Daily Archive for October 25th, 2007

A Hole in the Blog

Published on October 25, 2007 in asymptotia. 11 Comments

Definitely time for a gin and tonic, a long groan of exasperation, and a lie down on the sofa.

As you can see by scanning down the page (if you’re a regular), all the blog posts and comments since October 11th right up until today have been lost. The blog was hacked a few hours ago, and it was being redirected to a site in the Middle East. I’ve no idea why.

Anyway, I’ve managed to get (withe the prompt help of the good people at Bluehost) everything restored since the last backup. It turns out that I thought i had more regular backups enabled, but it was not set properly.

I’m going to have to rebuild a number of customization elements of the blog to make it compatible with the newer (and supposedly more secure) version of the blog software I am running, and so the site might look a bit weird for a while until I complete that.

In the meantime, I need to see if I can find some way to get those old posts back and Continue reading ‘A Hole in the Blog’

First Watson, Now Holmes

Published on October 25, 2007 in astronomy and science. 12 Comments

[Post partially reconstructed after 25.10.07 hack]:

As a headline, it’s a cheap link, I know, but it was irresistible. The point is that the comet Holmes suddenly got much brighter and is now beginning to do a naked eye display. How much brighter? It went from magnitude 17 to magnitude 2.8 over the course of a few hours. David Morrison (at NASA) who writes a newsletter about near earth objects (NEO) gives an analogy: “This is equivalent to the planet Saturn suddenly becoming as bright as the full moon.”

Before you go wild, based on this, know that


[Attempt at reconstruction of remainder of lost post follows]:

Continue reading ‘First Watson, Now Holmes’