While spot-checking my mostly-reconstructed 2002-2006 blog, I found this plaint from 2002:
When you are a writer whose entire corpus exists online, woven into a fabric of citation and commentary, it is incredibly painful to see that fabric torn apart.
Déjà vu all over again. In 2002 I had to sacrifice the linkage to my 1999-2002 BYTE.com and restore it here. Now I’ve done the same for my 2002-2006 InfoWorld blog. Since its former namespace isn’t being redirected, and since all the old links were broken anyway, I’ve taken this opportunity to create new descriptive names that incorporate dates and titles.
The reboot isn’t 100% clean, but it’s automated and reproducible so I can address categories of problems as they show up.
I’m glad I’m not in publishing anymore. It turns out to be a lousy way to keep your stuff published. When a commercial hosted lifebits service comes online, I’ll be customer #1.
“I’m glad I’m not in publishing anymore. It turns out to be a lousy way to keep your stuff published.” Ick…I hate to see this happen twice to you, Jon. It’s sad that’s how it seems to work out, but good that at least you were able to restore a copy of the corpus. Alpha geekness does have it’s advantages! (and that does remind me, I have to got fix some redirects…)
(Yikes, please ignore the grammatical errors there; it’s late.)
In spite of all the work and unfortunate circumstances, I for one am glad the archive is being made available. No doubt this happens to other authors who are less able to solve and fix the problem without oodles of help. Will Google/Yahoo/MS finally get Lifebits Beta out of the labs and onto the ‘Net? I hope so too.
Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.
I watched your piece on the Heavy Metal Umlaut for a digital history class. First, I have to say that it was excellent. I would, however, like to ask if it is at all possible to get a slightly edited version that blocks out the site vandalism. I would like to use this in a high school environment, but if I show kids a whole page of I Suck ****, I will run into parent problems. Anyhow, I thoroughly enjoyed the work.
I’m not going to make those edits, but if you need to you’re welcome to do so.