Is Google Losing A Step?
(Internet • Web Stuff)
I try to follow certain geek rules, and No. 4 is that if a particular piece of software is performing to your satisfaction, do not “upgrade” it. “Upgrades” as often as not fail to improve upon the older program version they just replaced. And sometimes they add “features” such as spyware or other annoyances. But in a Homer moment, I fell for the promise of improved service, and upgraded a favorite web stats analyzer.
Doh!
The upgrade corrupted this web site’s database. In so doing, it not only failed to provide enhanced web stat evaluation, it invisibled all the web stats that had been meticulously gathered over the past couple of years.
I knew I could pretty much fix things by importing a backup of my database. However, since this site is mostly a collection of my ramblings, and not what I consider data-critical, I only have my auto backup scheduled for once a week. That was Sunday. I’d written a couple of blog posts since then, but figured losing them was better than losing a couple of years’ worth of web stats. So I imported the backup database.
And then I remembered that Google stores copies of the pages its spider finds as it searches through the web, in the form of Google cache. (If you do a Google search, many of the results include a link marked “cached.” If you click on that link, it usually provides a version of the page from a slightly earlier point in time. Check it out.)
Only today, I learned that Google’s cache has been asleep at the wheel. After conducting a series of advanced searches using Google’s date feature, and employing the cache, I learned that the last time Google had cached my site was Aug. 26 – four days before the two recent posts I had chosen to sacrifice but now was trying to revive.
I tried Yahoo, and Bing, and Ask, and several lesser-known search engines that include caching. Strangely enough, each of them had last cached this web site on Aug. 26. What are the odds of that? Do you think they’re all sharing Google’s cache somehow?
Turns out Baidu got cache. Only Baidu displays it as four Chinese characters I can’t reproduce using our greco-roman-ish alphabet.
Turns out Baidu last cached this web site on Aug. 31. That allowed me to cut and paste my two missing blog posts and, if I hadn’t just tattled on myself, no one would’ve known the difference.
Two morals to this story: Whenever you’re tempted to upgrade to the latest slick version of your favorite software, remember Geek Rule No. 4. And when you’re stuck in the middle of deep web research, remember that Google not only isn’t the only game on Earth, it isn’t even the biggest or necessarily the best.
→ B.Dunn, Sep 01, 2010, 10 05 AM
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Ghost in the Machine
(Internet • Web Stuff)
Sorry about any squirreliness readers may have experienced when attempting to access this site over the past few hours.
For some very odd reason, the site began sending visitors to a web mail page instead of the blog’s home page, beginning last night.
Unlike most of my sites, this one still resided on servers owned by my former company. This morning, I moved the site to my own servers. It’s quite probable you could still find bugs, so watch out!
→ B.Dunn, Aug 02, 2010, 07 19 AM
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Thursday Brain Drain
(Web Stuff • Writing)
This week’s best other stuff from brains that contribute to bringing you this stuff:
→ OK, which is better, keeping abreast of the latest legal underpinnings shaping the future of our society, or listening to the babble of crackheads leaving the courthouse? You may already have guessed the answer.
→ Let’s say you’re trying to raise $52 million to help cement the Big Corporate Choke-Hold on American politics. Trouble is, prospective donors are put off by laws requiring the quick disclosure of their names. ¡Hey Presto! Just create a 501©(4) organization, which doesn’t have to disclose donors until months after the attack ads run. And who better to hire as front man for this Rovian effort than the vice chairman of a Swiss bank implicated in a major tax evasion criminal investigation?
→ Not content to merely drive newspaper web site visitors away by building the sort of paywall so popular with his bigger peers, publisher Oreste P. D’Arconte has unveiled a more impressive scheme for annoying any remaining digital readers who stop by.
→ Small businesses created more than 60% of all new U.S. jobs in the past 15 years, so when I got a half-dozen letters from the IRS the other day, I figured they were refund checks resulting from a shrewd plan to provide direct stimulus to those of us who actually power America’s economic engine, as opposed to corporations who are so patriotic they’ll happily move their headquarters to the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes. Yeah, right.
→Women who wear tattoos now find themselves in the Mexican government’s cross-hairs, targeted as poster children for the erosion of social values. As debate ignites over a woman’s right to artistically embellish her own body vs. her social/moral obligations, The Mex Files supports the Marxist tattoo viewpoint.
→ B.Dunn, Jul 15, 2010, 06 59 AM
Back Up For Air
(Work • Web Stuff)
For a while there it was almost like Old Times at Inky Wretchland, where every minute was a deadline of some sort, and when you put the newspaper to bed at the end of the evening there was just enough time for a couple beers and a four-hour power nap, and then you were on deadline again.
This time it was two database-driven political web sites built from the ground up with rather full interactive capabilities, in-house graphics, email-list and social media integrated, in seven very full days, courtesy of a cranky old man who really needed to be tending to his tomatoes.
For your viewing pleasure, I present you with a nearly complete but still raw-around-the-edges new web site for my friends at the Fort Bend County Democratic Party.
And another for their upcoming Blue Fort Bend In 2010 Campaign.
That’s right, once a bright red stain on an angry red state, Fort Bend County has had enough and, assisted by some terrific demographic trends, is about to become majority Democrat.
The worm turns.
→ B.Dunn, May 27, 2010, 02 24 PM
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