Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

He really is that stupid.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

I was promised a recession.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Who Wants A Site Update?

Who Wants A Site Update?

by | 83 Comments

This post is in: 

Who wants a site update?

I needed to write something up so I can update Cole and I figured why not update everyone?

I had to clear away a bunch of debris after the merge in order to get a better feel for where things stand, and I thought this might be a good time for an update.

The has been a bit like trying to untangle a very fine chain necklace that has turned into a big, fat tangled knot.  You have to work around the edges until you find a way in, and then work slowly from there.  So that’s where we are now; I have done some of that untangling so the picture is getting clearer.

50 posts were dated 1970, so I had to track each one of those down and fix them.  done!  *That was fun.

750 draft posts were published during the merge :-( so I had to track those down and corral them back into drafts.  done!

There were a boatload of posts that showed “[email protected]” as the author, but that number should have been zero since they had authored no posts before the merge.   Thank goodness for standard posts like the Covid posts, Medium Cool, David Anderson, etc.  After that I had to do track most of them down one by one.  done!

There are no images in the Media Library until 2008, and I find it hard to believe that it took 6 years for Cole and Tim to figure out how to add an image to the post.  The developers say they have never been there and it’s true that they are not in the “20 years of balloon juice” server I still have access to, but with the months testing I did before the site rebuild I KNOW I would have noticed no images until 2008.  So this is all I’ve got on that.  🤷‍♀️

It appears that many/most of the posts until 2006 had zero comments, which, again, I certainly don’t recall that being the case past the first year or so as I was doing all the site testing, but I am seeing the same thing on the restored “20 years of balloon juice” site I still have access to.  So this is all I’ve got on that.  🤷‍♀️

On the road is a total **clusterfuck after the merge, well at least the ones since we got new-old Balloon Juice on May 29.  It is unclear if/how/whether that can get sorted.  The devs are thinking about what they can do/whether they can do anything about that.  Fingers crossed.

All the @replies from new-old Balloon Juice are broken – in all 572 posts that have a total of 50,000 comments.  The @replies work by referencing the comment # you are replying to, and when we merged, all the comment numbers changed.  Damn the laws of physics that say you must have only have one comment with any particular number.  This is not fixable.  I knew we were in trouble when I saw that the @replies were broken – because I couldn’t see any way that that could be fixed – but even so I was hoping that the site dev who is an amazingly clever programmer might have a way.  He does not.  So it is what it is.

I’d like to finish with two things.

First: Compared to thinking that we had lost everything, that we had lost all our history, that we had lost all 20 years of Balloon Juice, this stuff is small potatoes.  I am infinitely grateful to have Balloon Juice back.

Second: Now that the broken glass has mostly been swept away and I have a better sense of where we stand, feel free to share any new oddities you have noticed now that we have a new mother ship for Balloon Juice.  I’m not talking about things like duplicate or near-duplicate categories or rotating tags.  There is still a lot of cleanup to be done.  But if you notice a pattern or notice something unusual, this is the place to say so.  And now is the time to say it while I still have access to the 3 previous iterations of Balloon Juice  so I can check on the originals.

*Please feel free to add “that was fun” to the end of each line in this post, because this has not been one of the most fun things ever.

** Clusterfuck is a technical term.

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    I emailed Cole that he needs to dock your pay until Recent Comments comes back.  I miss that feature.

  2. 2.

    scav

    Absolutely that was fun.

    Somehow I also find the @situation very mopping-naked-with-mustard in-an-empty-field-too-near-the-willow kind of appropriate.

  3. 3.

    Adam Lang

    I’ve fixed comment ids before, by going into one of the databases pre-merge and adding 10 billion to every ID in every table, and every column that refers to those IDs. It took some doing, but it worked.

  4. 4.

    PST

    Thank you a million times over, WG. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

  5. 5.

    Miss Bianca

    I’m still just so boggled that you have been able to deal with the clusterfuck as competently and cheerfully as you have done, WG. Thank you for your service!

  6. 6.

    Motivated Seller

    I’ve noticed that there is no longer a link to the previous post, and the following post, that appears at the bottom of some of the newest blog posts.  I use(d) that navigation tool every time I read the blog and I miss it.

  7. 7.

    lowtechcyclist

    I’m just amazed that just about everything’s back, just about the way it’s supposed to be.  WTG, WaterGirl!

  9. 9.

    WaterGirl

    @Adam Lang: Yeah, we tried to have a conversation on Friday about whether to back up a step, go back to new-old balloon juice, and start the merge again at a later date, but the devs weren’t willing to have that conversation.

  11. 11.

    Old School

    Thanks for all your work putting the site back together, WaterGirl! Everybody owes you a cupcake.

  12. 12.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    WG, you are a wonder!  Thank you for all your work and the time you have put into this restoration.

  13. 13.

    eclare

    Thank you so much for all of your hard and dedicated work on this WaterGirl!  We would be in a no-man’s land without you.

    The feature from before the fire that I miss the most is getting an auto tweet from Cole that there was a new post.  I don’t know how that worked or if that is technically site related, but it was very helpful to me.  I have to think at least a few others liked that too.

    Small potatoes in the grand scheme, but thought I would mention it.

  14. 14.

    WaterGirl

    @Motivated Seller: I still have that on my laptop.  I just checked and i still have that on my iPad.

    And I checked and I still have that on my phone.

    What device are you using?

    edit: Also, are you talking about the arrows at the top in the white menu bar?  Or the fly-outs at the side?

  16. 16.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    Dang, woman. If I lived near you, I’d supply you with your daily double cupcake dose for the next six months. Thank you for all the tedious work you’ve done to get this place all spruced up again!!

  18. 18.

    WaterGirl

    @eclare:

    …that I miss the most is getting an auto tweet from Cole that there was a new post.

    Not to worry, that will be back.  Every post since 5/14 was being tweeted out at the beginning of the merge process, so John deactivated his twitter and we turned that plugin off.

    Trying to figure out how to turn that back on without the plugin playign catch-up on 550 posts!

  20. 20.

    NotMax

    Is there any reason the temporary interim jackal action replacement site data couldn’t be separated from the archives and placed into its own segregated enclave? It would still be there but function more like an appendix to the main site.

  21. 21.

    frosty

    Unknotting the chain sounds like some of the unpleasant tasks I had to do at work, like trying to figure out why my project was over budget. I called it Foremsic Spreadsheets.

    And yes, “that was fun” certainly applied.

    Thanks for all your hard work. I don’t know what we’d do without you and I’m  happy to report that I see no glitches.

  22. 22.

    trollhattan

    I was amazed to learn that clusterfuck and star cluster are two completely different things.

    And thank you for your service, WG.

  24. 24.

    Xantar

    I remember some talk about legal action being taken against the web host? Has anything happened with that

  27. 27.

    stinger

    I’m surprised how much I miss the Recent Comments feature. It quickly answered the question “Where is everybody?”  But that’s not a criticism! You have done an amazing job putting huge amounts of scrambled data back together.  (My IANAD where D = Developer take on things.) Thank you a thousand times!

  31. 31.

    HumboldtBlue

    Can’t say thank enough or too loudly. So thank you so much, WG, just having the site back is enough to get up and dance.

  32. 32.

    Motivated Seller

    @WaterGirl: Never mind.  I was confusing Balloon Juice navigation set up with another site that I regularly visit. (D’OH!)

  34. 34.

    Ken

    Thank you for all your hard work on this.  I admit that if I were faced with the blog equivalent of

    The has been a bit like trying to untangle a very fine chain necklace that has turned into a big, fat tangled knot.  You have to work around the edges until you find a way in, and then work slowly from there.

    I might have gone with the “eh, the big knot looks OK” approach.

  35. 35.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    Got the impression from your post that replication of comment numbers was proving to be a headache. This would sidestep that bugaboo.

  38. 38.

    Doug R

    Noting the comment number changes- about a decade ago my bank, one of the largest in Canada decided to do an update. Since they are 5 1/2 time zones and millions of transactions a day, they decided to go with assigned numbers instead of timestamps seeing as satellite hookups and computer clocks can wobble.
    The whole system crashed on Tuesday when every Ontario government employee got paid and it only got worse on Thursday when every Federal employee got paid.
    Took over a week to clear, it was so bad the bank was offering no service charge overdraft.
    So it could be worse.

  40. 40.

    Scout211

    To: WaterGirl and the whole backstage crew

    From: Scout211

    I am very happy with whatever you do.

    And very grateful.

    ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

  41. 41.

    MomSense

    Let’s all email Cole WELL THAT WAS FUN
    He will probably think we are talking about his day.

    Thanks, WG for doing all of this. You’re amazing!

  46. 46.

    lashonharangue

    Thanks WG for tackling this and for all the other things you do to keep the lights on for the FPers and the rest of us.

  47. 47.

    eachother

    Is there a page for Balloon-Juice beginners?

    Six, seven years. Still a beginner.

    Thanks WaterGirl.  🐠🐠

  50. 50.

    H.E.Wolf

    Renewed thanks for everything you’ve done to bring the site back! Truly a labor of skill, persistence, and love.

  51. 51.

    Old School

    It appears that many/most of the posts until 2006 had zero comments

    Over the next week, everybody needs to go back and repost their comments from 2006 and earlier to help with the rebuild.

  55. 55.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    FYI, I’m now getting a pop-up window asking me to sign in any time I use the navigation arrows to the previous or next post or post a comment. I can just click cancel and it goes away, but wanted to let you know. I’m using Chrome on desktop on a Macbook.

  57. 57.

    Albatrossity

    WG, you deserve chocolate, for sure! I’m sure most of us have absolutely no clue about the amount of work you’ve already done. Once Cole comes out from under the anesthesia, and gets some more fiber in his diet, he should send you a lifetime subscription to some chocolatier monthly care package!

  58. 58.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: @stinger:

    We had a custom Recent Comments created during the site rebuild, but that has disappeared.

    Until I can get an answer from our site development people about why that disappeared, I have added a generic Recent Comments.

    Maybe that will tide you guys over.

  61. 61.

    Gin & Tonic

    @WaterGirl: I get the sign-in prompt on pretty much anything that refreshes the page

    ETA: Started within the last 45 minutes or so. Was out amusing the dogs, so can’t be sure.

  64. 64.

    WaterGirl

    Everyone:  Is the popup gone now

    Okay, yay it’s gone!  That was my fault, something I did when I put the Amazon links in the side.  (oops, no chocolate for me)

    Thanks to all who let me know ASAP.

  68. 68.

    Ken

    @PAM Dirac: Thank you, I saw it earlier. Interestingly, he doesn’t feel the (alleged) fraud caused much waste of research dollars, in that people were already focusing on the amyloids.

  69. 69.

    Redshift

    I have one quirk that is not from the merge, but started (I think) after the “real” version of the temporary site got going and continues to this day.

    On desktop Firefox, I click on a reply button, I intermittently get a comment box with no @name and that I can’t type into. If I do a hard refresh on the page (cmd-shift-R), it starts working, but will often be broken again after I post a comment.

    Like I said, it’s intermittent and I have a workaround for it, so I never got around to reporting it when it first started, but it ought to go on the list. I never see it on my phone, just desktop.

  70. 70.

    Redshift

    @Ken:

    Thank you, I saw it earlier. Interestingly, he doesn’t feel the (alleged) fraud caused much waste of research dollars, in that people were already focusing on the amyloids.

    That’s true, but I have to wonder if it made it harder for people working on non-amyloid mechanisms to get funded.

  71. 71.

    PAM Dirac

    @Ken: Yeah it’s  not my field, but I kind of suspected that. Amyloids were big way before 2006 so the idea that if this paper hadn’t been published, the amyoid hypothesis would have died out didn’t seem at all likely.

  73. 73.

    Ken

    @Redshift: @PAM Dirac: And in other off-topic (but somewhat related) news, Martin Shkreli has announced he is starting a web3 drug discovery platform. Shkreli just spent five years in prison for fraud, and been banned for life from the pharmaceutical industry.

    Announcement courtesy of Molly White’s site, and my thanks to whoever recommended that a couple of months ago.

  74. 74.

    PAM Dirac

    @Ken: The bullshit density in that announcement is enormous. I’m not interested enough to find out what the con is, but there is certainly no reality there.

  76. 76.

    Ken

    @PAM Dirac: I’m waiting for him to explain it to a judge. “Yes, your honor, I have a lifetime ban from anything related to the pharmaceutical industry, but there’s absolutely no chance my web3 drug design company will ever produce anything, much less any pharmaceutical patents or products.”

  77. 77.

    Redshift

    @Ken: He must be like a kid in a candy shop, going to prison for committing fraud the old-fashioned way, and emerging to find there are whole new automated fraud platforms to play with!

  78. 78.

    PAM Dirac

    @Ken: LOL. I noticed that the announcement said there was no charge, so that’s why I knew there had to be some other con; sell the suckers services? load malware and steal god knows what?. One thing is certain. No pharmaceutical products will come out of it.

  79. 79.

    Fair Economist

    Thanks again for all your great work! Sounds like most of the early era problem were in either the backup or the restore. I’m guessing it’s mostly fixable, but might take some significant work. Also very possible the old provider didn’t send all the relevant files (for a number of different reasons).

    All the @replies from new-old Balloon Juice are broken – in all 572 posts that have a total of 50,000 comments.  The @replies work by referencing the comment # you are replying to, and when we merged, all the comment numbers changed.  Damn the laws of physics that say you must have only have one comment with any particular number.  This is not fixable.  I knew we were in trouble when I saw that the @replies were broken – because I couldn’t see any way that that could be fixed – but even so I was hoping that the site dev who is an amazingly clever programmer might have a way.  He does not.  So it is what it is.

    Um, if the comments are editable that’s a relatively easy fix by code if both databases are accessible. I did similar things many years ago in my previous life as a database programmer. I know programmers don’t come cheap and it might not be worth doing but it should be pretty doable.

  80. 80.

    Ivan X

    Well, your site update was fun.

    How do we pay you or something? I can at least pay you in adulation.

  81. 81.

    Ella in New Mexico

    You and all the wonderful folks who do the technical support for us are frigging heroes. Thank you so very, very much for all the suffering you’ve done to keep us afloat here.

    You are AMAZEBALLS.

  82. 82.

    Nancy

    I didn’t know how important Balloon Juice is until I couldn’t get to it. I knew I couldn’t because something something but I forgot.

    I deeply appreciate you, WG, for your presence as well as your hard work on the site.

    Checking in gives me as much of a routine and structure as I can handle.

Comments are closed.