Pssst… Pssst psst pssstttt….

Diary-x isn’t going to recover. I guess I’m going to have to make this space my home. *sighs* This is what happened.

February 26, 2006

There is now a simple database up where you can enter your forwarding information. Unfortunately I can’t keep forwarding your email, because I don’t know whose email is supposed to go where anymore. But this database should let you meet up with people, wherever they went off to.

Tons of people have asked me to keep the site open. I know that it’s a shock to have this gone away so completely and so suddenly. Unfortunately, I am in no position to re-open the site, purely from a time perspective. A group of dedicated Diary-Xers are getting together to revive the site under a different name, starting with what’s left of the code. I will be participating in that project, but I will not be running it.

If you’re interested in helping, watch this space. When things get set up, I’ll post more information here. The team is going to need talented designers, programmers who are familiar with Perl and PHP, and people with good writing skills.

I’ll post more when I know it.

Stephen Deken
stephen.deken@gmail.com

---

February 24, 2006

Dear Friends,

There is no easy way for me to say this.

Diary-X has suffered from an unrecoverable drive failure. Due to a combination of issues, the last backup (from December 2004) contained only configuration files and other non-essential files. We do not have any other backups for the site. All journals, user information, forum posts, templates, images, and everything else are all irrecoverably lost.

In the past several hours, I have had to decide whether or not I should put the site back online at all. Only those users who backed up their own journals (either using the journal download tool or otherwise saving each entry) would be able to reconstruct their journals. Everyone else would have to start over. Whatever developed as a result would still be called Diary-X, but it wouldn’t be the same.

I believe it makes the most sense to close Diary-X permanently. Tentatively, the site will go dark on March 31st, 2006.

Thank you for being so generous with your donations during this crisis. Your generosity and kind words were the sole bright spots during this disaster. If you would like a refund, please send an e-mail to mdeken@gmail.com with your name and PayPal e-mail address, and we will process it as soon as we can, hopefully within 24 hours.

If you would like to discuss this matter further, you may contact me at the address below. I will do my best to answer your questions if they were not addressed here.

Regretfully,

Stephen Deken
stephen.deken@gmail.com

Q. What happened with the drive? I thought DriveSavers was the best.
A. I had a long conversation with the engineer that worked on the drive. What happened was that the read heads slipped slightly out of alignment and began what is known as ‘head skip,’ which means that the heads skipped along the platters like a stone across water. Each time they hit the platters, they destroyed a little bit of data (somewhere around 256 bytes). Because they were skipping, they were reading bad data, so the drive attempted to compensate by moving the heads away and back again, which caused the heads to skip into more areas, which the drive then attempted to read from, which moved the head and caused more damage. Given that the drive spins at 7200 RPM, a few hours worth of this type of treatment just completely hosed the drive. DriveSavers was able to get ‘fragments of files,’ but they were not able to recover anything substantial at all. The physical damage was just too extensive.

It’s just so sudden. And so sad. =(( Memories since 1st July 2003… till Feb 2006… The most painful thing I felt was that I lost all my blog stuff and my memories that were in the private blog on diary-x. Yeap, I double blogged. And that made me feel that somehow, I lost a huge part of my heart when the news came about diary-x not being able to be recovered.

Through the LiveJournal forum for DXers, I managed to google out one of the archive page of my blog and view it as a cached page. This was what I saw.

December 2005
30 Dec 2005 - How to ask your Boss for a salary increase..?
29 Dec 2005 - The chain letter that puts all others to shame!
29 Dec 2005 - One-Liners
29 Dec 2005 - Cat or Dog?
29 Dec 2005 - Let’s ponder ….
29 Dec 2005 - Updates
29 Dec 2005 - Jokes to share…
12 Dec 2005 - Damn it!
11 Dec 2005 - Wheee~
11 Dec 2005 - Cats Fact
07 Dec 2005 - Secret Lives of Dogs
07 Dec 2005 - The Case
07 Dec 2005 - What were the debts?
07 Dec 2005 - Some letters from the forum…
07 Dec 2005 - Satan’s Meeting
06 Dec 2005 - Cats!
02 Dec 2005 - Updates! =)
02 Dec 2005 - The Death Penalty Part Three
02 Dec 2005 - The Death Penalty Part Two
02 Dec 2005 - The Death Penalty

November 2005
18 Nov 2005 - Episode 11
16 Nov 2005 - Updates & a Stupid Wedding
10 Nov 2005 - =)
09 Nov 2005 - And then…
09 Nov 2005 - Back in Singapore…
09 Nov 2005 - On the way back to Singapore…
03 Nov 2005 - Cooler day
03 Nov 2005 - Good Use of Notes…
02 Nov 2005 - Hot!
01 Nov 2005 - PZ got hit by a can of mushrooms!

October 2005
31 Oct 2005 - It’s HALLOWEEN!
30 Oct 2005 - heeelllllooooooooooo!
29 Oct 2005 - Updates!
25 Oct 2005 - hmm… death penalty?
23 Oct 2005 - Tenjewberrymuds
23 Oct 2005 - Degraded?
22 Oct 2005 - I haven’t blogged at all in days…
20 Oct 2005 - Good read!
19 Oct 2005 - Lao Lian…
17 Oct 2005 - Eh…
16 Oct 2005 - Memories…
16 Oct 2005 - Hehe
16 Oct 2005 - Shopping Day…
15 Oct 2005 - Doing things alone…
15 Oct 2005 - Yesterday…
13 Oct 2005 - Lunching Alone…
13 Oct 2005 - Take Hold of Every Moment
13 Oct 2005 - Abraham Lincoln & John F Kennedy - Matter of 100 years difference..!
13 Oct 2005 - Far Away From Home
13 Oct 2005 - [Joke] At the Pearly Gates…
12 Oct 2005 - Yay!
11 Oct 2005 - Just popped in…
10 Oct 2005 - To Be With You
10 Oct 2005 - My Re-Enrolment
09 Oct 2005 - It’s time…
06 Oct 2005 - Calamari Rings and Chicken & Chip Salt and the Darling Boy!
05 Oct 2005 - More Birthday Shoutouts
04 Oct 2005 - t.o.d.a.y
04 Oct 2005 - Gross…
03 Oct 2005 - Food from the Heart’s ‘Crumbs of Kindness’ Charity Lunchbox Sale
03 Oct 2005 - Hols are ending… or rather, have ended…
02 Oct 2005 - Episode 10

September 2005
30 Sep 2005 - Last day of the month…
29 Sep 2005 - Many Thank Yous…
29 Sep 2005 - More Birthday Shoutouts
28 Sep 2005 - Quick one…
25 Sep 2005 - Episode 9
25 Sep 2005 - Marie
25 Sep 2005 - Marie Biscuit
25 Sep 2005 - All About Me…
24 Sep 2005 - Episode 8
24 Sep 2005 - Shoutouts!
23 Sep 2005 - Episode 7
23 Sep 2005 - finally!
21 Sep 2005 - What has been happening…
20 Sep 2005 - Quizzes
16 Sep 2005 - Episode 6
15 Sep 2005 - Updates
12 Sep 2005 - Episode 5
12 Sep 2005 - Joke - Amazingly simple home remedies
11 Sep 2005 - Joke - Gay Worker
11 Sep 2005 - Right…
11 Sep 2005 - Episode 4
08 Sep 2005 - Just blogging~
08 Sep 2005 - 9 Months Later…
08 Sep 2005 - Joke…
08 Sep 2005 - Episode 3
07 Sep 2005 - Life in the 1500s
07 Sep 2005 - =)
05 Sep 2005 - Episode 2
03 Sep 2005 - Monk’s Hill Guides
03 Sep 2005 - blabber…
02 Sep 2005 - Episode 1
01 Sep 2005 - updates!!!!

August 2005
21 Aug 2005 - ahhh…
14 Aug 2005 - haiyayayaya…
14 Aug 2005 - more ghastly pics!
09 Aug 2005 - ghastly photos!!!
09 Aug 2005 - it’s national day…
08 Aug 2005 - pix pixs pixxys!
08 Aug 2005 - Since U Been Gone
07 Aug 2005 - oh drats!
07 Aug 2005 - something interesting…
05 Aug 2005 - he’s back!
04 Aug 2005 - oh no!
03 Aug 2005 - good week @ school

July 2005
30 Jul 2005 - What age do you act?
28 Jul 2005 - Another interesting lesson
27 Jul 2005 - great day at school!
22 Jul 2005 - well well well…
21 Jul 2005 - SARDARJI IN MEDICAL SCHOOL…
20 Jul 2005 - latest updates

June 2005
29 Jun 2005 - Long Time…
19 Jun 2005 - Wonderful BS
17 Jun 2005 - OMG!
17 Jun 2005 - BS…
10 Jun 2005 - Deadly Housemates
05 Jun 2005 - what do you think?
05 Jun 2005 - why i hate monash green drive
01 Jun 2005 - Love & Marriage - Men Never Learn

May 2005
30 May 2005 - school term
26 May 2005 - okay…
06 May 2005 - pics of Oreo
02 May 2005 - how to get online
01 May 2005 - the need to blog

April 2005
21 Apr 2005 - Joke: Ah Pek & Ah Ma
16 Apr 2005 - it’s the weekend again
09 Apr 2005 - rants
01 Apr 2005 - Dogs

March 2005
30 Mar 2005 - Positive Side of Life
30 Mar 2005 - amused…
29 Mar 2005 - Ladies and Gentlemen…
27 Mar 2005 - What To Say When You’re Caught Sleeping At Your Desk
27 Mar 2005 - Life of a Singaporean
24 Mar 2005 - alrites.
14 Mar 2005 - long time…
05 Mar 2005 - Joke: Ten Commandments in Marriage

February 2005
10 Feb 2005 - Dreams
09 Feb 2005 - cny…
07 Feb 2005 - departure date…

January 2005
31 Jan 2005 - my programme for later…
18 Jan 2005 - alrites.
14 Jan 2005 - quit…
12 Jan 2005 - meaning of names~
11 Jan 2005 - Boredification
09 Jan 2005 - update..?
06 Jan 2005 - 29…
05 Jan 2005 - work…

< < 2004 -- 2006 >>

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This is just what I had on my public blog. But I had heaps more on my private blog. Damn! I feel so sucky about this whole thing. =(