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 fill the 14 day hole. The RSS feeds only ever gave fractions of the posts, and I have those. I also seem to have the feeds of all comments from around then, so I think that I can restore those somehow. If for any reason you have parts or all of the body of a post I might have done living on your computer, please send it along to me and I will use it in the reconstructions. Thanks. I’ll be fiddling a lot with the site to get things reconstructed over the next several days and so you might spot some strange things from time to time.
This all is so exasperating.
Now where are those limes?
-cvj
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Hi Amara,
I think there was also something about it over on Bad Astronomy, but I’m not sure where I read it now. I guess we just wait and see.
Thanks….
-cvj
The Palomar fire is still continuing among all of those fires, but they look much more contained now (see link above). They say that the Palomar Observatory is expected to survive, but for some reason I don’t feel reassured.
A random comment out of nowhere… the Southern California fires are still burning. Palomar too. You can evacuate people (_mostly_, the evacuations are working), but in that charred mess, there might be some large and sophisticated telescopes.
Hi All,
Thanks for all the positive thoughts!
I’ve put all the posts back in place with their correct URLs and timestamps. Some are incomplete in the body (images missing, and some updates missing), but I have most of the material to complete them in a few days. Lots of comments to put back too…. have them all…. will take time.
Best,
-cvj
Sorry to hear of your troubles. It’s aggravating to spend time dealing with security issues instead of writing more entries. I just subscribed to your feed and I look forward to seeing your new stuff. Good luck getting everything back in order.
I’m so sorry this happened, Clifford, and hope you can sort it out with minimal pain. It seems so senseless and random!
Amara: In my experience, this isn’t a very common occurrence at all, especially if you aren’t blogging on your own site. If you are worried, go with a service provider platform (like Vox or Blogspot or whatever). But still very unfortunate in this case.
Oh my, Clifford, I’m so sorry about that! And your experience nudges me away from having a blog.. the occasional attacks on my basic web site give me enough headaches. Maybe I’ll skip the Internet blog phase altogether and be more ready for the Next Big Thing (‘Web 3.0’).
Good News Everyone!
Aaron Bergman emailed me with some of the posts he found on google cache. THANKS!
Inspired by his success, I tried to find the others elsewhere, and sure enough, I found some more on yahoo’s cache site…. I think I might have all of them now….
It’s going to take me a while to fool the database into making the right URLs for them and everything, but all posts ought to be up soon… Then I’ll restore your comments… Then I’ll begin the long process of upgrading the whole site…
THANKS everyone!
-cvj
darn. I’m sure I posted some brilliant comment that is now forever lost in cyberspace.
I think drinking is the appropriate response.
good luck. It will be better tomorrow.
e.
*hugs*
I know firsthand how annoying these blogging woes can get. My best advice is to hold it at arm’s length and keep it in perspective- it’ll all seem like ancient history in just a few weeks!
That sucks a lot CVJ…