h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Jim

Whilst doing some routine Archive maintenance I noticed that some of our graphics (notably cartoons) are disappearing into something called 'oldblobs' which doesn't allow them to display.

I have reported this to the Team but they don't really know what's happened and suggested that I re-submit them for due process. This is fine for the ones I still had on back-up discs but, sadly, I have a gap of a few weeks and so no longer have all of the missing items.

Is there any way these can be retrieved? I can trawl through and supply the missing blob numbers if so... although it may take me some time to track them all down.

shazz

If you're looking for B-number cartoons, I can probably reproduce a list by searching on "cartoon" within the blob numbers I recorded. I think I labelled most of them that way.

Thank you SEF

I have them all archived and know pretty much which ones are missing - just can't get them to display as they come up as 'oldblobs'...

shazz

Hmm... I just tried a fairly random spot-check test (searching for cartoon at various points within my text listing, ie over the past 5 years) and 5 out of 5 cartoon B-numbers worked OK. Though I was only testing them as URLs bolted onto a basic h2g2 stub (which then automatically changed to an oldblobs plus number URL) rather than within a page. Could the skin you are using be relevant?

We always work in Brunel on The Post...

Perhaps you could try these ones and see what you get?
B5768109
B5800012
B5829670
B5858374
B5768106
B5800009
B5800004
B5800006
B5829662
B5829668
B5858365
B5858370

shazz

Ah, those are all ones from the very last days of the B-number system - and at least one of them (B5800012) had never worked well enough for me to record it as a viable blob. I wonder if the lack of use before transfer makes a difference. The system doesn't even know whether they are gif or jpg.

Traveller in Time browsing local archive
"Some numbers I can not find in my archive either

They have one other common property: they are only used in their respective post article.

'done' is my test of the last hour for the search.

< F47997?thread=1016599 > "

Yes, I was aware that there was a problem with them from the outset - the editorials from those Post editions apologise for the lack of graphics at time of 'going to print'. They did, however, work a day or two later and only disappeared fairly recently (I suspect after an upgrade possibly?).

My problem is that the italics are happy to 'reactivate' them if I re-submit the graphics to the ftp server. Sadly, I seem to have mislaid one of my back-up cds so a few are gone forever unless this 'oldblob' folder can be retrieved somehow. With spimcoot, Greebo and Mr C not around much I doubt that I can ask them if they had a copy so Jim is probably my only hope.

shazz

We don't have any of them. They were all uploaded at a time when the blobs were broken, so we simply don't have the images at all. I think all this happened when we were having severe server problems, which meant switching between two different servers, and it's probably during these switches that the images just got lost.

> "They did, however, work a day or two later and only disappeared fairly recently"

Then you ought to try the "wayback machine" in case it caught any of them working. Do you have the A-numbers?

Traveller in Time browsing
"I just did a search for all of them and besides my 'done' they came up with post Articles.
I am missing:
B5800004
B5800006
B5800009
B5800012

Shall I email the others? "

Can't get the floppy to work TiT

I've tried the wayback machine but no luck so far... plus I get this: We're sorry, access to http://bbc.co.uk/* has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt.

The relevant Post articles are:
A2753453
A2770544
A2792919
A2753165
A2753471
A2753525
A2770535
A2770562
A2792883
A2792937

shazz

Traveller in Time on an attachement
"Wel will work it out tonight. So far nothing more at the office.

More important for now is the current issue of . "

... which is now up and running...

shazz

Well I didn't get anywhere with the first A-number (not as many chances as with a U-number!) but I didn't get that robot message.

Oh dear.

Luckily I have salvaged *all* the Wowbaggers and spimcoots and they are back in place now. Ironically, those ones were from an entirely different era - Christmas 2001. As you see it's the Greebo, Mr C and Tonsil ones we've lost - unless I come across my missing cdrom with the relevant back-ups.

I guess my final and only chance is to email them all and see if they still have copies somewhere.

shazz