here<\/a>, to find out which manuscripts are next in the list.\u00a0 Then to the Biblioth\u00e8que Nationale Fran\u00e7ais site to find them!<\/p>\nBut what is this!?!\u00a0 Aaargh!\u00a0 Woe!\u00a0 Eheu!<\/p>\n
The front page is up, but clicking on “Recherche” gives an error message!\u00a0 It’s not there.<\/p>\n
What now?\u00a0 Panic panic!<\/p>\n
There’s an email address on the bottom of the front page.\u00a0 Together with a “last updated 1998” (!)\u00a0 I don’t have a good feeling about this.\u00a0 I email anyway.\u00a0 It bounces.<\/p>\n
I go to the Bollandists main site and send an email.\u00a0 No reply.\u00a0 They’re probably busy monking out or something.\u00a0 No doubt the site is actually maintained by some underpaid Belgian who’s off for the weekend.<\/p>\n
I try again at the BHLms site.\u00a0 This time I get the sign-in page!\u00a0 But it just spins after that, then gives a 500.\u00a0 The database is probably down.<\/p>\n
I have a directory of manuscripts.\u00a0 Luckily for me, I did a copy and paste of the results for BHL 6108 and stuck it in a Word document.\u00a0 Phew!\u00a0 I am saved!\u00a0 I can proceed.<\/p>\n
But what if I had not?\u00a0 My work would have been completely stopped.<\/p>\n
The world-wide web is a fragile,ephemeral thing.\u00a0 When we rely on tools which are online only, we rely on the continued perfect functioning of the most complex and fragile machine in human history.\u00a0 All it takes is a power outage and it is gone.<\/p>\n
“The Cloud” is just a marketing lie.\u00a0 There is no “Cloud”.\u00a0 There is just a bunch of computers in a room somewhere, owned by someone else, with a\u00a0 power supply and a network connection.\u00a0 That’s it.\u00a0 It is madness to rely upon this.\u00a0 Especially in days when the most powerful people seem determined to ensure that there is not enough power to sustain society.<\/p>\n
Update: it is now back. Clearly there is an automatic script to restart these things.\u00a0 But… it’s a warning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s after lunch on a rainy Saturday, the central heating is on, and it’s New Year’s Eve.\u00a0 I have my can of diet coke and some crisps.\u00a0 Time to download and collate some more manuscripts of John the Deacon! First, off to the Bollandists site, the BHLms, here, to find out which manuscripts are next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-my-diary-announcements"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}