Do we need a historian? It's pruning time.

Howard Wallace

Howard Wallace

.
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Feb 23, 1999
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Please see Sparks announcement at the top of the forum. http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/announcement.php?f=739&announcementid=83

HI posts older than 3 years are going to dissappear next week.

I assume that this means the HI archives forum also.

If someone with a webcrawling program wants to archive the posts older than 3 years we only have a short time to do so. It would be great if we had them archived and could make the archives available to those who wished to view them.

A number of years ago I put the khukuri FAQ together by sifting through the BF and KF archives. A lot of valuable information has been added since that time.

Any volunteers for the position of HI Forum Historian?
 
Howard Wallace said:
Please see Sparks announcement at the top of the forum. http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/announcement.php?f=739&announcementid=83

HI posts older than 3 years are going to dissappear next week.

I assume that this means the HI archives forum also.

If someone with a webcrawling program wants to archive the posts older than 3 years we only have a short time to do so. It would be great if we had them archived and could make the archives available to those who wished to view them.

A number of years ago I put the khukuri FAQ together by sifting through the BF and KF archives. A lot of valuable information has been added since that time.

Any volunteers for the position of HI Forum Historian?
Click to expand...


I would be very happy and interested to do it, really, but just need to know the mechanics of doing so. I have plenty of hard drive space; is there a way Spark can download the data to a flat file or similar structure that could be searched for keywords?

I'm willing to work with him or anyone else to make it happen. Ideally I could download this to CD RW's and keep it updated regularly.

Any info would be welcome. Most of what I have learned has been by browsing the HI archives clear back to 1999. We would only be interested in this manufacturers forum, correct?

I don't believe I have a webcrawling program (not really sure! Believe it or not I have over 200 apps on CD and need a spreadsheet to keep track of them all, but am losing them one by one as many of them are Win9X and NT 4 based and I only have a limited sized W98SE partition to run them in), but am sure I could figure one out and would be glad to buy one if necessary. It would need to be pretty specific though: HI MFG forum, all posts older than 36 months, all attachments.

Just let me know. Should I PM Spark?

I'm signing off now, but will check back in the morning.

Thanks,

Norm
 
There's so much of Bill and Rusty and the others in there...it should be easy to burn to CD.

Heck, we save some financial data at work 21 years back...their voices are worth more than that.

.
 
So "pruning" means that the old posts will be deleted? That's a lot of knowledge that will be lost.

Right now I only have a dial-up internet connection, but around Sept 1st I'm going back to college and I'll have access to a lot of computer resources. I think I would have the tools and ability to make an HI forum archive. But, if this is happening next week, it will be too late.

Here is a webcrawler for whoever can use it (requires Linux or Cygwin):
http://pavuk.sourceforge.net/about.html
 
Well I don't know what I'm doing, or what I'll do with it when I get it, but I'm downloading the archives now. We'll see what happens.

Steve
 
On a somewhat unrelated note, I like the name, 'quadsucker' by the group Mrosotov linked to- sounds like computer geeks with humor.

OH- Steve, if you're doing too much as it is, get together with Norm and see if he can help.


munk
 
ferguson said:
Well I don't know what I'm doing, or what I'll do with it when I get it, but I'm downloading the archives now. We'll see what happens.

Steve
Click to expand...

OK, Steve, I'll leave it to you. Let me know if you think I a dupe download should be done as well. If you download and archive them then I suspect with all the other Bladeforums being cleaned out as well, we will be good here for many years to come.

Thanks.
 
I'm going to have to try again tonight. That sucker is huge. Had to stop the download to my work computer here, as it looks like it's going to be over 1.5 gig. I should be able to start it tonight, and just let it run. When I get it mirrored, I'll try to find a site to put it where it can be accessed.

Steve

Edit:
Oh Norm,
Definitely a duplicate download should be done. 'Specially since I don't know what I'm doing.
 
I was just thinking that it would be pretty easy to download the contents of every thread on bladeforums, since the threads seem to be numbered sequentially.

It would be easy to write a little script which grabs everything from the HI forum indexed by thread number. You really only need to save the text contents of the pages anyway. It doesn't matter though since it seems like we have a working program to do this.
 
I've been unsuccesfull. If anyone else has the skills to do this, please give it a try. The software I got to do it seemed to make a mirror of the site, but it's not in a form that I can readily share. Sorry.

Steve
 
ferguson said:
but it's not in a form that I can readily share. Sorry.
Click to expand...

Could you be more specific about what's wrong here?

If nobody else can get this to work, I'll write a program to do it. What I would probably do is save the contents of each page, of each thread as a separate HTML file. It would make a whole ton of files, but it would be easy to package them up and distribute them.
 
Khukuri Monster said:
Could you be more specific about what's wrong here?

If nobody else can get this to work, I'll write a program to do it. What I would probably do is save the contents of each page, of each thread as a separate HTML file. It would make a whole ton of files, but it would be easy to package them up and distribute them.
Click to expand...

What's wrong is that I don't know what I'm doing. :confused: I have a directory with 1.something gigs of files and tons of folders on it. At the top is an index.htm file that when I click on it looks just like the bladeforums archive page. Then when I click on a thread, it takes me to the actual Bladeforums site, not what is stored on my hard drive. The data is probably on my drive, but not being a web page programmer, I dont know what to do. There is a very large dat file, and an index file that probably have the thread data in them. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.
Steve
 
Heck, we save some financial data at work 21 years back...their voices are worth more than that.

The Bladeforums without the historical content is worthless. For all I care Sparks can shut the place down and be done with it. Usually when a project has to be rush through in a week; its a sure sign that the place is going the way of the dodo.

n2s
 
I just emailed Spark, asking for a week's reprieve from the pruning.

I have no idea of how to store the files, but with an extra week, the great minds here might be able to figure it out.

Dunno what his response will be. H.I.'s numbers might count for something to him.
 
I also emailed Spark, and suggest that all paying members do likewise.

Spark,
I'm writing to respectfully request that you hold off on deleting the old Himalayan Imports forum and archive materials for a week to let our resident geeks figure out how to save this material. There is no book or other reference which contains this information, and it would be a shame to lose it. I understand and support your need to speed up the site, but humbly suggest that a week's delay would not be unreasonable.
Berkley
Gold Member

Berkley Bettis
Attorney at Law
Austin, Texas
Dolrsdad@aol.com
http://ikrhs.com/
Click to expand...
 
The software costs $160 for a lifetime license and a website to host it as an archive only would run about $100 a year. It would be technically possible to get it set up *as an archive only*, anyone could read to it but no one could write to it.

If I were rich I would be doing this right now *if* Spark agreed to it.

Might be worthwhile pursuing...if not me, someone else...all I know is that Bill's essence remains in those written words...

.
 
Our database contains the thoughs of hundreds of Formites who have passed on and is a wealth of knife content. There is no reason to continue these forums if we doom ourselves to answering the same set of questions over and over again. Ebay is a much better site for current knife content; the value of the bladeforums is that we can go back to 1999 and see how the maker describe his knife when he first sold it, and when we first discussed it. Without that there is really no reason to be here.

We may as well change the name to the Pirates Cove and use our bandwidth for nudie pictures and off colored jokes.

n2s
 
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