Apparently some scum-sucking invertebrate decided to hack the Skywritings blog.
Scully, the author over there, decided to go ahead and shut down, rather than go to the effort of retrieving all of her prose and poetry that was cacked.
This got me to thinking — usually a Bad Thing.
I don’t have any of this saved, except betwixt Ye Olde Ears. Methinks I might ought to do something about that.
Bearing in mind that my computer-ical and internet-ish knowledge compares favourably to that of a Neandertal, anyone got any advice for saving this stuff?
Bear in mind, if you please, that any instruction needs to be along the lines of:
“1)Offer box of KFC Crispy to Magic Box Elves.
2)Mash yellow button.
3)Sit on hands until pretty blinking lights stop.”
LawDog
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=41447&topic=12512
open your favorite browser – I use Firefox
Type this into the top address bar
“http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com
/search?max-results=1000″ (all as one line, without the quotation marks).
Wait until the thing quits spinning – about 3 minutes.
Under the File Menu select the option “save page as …”
That will bring up a popup window. Give it a name, such as
Lawdog 2007nov22.html.
Pick a disk location.
At the bottom is a window labeled Format. Pick “web page, complete”.
Click on the “save” button.
Copy that file off to a CD. I just copied the site this way and it occupies 3.6 megabytes.
PS – It does not save comments. That would be
http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com
/feeds/comments/default?max-results=1000
All on line at google
You could use a blog client software – the one I use is Ecto – at http://infinite-sushi.com/software/ecto/ – it’s available for Mac OS/:X and Windows. After entering the login info about your blog, it will synchronize, downloading all your previous entries. You can then open them individually, post new entries, post edits to old entries, etc. without any hassle. It does not save comments, though.
The feedback so far goes to how to capture a copy of the blog content, but doesn’t talk about the computer, or safe backup. Check out Mozy (www.mozy.com) online backup; free for 2GB and $5/month for unlimited. I’ve had three computers on Unlimited for a while now, and 2 more on Free.
(And they do a good job of putting it in the “mash yellow button” category, and you don’t need to wait for the blinkenlights to stop.)
What the others above said but get a USB drive of suitable capacity to save it.
Portable, updateable and cheap.
AWWWWWWWW I hope Scully will start another post. Her writings are wonderful…let us know if she starts one!
bj3672@yahoo.com
It would depend on whether you have the data on your PC or if it is solely on the blog. If it is on your PC, buy an external hard-drive and periodically backup all your data onto the external hard-drive. They are getting cheaper almost daily. You can get one for under $100, someplaces near $50.
If it is solely on the blog website, then you need to work with those folks and have them do the backups.
Assuming you first save your content to your local hard drive this will be the best option, I think. I learned this when I used to do computer forensics for the Texas AG.
I like to backup my whole computer and lately have taken to using ghost.exe which comes packaged with Norton Utilities. Get an external hard drive and with it hooked up and formated as FAT, so you can see it in DOS, start your computer from a DOS diskette and run Ghost and then choose the appropriate options to make a copy of your drive(s) onto your external HD. These files can only be 2gig each so you will likely have a series of files when you finish such as gho1, gho2, gho3, etc.
With these files you can restore your whole system, say, for instance, if you have a catastrophic failure of your hardware/hard drive. Just pop in a new drive, run ghost from the DOS prompt after booting to the command line prompt, and voila! You are up and running again. AND, using another utility in the Norton basket you can even browse ghost files and restore individual files therefrom. What you are essentially doing with this program is making a bit stream image of your entire drive and/or OS/files depending on the options you choose. That is, it will even copy stuff you have deleted, not saved, etc., EVERY 0 and 1 on the drive. Neat stuff. I love it. It has pulled my chestnuts out of the fire more than once.
Skywriter would be rolling over in her plane if she saw the “strip teasing” I saw on her blog site when I went there after she closed up shop.
Blogger might have backup too for the hacked blog.
For you LD I would say download each post (yeah I know) and save to a flash drive.
Take little black thingy and push white thingy on it till silver thingy sticks out.
Insert silver thingy in the little slot (USB).
Save all postings on the removeable drive.
Sit and wait till done…
*8P
Set blogger settings (from the control panel) in ‘archive’ to ‘no archive’. Set in ‘publishing’ to 999 posts on the page.
Now go to your blog and do a file/save-as and send it to your desk top.
Shezzam, you got it all, unless you have more than 1000 posts.
Don’t forget to set everything back.
and does anyone know how to capture Skywritings from Google history files? I know the last couple of months of it still show up in my Google Reader, but that’s as far back as I was subscribing.
I’d love to have a copy of all I’ve missed.
Is it possible to trace who hacked the site? Seems some retribution is needed.
Well, how helpful is this? I come here to enjoy your writing and find something that might save mine. My husband does all his postinging as a document and then uploads to his blog. (So he’s got everything saved.) Phfufff! I say! (Used to say.) Now I better get busy with your readers’ suggestions in case my blog goes blewy.
Patience (my name, not a suggestion)
Use the wayback machine, it has all websites ever created.
I recommend you save all yer important stuff to an external HD and store it in a fireproof safe. If you can figure out Norton’s Ghost proggie (previously mentioned) or G4U (tis free!): http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ that’d be even betterer.
This HD should ideally have an clean copy of yer HD on it and also individual files that you can easily access/update.
Remember that this is yer secret backup behind yer other backups– so never “save” if you think you might have been wormed, trojaned and otherwise hacked or you’ll risk saving the problem too. Do a complete system scan before you copy yer HD and once that’s set, just update individual files as needed from then on.
This way, if you get a case of the hackers, have a box malfunktion or if the lawdog lair goes all flamen’hotn’ashy on you, you’ll at least have yer bookmarks, pics, writings etc…. available. If your box came with Operating System disks, keep them in the safe too. Do an update of your newly collected bookmarks/writings once or twice a month and you can sleep ez knowing all is not lost, even when all is lost. (i luv haven’ an ace up my sleeve, don’t you?!)
Thanks for you and what you do,
nurf
(ps– good article idea?: “What Aces do you keep up yer sleeve?”
Mine: a good sharp pocketknife and belief in a soul that no man can compromise. No matter how ugly things get, I know I can count on those!)
First, awesome blog. Second, as regards recovering files from the other blog, try http://www.archive.org, and see if there are copies in the “Wayback Machine” you’ll find at the top of the page. Archive.org archives all sorts of web sites, so you all may be in luck…
So, after all of this, did you actually archive/save anything?