June 6, 2001

9:18 AM

Poof.Would everyone please take a look under their couch cushions and check if Sippey's there? Or maybe the site fell behind the desk. I mean, a web site couldn't really just vanish, could it?
posted by dchase (28 comments total)

um... what's sippey.com?
posted by starvingartist at 9:20 AM on June 6, 2001

he's been having ISP trauma...there's always theobvious.com if you need your sippey fix.
posted by judith at 9:31 AM on June 6, 2001

I've been wondering the same about dangerousmeta.com.
posted by crunchland at 9:34 AM on June 6, 2001

Michael Sippey, my ex-husband, was eaten by cats. Looks like it's kottke.org for you from now on.
posted by lucius at 9:35 AM on June 6, 2001

heh. finally get metafiltered, and it's for this.

the cheapass ISP jumpline.com that hosts sippey.com had a hardware failure on the box that my site "lives" on. and either their tape restoration procedures hadn't been adequately QA'd, or they're lying to me and actually weren't making backups at all...because the most recent backup they could restore was from march 12th. so, two and a half months of (admittedly fairly useless) content has vanished into thin air.

eh.

lesson #1: backups don't do jack if you can't restore.
lesson #2: avoid cheapass ISPs. duh.
posted by msippey at 9:36 AM on June 6, 2001

If you really wanted the glorius content returned, this google cache has some of your pages. Unfortunately it has the earlier ones in as well, but a bit of sifting will get the ones you need.
posted by ajbattrick at 9:55 AM on June 6, 2001

Tragic. But in keeping with jumpline's M-O.

I recently lost a chunk of data off jumpline as well for a portion of the month of May. That, and the down time of jumpline's servers is always surprisingly higher than I expect. You'd think I'd get used to it by now.

Woe is me. The Real Cost of being cheap.
posted by josholalia at 9:57 AM on June 6, 2001

dangerousmeta's down because of the launchpoint.net and zopesite.com outage. back soon (i hope).
posted by crazyhorse at 10:23 AM on June 6, 2001

i need to ask you a question, and i want you to be honest with me. will you be using google's cache to save your site?



(all hail the mighty google, the common man's backup device.)
posted by mathowie at 10:24 AM on June 6, 2001

"I mean, a web site couldn't really just vanish, could it?"

You mean the way Metafilter (almost) did?
posted by CrayDrygu at 10:43 AM on June 6, 2001

the way i see it, i have a few options.

#1: call the site "dead" and leave it at that.

#2: call the site "almost dead" and point to the google cache. the google cache expires eventually, so my life (and protracted death) will be short-lived.

#3: rebuild the site, and pick up where i left off like nothing ever happened.

#4: start fresh with something similar.

#5: start fresh with something new, exciting and never-before-seen. something like, oh, i don't know, like a site that would serve text and images and link to things.

#6: point the site to a vox populi poll that asks these very questions and lets the "readers" decide, and then ignore the results completely and choose one of the paths at random.

#7: set up a paypal account and ask for donations to get the site back up and running, and see just how much people are willing to pay for worthless microcontent.

#8: debate the nature of online community, endlessly.

#9: build a "site" that's nothing more than an ever-changing set of email autoresponders.

#10: pay activebuddy to develop, launch and maintain my very own IM persona that's available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to ask questions and distribute text fragments.

#11: hire an intern to evaluate my options, present them in an excel grid, make the decision and rebuild the site.

#12: take a nap.

#13: take a walk.

#14: take a nap, then take a walk to get a cup of coffee, then debate, endlessly, the nature of online "community."

thoughts?
posted by msippey at 10:54 AM on June 6, 2001

I think #14 and #10 are my favorites Michael.

You can rebuild it. You have the technology. You have the capability to make the world's first Bionic website. Sippey.com will be that site. Better than it was before. Better . . . stronger . . . faster.

The $6 million dollar man had a team of scientists... you have Google cache.

And as long as we are talking about vanishing domain names... does anyone in the Bay Area know what happened to the Bay Area Rapid Transit site bart.org. I first noted it's disappearance on May 25th and it's still down! This just three weeks after they came out with a major redesign and a Palm sync-able riders guide. Anyone know the scoop?
posted by jasonshellen at 11:02 AM on June 6, 2001

Ask the baby, Michael. Ask the baby.
posted by holgate at 11:25 AM on June 6, 2001

BTW, what ever happened to Mark and RiotHero?
posted by tamim at 11:44 AM on June 6, 2001

Yikes, I've never had trouble with Jumpline (nor would I call them "cheapass" - they're taking a nice chunk of my embezzled funds each month, money I should be spending on my "girlfriend" One-Tooth Kandi). Should I start worrying?
posted by jga at 12:45 PM on June 6, 2001

seems like a perfect reason and opportunity to start fresh although a bizzare mix of #9 and #10 might be an amusing concoction.
posted by igloo at 1:01 PM on June 6, 2001

tamim, mark's hero.nu site is still up, but since the entries aren't dated, i dunno if it's current.
posted by phooey at 1:13 PM on June 6, 2001

couldn't you have the email auto responders and active buddy do the work of the intern and debate the nature of online community with kaycee?

phew.
posted by elsar at 1:54 PM on June 6, 2001

does anyone in the Bay Area know what happened to the Bay Area Rapid Transit site bart.org?

Fox successfully sued BART for control of bart.org, citing copyright infringement, etc. with regards to The Simpsons and Bart Simpson. They had to hand the domain over. I remember reading about it last week, but I can't seem to find the link (not even on Yahoo! or Moreover).
posted by jkottke at 2:28 PM on June 6, 2001

Michael --

Pick up where you left off. That way I can say, hey I started this daily logging thing before sippey.com. All I have before that is five or six years of static pages around the Web.

I truly like the snippets in sippey.
posted by vanderwal at 2:43 PM on June 6, 2001

bart.org got handed over to Fox?!?!?! a dot org site is infringement?

Fox truly sucks for pursuing this. Pathetic.
posted by mathowie at 3:20 PM on June 6, 2001

Dear Mr. Sips,

I would like to see you write a novel on your Web site about an uprising among animals on a farm. I just checked the Web, and no one has every done this before.

Even better, make the whole thing an allegory for the Weblog community. So the "farmers" are traditional big-money publishers, while the "animals" are DIY-content people.

Sadly, after the "revolution," all the animals do is debate the nature of online community. The farm goes to weeds and the cows remain unmilked. At the climax, some pigs try to take over the farm (the pigs are, uh, "A-list" "stars" of the blogscene), but the sheer number of sheep (Blogger and Blogspot users) overwhelm the pigs. Some pigs turn out to be traitors, and other pigs try to walk on 2 legs and pretend they're really important. Some pigs even do interviews. Finally, all discussion is reduced to oinking and bleating and the entire farm is foreclosed upon because the NASDAQ crashes.

I think it would make a good movie, too. I have this other idea about a book about a totalitarian regime with a face on a screen called "Big Brother" but we'll see how you do with that one before I give you any more.

Thank you.

Clover,
The Horse
"I Will Work Harder"
posted by lucius at 3:38 PM on June 6, 2001

Well the good news is that I finally found a link to BART that wasn't the .org . It turns out the site is also available at bart.gov.

I would love to see a link to the Fox vs. BART thing. It's been bugging me for a while and I can't find anything. Their whois info still shows BART in control of the domain. Prob not for long if Kottke is right.

(sorry for disturbing your MeFi thread Michael)
posted by jasonshellen at 3:47 PM on June 6, 2001

dear lucius,

i think your novel idea is absolutely brilliant. there are all sorts of rich metaphorical possibilities there just waiting to be mined. i'm not sure if the animals, instead of debating the nature of online communities, wouldn't be better off debating the nature of farming, or the nature of living on a farm, though, since, as animals, the chance of them actually having visited an online community, however one may describe that, would probably be slim. but it could be really clear to the reader that when we said "farm" we meant "website," and when we said "harvest" we meant "post something really personal / insightful / clever / antagonistic that sparks meaningful dialog that changes peoples lives in extraordinary ways." obviously, the ideas need work, but i think we're on to something.

also, re. the movie idea. i'm not sure if you're thinking of a whole babe-style thing, with CGI'd talking animals or not. (although if we did use CGI'd talking animals, the whole production process could be a play on the web, and its use of "CGI" as well. but that would probably be lost on most of the pigs, if not all of the sheep. alas.) but think about this, maybe if we actually didn't use talking sheep, but instead cast the actual webloggers themselves in these roles, dressed as sheep, or pigs, or whatever. since the nasdaq's cratered, and there's already been more than one documentary on "farming" (nudge, nudge), the opportunity for these folks to actually cash in on their farm-team status is dwindling to zero, i'm sure they wouldn't mind actually dressing up in farm animal costumes. think matthew barney meets startup.com.

would love to chat. call my service.

-michael

ps -- my isp has found a backup from 5/30, and restored from that. which begs the question -- did i fake the whole thing just to spawn this thread?
posted by msippey at 4:18 PM on June 6, 2001

That would make me part of a conspiracy and I would never... damn! been caught.
But it wasn't your conspiracy, Sippey - it was Murdoch's. Yes, Murdoch and I hatched this plan months ago in the hopes of improving the ratings for the Simpsons. Bwahahahah!
posted by dchase at 5:08 PM on June 6, 2001

While we're on the subject, does anyone know what happened to my mind? I thought I left it around here somewhere...
posted by fooljay at 7:45 PM on June 6, 2001

Sippey - finally! You've just described web content I would pay for. Please, give me a bunch of Webloggers dressed as pigs and sheep running around a big muddy barnyard, rooting for truffles and rutting with one another.

And then one of the biggest pigs could fake some terminal disease and a bunch of the sheep could threaten to sue the pig because they sent the "sick" pig some books.

Let's get this started. I got my wallet out. I'm ready to type in my credit card numbers and dish out some micropayments for the first Weblogger to dress up like a piggy on their little Webcam. Who's it gonna be? Beasts of the Bay Area, you sows and boars, show us some pink (noses)!
posted by lucius at 7:59 PM on June 6, 2001

msippey (who is that?), I'm so sorry to hear your cat died!
posted by bryanboyer at 3:25 AM on June 8, 2001