Archives on CD? Leonard, would you consider it?

Since many folks, including myself, have trouble searching out information we know is or was here; and since there have been several blackouts over the past few years; would it be possible to put the archives on CD for each calendar year and make those CD's available for purchase.

The information dispursed here is invaluable, hopefully there is a full backup of "all" since SSF was started.

Of course, I have no idea what space a years worth of SSF would take up. But even 2 or 3 CD's for a year would probably be worth it to some. And I wouldn't care if all the "arguments" were included, it could just be marketed as "SSF Volume 1, 2001". Put it all out as "TXT" or "HTML" so anyone could benefit.

>Since many folks, including myself, have trouble searching
>out information we know is or was here; and since there have
>been several blackouts over the past few years; would it be
>possible to put the archives on CD for each calendar year
>and make those CD's available for purchase.
>
>The information dispursed here is invaluable, hopefully
>there is a full backup of "all" since SSF was started.
>
>Of course, I have no idea what space a years worth of SSF
>would take up. But even 2 or 3 CD's for a year would
>probably be worth it to some. And I wouldn't care if all the
>"arguments" were included, it could just be marketed as "SSF
>Volume 1, 2001". Put it all out as "TXT" or "HTML" so anyone
>could benefit.

Well, that could probably be done. We are taking up a pretty good chunk of space right now. The archives are growing rapidly these days. As I recall the first year we had 5000 posts. It took 6 months to do the next 5000. Then it was 3 months. We are doing between 125 and 150 a day now. We can do close to 5000 in a month (especially if the weather is bad or peole are bored at work).

Under the current settings I keep the 1800 most recent posts as active. These are preserved in two different formats. After that they go into the archives and cannot be written to, but can still be accessed. These are in one format. Once we switch to php (I have been saying that for a long time, haven't I?) everything will be reduced to one format and all threads going back to the very beginning will be accessable to be written to. I haven't worked out anything on that yet because I would like to have a cut-off, but it will take up about half the space that it does now.

Anyway, a year on a CD would be doable space-wise and a nice way of doing it. There is the added problem of pictures, however. This would be the real clinker. Right now we are in html format and the pictures are randomly assigned a number/name. This is done so I don't post a picture and title it "my nobler" and then you follow up and post your picture that you just happen to call "my nobler" too, and overwrite mine.

So, randomly named pictures would need to be copied over (which means determining which ones go with which year), and directories set up on the CD to make it work. Otherwise, dong just the text files wouldn't be bad.

It would be something to consider. I know I'd be interested, perhaps others will speak up and let you know how they feel about it.

There are of course, some threads where the photo is absolutely necessary for the text to make sense. The majority of threads however, would be fine in text format.

I would assume, it should be possible to add code to assign a yearly prefix to the random number/letters given to any given photo file. At least to handle such files in the future.

Thanks for the reply,

Leonard,
You are sitting on top of a stunning control line stunt information resource. The collective brainpower of hundreds of CLPA modelers resides within this forum. I would propose taking up a collection to assist you with the financial costs of putting all this valuable informtion on CD. I suppose you could calculate your labor, material etc., and come up with a cost and divide accordingly.

Proparc/Milton Graham

Pictures by year is easy, just look at the file dates.

We have lost several excelent threads in the crashes and pictures don't seem to be getting archived with the old threads.. I think it would be great to have on CD.

>Pictures by year is easy, just look at the file dates.
>
>We have lost several excelent threads in the crashes and
>pictures don't seem to be getting archived with the old
>threads.. I think it would be great to have on CD.

Hmmm. I wonder...

When we got a VCR I was big on recording stuff for, well, I really can't remember how it was justified. Just being able to do it was enough, I suppose. Like the joke about dogs and why they lick where they lick.

After a couple months the tapes had begun to pile up, the stuff I was actually going to review was miniscule. Recorded over everything except "Young Frankenstein," which I still watch once a year or so.

(What knockers!) << wasn't Frau Blucher, of course..>

".. that's Frawn-ken-steen."

The one I have on tape (still) is Emperor of the North.

".. No you don't! You promised me a fight!" and
".. Ya got no CLASS, Kid!"

[photo not recovered: 3e69bb3870f12ad5.jpg]

"From error to error one discovers the entire truth." -Sigmund Freud

P.S. Danster, isn't the German word for glue "blucher"..?