the web archive site if I need to refer to older posts. It’s tricky enough to find time to post anything new, let alone recreate anything old! But I do appreciate the thought.
-paltego
Was afraid we lost you… Welcome back!
Thanks! Good to be back.
-paltego
Welcome back! I see from your Blog Roll that some blogs that were quietly and subtly pruned from the list have returned – just to make you aware.
Thanks for the heads-up. I did a pass through the blogroll and cleaned everything up.
-paltego
It’s a pity about the archive but it’s good to have you back.
Yeah. I’m a bit annoyed with myself for not taking more regular backups, but didn’t think my hosting company would turn out to be such a disaster. Lesson learnt I guess.
-paltego
Good to have you back!
Thanks! Glad to be back.
At first it was flaky and randomly unresponsive. Then it fell over entirely.
So… not unlike the site author, then?
I’ll, umm, I’ll just see myself out.
Ummm. Not so sure about this one Tom. Think I’m normally pretty responsive and unflaky on here. Falling over may occasionally happen during the festive period.
-paltego
Welcome back, you’ve been missed.
Don’t worry about the missing posts. Focus on moving forward.
Thanks! Appreciate the positive wishes. Best foot forward into 2023!
-paltego
Sorry for your loss paltego, but I like the “life is too short to be sad about it” motto very much.
Thanks. Onwards and upwards!
-paltego