Stripey II Thread?

[Sy V]

WTF has it gone?

[TStevens]

Looks like something went wrong when you was posting to the thread, I cant find anything wrong in the database so im a little confused.

[Liz]

I wish I could answer your question Sy...

[Gary]

Now you know how me and Dico et all felt when we lost all our threads when the old forum crashed

Sorry, I know you must be upset, but couldn't stop myself

[Sy V]

Yeah, you just don't know how much better that makes me feel...not!

[Paul.P]

This will be a very sad loss, if all these posts have gone for good !!!!

[Sy V]

Oh, it's gone Paul. The database has been checked.
I have most of the pictures though, so I suppose I could do a History since Purchase and then continue from the present.
It's would just be a pictorial-type thing with a list of mods though, and mustering the enthusiasm is difficult, to say the least.
The really annoying bit is the loss of the feedback and advice and the lessons learned for other to avoid falling into similar pitfalls.

On a more positive note, the new engine is bolted into place in all four areas and looks really sweet. Couldn't be arsed to even take the camera though as I was on such a downer about the loss of the historical thread.

[Paul.P]

Not being a computer buff, is there something we should be careful of when posting, cause we don't want to start losing threads all over the place , or was it something you did by mistake Sy ?. Which ever, i feel sorry this thread has been lost, like you said Sy, a lot of valuable info lost here !, but try not to loose heart mate, you've been an inspiration to me & others on here, & long may it continue !

[Sy V]

Thanks for the kind words Paul, but there are plenty of individuals who are far more inspirational than I, on these pages, mate.

When the thread vanished it was very early on Sunday morning. I'd gone to bed on Saturday night having just posted about 12 pics of the progress made that day. I was knackered and downhearted (we'd not made as much progress as i would have liked), and I'd set my alarm for 6am Sunday morning to ensure another full day of work on the car.
The alarm went off and I really didn't want to get up. I sat in front of the computer and checked in for feedback on the thread. There were one or two posts - the last of which was from Doug taking the mickey out of the massive size of my stiffy.

I replied with a whole dialogue of info on what we had done and what was fitted and some double-entendre just to keep Doug on his toes, hit 'Submit' and then got one of those white screens with bold and unbold text (the one's you get when the site's down). My first thought was "hit the back button and copy the text that you've just typed" 'cos I didn't fancy typing that little lot out again. But the back button took me to a screen (that only Doug and I see) which is the "Are you sure you want to delete this thread?" option. I am 100% certain (no doubt whatsoever) that I hit the No option.

Then the pages hung (stalled) and I closed the LEC tab in my browser and hit the Homepage button - LEC Forum. Went straight back to the Projects area to repost my typed text...no Stripey II thread left.

I'm sure you can imagine what I felt - gutted. The best part of the car's recent history (remember the car was completely standard when I got her and all of the mods were recorded, in some way in that thread) had disappeared into the ether.

On the plus side...if I do restart the thread in some way, it won't suffer from the pagination problem that the old one did!

[Sy V]

Paul

I don't think there's any need for anyone to start worrying about posting.

Here are some forum stats:

Number of posts: 54634
Number of topics: 3638
Number of users: 1845
Board started: 14 Mar 2002 10:00

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first post to have vanished, without explanation. As sure as I am of my actions on Sunday morning...all evidence points to operator error, I'm afraid.

Subject Change

Consider your car, or Whitey for that matter.

Can you

a. List all mods.
b. List those mods in the right order.

I can't. For instance, I think my first M100-equipped Donington was 2001/2? The car was green. When was the vinyl stripe added? What year did I first turn up at the show with the painted stripe.? Did I have the Kia lights fitted last year?

For most of the stuff I've done myself, I have no receipts for work, therefore its inexorably difficult to timetable.

[Gary]

Is there a way to export or backup individual threads?

I know Paul would be gutted if we lost the JPS one (although he'd be the only one )

[Paul.P]

Sy, glad to here there shouldn't be any worry's about posting, but having read & thought about your last posting, its really quite sad !, as you say, you can't remember when things happened ( know the feeling only to well ! ), but the one saving grace / consolation is that whatever & whenever you did all them things, you know you have certainly created one of the nicest elans around !

[markv]

Is there a way to export or backup individual threads?

I don't know much about the open source software used to run the forum, but it appears to be in use in loads of forums on the internet, so I'd be surprised if there wasn't some way of taking backups.

How big is the database? Couldn't a backup of the entire database be taken once a month/week/night to prevent such a devastating loss from happening again? Even if data from a lost thread couldn't be restored from a backup into the current database, it could at least be copied into a document and preserved somewhere.

[Sy V]

The database IIRC is ~73Mb and there is the option of back-up.

This is something that I need to discuss with Tony, Doug and Liz to see who needs to do it in the future, when and what it entails.

[Gary]

I can volunteer if need be. I've loads of hard disc space (raid too so shouldn't fail)

[Gary]

Actually I've got another offer. I've got about 200 100MB Zip discs. So if I used one of those a week I could back it all up for about 2 years !

Just let me know if I can help

[Sy V]

Thanks Gary.

We'll let you know if needed.

Listen, I'm going to lock this thread now. No point crying over spilled milk. What's done is done, so onwards and upwards (and any other crap cliches you can think of).

I'm going to spend an hour or two each night (during the week) to give a precis of how Stripey has evolved since I bought her.

It will (by its very nature) be historical and some might find it incredibly dull. But I'll try to make it as interesting and as informative as I can. Just don't ask me to show the cost at every juncture, or I might need counselling by the end of it all!