TopShelf TG Fiction in the BigCloset!
I don't know what I touched but twice I've lost tonight's manuscript for Bike. If it happens again, £400 worth or not, I'm going to smash this heap of crap into a million pieces. I may or may not post tonight.
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Comments
Tech Advice
I have found that doing a 6 foot calibrated drop test onto a sufficiently hard surface is very satisfying to the soul. And it has the benefit of being easier to clean up than a million small pieces.
The above works for all known hardware issues.
For software problems, this will make them all go away (if you are using windows - which might be the problem by itself): start/run/cmd format c:\u. This little sequence will overwrite the hard drive with random 1's and 0's and all of your software problems go poof. Of course the drive has to be rebuilt, data restored (you do back up frequently don't you?), etc. You will also need something to boot the computer from - ideally a master CD.
Seriously, I hope your computer problems are quickly resolved.
Hugs,
Kathy
Just get up, walk away, and
Just get up, walk away, and don't worry about it.
You've been one of the most reliable and consistent writers here - you deserve a break.
I wonder if there's a very light duty editor for windows with autosave? I don't know if Notepad++ can do it or not.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
I always found
I've always found a few good smacks to the side of the tower or threats with a hammer seem to work quite well. When I was working at a convince store one of the registers would act up an smack I'd slap the side of it an it worked.
Save your wrath for later
Angharad, sweety, there are several ways around this frustration instead of letting your hard efforts go like a thief in the night.
1: there is an auto HD backup that plugs into your USB port and autosaves data every five minutes. Or you can mirror your HD but it has to be the exact HD as what you are running to mirror. If you want you can clone your HD. The clone can be bigger or same size as your HD but not smaller.
2: you can autobackup to a jump drive only what you are working on. Insert jump drive into USB port and tell word to save to... J drive or where ever the storage is plugged into.
Now, I installed virus protection. When I retrieved files off my jump drive, changed them and told them to save, they disappeared. The Name Brand virus protection was wiping out my files as they were saved. Have you installed virus protection lately???
If you need data holler at me. Been awhile since I did all this but I might be able to figure out who, what for saving your sanity. As if any writers on this web had any left.
hugs doll
always,
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
I have found that "save as" is better than "save".
I have found that using "save as", instead of "save", every ten to fifteen minues, along with saving muliple copies, on a few different folders, harddrives, and usb memory sticks helps prevent losing stories. Also, CD back-ups for long term storage, every few weeks, is a good thing.
My favorite advice
Have you considered Google Docs? It is a full featured word processor that runs right inside your web browser. The huge advantage it has is that everything you do is saved on Google's servers, instantly while you type; if your computer crashes, absolutely nothing is lost, and your work is accessible from any computer on the Internet.
Google Docs?
Ah yes, that well know feed of data to the likes of GCHQ, NSA, FSB etc.
Using 'Save As' at regular intervals is a good way to keep track of your work. Think of 'baselevels'. I make a note of the name of the file and the curent stage of editing along with the time I did the save. This has saved my bacon more than once.
As for the post about 'Teco'! Well done.... I used that for years on a PDP-11 when I worked at DEC.
It is a real pity that Windows (and other Systems) have not implemented a versioning file system. DEC did it with RSX and VMS nearly 40 years ago. This is where you can have multiple copies of a file with the same name but with a different version number.
Even if
Even if that hyperbole were actually true, I sincerely doubt an individual's fiction writings are a matter of national security.
NSA, ad infintum...
Well, the Internet Archive does the same thing, or a largish number of similar Web crawlers. It’s difficult to make a coherent argument for the privacy of documents posted to the Internet in general. If one is truly concerned about privacy, write everything on paper with an ordinary pen or pencil (since every computer not Tempest-certified broadcasts every keystroke to the immediate neighbourhood) and then burn the paper (to avoid the risk of burglary). Better yet, don’t even think anything that might be of interest to the NSA, FBI, or Internet advtertisers, since one never knows when the brain’s ‘code’ will be cracked. I’m sure that there are many agencies (both domestic and foreign) working on the problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_%28codename%29
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
plus ca change, plus c'est le
plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose.
once upon a time there was a text editor called TECO. it was incredibly powerful
but incredibly unfriendly. one command that was used a lot was the
t
command. the 't' command would 'type' out the current line. pretty harmless, but right next to the t key is the y key. 'y' was/is also a TECO command. the 'y' command has a function but for 'most' people the 'y' command was more or less the 'throw my text away' command.
these days the tools aren't _usually_ that unfriendly, but they can always hurt you. i mostly use
an editor that is more or less the direct descendant of TECO. unlike its grandparent, though, it autosaves. :-)
I do an enormous amount of my
I do an enormous amount of my writing in VI (mostly vim.nox).
I've also used VMS EDIT, I've used EDLIN, Dos EDIT, TEX, LaTEX (boy, I miss that NeXT sometimes), PICO, and I even tried EMACS. Never understood that one. The only thing it was missing was an editor.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Autosave...
Is very nice. It's one of the reasons I love Scrivener. It autosaves everything, but only doing the actual Save command will permanently alter your document.
My first writing software experience was Word Perfect 5,1. Oh, I'd played with things like vi, emacs and JOVE back in the day, but for actual writing WP was my real first. I was sad that it lost out to Word and then I began looking for alternatives to Word as it grew into this giant piece of bloatware. For what I do, using Word is like taking an eight passenger SUV to the store that's a block away to get that carton of milk you forgot earlier in the day. It does the job, but...
Plus with .rtf being almost as widely accepted as .doc, and the availability of things like Google docs, OpenOffice or even LibreOffice, Word just isn't something I need anymore.
~And so it goes...
TECO...
Hell, with TECO, one could write an emulation for any text editor one prefers, including ‘autosave.’ EMACS was first created as a TECO emulation.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
I don't understand
How does this happen nowadays? Have you turned versioning an auto save off?
Doesn't help
...if you accidentally enter a command to dump your text.
What was auto-saved will get dumped as well. After all, that's what you asked for, wasn't it?
Auto-save is only useful in the event of a power cut or similar extreme failure, In that case, when you (eventually) restart it will recover your file from the temporary backup.
Autosave is not to be regarded as any kind of security, any more than RAID is. RAID is just for rapid access and for disk failures.
Penny
The problem lies in direct editing to BC...
If the connection fails for any reason, or the site itself experiences a tiny little glitch, it’s very easy to lose one’s edits entirely, although it’s sometimes possible to ‘back up’ and retrieve the text one has already entered. I do this a lot, and usually do a ‘select all’ and ‘copy’ before trusting the site ‘Save’ button, but occasionally get bitten none-the-less.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Absolutely
I don't generally bother with ad hoc comments like this one, but for posts of any length they get set up as text files first and then copy-pasted into the edit buffer.
Been burned too many times by that one!
Penny
Fun with computers
To err is human; to really screw things up requires a computer.
Undo
Since you don't know (or haven't said) the exact mechanism by which your masterpiece disappeared, I can't really tell you if it was gone forever.
But, consider this: if you're still in your editor/word processor when this happens, just try a simply "Undo" command or more. Your data may still be there in some internal edit buffer. On my system Control-Z is the usual Undo command but yours may differ.
It should do no harm to try this when disaster strikes. You'll find that you can usually go a long way back by repeating Undo commands, it may just save your bacon. It certainly has mine, of a time.
Penny
Is it possible she is entering the text directly in the browser
If that is the case, yes, it is easy to accidentally kill the webpage. This is especially true on a laptop where the mouse cursor may accidentally be accidentally moved from the text entry area and then you hit 'backspace' and they the browser will very helpfully go to the previous web page. Laptops are particularly vulnerable to his happening as the trackpad can be accidentally touched. When that happens I would try clicking on the forward arrow on the browser in hopes the browser still has the page. That's how I've accidentally lost comments.
On a word processor, even openoffice or microsoft word it is very hard to not have something saved unless it has been controlled Z'ed of course. In that case, try redo on it and the text should be restored.
I tried undo
and it lost me the lot.
Computers are currently the bane of my life, yet without them and the internet, I wouldn't have met you lovely lot.
Angharad
The Pony
It would appear you just found the pony!
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
If it is a backspace problem
leading you to go to the previous webpage then the redo (the forward arrow on the web browser) will put you back into the page you are originally on. Just to confirm, I did this:
a) Entered some nonsense comment (like now :))
b) Put the mouse cursor on the top of the comment page so that I am no longer in the area where I am typing the comment.
c) Hit the backspace key, and I am back to the previous webpage where I had clicked 'reply' to put the new comment in.
d) I hit the forward arrow on the web browser (I use Firefox and the forward button is the right facing arrow button at the upper left hand corner of the webpage.
e) The webpage comes back replete with my load of wisdom :)
A similar trick seems to work when BC had all those connection issues and the server becomes unresponsive and the connection to BC times out or if BC is rebooting. In that case, don't do anything with the webbrowser. Instead, open up another web browser window and retry connecting to BC until you are sure you can get to BC again. Then go back to the formerly unresponsive web page and hit the back arrow and then possibly the forward arrow again, if this does not return the web page that has the text you just painfully entered (I forget whether the forward is needed or not as I haven't done it for a while) your text should be restored. The browser is very good about retaining text if you do not do a 'reload' of the webpage.
If however it is not a browser issue then hopefully this helps somebody else.
Undo doesn’t work if the site goes offline, even for an instant.
On the Mac, try [CMD] [Left Arrow]. It should give one the previous page, restored from the history of one’s own web browser. I’m sure Windows machines do the same thing, although I’m not sure of the exact keystrokes, since it’s Web browsers that remember their own history, not the machine’s OS.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
trash bin
on win_systems it should go to trash the most recent files should be last in the list.
as far as touch pads i hate them and use a usb mouse.
I'm shocked. Really shocked ...
... at the heading to your little rant. Someone of your writing talent should be able to spell simple words like 'fucking'.
I we lived nearer, I would ride to your rescue but Dorset is a bit too far from Derbyshire for an evening bike ride :) Not sure what editor/word processor you're using but my ancient copy of Word 97 which runs OK on Win7 (not sure about Win8) can be set to back up periodically as you write. If you're writing straight into the browser then Lazerus has saved me from a lot of frustration. It remembers what you typed into a web site which helps if something goes tits up when replying to a blog as I am now.
hugs
Robi
hmm.
I thought it was fscking. I mean, if you keep losing data, you want to do a file system check, don't you?
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
I suppose that makes more
I suppose that makes more sense than checking your fish...
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
Many times
Many times I had reviewed, edited and then closed a word doc that was sent to me over the internet. The document would open fine and its little icon would show that it was being saved to the hard drive. I worked diligently on said article hoping to send it back to its rightful owner only to have many hours of work wasted and my frustration level shoot through the roof as I failed to do one little item.
You see when word opens a document from the internet i.e. mail an such it doesn't do an auto-save to the hard drive. It copies the file and saves it in a temp directory so you are left with the idea and falsehood of believing that a copy of the document is actually on your hard drive itself. That is not the case. Not unless you save the file directly to your hard drive is a copy of the document saved. Word does not save the editing of what was sent via e-mail as its not that smart. I personally don't think any word-processor does that.
So when I'm tired and not thinking and I wish to waste preciousness hours of my time, I don't save the file. It gives me a chance to test my memory on what I had edited, wrote and so forth.
I know your frustration and empisize with you.
The other thing that happens
is that the website to which it's being uploaded loses the internet linkage and it's lost. It happens on this site at least twice a week, usually as I click on save - like just now. I am very tempted to stop posting on the internet because I am so sick of it all.
Angharad
Really?
It has been many, many months since I have had any network problems accessing BCTS, or most other sites for that matter. There has been no trouble ever since BCTS upgraded after the little fuss a while back.
If you still have those kinds of problems, apart from the finger issues, then you really need to speak to your service provider. Tell them the word you used at the top, it may help you get some service!
Penny
Try Lazarus.
It saves the text you enter onto a web site and if things go awry then you just right click in the site's text window (like this one) and select 'recover text'. It works fine and it's free. It works for both Firefox (which I use) and Chrome (which I use very occasionally) but not for MS Internet Explorer IIRC.
Just Bing 'Lazarus Text Recovery'.
It's saved me a load of typing on many occasions.
One other thought - are you hitting the Cntrl key by accident? That cause all sorts of strange things to happen depending on which other key you press at the same time.
Robi
A good text editor for Windoze
is EditPad Lite.
http://www.editpadlite.com/
It has unlimited undo even after saving, and one can set it to save unlimited numbered backups.
It also has full syntax colouring if you wish to hand-code your HTML. I don't know if the Lite version has a spell-check, although the Pro certainly has.
Another route may be to use the built-in editor in the Mozilla Seamonkey browser. I haven't used it for yonks, so I don't remember details, but I think it may bear closer investigation.
For all authors, you might try the Calligra suite (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligra_Suite), running under KDE, though, of course, it can run on any 'nix platform.
It is a very necessary life-skill to be able to step back and disengage from a situation--a cup of tea is a wonderful remedy for those fraught moments!
Hoping things improve for you,
Regards,
Chris.
Don't ever feed your Aardvark honey.
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If I get this once more I'm going to scream. It happened twice while posting tonight's bike. I am sick to death of computers and the fact that they are slower than one of my halfwit cats, and less reliable.
Angharad
I suspect part of it might be
I suspect part of it might be because of the work on the site, such as the new links bar that follows you around the page.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.