After my irritating episode yesterday when I deleted a couple of posts, I received a message from Fiona to say that she had rescued the Myna Bird post from her Google Reader because it had not at that time refreshed and deleted it. However the 'Legs' one had gone. In fact it had gone from Facebook's Networked Blogs too and had, effectively, disappeared never to return.
However my saviour for that post came from Mark, my Nepthew-in-law, who wrote the blog search program Postvorta and who knows about the dark arts behind computers that most of us can only wonder about. Apparently my Postvorta had not re-indexed since the deletion (if I understand it correctly) and Mark was able to rescue all the text from it.
So today I am an exceedingly happy bunny and have re-constructed the two posts and the comments made on them.
Some people today will have done great things: finished their magnum opus, discovered a cure for an illness, re-invented the wheel or saved a life or, perhaps, just achieved a personal best on the athletics field. I've re-constructed my blog. I am easily pleased!
I should have been out on the croquet lawn this afternoon playing a match in the hot summer sun. As it is it's rained solidly all day and the match has been postponed until tomorrow.
So for the second day running I've been catching up round The Cottage, in Blogland and Computerland. The children, on the other hand are not on their play-stations or whatever - they are in the pool despite the rain - the water temperature yesterday was an almost bath-like 30℃.
I've also started using Blogbackupr.com to back up my blogs constantly instead of my supposedly monthly back-up to my own computer. For someone who is a fanatical backer-upper and who keeps on and off-site backups I certainly failed when it came to the blog backup.
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While I am glad you were able to reconstruct your lost blog posts, this makes me wonder about the opposite situation; what if you really want to get rid of something that you wrote (or that was written about you) on the internet, and it is so indestructible? Of course, the answer is: make sure you don't post anything you might later regret...
ReplyDeleteYou are right, the best idea is not to post anything you might regret! Having said that it turns out the reason I had copies of the lost posts was a bug in Postvorta. It's supposed to forget deleted posts and comments but for some reason it isn't. I'll have to dig into the code and see what is going on.
DeleteInterestingly the EU have a new directive working it's way through that enshrines the right to be digitally forgotten. So being able to delete a Facebook account (for instance) and be safe in the knowledge that it had really gone not just been disabled or hidden. While this sounds like a great idea, I'm currently working on a project with The National Archives, where they are really worried about it. Of course they want to record historically important things for posterity without people being able to retroactively change the historical record.
That last concern is understandable. We all know what kind of thing can happen when history is re-written. Although of course that presupposes that it is written 'accurately' in the first place...:-)
DeleteRe your bug: Perhaps, given that I have run out of blogbackupr space already, you should get into the blog backing up business too Mark? Please?
Wow! Postvorta Mark is your rellie?! I'm impressed! I use postvorta all the time to search my own blog.
ReplyDeleteI don't back-up my blog... I'd be very sad if it all disappeared. I shall check out Blogbackupr.com. Thank you.
Hi Katherine, glad you like Postvorta. Over the last few days I've made some changes to the server side of things which should make it even faster to use and there are some more ideas that I intend to incorporate when I have the time. Let me know if there are any specific things you would like to see add and I'll see what I can do.
DeleteI managed to read the Myna bird post before it flew away...how amazing that you can get it back.
ReplyDeleteSP
Great job getting your blog back! I'll start using Postvorta. Cheers, Ruby.
ReplyDeleteGlad for you that you managed to restore your posts!
ReplyDeleteSo Postvorta will back up my blogs? How brilliant of Mark!
ReplyDeleteWell, my phone is still wet after two and a half days of being in the rice. It had made progress enough that the phone turned on, but wouldn't respond to the send button. Wish me luck on finding something that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, please. Best wishes for dry weather tomorrow.
Glad you rescued your blog. Postvorta. I'll look into it.
ReplyDeleteMind you, I often manage to delete blog posts or generally mess up without any malign assistance from technology !
Good news about recovering your posts. And thanks for the Postvorta tip. Clever man, that Mark.
ReplyDeleteThank you Mark.
ReplyDeleteGeeb, Re BlogbackupR - I see I have run out of 'space' already. (used 108/100) What happens now? I guess I should contact them and ask instead of you...
I'm not sure what your problem might be Katherine because I've backed up the whole of this blog and Eagleton Notes on the same Blogbackupr account. However it hasn't updated since I did the original backup. I shall keep my eye on it. I haven't managed to find another free one apart from Backupify which has a limited free service.
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