www.hippy.freeserve.co.uk

It looks like my www.hippy.freeserve.co.uk site is no more, won't be returning - Eaten by the Halloween Bogeyman :-(

I monitor the site fairly regularly watching for the '90-days of inactivity and it gets deactivated' event with a further period in which to restore the account if it does, but that hasn't worked this time and Orange ( formerly Wanadoo and Freeserve ) aren't recognising me as a customer.

I was surprised it's lasted this long as I was receiving 20MB+ of email spam a day on that account and started running a POP3 client which just deleted everything en masse without any downloads. After a week or so of that they stopped sending me any mail at all and I think disabled the account. I haven't been able to login for a long while now.

I have all the content and could restore most of it ( there are some issues with some content and certain ISP T&C's ) but that will have to wait for a while. Unfortunately little can be done about dead links now pointing to nowhere. I know how frustrating it can be to find the link you really need which comes up "404" but c'est la vie, that's how it is.

It's personally sad to see my 'rants' and opinion taken off-air but I guess most people here will be more concerned over the PICAXE information. That, and the site in total, hasn't really been updated for getting on eight years and hasn't kept up with PICAXE developments but it does seem to get referenced a lot, so I'll think about where I go from here.

This is perhaps the downside of the Web we don't often think about - it's a superb and massive repository of data, information and viewpoints, but only for as long as servers are hosting the pages, authors or others keep the accounts activated. In a blink of an eye, everything could - and some does - just disappear.

On the plus-side of things, at least the dead links lead to a "Not found on this server" error rather than a page someone has opportunistically grabbed and usied to push links for profit, porn or malware.

You being such a wealthy man, why don't you just pay for your site.

I am paying about 40 gbp a year for mine.
Something to consider.

Google still has 'em cached. I printed the cache to PDF if you'd like a copy.

joe

@ cdngunner : Yes, hosting is an option. It will be a diffrent URL so it makes sense to take the opportunity to re-think how the new site will be.

@ JoeFromOzarks : All the content is on my disk ( and numerous backups ), so no problem over any loss of source material. Just a loss of on-line presence.

hippy said:

@ cdngunner : Yes, hosting is an option. It will be a diffrent URL so it makes sense to take the opportunity to re-think how the new site will be.

@ JoeFromOzarks : All the content is on my disk ( and numerous backups ), so no problem over any loss of source material. Just a loss of on-line presence.

Click to expand...

AFAIK, I've read most/all of your
rants / memoirs / musings and other stuff.

Please replace as much as possible. )

e

I just happened to try to get to the LCD pages today and found a 404 ...it's great reference material that needs a new online home

MartinM57 said:

...it's great reference material that needs a new online home

Click to expand...

Definitely - I couldn't agree more.

A

Like all above. The site was really valuable and had information that any level Picaxer could understand. I have used it for LCD and and picaxe to picaxe tried to check out the RF stuff last night ant got the error. Might need to get the cached version asap. Would love for you to get it back up and going hippy.

Hippy, I have the experience and time to edit/correct any linking issues etc.

I'd be glad to spend it getting your stuff working on a new site.

Your material has educated me numerous times, and I'd like to give back.

MartinM57 said:

...it's great reference material that needs a new online home

Click to expand...

I obtained valuable information from the site many times, I agree with Martin

hippys-picaxe-site.com is available

The Internet Archive has a snapshot...

http://web.archive.org/web/20080602200243/http://www.hippy.freeserve.co.uk

Do what they did with Geocities, release it as a torrent. Although it'll be much easier to download yours than the 900GB Geocities archive

Andrew Cowan said:

Definitely - I couldn't agree more.

A

Click to expand...

I could agree more. In fact - I'm thinking of doing just that.

Besides - while I've read most of the rants I want to read all of them - as well as some new stuff. I'm an info pig. I eat it all up. But I really prefer the good stuff - like Hippy's site.

GSI/GSO. (Good Stuff In/ Good Stuff Out.)

This site is very, very good.

It is a great resource. As a relative new boy this site is still very useful!

Any remote chance of a rebuild? or, how long will the web.archive.org remain there?
________
Wellbutrin lawyer

Can you not host it on a free server? I think 110MB hosting is free, at least for their free service!

And another thing ....

... Why doesn't RevEd provide you with some space? Hell, you do enough for their bottom line right here.

Hippy,

If you don't have any web space, would you be interested in me uploading the last backup of your site to my webserver? Just last night I needed to check the wiring diagram of a LCD, it was a pain having to use the internet archive.

The site will be back, just a question of when and in what form. I don't want to further compound the current situation with a stop-gap which may lead to links to a temporary site which may disappear in the near future.

There are a number of options ( perhaps too many in fact ! ) but it's a laborious process going through the small print of T&C's to see what each provider allows, prohibits, what rights they assert over my content, and which legal jurisdiction applies etc. TANSTAAFL.

A solution

Hippy,
Take a look at this link, could be a total solution to your website dilemma.
Total control and portable between service providers etc and for less than £30
http://www.jaycar.co.uk/productView.asp?ID=KC5489&CATID=25&form=CAT&SUBCATID=432

I've just ordered one to do just this !
Take care
Regards
Neil

How's the power consumption on that? Is it configurable? How's that better than keeping your computer on?

It's awesome either way though

I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on that as I have been looking at adverts for it and the original articles, but couldn't find an actual Jaycar link when I last looked ! There are also other, more expensive, devices but with additional capabilities such as SheevaPlug and PogoPlug; the GuruPlug Server looks particularly nice.

The big problem with a WIB and similar for a public website is that all traffic goes up and down your cable / wire which is limited bandwidth and also impacts your own traffic, eats into quota allocation, you need a dynamic DNS setup for people to be able to find it, and if you do have a power-cut or trip over the mains lead it drops of the net ! You also have to be careful with security to keep traffic off your internal LAN and keep all the nasties out. That's why most people take their 'WIB' and use hosted servers which are linked much closer to the net's backbone.

That's not to say WIB & Co have no use. For lower traffic demands I think they are absolutely perfect. I want to put one on a Wi-Fi hotspot, but it's a case of finding the time to do all the things I'd like !

I know very little about the actual way things are done on the web, so I'd like to hear some knowledgeable response from someone about this idea:

It appears there are a couple of really big websites that cache everyone else's site for historical purposes. Is that correct? If so, why couldn't someone simply slap their site up on the web long enough to get it cached at one of these big, high-bandwidth archival places (for free) and simply refer everyone to its location there?

As long as you weren't updating anything on a regular basis the basic info would always be conveniently stored and available - for free.

What are I missing?

The main problem with such sites is they only keep raw text and a bit of the page layout. If you only had a very basic website the internet archive would be an ok way to host your site, but would be limited to a slow bandwidth.

I believe hippy has underlined just about all of the problems with WIB. By the time you had paid for the amount you went over your upload quota a cheap host would probably be cheaper!

Hippy, have you looked at t35.com? They seem to offer a very honest free service, just as long as there is nothing 'naughty' on your site!

obroni said:

Hippy,

If you don't have any web space, would you be interested in me uploading the last backup of your site to my webserver? Just last night I needed to check the wiring diagram of a LCD, it was a pain having to use the internet archive.

Click to expand...

Hippy, do you know how much space you need? I'd be happy to host a Mirror here in Aus. Could also give you write access for updates.

marcos.placona said:

How's the power consumption on that? Is it configurable? How's that better than keeping your computer on?

It's awesome either way though

Click to expand...

I'm skeptical it will use the average of ~170W that most computers use. There is no risk of dust clogging them up, performance loss over time, windows having to restart itself when it bursts the banks of the RAM, iritating buzzing. The list goes on and on!

On power consumption, even if a WIB draws 1A at 5V (5W) and is operated 24/7 that's less than 45kWh per year. In the UK that's '45 units' of electricity so likely less than £10 per year running costs, and far likely less.

hippy said:

On power consumption, even if a WIB draws 1A at 5V (5W) and is operated 24/7 that's less than 45kWh per year. In the UK that's '45 units' of electricity so likely less than £10 per year running costs, and far likely less.

Click to expand...

The power draw of the WIB is (almost) insignificant. The real cost of WIB is likely to be transmission. On the other hand, if you use a service provider that does not charge for upload traffic, you could 'maximise' the use of an ADSL link. However, you might need to fine tune your firewall to discourage unwanted incoming traffic, which would have to be paid for, even if blocked by the firewall.

The webhosting option 'in the cloud' looks more attractive That way traffic will be managed and you know what you're paying for.

hippy said:

I know how frustrating it can be to find the link you really need which comes up "404" but c'est la vie, that's how it is.

Click to expand...

I used to host a vBulletin forum. There was a feature, search and replace kind of thing. Designed I think, so you could automatically correct naughty words. I am pretty sure it worked retrospectively.

Depending on the structure of your internal links you may be able to get Admin to convert all the links from this site to your new home, without having to re-write everything.

It's more links which are on other people's pages and browser bookmarks which go nowhere now. Manually fixing links here shouldn't be too hard. Just need to have something to fix them to.

Hi Hippy.. ive been sniffing about looking for cheap webhosting (with php/mysql support) i found this..

http://www.unitedhosting.co.uk/index.php

Bought their bronze package for 5 quid a month.. 5gb bandwidth a month.. i expect it will be fine for my purposes.. i'm not linking my site because a) its dog dirt and b) not finished but so far I'm enjoying the experience.

5 quid a month + 15 quid for two years of domain registration (...co.uk)

I read a few articles on your site.. not just the electronics ones... you should deffo get your own site space.

how about google sites ?

Google Sites gives you 10GB for free and is easy to link to their other things like docs, picasa etc...
no bandwidth restrictions, and you can keep previous edits just in case. There are also tools around to allow you to download/export the site for backup and re-import - though not (AFAIK) to import an existing site.

I'm keeping an eye on this thread because my haku.co.uk domain webspace yearly cost is shortly going to jump from ~£20/year to ~£55/year (bloody fasthosts), so I need some cheap domain based webspace to host my stuff. There's about 1.7gb hosted there, the bulk of the files are avi's that aren't really that important, but there's a lot I want to definitely keep online.

Looking around at the prices of 'cheap' webspace is somewhat disheartening, the average appears to be £5/month for 'high' bandwidth & 'high' space even if you don't use all the bandwidth & space allocated for the package.

So if anyone can reccomend some cheap webspace I'm very much interested.

My ISP is BeThere which gives me truly unlimited download/upload and I have just over 1mbit upload rate so I could host large files locally if need be.

Carefully read the terms and conditions on the Google Sites hosting.

Hippy has expressed concerns about his intellectual property rights (IP) under the terms and conditions of the hosting company. You will be surprised that this is a big problem with a lot of hosting.

It isn't always about cost and bandwidth. Of course, that is just my opinion.

I've been especially concerned with storing my photos online. Some places I've seen require you to give them the rights to do whatever they want with your images as a requirement of storing them there "for free." Even if you delete your images from their site they still have them and can benefit from them in any way they see fit, indefinitely. You agreed to it in the small print.

If you're a photographer, don't do it!

That also applies to schematics and other technical materials. The minute you upload anything to such sites you lose your rights to control the materials you place there. It's gone.

"Free" is seldom free. There's always a reason for such offers. Learn what the reason is before you jump at the offer.

Webs is a good service and reasonably easy to upload to, when creating a web site just click the "HTML only" hyperlink (might not be correct wording). I havnt had any problems with them and its free (if you dont have too many pages and dont want domains/email etc)

John West said:

..."Free" is seldom free. There's always a reason for such offers. Learn what the reason is before you jump at the offer.

Click to expand...

Apparently this concept is not so important to many people. Oh well.

http://www.000webhost.com/

Sorry for bumping, but i have also taken an interest in the recovery of this website.
You can use this web provider: http://www.000webhost.com/
I use it, it has easy ftp uploading for faster updates, no advertisements, its better than webs.
If not, Hippy can't you zip the website so people can use it for offline use? Or I could put it on my server for other people to use.

mahyarkoshkouei said:

Sorry for bumping, but i have also taken an interest in the recovery of this website.
You can use this web provider: http://www.000webhost.com/
I use it, it has easy ftp uploading for faster updates, no advertisements, its better than webs.
If not, Hippy can't you zip the website so people can use it for offline use? Or I could put it on my server for other people to use.

Click to expand...

A genuine question, especially considering posts #35 and #37:

What's the catch?

It must cost the company time/money to provide
the service. Why?

ec

eclectic said:

A genuine question, especially considering posts #35 and #37:

What's the catch?

It must cost the company time/money to provide
the service. Why?

ec

Click to expand...

Disk space is 1500MB and Data transfer is 100 GB / month. It can only do PHP and html. Thats it.