Sam's Backup Page

*groans* It's too late at night for this bullshit...

So now the LJ hackers, who are cheeky fucks, are posting to comms they've hacked warning against hackers. They link to "me" only the link goes to one of their creepy spampages.

Pass the word, I guess. They just pulled it on boyskissing, FYI.

(thanks drgaellon!)

I COME BEARING LINKS. Links to exciting things!

bjewelled has written a Top Ten Pet Peeves list for Writers -- it's mostly aimed at fanfic, but it applies to writing in general as well. And is also really funny. As ever, if you go, please stay polite; you represent the cafe and have a reputation to uphold.

Number 10 in particular is endemic to the Torchwood fandom and makes me fucking nuts. As someone whose minimum standard for chapter length is three thousand words (and lately, as with In Another Life, I just push it to max posting size, usually around seven thousand) it immediately makes me stop reading when people post 500 word "chapters". Nobody is impressed; everyone is annoyed. And if you are in doubt as to your chapter size, bookmark a wordcount program.

I'm also fond of 10a, but you know me, I love lists that end in #a. :D

In other news, several people have contacted me to let me know that you can now remove old email addresses from your LJ account, as long as your current address has been valid for six months or more. I strongly recommend that you remove any addresses you don't have control of anymore. An old uncontrolled email address was the direct tool they used when I was hacked. Many of you already have security questions, but this is an extra layer of insulation against low-tech hacking.

Also, given everything, I'm very proud of LJ for instituting this -- in the past we've criticised them a lot for introducing new features we don't need and not addressing features we should have, so it's nice to see them reprioritising. Well done, Livejournal team!

And before you open a comment window: DO NOT ASK YOUR LJ TECH SUPPORT QUESTIONS HERE. Even if they're about the hack (ESPECIALLY if they're about the hack). Or if you do, do not expect me to answer them. Check the "picking up the pieces" tag (on this post, for your convenience!) if you need more info. You will find it all there, from friending bots to security questions to recovery techniques.

Hey guys -- does anyone have a saved copy of the Guide To Discworld Reading that I posted in January of 2005? I just realised it's one of the more permanent casualties of the Hack. And while I could rewrite it, I'd really rather not have to. Not that it doesn't need updating anyway...

I've completed the tagging and unlocking for 2008, so the majority of the last year and a half's entries are back up. Now comes the bloody business of cross-checking what's there against what Google Reader has archived, and hand-uploading those entries.

You know, as satisfying as it will be to have a tidy journal, I have to say that being the human test subject for the "Nothing ever disappears off the internet" hypothesis was not exactly pleasant.

In other news, Coworker B brought me chocolate and a cherry jolly rancher sucker. She wins Thursday.

In other other news, a couple of people were intrigued when I mentioned that the new journal title is from a Chumbawamba song, and many more were intrigued to hear that they'd written a Shakespearean-style love ballad between two men. So I thought I'd upload a sampler of their work that does not include I GET KNOCKED DOWN, BUT I GET UP AGAIN. :D Because they really are a pretty sublime group of artists and I am deeply in love with their cover of Daddy Was A Bankrobber.

BTW -- am still wrestling with the computer and with livejournal over getting my old entries uploaded. IF YOU SEE an entry from me that looks out of place or seems irrelevant but is at the top of your flist, check the date. And then let me know, so that I don't fill your Flist with posts from August of 2007. Thanks guys :D

Except for the really harsh hand-coding, I have finished uploading through August of 2007. The vast majority of the uploading from now on will be automated from the GJ/IJ mirrors.

Jesus christ, I need a drink.

As it turns out, uploading the more recent history is way more traumatic than the old stuff, even being miserable in Texas in 2006, because my memories of it are so much clearer and you guys? How did I not realise how incredibly miserable I was at the box office last year? I mean I know I didn't have a gold standard to compare it to, but seriously. Many terrible things have happened in 2008 but at least I don't work for a fucking nutbar anymore. As much as I liked my coworkers...fucking nutbar.

Dear BossBoss: I love my job and I am grateful you think I am competent and I will burn you a Torchwood DVD set and I want you never to fire me. Yrs, Sam.

2005 is done! Except for polls and photoposts, all the hand-uploading is completed. I'm now more than 50% finished with the manual part; I just have to get through 2006 and half of 2007. After that I can hopefully automate it. I'll still need to read through everything that's auto-uploaded to make sure it's kosher, but reading isn't so bad. Besides, 2005 was a significant year of suck after May, and I'm just as glad to be done reliving that.

Technically I should be uploading what I can automate first, but I decided to start in 2003 and just work forward, because I have very little logistical sense when it comes to times and dates, and am easily confused.

Sidebar: When I was done with Two Centres the first thing I did was go back and build a timeline of the events within the story and then redate everything so that, you know, TUESDAY DOESN'T GO MISSING. You don't even want to know what I went through with All That I Ain't Got; everytime Jack said I MISS JOO and Ianto replied HOW CAN YOU MISS ME YOU ARE SITTING NEXT TO ME EATING A SANDWICH was really me reminding myself how the timeline worked.

Back to the point: 2005 is uploaded. And to celebrate, I would like you to go have fun doing a meme that is not safe for work. GO ON YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO. Anonymous posting only, plz.

I'm already totally lost in the hows, whys, connections and wherefores of all this, but here are some things to remember before everyone freaks out (too late for me, I'm afraid).

1. Most importantly: If there are any email addresses associated with your LJ account that you no longer have control over, remove them remove them remove them remove them now. If they are the originating email address on the account, uh, reopen the account or contact LJ support to get it removed, I suppose. It can be done -- they removed my hotmail address permanently.

2. As far as I know, there is no connection between the Russian "friending" bots and the hack, but that doesn't mean the connection doesn't exist. http://nympholept.livejournal.com/tag/russian+bots has more info on the friending bots, which I haven't really looked at because I can only handle so much at one time. I don't really see logically how the friending bots would work in concert with the hackers, but *throws up hands* I never thought naming my email address after my LJ would get my LJ deleted, either.

3. Let's all remember, there are nice bilingual Russians who mean us no harm and do hang out on this journal. Cold war jokes are funny for like 0.2 seconds. (Granted, for those 0.2 seconds, they are pretty fucking funny.)

3a. As a personal request, PLEASE, if you have a question about all this, read through the comments on the last two or three posts before you ask it, because I'm getting a lot of the same questions and, generally before I can answer, a lot of the same answers. Which is, you know, just a trifle irritating to me at a time during which I am not my normal tolerant self. I'm not going to sic the cafe on you or anything, I'm just going to...fume, or something. And nobody wants me fuming, right? Bad for the ozone.

Numbers are dancing in front of my eyes...

I spent all morning, when I wasn't actively working, on reconstructing the LJ. I've downloaded everything Wayback has on 2004 and saved it to the flash drive; January through March is mostly uploaded, though there are a handful of hard-to-code posts, polls, and photo updates that I'm going to have to deal with.

One of the things I stumbled across was a meme I'd posted nearly five years ago, about my LJ activity. It turned out that the website for the meme was still active, so I did it again. Interesting to see what's changed and what hasn't.

( Sam's LJ Activity in January 2004 and October 2008: )

So I had work today, and wrote and read and uploaded some posts and generally did my thing. We're still feeling Coworker J's departure keenly, but I'm told he, or someone to replace him, will be back within the month. Good, because I need a desk sub on the 22nd (it's Company Bondage Bonding Day again) and, well, everyone kinda needs to go to it.

I'm slowly whittling down the lists of Posts I Really Want To Recover -- I found my account of Pops Goes The Fourth in Boston, which for some inexplicable reason was posted on the seventh. I'd forgotten my horrific sunburn. Totally worth it, though.

It's kind of funny, now when I go to post I automatically want to hit the "backdate entry" button, and then adjust the datestamp.

I actually am culling quite a few entries, just because they're unimportant or they're fic posts and the fic is already archived. And sometimes they're just random quotes, which I can stash just as easily elsewhere.

OR I COULD SHARE THEM WITH YOU!

"Where are you my little object d'art? I am going to collect you!" -- Pepe le Pew

"The Southern Baptist Convention has issued Sunday school lessons on how gays and lesbians can change. We can change. I've been much happier since I stopped being a Baptist." --Letter to the editor of the Des Moines Register from reader Fran Bailey, Feb 8th 1999

And as a bonus, James Marsters in 1980.

Oh, Jimmy. That hair.

jack_and_ellis is up and running again; fully restocked, with a new index and news post as well as an art post. If you de-friended to avoid your f-list being flooded by the chapter posts, feel free to come on back.

I split up chapter thirty into two chapters, because the average chapter-length is around 4k words and that chapter was almost 9k. There are about seven hundred new words on the end of Chapter 32 (what once was Chapter 31), just to complete the conversation Ellis was having with the excreble MP Bell. Otherwise nothing new, just some redecorating.

I feel a bit guilty about Jack & Ellis these days, only because I don't actually believe Australia is a country of horrific nationalist bigots bordering on slaveownership. I quite like Australia actually. I've decided I just have to push through the guilt, because it's only going to get worse before it gets better and half the climax of the book is based on the race relations between the Aboriginal tribes and the White settlers. I am confident that the book in total won't give the impression that I despise the country and all white people in it, but at the moment it does tend to cant that way a bit.

So. All the communities are now taken care of. I'm going through old archived posts slowly, uploading where I can. If you happen to see a "new" post from me that looks like it doesn't belong or is dated funny, just drop a comment so I'll notice and backdate it properly. I have slipped up a couple of times but I usually catch it pretty fast.

One very interesting thing I've noticed is that I started doing "Three things" way before I actually started doing Three Things. Back as far as my entries go I've found lists in threes, often with a "3a" as well. I have no idea what it means, other than three is a tidy number when you have several random thoughts to tie together.