We're baaaack!
Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:43 pm
Thought we were dead, eh? You should know better. It may take weeks or even months but we always come back. 
It was merely a coma with some temporary amnesia. So what the hell happened anyway?
Our old friend Richard was told that the server would no longer be necessary. It had been faithfully serving his e-mail and printers for years so I was a little miffed by this but I was going to be buying a house soon and I had already planned to use my desktop as a server there. He tried to hook the old server up at home so I could grab the files but he couldn't figure his own router out. He then decided to post the hard drive to me instead. Unfortunately, being a little less than tech-savvy, he sent it with barely any padding since he figured it looked solid enough. As you have probably guessed, it wasn't a solid state drive and the thing was fucked.
I had been planning to switch to phpBB anyway so I came to terms with this loss and planned to get the place going again as soon as possible. Moving house is quite a stressful ordeal though and it became clear that it would have to wait. Then Virgin Media told me that they wouldn't be able to hook me up until the 31st, nearly three weeks after we were due to move in. Crap.
After the move, we only just managed to get online at all using mobile phones, first via GPRS (sloooow) and then via 3G (fast but flakey round here). Eventually the 31st came around and as the world entered the new year, I geared the machine up for its new job as a server. That night, Marna's forum was installed but I didn't have enough time to get Aura setup as well.
Work took over and my Dad came up to help decorate the place. Just as I began to wonder when the hell I would ever get around to this, my Netgear router bricked itself. I spent a short time grinding my teeth at the prospect of having to buy a new one when I realised that I didn't even need the fucking thing anyway. The server is now also the router. I have since discovered that the router is still in warranty and is currently away being repaired but I like this new setup so it'll stay like this.
Echo told me that he might be able to fix the old drive. I said he needn't bother since I had already come to terms with the loss but he said he'd give it a shot. I didn't expect him to get anywhere with it but somehow he was able to access most of the stuff without even doing anything to it. He says it's because he used Windows.
He managed to salvage the old forum database and files. Only the passwords table was corrupt. This didn't matter because the conversion to phpBB would require everyone to reset their passwords anyway.
I tried to convert directly to phpBB3 but that didn't want to work. I realised that it was because my version of IPB had been old. I could have tried to upgrade that but I decided to convert via phpBB2 instead. Being a much simpler board, this acted like a kind of IPB crap filter. A lot of stuff was missing though. I had to convert the avatars and attachments by hand using some Ruby and SQL magic. The signatures were a mess so I ditched those. Most of the BBCode also seemed to be broken. I've fixed the links and YouTube videos but any font styling is still broken. I may fix that later. Oh and the polls are missing too. I could fix those but I don't think I'll miss such gems us "Which FF7 character is the sluttiest?"
As for the skin, that's temporary. I couldn't find any that really said "Aura" so I (or maybe Shin) will cook one up in the near future. It'll probably resemble the old one. I suspect Mik may also do one.
Finally, if you spot any problems, let me know!
It was merely a coma with some temporary amnesia. So what the hell happened anyway?Our old friend Richard was told that the server would no longer be necessary. It had been faithfully serving his e-mail and printers for years so I was a little miffed by this but I was going to be buying a house soon and I had already planned to use my desktop as a server there. He tried to hook the old server up at home so I could grab the files but he couldn't figure his own router out. He then decided to post the hard drive to me instead. Unfortunately, being a little less than tech-savvy, he sent it with barely any padding since he figured it looked solid enough. As you have probably guessed, it wasn't a solid state drive and the thing was fucked.
I had been planning to switch to phpBB anyway so I came to terms with this loss and planned to get the place going again as soon as possible. Moving house is quite a stressful ordeal though and it became clear that it would have to wait. Then Virgin Media told me that they wouldn't be able to hook me up until the 31st, nearly three weeks after we were due to move in. Crap.
After the move, we only just managed to get online at all using mobile phones, first via GPRS (sloooow) and then via 3G (fast but flakey round here). Eventually the 31st came around and as the world entered the new year, I geared the machine up for its new job as a server. That night, Marna's forum was installed but I didn't have enough time to get Aura setup as well.
Work took over and my Dad came up to help decorate the place. Just as I began to wonder when the hell I would ever get around to this, my Netgear router bricked itself. I spent a short time grinding my teeth at the prospect of having to buy a new one when I realised that I didn't even need the fucking thing anyway. The server is now also the router. I have since discovered that the router is still in warranty and is currently away being repaired but I like this new setup so it'll stay like this.
Echo told me that he might be able to fix the old drive. I said he needn't bother since I had already come to terms with the loss but he said he'd give it a shot. I didn't expect him to get anywhere with it but somehow he was able to access most of the stuff without even doing anything to it. He says it's because he used Windows.
He managed to salvage the old forum database and files. Only the passwords table was corrupt. This didn't matter because the conversion to phpBB would require everyone to reset their passwords anyway.I tried to convert directly to phpBB3 but that didn't want to work. I realised that it was because my version of IPB had been old. I could have tried to upgrade that but I decided to convert via phpBB2 instead. Being a much simpler board, this acted like a kind of IPB crap filter. A lot of stuff was missing though. I had to convert the avatars and attachments by hand using some Ruby and SQL magic. The signatures were a mess so I ditched those. Most of the BBCode also seemed to be broken. I've fixed the links and YouTube videos but any font styling is still broken. I may fix that later. Oh and the polls are missing too. I could fix those but I don't think I'll miss such gems us "Which FF7 character is the sluttiest?"
As for the skin, that's temporary. I couldn't find any that really said "Aura" so I (or maybe Shin) will cook one up in the near future. It'll probably resemble the old one. I suspect Mik may also do one.
Finally, if you spot any problems, let me know!
