Update on Outage, Lost Images, Parse errors, etc.

[vodka]

A great many of my long lost pics are back. Some not, but many are there.

Dogman VERY HAPPY!

Quite a few are not important, but others are. Just found a pic of my worst ever build, the 5304 fuji wheeliemobile. That's the sort of think I was bummed to have lost, the pics of all the differnt weird stuff I tried in the last 4 years.

Pic of my first ebike.

BD 36 on Schwinn trike.JPG

My pleasure!

[dogman]

Still quite a few of em gone, but at least I was able to download quite a few that I did care about. So now I have a copy of a lot of old pics again.

[Kuzumoto]

Thanks a lot

[ebent]

On a personal level I use an external hard drive. Like many people, I have lost lots of file and info due to many crashed computers. External drive resolves issue. I like the idea of not being required to use photo bucket etc. I just don't trust them. If the opportunity to monitize becomes available they will do it. If it can happen here (almost) then why trust a third party. It is the same reason I don't tweet, twat or twittle. Now that the right parties are in control of ES I am not concerned for the future in regards to lost stuff. Looking back, the ES board fiasco may have been a blessing. It gave us a chance to see the weaknesses and with luck our white knight steped in just at the right time. We are stronger and better today!

[Kingfish]

MRVass, do you know when the corrupted characters will be fixed? Do you need help with that?

Best, KF

<yawn>

When o' when will you fix this database? I ask again: Do you need help? It really isn't very difficult. Understand that I grow tired of waiting. You either know how to do this or not. Come on Vass, step up and swing at the plate!

Impatient contributor. KF

[Ypedal]

MRVass, do you know when the corrupted characters will be fixed? Do you need help with that?

Best, KF

<yawn>

When o' when will you fix this database? I ask again: Do you need help? It really isn't very difficult. Understand that I grow tired of waiting. You either know how to do this or not. Come on Vass, step up and swing at the plate!

Impatient contributor. KF

canot promise anything but i'll see if i can bring this to someone's attention !! *pokes mrvass with a pointy stick in the background.

[mrvass]

OK, OK, I think that's sufficient poking!

I've been meaning to set up a quick test server and test some scripts on the content before applying the changes to the server (I don't want to introduce more problems and have to waste time backpedaling or restore the whole database!), but honestly the task was marked as low priority and has been buried under a number of other priorities.

You've reminded me about it at a good time though, as I should have some time to work on it (and likely get it finished) on Monday. I'm sorry that you had to remind me about it, though.

[Kingfish]

Good Kind Sir

Thank you for responding. If I were approaching a problem such as this for one of my clients, the method I would choose would go as follows:

1. Make a dup of the database and website for testing.
2. Check for character corruption: Does it exist? If so, resolve how to dup the dB w/o incurring more corruption (a paramount concern).
3. Once a solid copy can be had, affect mods TO THE COPY via the scripts that were previous submitted, or by using said scripts as a guide, employ your own careful mods. I would do one at a time and triple-check integrity cos I’m just nuts about things like that. A good test topic is “Doing the Math” cos I think that has one of the largest and most diverse use of mathematical characters of any thread on ES (apologies to be a troublemaker).
4. Validate that each mod has worked correctly. Use the other scripts as a guide to get a count of affected occurrences: This figure should go to ZERO after each specific character fix.
5. The scripts I provided likely will not fix every character corruption, however count me in to help find and resolve the patterns of leftover characters and let us work together to develop a script or identity rule for getting this sorted.
6. Once you believe the problems are resolved as well as can be had, make a plan to repair the live site. I would pick a time of lowest activity, stop the web services, and make a good & trusted backup of the dB. Apply the fixes to the off-line dB (not the backup). Start web services local-only and eval various posts for corrections. Once you trust that the fixes have been as good as they can get - make another backup, then go live man, GO LIVE!

If you are a beer-drinking sort of person, I would gladly purchase a pitcher in your honor of your local favorite when we meet… which I hope shall not be too far in the future: I’m near Seattle

Thank you most kindly brave lad:
We all appreciate your kindred help!
Sincerely, KF

[mrvass]

Well, looks like the character fix might take a bit longer than expected. I've been looking at a few topics for character replacement references (those provided in your script are nowhere near comprehensive now that a second migration has occurred with the previous corrupted characters):

http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/vi ... 4&start=30
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/vi ... 35#p240035

..And of course the math-heavy topic you noted (though that seems to have gone through both rounds of character conversion errors, and will be harder to parse). There seem to be some nice simple fixes (with an  symbol preceding all symbols in the extended ascii range, like «), but then there are some strange ones (like the ’ for what I presume to be your ´, utf8's 0xc2b3). Assembling the table would be all kinds of easier if people could submit their in this topic or a PM or something, as although I'm sure there's a pattern, I'm finding it hard to get it with the apparent character additions and transformations.

I'm in the process of setting up a second virtual ES server to test script changes on, and would be greatly aided by original content confirmation on those topics with character corruption. A suggested substitution table would be even better, like:

¡ = ¡
’ = ´
­ = -
® = ®
¯ = ¯
° = °
± = ±
² = ²
³ = ³
´ = ´
µ = µ

Please post here, or PM me if anybody has some substitutions like this. Otherwise, I'll be compiling what I can confirm, and getting the test server going.

[Lock]

é = é

 = —

è = è

’ = '

É = é

é = é

è = è

[amberwolf]

And the ü in the middle of Flügelwagen's name is supposed to be an umlaut ü.
memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=15426

[andreym]

I'm VERY happy about the fixed images!
ENDLESS-SPHERE APP ON ANDROID MARKET:
I'm not sure how the endless sphere app came out on the android market, but it's a nice way to read the forum, though it still needs a few updates for automatically refreshing, posting images, etc. But I assume it's using some other forum reader app.

I wonder if somebody have this app saved locally?
I had it installed a while ago on my defy, but yesterday after android version upgrade just could not find it on the market.
Please post *.apk file if somebody have it available,
thanks.

[Ypedal]

the app is still owned by the short lived ex-owner afaik, fyi...

I had it on my droid but i did not really like it, used to the browser format i guess.

[pelle242]

Any reason why not tapatalk could be installed/activated? I says its free for forum owners and while its a payapp some may think its worth it.

[andreym]

Please post *.apk file if somebody have it available,
thanks.

Nevermind...
Have not got apk alone, but found QR code for it.
Strange thing that is QR still working despite application could not be found on android market.

use barcode scanner of your android phone to download it

[Alan B]

Not sure if there are updates on this app, seems a bit buggy on my droid.

[The Stig]

Hey this might be something to fix. When I search "bmc" I get 0 results.

[Lock]

Hey this might be something to fix. When I search "bmc" I get 0 results.

AFAIK search strings here have to be minimum four characters... Hafta use a google search on the domain for shorter strings.

10cK

[fechter]

I just checked and the minimum character setting is 2, so 'BMC' should show something, but it doesn't. No clue why it doesn't work. The search function in phpbb is not very good even when it works.

Using google to search the domain works much better. Image search rocks

[amberwolf]

PHPBB search also depends on it's indexing function, and I've seen boards (like THEMAnime) that had the index get "broken", and a reset of the index caused search to never find ANYTHING after that, whether posted before or after the repair/reset, EXCEPT for stuff posted into completely new subforums.

My guess is that the index itself doesn't properly index things less than four letters long? Or, if a word (or abbreviation!) is VERY common among posts in the forum, it may refuse to "find" it at all, because there are too many occurences of it.

So basically the google domain/site search is a much better option than PHPBB's search. I wish someone had a PHPBB "plugin" that would use something liek the PHPBB search page, but feed those parameters to Google's search and then report the results. THAT would be useful.

[fechter]

So basically the google domain/site search is a much better option than PHPBB's search. I wish someone had a PHPBB "plugin" that would use something liek the PHPBB search page, but feed those parameters to Google's search and then report the results. THAT would be useful.

I think there is such a thing. I would like to get it.

[The Stig]

So basically the google domain/site search is a much better option than PHPBB's search. I wish someone had a PHPBB "plugin" that would use something liek the PHPBB search page, but feed those parameters to Google's search and then report the results. THAT would be useful.

I think there is such a thing. I would like to get it.

Do it!

For the time being would it be possible to have a google search box instead of or as well as the PHPBB search box?