The first is It's a poor craftsman that blames his tools for poor work.
The second is Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
A third is One definition of insanity is to keep doing something that doesn't work, and expecting a different result.
All are applicable in the case of my use of Radio Userland software for the BWIA Weblog. In the first few days of December, 2002, after a weeks-long hiatus, I posted a long, thoughtful entry to the BWIA Weblog. A few days later, I received a note from a regular reader inquiring if I was ever going to update the BWIA Weblog to which I replied that I had. Then I went to look. To my horror, my long, thoughtful entry was no longer the most recent post. The December entry was completely gone, in both the Radio Userland server, and the local (running on my PC) server. I hoped to restore that entry from backups, but my daily backups, at the time, were not backing up the Radio Userland directory (under c:\program files). The entry was gone, almost as if it had not existed. I was relieved (that it wasn't my imagination) when one regular reader told me that they had read the update online. Needless to say, this was disheartening.
But, this most recent incident isn't the first time I've lost data in Radio Userland. Others I've corresponded with have told me that data loss is a common occurrence with other Userland products, not just Radio Userland.
I thought I had worked out a solution to this issue in Radio Userland, where I "Save and Post" after entering paragraph of text into Radio Userland's browser-based editor (which includes What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) features. This approach had worked well to insulate me from data loss resulting from "browser glitches", for example, another browser window becoming locked up on a problematic web page, causing all the instances of the browser to lock up.
But for text that had been entered, posted, read by others, then simply vanish from both a host and a local system calls into question my continued usage of Radio Userland. As a result of this latest "experience" with Radio Userland, I've permanently altered my routine for the BWIA Weblog:
- All my initial text creation, saving, and updates will be done with familiar, stable tools, like Microsoft Word so that text won't be lost.
- Any updates to existing BWIA Weblog entries will be "full postings", with the entry being updated deleted after successful posting of the revised entry.
- Any postings done with Radio Userland will simply be "text dumps" into RU from the Microsoft Word file, so that if/when I encounter another data loss with Radio Userland, I can restore it with little trouble.
Likely my weblog format / software / hosting will change in 2003. Depending on when my annual contract for Radio Userland is up, I may or may not renew. Once I renounce Radio Userland, the BWIA Weblog's "static" address (the address I've always given out and encouraged to be used for links): http://www.strohpub.com/weblog will be changed from a redirect to my partition on the Radio Userland servers to content hosted directly on a hosted server (as www.strohpub.com is now) or directly on a local server directly under my control. As for format / software of a future weblog� Plain HTML, perhaps with frames, is an option. Thanks to the evangelistic efforts of Bill Vodall, I've come to realize the considerable benefits of local control of a server running free, open source Wiki, easily edited in any browser window. That solution, though tempting, will have to wait for a better Internet connection that expressly permits servers, which will likely happen in early 2003.
Steve Stroh
Copyright © 2002-2004 by Steve Stroh. This article originally appeared on my original Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog hosted on Radio Userland.