Backing up just in case

[erastes]

Well, I've been backing up my Livejournal posts today onto Blogspot, but it's not going well - I installed Blog2Blog but it only copied 30 out of 1251 posts. Not good!  I'm not really panicking, I have a billion blogs here and there, and ideally I'd like something like Hayden Thorne has, with a blog and a website combined, but have no idea how this is done.  I'm a little nervous of Wordpress as the updating (from what I hear from others) is pretty daunting.

Wrote a little today, but think I need a lot more research.  I am beginning to realise why people stay in their comfort zones--it's much easier to stay in Regency England (particularly London) because I can see it in my head and know the politics and events of the time. When I jump to early Victorian Norfolk, it's rather different. Even the coastline was different then, let alone the people's minds and thoughts and socio-political make-up.  And to think - it's only really about 20-30 years after when I'm used to writing about. Standish finished in about 1823 I believe.

I'm also beginining to realise that I have a real dislike - almost amounting to a phobia - of text books. I don't know why this is--all I can think of is that is goes back to my schooldays or something. I sit down with The Norfolk Broads - a rather massive tome stretching from pre-history, and I just glaze over.  I really wish I was one of these people who loved to read them, it would make my life so very much easier!

Comments

[the-sea-to.livejournal.com]

interesting - did not know there was a utlity for that!

*hugs re text book*

Sorry about website last night - mind just melted. It was all I could do to edit the last 2 chapters of story! Tonight should be more productive!

[aunty_marion]

I've used ljArchive for backups very successfully - it backed up over 1000 posts and 5000+ comments yesterday in under five minutes. But I don't know anything about Blogspot, so I suppose that's not much help to you!

[spikeyboots.livejournal.com]

I figure if LJ splodes that might just have to be the way of it. I don't have the energy to archive. *sigh* Either that or I'm lazy.

I don't like the sound of the text book ... *hides*

[fiona-glass.livejournal.com]

You're the 3rd person on my flist to mention LJ problems - I'm way behind the times as usual and wondering what's going on?

I know what you mean about Tomes. My great-aunt waxed lyrical over a book someone gave her (for her 80th birthday, mind you) called Subsistence Farming in Rural Italy. I glazed over at the *cover*. LOL

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

Just to let everyone know, Insane Journal is a lot like LiveJournal, without the same batch of idiots in charge. You can cross post your posts from here there without needing to making changes to html, and you can do ij cuts and ikj user tags about the same way by substituting lj user= with ij user= etc.

I've got the same SN there as I have here.

History book wise I tend to stick with the stuff written by Frances and Joseph Gies. They can manage to make things interesting and I've got a lot of their books. Too bad they don't do books on Japan. *sighs* Cause the books I have on historic Japan are *twitches* terribly boring.

[aunty_marion]

Actually (unless Squeaky has changed the code) the code for cuts and usernames is lj-cut and lj user, same as here. But on IJ it brings up the IJ user name.

[haydenthorne.livejournal.com]

My blog is mostly a blog still, and my sidebar serves as my book pages. ^^;;; The good thing about Blogger is that you can easily tweak your sidebar with additional widgets (just add as many text widgets as you need and fill them up with book info).

I hate the default Blogger templates, and if you go to mine, scroll all the way down to the copyright link, and it'll take you to Ourblogtemplates (http://www.ourblogtemplates.com/). They've got some really great free templates you can download and use for your blog.

Word of advice (and I learned this the hard way): if you go the Ourblogtemplates route, make sure that you don't have a sidebar with all kinds of links and widgets yet. Get all your entries posted first, keep your sidebars and footer clear, and then upload your new template. That way, you can tweak with the widgets and not lose important links once you have the new template in place. I lost so many in the course of working on my template, and it was hell.

And if you need help, just email me. :)

[feed-your-muse.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about textbooks. I did history at university, so when I was gathering material on the 18th century I got some academic textbooks out. Well. Dry, with more footnotes than actual text (or so it seemed). Maybe it's the time period, but I don't recall having this problem with textbooks on Greek or Roman history / literature?

Merry

=^..^=

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

Is there any special reason why you’re doing a different period now? I do recall you mentioned something about not wanting to be ‘typecast’ as it were, but it’s true what you say about the knowledge of the era being almost a comfort zone; I’m very much the same myself with the late 18th C.
It always seems to make for a better story when one’s love for that particular period is evident in the story (as you pulled off to great effect, I think, with your first book).
As for textbooks, I find no trouble with the ones written in the parts of history which I am personally drawn to (I am sure we all have them), but as soon as I have to read on something else, the glazing over does tend to happen! I much prefer to read novels written in that time to get the feel of it (Dickens, for example, in the period you mention), but of course, when you need hard fact, then this isn’t so helpful. Gah!

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

The latest Wordpress has updates built right into the online administration panel! It's easy peasy to do updates now. After the initial installation you shouldn't ever need to use FTP to access your files again.

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

Now, see, I *adore* research. I can spend hours looking for the precise etymology of a word, or what the hours and precise geography of a shop in central London in 1888 might be, just because it all fascinates me so much. Alas, I do not have the money to come to England and do the research "on-site" as it were, nor can I afford books and books just because I want to know one (1) fact, so I finally gave up and said, "fuck it! This world will have magic and therefore I do not have to be 100% accurate as to where the readymade suits would have been in the 1888 Harrods. It's enough that they would have sold them." I still really want to know where they would have been and what a shop encounter would be like, but it's for a passing scene in the novel, not actually anything that will have plot significance.
But I adore that part of it.

[mzcalypso.livejournal.com]

I look at textbooks as a buffet. They're usually indexed, so you can more or less go to the item you need and there are often related things nearby.

I know what you mean by the glaze-over, though .. that's how I react to anything related to math.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I've used LJarchive today, just in case. What I'd like to do is transfer all my posts to blogspot and transfer over there, but tis not working. I'm sure it's a panic over nothing, but a backup is good to have too. It's so funny reading my early posts.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

LJArchive is very easy, and it saves comments too. Don't know why you'd need them, but still!

:)

It's a great text book, I just behave like Alice "what's the use of a book without pictures or conversation?"

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Layoffs apparently, my flist is stuffed full of it, people doing the normal panicking and migrating. I'm not panicking, just backing up, in case!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Oh I adore research, but although I'm of the internet generation, I started my research online and find that dynamic and fast. To me, reading is something that I do when I'm not working, or not online. It's something I do in the bath, or in bed, and it's an escape. To trawl through 1000 years of Norfolk and which Ug the Ig came over to where and changed the landscape just isn't grabbing me.

Luckily, being a local subject, there are at least many books even in the smallest library!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

that's probably part of the problem, I've never been taught how to research with books... I never thought of using the index... *headdesk*

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Oh - that's a relief. I'll have a look at it. I do like the Wordpress system, I have to say.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I wanted to push forward a few years, because it was becoming a different world in 1840 - Railways, Darwin etc - the world was changing, and the important thing is that the house where this take place isn't...

Yes - you are right - reading the text books for the English Civil War was tough, but I always enjoy reading about the Molly Houses of the 18th and 19th cent.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

No worries about the website, whenever you get it done hun! I'm poised to upload it!

*kiss*

[the-sea-to.livejournal.com]

it is almost done - just checking it now *grin*

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I've copied it all onto Greatest Journal. There are too many places - I dread if LJ does go down, as everyone will be scattered and I'll lose people.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I'll definitely take you up on that. I like Blogspot, it's easy to use - the picture uploading makes me crazy because it doesn't insert it into the place where you tell it to and you have to drag it to where you need it, unless i'm doing stuff wrong.

Thanks!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you are right, perhaps it just that the history of drainage ditches and marshland doesn't grab me...

:)

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

I sense a certain Mr Norton has written a few of the tomes in your personal library as in mine! Heh!

And yep, it was becoming a very different world in those times. I'm intrigued by the hint of plotline, though I won't enquire further in case you don't like to tell...

[cerisaye.livejournal.com]

I am showing my age here but when I was a lass at university, books and periodicals were all we had, long before the internet transformed researching. Text books are my comfort zone!

I've taken the precaution of backing up my journal too, but I don't think LJ is going to disappear just yet (fingers crossed). I really hope it stays around cus I'd miss my communities and friends. I have an IJ but never post there. This is where I want to be, where I know how things work.

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

Textbooks>>> I really love them, especially medical/nursing ones. I like to know how things work and why. My next *gestational diabetes effort of a baby* (read: big one) is to be along those lines...hopefully *meep* I heard such a spooky story about a kidney transplant patient suddenly having a craving for cheese..when she never even liked the stuff. It won't have anything to do with cheese...or maybe I should keep it in, lol.

I'm reading SIN and am about 4 chapters in so far. Work got in the way of me getting started but needless to say, I'm having a whale of a time. I did want to cheat and start with Erastes' contribution but I convinced myself to be a good girl and read the book bloody properly. I'd never wanted to do that with a book before, you bad, bad kitty.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

That's the thing, really - I never went to University, so I never learned how "to use" text books. When I started to study law, that was a different thing - you found what you wanted nicked it - and got out - you didn't have to read an entire book! It's just getting used to working in a different way, I think--part of the problem is that I don't know exactly what I'm researching - just trying to steep myself in the Norfolk Broads in the early Victorian era.

I don't think it will go flop-bot either, but a back-up won't hurt. Good habit to get into!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Well, you could cheat and do that - the book runs back-to-front historically with the newest age first, but really it doesn't matter which one you read first.

I'm happy you felt like that, though. :)