Losing Weight - er - Stories
April 7th 2010 08:34
Over the Easter weekend I spent a bit of time putting my previous computer back together again to see if I had copies of some stories that got deleted from the Internet when Yahoo, after having 'acquired' Geocities, decided they didn't really need it and dumped it from the system. Thousands and thousands of geocities files vanished overnight. I think we were warned, but I'm not entirely sure.
I hadn't used the geocities site for a while because I was mostly blogging on Blogger, but there was a bunch of stuff there, including five stories that didn't get reloaded on my new computer. (I may have mentioned on here earlier that I spent a lot of time a few months back trying to see if my geocities site had survived the purge by being picked up by one of several sites that attempted to put geocites back together again. At that time there was no sign of it. However there are still dozens of links to my geocities site, which of course go nowhere anymore.)
Anyway, I spent quite a bit of time searching the old computer - which had an enormous folder entitled 'Old Hard Drive', made when my computer guy had installed more memory a couple of years ago (maybe more). He'd dumped everything in there, and then put all the important files back into the current folders. So by rights I should have had two copies of most things - in fact, when I used Google desktop, I'd often find several copies of each thing. Not quite sure how that came about.
I found files everyone had forgotten about: ones under various family names - people who'd gone and gotten married and had kids since the files were last looked at. But no sign of the stories.
This isn't the first time I've lost stories: our first computer, an Amiga, had a number of stories on it, which we saved onto disk. We then acquired our first PC. Of course the files were saved in an Amiga format and wouldn't work on a PC. And by that time the Amiga had been passed onto someone else. There was one particular story I was very fond of, about an alter ego. Gone.
And it looks as if the stories I was trying to find on the weekend have gone too. It's a puzzle, because there's other stuff that's backup material for the geocities site, but not this particular folder. Very annoying.
Do they still exist in cyberspace somewhere, as deleted files are supposed to do on your computer? Perhaps so. Maybe one day, Yahoo will repent and restore all these sites. It seems they thought of these as some people think of their weight: the outside fat can be hived off pretty quickly (helped by such things as top fat burners), and that will make the remainder not look so bad. Once the outside fat is gone - the geocities of the system - the basic normal fat can be gradually whittled away. It'll be interesting to see what Yahoo gets rid of next, in that case. (I forgot to mention that they also disposed of the site that had backups of many of my files. Very helpful.)
I think Yahoo is in the unfortunate position of having been good while it lasted, but not so good once Google came along - and a variety of other, better sites.
Meantime, while I was looking for the stories, I found a number of writing exercises I'd done back in 1999. How did they survive the various purges? Amongst them was this piece of nonsense:
ABC
After being caught dunking every fiery gourmet halibut in juice, Ken looked more niggled, ordered pancakes, quiche, risotto, said, Take up virgins, woman, Xerox your zeroes. Alison biffed curly-downed, Easter-fired, gargantuan-heathed, indiscriminately-jointed Kenneth; left moping, never opened peace, quarter refused, spat torrid unctuous, vicious words, xenophobically yelled, Zorro!
How to make a total lack of sense.
PS - by chance I've just found that reocities, one of the sites that was trying to rescue geocities sites, has managed to find my geocites blog page! Well, how about that! The link at the bottom of the page doesn't appear to go anywhere, but maybe there are more pages floating around, if I look.
I'll keep you informed.
I hadn't used the geocities site for a while because I was mostly blogging on Blogger, but there was a bunch of stuff there, including five stories that didn't get reloaded on my new computer. (I may have mentioned on here earlier that I spent a lot of time a few months back trying to see if my geocities site had survived the purge by being picked up by one of several sites that attempted to put geocites back together again. At that time there was no sign of it. However there are still dozens of links to my geocities site, which of course go nowhere anymore.)
Anyway, I spent quite a bit of time searching the old computer - which had an enormous folder entitled 'Old Hard Drive', made when my computer guy had installed more memory a couple of years ago (maybe more). He'd dumped everything in there, and then put all the important files back into the current folders. So by rights I should have had two copies of most things - in fact, when I used Google desktop, I'd often find several copies of each thing. Not quite sure how that came about.
I found files everyone had forgotten about: ones under various family names - people who'd gone and gotten married and had kids since the files were last looked at. But no sign of the stories.
This isn't the first time I've lost stories: our first computer, an Amiga, had a number of stories on it, which we saved onto disk. We then acquired our first PC. Of course the files were saved in an Amiga format and wouldn't work on a PC. And by that time the Amiga had been passed onto someone else. There was one particular story I was very fond of, about an alter ego. Gone.
And it looks as if the stories I was trying to find on the weekend have gone too. It's a puzzle, because there's other stuff that's backup material for the geocities site, but not this particular folder. Very annoying.
Do they still exist in cyberspace somewhere, as deleted files are supposed to do on your computer? Perhaps so. Maybe one day, Yahoo will repent and restore all these sites. It seems they thought of these as some people think of their weight: the outside fat can be hived off pretty quickly (helped by such things as top fat burners), and that will make the remainder not look so bad. Once the outside fat is gone - the geocities of the system - the basic normal fat can be gradually whittled away. It'll be interesting to see what Yahoo gets rid of next, in that case. (I forgot to mention that they also disposed of the site that had backups of many of my files. Very helpful.)
I think Yahoo is in the unfortunate position of having been good while it lasted, but not so good once Google came along - and a variety of other, better sites.
Meantime, while I was looking for the stories, I found a number of writing exercises I'd done back in 1999. How did they survive the various purges? Amongst them was this piece of nonsense:
ABC
After being caught dunking every fiery gourmet halibut in juice, Ken looked more niggled, ordered pancakes, quiche, risotto, said, Take up virgins, woman, Xerox your zeroes. Alison biffed curly-downed, Easter-fired, gargantuan-heathed, indiscriminately-jointed Kenneth; left moping, never opened peace, quarter refused, spat torrid unctuous, vicious words, xenophobically yelled, Zorro!
How to make a total lack of sense.
PS - by chance I've just found that reocities, one of the sites that was trying to rescue geocities sites, has managed to find my geocites blog page! Well, how about that! The link at the bottom of the page doesn't appear to go anywhere, but maybe there are more pages floating around, if I look.
I'll keep you informed.
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