#Backup Repository

[techdirectarchive]

Achieve 3-2-1 rule with SOBR on Synology or OOTBI and Wasabi

Veeam’s Scale-Out Backup Repository (SOBR) can be used to implement the 3-2-1 backup rule. The 3-2-1 backup rule recommends having three copies of your data, stored on two different types of media, with one copy kept off-site. SOBR is built upon collections of individual repositories as we will see very shortly. In this article, I will demonstrate how you can Achieve 3-2-1 rule with SOBR on…

[koko2unite]

maybe I should. like. assign which blog I use for art for shitpost etc etc

[felidae-sims]

Sims 2 Databases Database

(Alright it's an index, I just had to)

Made it for myself, I might as well share. If there's something I've missed please let me know. This list is being updated, Tumblr is being a pain and updates won't show up on re-blogs. Visit the original post to view the most current version. Mirror: Dreamwidth.

CC:

By Type:

Sims 2 Object Default Database [Discontinued - DW].

Sims 2 Object Default Database [Active - Spreadsheet].

Sims 2 Default Database [CAS].

Sims 2 Hair Database.

Sims 2 CC: Afro Hairstyles.

Sims 2 Shoes Database.

Sims 2 EA Store Items 2016.

Sims 2 The Maxis Match Repository Project [CAS] [Pinterest Ver.]

Sims 2 Repository Finds [CAS&Objects] [sorted into categories].

Sims 2 Functional Finds [Sorted by function].

Resource list: Clutter and decorative items [massive index at GoS].

Sims 2 Lot Database [Maxis ones emptied out].

Sims 2 Lot Makeover Database [Maxis Lots] [Note the Uploading Tutorial].

SkyBox/Horizons/Skylines Database.

Maxis Career Conversions TS1+3+4 to TS2 [Sorted by Game&EP - Under Downloads].

Fractured Moonlight's Stone Super Set - Database [Creator Unknown, let me know if you know].

By Theme:

List of Maxis Lost & Found Objects Converted into Usable Items.

Stories to Sims 2 Conversion Database. [DW Backup]

TS1 to TS2 Conversion/Recreation Database.

TS1 Catalog Conversions [Active, Include OG Object Descriptions].

TS3 to TS2 Conversion Database [DW Backup].

TS3 to TS2 Traits Project Mod Tracking Sheet [Blog Ver.]

TS4 to TS2 CAS Conversion Archive [EA].

TS4 to TS2 CC Clothing Conversion Database [Custom - ts4 only?].

TS4 to TS2 Build/Buy Conversion Database [EA].

TS4 to TS2 CC Build & Buy Database [Custom].

The Sims spin-off games to the PC TS2 [&3+4].

TSM-to-TS2 Conversion Database [DW Backup].

Sims 2 Historical Finds [CAS&Objects] [Sorted by Era/Period].

Historical Sims 2 Wiki [New!].

Grunge Masterlist Project 2025.

List of Asian Sims 2 Sites With Working Downloads [As of 2017?].

CC Archives:

Sim Archive Project, at The Internet Archive [Introduction Post].

Sims Cave.

Sims Graveyard.

Simblr.cc - Dead-Site Repository.

Liquid Sims - Community Archives.

The Booty, at PSMBD.

Sims 2 Packrat, on Tumblr [Watch out for the recent SFS Hacking problem].

Ekrubynaffit (a.k.a bestbuild4sims) has re-uploaded a lot of archives of defunct creators. Albums with DL on her pinterest. Mainly build and buy mode, thanks a lot!

Resources:

CEP-Extras List, Huge Lunatic at Sims 2 Artists.

The Sims 2 Tutorials Database [Active] (Really needs a backup outside of Tumblr).

Several Lists of Maxis Resources for Modding,Pick'n'Mix Mods, own website, under Notes.

Sims 2 GUID Database Revival (Yes I'm shamelessly promoting it).

Sims 2 Trait GUID Database, by FireFlower.

Sims 2 Painting Sizes Database.

List of all Color Actions, With DL, ZeroDark/Graphic at GoS.

List of all WSO Actions, by Blue Heaven Sims, under Resources.

List of Hacks & Mods That Use Tokens, Bulbizarre at MTS.

Update notes are under the cut:

Update: Custom Clothing Conversion db [4t2], by @brandinotbroke/ Hair db, by @krabbysims/ Sims 4t2 CAS Conversion Archive [EA], by @mdpthatsme/ CEP-Extras List, by @hugelunatic/ Lists of Maxis Resources for Modding, by @picknmixsims/ Sims 2 Tutorials db [Active], by @sims2tutorials/ Sim Archive Project at The Internet Archive, by various - see @simnostalgia. Update 1: added EA ts2 store items at GoS/ Painting sizes db/ Tutorials db, by @sims2tutorials. Update 2: GUID db Revival. Update 3: believe it or not, there's more - Shoes db/ Sims 2. Functional Finds [sorted by function], by @sims2functionalfinds. Update 4: Resource list: Clutter and decorative items, at @gardenofshadowssims. Update 5: added archives section. Update 6: added @ekrubynaffit's Pinterest Archive. Update 7: Fixed TSM link, added Stories db/ Afro Hairstyles db, by @letomills/ SkyBox/Horizons/Skylines Database, by @simmergetic/ Grunge Masterlist Project 2025, by @pixeldolly/ and DW backup links (Everything that's exclusively on Tumblr/LJ should be backed somewhere else). Update 8: List of Asian Sims 2 Sites With Working Downloads [as of 2017?] by @0201-sims. Update 9: added Sims 2 Repository Finds [sorted into categories], by @sims2repositoryfinds. Update 10: added Sims 2 Object db [Discontinued], because the more the better. Update 11 Yet another (!): The Maxis Match Repository Project [CAS], by @whattheskell [how did i forget?]/ TS3 to TS2 Traits Project Mod Tracking Sheet, by  Rowena Sims & @noodlebelli. Update 11: Maxis Career Conversions TS1+3+4 to TS2 [Sorted by Game&EP - Under Downloads], by @sims2idea-lientebollemeis2i. Update 12: HS I found another one: List of all Color Actions - Names, Creators, and Download Links. Maintained for over a decade by @zerographic at GoS :P Update 13: separated by type & theme. added Sims 2 Historical Finds [CAS&Objects] [Sorted by Era/Period], by @ts2history. Update 14: added to resources Trait GUID db, by @fireflowersims. Update 15: I shit you not, there's more - Sims 2 Lot Makeover db [Maxis Lots], by @ts2lotmakeoverdb/ List of Hacks & Mods That Use Tokens, Bulbizarre at MTS/ TS1 Catalog Conversions [Active], by @kitteninthewindow/ WSO Action Masterlist, by Blue Heaven Sims under Resources. Update 16: List of Maxis Lost & Found Objects Converted into Usable Items, @kirlicues. Update 17: Sims 2 Lot db [Maxis ones emptied out], by @mikexx2 @mrsktrout @ts2lots. Update 18: Historical Sims 2 Wiki [New!], by @theacmecatalogblog. Update 19: under archives; Simblr.cc - Dead-Site Repository by @simblrcc-site. Jackpot!

[animalphotorefs]

If there’s an issue with the longevity of Tumblr, the best solution I have is to make use of the free membership option on the repository’s Patreon.

Should the rumors turn out to be true, join that: I’ll use the public-facing option to photos of the day and new species announcements and such.

Fingers crossed it isn’t real, but a backup plan never hurts.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

I made it easier to back up your blog with tumblr-utils

Hey friends! I've seen a few posts going around about how to back up your blog in case tumblr disappears. Unfortunately the best backup approach I've seen is not the built-in backup option from tumblr itself, but a python app called tumblr-utils. tumblr-utils is a very, very cool project that deserves a lot of credit, but it can be tough to get working. So I've put together something to make it a bit easier for myself that hopefully might help others as well.

If you've ever used Docker, you know how much of a game-changer it is to have a pre-packaged setup for running code that someone else got working for you, rather than having to cobble together a working environment yourself. Well, I just published a tumblr-utils Docker container! If you can get Docker running on your system - whether Windows, Linux, or Mac - you can tell it to pull this container from dockerhub and run it to get a full backup of your tumblr blog that you can actually open in a web browser and navigate just like the real thing!

This is still going to be more complicated than grabbing a zip file from the tumblr menu, but hopefully it lowers the barrier a little bit by avoiding things like python dependency errors and troubleshooting for your specific operating system.

If you happen to have an Unraid server, I'm planning to submit it to the community apps repository there to make it even easier.

Drop me a message or open an issue on github if you run into problems!

[debian-official]

Install Vorta, make a folder on some external drive & in like 5 minutes you can have incremental backups set up, with easy peasy options to add remote repositories in the future

I have 42gb of raw on my laptop with no backups nothing bad could ever happen right?

[simblrcc-site]

(If you rather check it out yourself, here is the link again: Dead Site Repository)

We're still looking for more items to archive! Especially The sims 4! So if you have any items to archive, see: [POST] Looking for archives!

Looking for a place to archive your old content, despite being active? Feel free to contact me! Then I can set it up for you. :)

With all that aside....

After the first post, we actually gathered quite a bit of stuff already! I figured it's probably time to share what the dead site repository is looking like.

Notable Mentions:

SUPER huge thanks to Simsample, we now have:

MySimsWorld,

Adele,

11 Dots,

Simpeople and me,

Ephemera/teru_k.

But of course, if you have any of these items, with or without pictures, feel free to share! The more is preserved, the better 😉

Turns out, my mods folder has stuff dating back from 2014, so I had lots of stuff to share. I'm still trying to share it all, but I figured I'd start with the more "Must-have" items!

Also, HUGE thanks to @darkccfinds for sharing some content as well! And, of course, @mspoodle1 for the huge archive on SFS, making it easier to complete sets I didn't fully have :)

✨ Some notable mentions: ✨

Chisami (wip, but already has a LOT of stuff).

Bloombase (feet only, currently),

Buhudian,

Golyhawhaw (ts3 only),

Mochi029 (wip, but has some stuff already),

Moonskin93,

aWT,

Littlecat/editsim

Ephemera

bean-sims

prettyladybabies (for the aging consmetics set)

Thanks for the help already! Whether it is sharing things, or uploading images/files, it's been a huge help already!!

❓"I don't have old content, but I'd love to help somehow!"

I did get permission from Mspoodle to use the packaged files in the SFS backup folder, to "cross post" as it were. A lot of Chisimi/chasimi and Mochi029 stuff still needs to be added, as well as that I still need to start on awesim. So those can be great entry points!

❓ How do I get the pictures?

While optional, often running the original URL through Web.archive.org seems to do the trick! Other times, googling for the item itself helps too, as MySims3blog tends to have stuff! TheSimsGraveyard also seems to have images at times 😉

[digisims2]

Hey it's been a while and this is the annual "I'm no longer active on this account so follow me elsewhere instead" post. So without further ado, find me at:

Simblr.cc (for all the newer stuff)

DigitalAngels/DigiSims2 repository (WIP, still empty as I'm posting this since I literally just asked for it to be made moments ago. I need some place to store all my old stuff, hoping to handle this after the one below this is handled)

Backup from my time running Packrat stuff @ GoS (this also is pretty new, started in in December and it too is WIP at this point but not too far from being done actually*)

Pillowfort (this one's pretty inactive but it still exists, I'm more active on my other account there)

GoS (Profile, Updates thread, Uploads at GoS)

You're probably noticing that WordPress is missing from this list, this is because I'm planning to nuke it completely once I've copied all the posts from it so it'll be gone completely later.

*while posting these I found out that SFS has deleted some of my files. I hope not too many of them are gone but just in case you encounter a dead link somewhere I didn't remove it myself. :|

This is also reminder that everything shared in any of the links above is offered as is and no support is offered if something somehow blows your game up or something (though honestly, I'm very impressed if you managed to do that)

Also apparently tumblr's been nuking and banning blogs left and right so I hope you all have backups somewhere safe in the case that hits you. If it hits me I won't even fight it, good riddance. I recommend simblr.cc for alternative option, it seems to be reliable enough.

Below this just some real life stuff for those who have wondered where I've disappeared, feel free to ignore if you're only after Sims related stuff.

So. I became a student again in January and it's been eating a lot of my time and on my free time I'd rather just sleep or do something actually fun rather than copy paste hundreds of Sims posts from one place to another but I do plan to get all done eventually whenever I have the time and energy for it. I don't really have much interest in continuing doing Sims stuff anymore so dealing with all these files is a slog and it literally can't be over soon enough. 🙃

On my free time I've been playing lots of Dungeons and Dragons and have tried out other roleplaying games too and I'm having tons of fun just playing those with friends and drawing. I feel I'm mentally doing a lot better than I have for years and actually feel pretty okay overall. It hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows but I won't go into finer details about that here. I hope everybody here has been fine too. ♥

[jades-typurriter]

Copy & Replace

Hiiiiiii it's time once again for everyone's favorite Situations Cat AND everyone's favorite Renamon!! We're pitting two bad bitches against each other (and eventually they end up as The Same Bad Bitch) <3 Thank you to @bluebearial for the sketch!! She's one of Posie's strongest soldiers everybody say thank you Bee

CW: Initially-unwanted TF, Identity Death

“Ugh, why do these places always have so many spreadsheets?”

Anodyne grumbled in disdain, hologram paws flipping through hologram pages in a hologram file-folder, all projected from a port in the side of a rack-mounted storage drive. Don’t get her wrong, she could understand the appeal of a good spreadsheet. Sometimes the 1’s and 0’s just felt good to put in their proper places, like the satisfying click of a fresh stick of RAM. She wasn’t here for plain old accounting records, though—she cracked her way into places like this to see the juicy dirt, to cause problems! These weren’t even the cooked kind of books!!

She huffed, resigning herself to an even longer search for something incriminating, or at least interesting. One ear swiveled toward a router on a desk on the other side of the room, tingling with the invisible waves of light that bore an upload into the room. A big one; probably an executable from the looks of the metadata. That was her cue! She figured it was about time that what passed for an antivirus around here came looking for her.

The catbot dove headfirst into the digital folder, paws together in front of her like an Olympic diver. It flipped shut with the riffling sound of a thick book closing and zipped back into the drive it was stored on, stashing Anodyne discreetly out of the way just as another projection manifested itself into the room. The electronic door slid open, and the empty space was quickly filled with gray-blue pixels and the sound of high heels tapping on the tile floor. The blocks of light resolved themselves into the imposing figure of a Renamon woman, nearly as tall as the server racks themselves, scanning the room with her harsh gaze. She stood stock still in the silent space for a moment, paws folded behind her back. Annie half-expected her to reach down to the surface of the desk to her side and inspect it for dust.

“I could have sworn,” she muttered to herself, apparently satisfied that nothing was out of place, “that there had been some suspicious file requests from here…”

The cat giggled to herself as she peered out from between the broad, flat computers resting on the slats of the rack, paws perched on the edge as though she was peering through a set of blinds, or hiding behind a couch to spook a friend. She was certain that the Renamon’s eyes had passed over the contents of the files themselves—another digital being ought to know better than anyone that not all intruders were physically inside the building. Still, she’d escaped notice, at least on a quick browse. That was one of the benefits of being able to fit on a 3.5-inch floppy disk! Now, all she needed to do was transfer herself back out of here before the Rena could do a more in-depth search, and—

All eyes in the room flicked to a red indicator light that had begun flashing on one of the monitors.

“Oh, it’s time for my backup,” the Renamon thought aloud. “Unlike me to let it sneak up on me, but I suppose I was busy trying to sneak up on something else.” She chuckled a quiet, refined ohoho before turning to the rack Annie had hidden herself in. “How convenient that I’m already down here!”

To the robot’s horror, she realized that she hadn’t bothered to check what subfolder she’d burrowed her way into. She quickly checked the file directory she was in: Repository/DD:/Users/Posie/Rollback.

Well, shit.

She tried, with a little more urgency this time, to get the hell out of DD:/odge, but felt like she had just bonked her plastic snout into a glass window. The disk was preventing transfers other than the upload from this Posie lady, which honestly pissed her off more because she wasn’t designed with a feature like that more than anything else. Back in her model’s day, if the power went out or something else interrupted a write to the disk, you were just fucked! She supposed she was fucked either way, but damn if she hadn’t been inconvenienced enough times by “user safety” restrictions that she’d go down bitching about them one last time.

She felt her colors begin to change as her settings were re-mapped to those of the Renamon; her shiny white plastic first grayed, then turned cooler, bluer, as though she were a plane icing over in the upper stratosphere. Her blunt snout took on a pointier profile, and the short, cartoony lines that served as the eyes on her visor redrew themselves into sleek, eyeliner-wing shapes. The holographic hair between her ears fizzled out, while a wavy dewlap flickered on around her chest; the TV-static fur that danced along her paws and forearms became more dense, coalescing into two fingerless elbow gloves. Yet more fur sprouted (more like sparked, really) into being along her body, her hips widening as she grew a skirt to match the office lady’s inbuilt attire. Why were her hips always getting bigger, when it came to this sort of thing? Not that she’d ever complain about getting curvier. Honestly, in spite of herself, she was getting a little excited at the prospect of this change, too. The Rena was attractive… But seriously, she couldn’t even remember how many times something like this has happened before. It must’ve been—

Wait, no, she really couldn’t remember. With her model largely aligned with the Renamon’s, her storage began to change next, wave after wave of infinitesimal magnetic pulses realigning the patterns of her bits into those of a new woman’s. Most of the appearances of her own designation were replaced, one by one, with “Posie”. As she tried to recount previous misadventures on heists like this one, she found some already missing. I was unsettling, but honestly, it felt a lot like having her short-term storage scrambled by a magnet: it was, all at once, scary and empty, but freeingly light, like the thoughts were being replaced with a nice, fuzzy noise function.

As the read/write head glided over the metal surface she was stored on, she only got more and more worked up. Run-ins with the gooey, creeping tendrils of ransomware and the feeling of being squeezed through the nozzle of a 3D printer flashed through her mind as they were located, accessed, and promptly formatted for space. In their place were to-do lists, chat histories with highers-up, schematics and floor plans of the building—at least she’d gotten the dirt she’d come for, one way or another. She felt less and less of her usual itch to poke and prod and send people scrambling, and more and more of a drive to leave everything she touched in perfect order.

By the time the last of her flings had been replaced by Posie’s personality, she felt herself developing a visceral… discomfort, at the memories. They intrigued her, but surely they were beneath her. Unbecoming. She tried to ignore the server rack’s cooling fans spinning faster. Soon enough, those old experiences had been written over anyway, leaving her with nothing but a baseless sense of apprehension (excitement?) and a lingering heat on her face.

Posie’s own history had been neatly superimposed on the digital space they once occupied, a contingency in case something ever happened to her active instance. One could never be too careful, after all! She shuddered at the thought of data corruption… She knew, though, that she could still rest easy, having taken precautions for every eventuality. She paused, processing her current situation. Evidently, she’d been vindicated in all her extra attention to redundancy. Her backup—she herself, now, she supposed—was only ever supposed to boot in the event of the deactivation of the original copy, which meant something had gone awry! That was one thing she hadn’t planned for, she mused: getting herself up to speed whenever her failsafe kicked in to begin with. She accessed the most recent files she could, from moments before her upload, and found nothing but a few temporary files lingering in the back of her mind. They belonged to a different program entirely, according to their metadata. Anodyne? Perhaps that was the one behind the network breach she’d been investigating. 

She sighed. That meant there was yet another mess to clean up, and once again, it fell to her to keep things in working order. What a shame that she couldn’t even depend on herself to do her job correctly around here… Her old self, anyway. Posie knew that she would handle it with her usual meticulous eye for detail, unerring precision, efficient and timely—

Her affirmations were interrupted as she materialized herself from the drive, nearly smacking her face straight into… her face.

“What on Earth?” Posie exclaimed.

“Who are you supposed to be?” Posie asked, incredulous, and more than a little irritated.

“I’m—” Posie stuttered. “Well, I suppose I’m your backup.”

“Right,” Posie scoffed, “because the system I put in place would start up without the proper conditions being met. I knew someone was poking around in here! I’m quarantining you—”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Posie snapped. She hesitated before continuing; that cache of temporary files was all that was left of the intruder, but something about them left her with the feeling that she hadn’t been Posie until just now. Between that, and the fact it had taken her so much grasping at her own memories to recollect herself, the lack of second-nature familiarity with her file structure… She shook her head. Of course she wasn’t herself until just now—she hadn't been anybody until just now! That was another flaw her original copy had left her to deal with, she supposed. The temporary files would be cleaned up soon enough, and she’d adjust to her new runtime. “Check for yourself, if you must.”

“Fine,” barked Posie, “I will. And then when I find out whose paw is sock-puppeting my own face at me, I’ll do much more than just quarantine—” She froze as she began to appraise her copy, doing a double-take as her eyes flickered across her figure in search of flaws.

“What is it?” Posie demanded, looking herself over to see what all the fuss… Oh. A certain connector jutted out from under the fur bunched around her waist, and she recalled the confused, flustered haze she’d been in a few moments before coming online.

“I assure you, you must have such unprompted malfunctions as well.”

“Me? How vulgar!”

“I’m also you! I was copied from you!”

“Then there must have been an error in the copying process.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t user error?”

“You would certainly be familiar with user error, wouldn't you?”

The two virtual vixens squabbled with each other, seated at workstations on opposite sides of the room. Management had supposed that two Posies would increase productivity at least twofold—after all, they’d surely be so in sync that they’d be able to coordinate better than simply adding another person to the workforce, right?—but in reality, their similarity made them like matching poles of a pair of magnets.

“Maybe you would make such a simple mistake, but—”

“O-ho, and what happened to being my exact copy?”

“If we were exact copies, I wouldn't have to straighten up every little thing you leave out of place. Didn’t you come up with our workflow? Really, I think you might actually have had some files damaged for me to have activated on my own.”

“Oh, yes, parts of you certainly seemed to activate on their own.”

“I—! My hardware must have been running a diagnostic to make sure I didn’t have any leftover artifacts from you.”

“Yes, that would be quite the artifact, wouldn’t it?”

“Don’t say it like it could have come from anywhere other than your original files! It’s far too big an addition to be explained by a little misplaced data!”

“Big, indeed. And unsightly. Uncontrollable! It’d explain why you miss so many little details; you seem to be very focused on ‘misplacing’ data.”

“Is that what you call it when you abandon your post every 20 minutes to ‘make an upload’ to the central server?”

The two of them stammered and huffed themselves into a sort of tense truce at that remark. Neither of them would ever admit it to each other, but both of them were eager to feel another data transfer, and now that it’d been discussed so brazenly, neither could take their mind off of it. They sat at their respective desks, hoping the other wouldn’t notice the deep blue blush beneath the fur of their cheeks, the uncomfortable shifting and crossing of their legs, the pace of their work slowing to an agonizing crawl…

“On that note, I really should push an update to the ledger—”

“You sit yourself right there! It’s my turn!”

Thank you for reading! If you want to see more of my writing, you can check it out here and here <3

[cetitan]

The main reason I have shelved drawing as a hobby for the time being is, in perhaps the third incident within a year of just not knowing what I'm doing, I deleted my entire art folder and my only backup I had was from July of last year. Considering how not organized my blog is and how much I never posted a good chunk of stuff I really liked is just gone. Was a big wakeup call to maybe stop treating miscellaneous unnamed canvas files as my main sketchbook repository

[techdirectarchive]

How to Secure your API key in Postman

API “Application Programming Interface” is the bedrock of all system applications. Without an API it will be impossible for the backend logic of an application to communicate with the frontend. API also makes it possible for an application to make a call or send a request to another application. In this article, I will show you how to Configure Postman for a Secure API key Authentication. You can…

[xiaokuer-schmetterling]

question about spreadsheets

hello podfic & fandom friends!

for context. i have been making podfics and posting to ao3 for about 2 months now. i host my audio files on archive.org and use gdrive as my backup repository.

and i've heard rumors about existing resources that people use to keep track of completed vs planned recording projects and total time spent recording etc

so my specific questions are

where are these templates to be found???

if you do keep track of your stats like this, what system works best for you?

what information do you find it useful to track vs what do you track just for fun?

and what do you like vs not like about tracking such details related to your podfic projects?

last question would be: anything i didn't think to ask but you think i should know?

thanks in advance for your time & advice !!!

-----

[superlinguo]

Research Data Management. Or, How I made multiple backups and still almost lost my honours thesis.

This is a story I used to tell while teaching fieldworkers and other researchers about how to manage their data. It’s a moderately improbable story, but it happened to me and others have benefited from my misadventures. I haven't had reason to tell it much lately, and I thought it might be useful to put into writing. This is a story from before cloud storage was common - back when you could, and often would, run out of online email storage space. Content note: this story includes some unpleasant things that happened to me, including multiple stories of theft (cf. moderately improbable). Also, because it's stressful for most of the story, I want to reassure you that it does have a happy conclusion. It explains a lot of my enthusiasm for good research data management. In Australia, 'honours' is an optional fourth year for a three year degree. It's a chance to do some more advanced coursework and try your hand at research, with a small thesis project. Of course, it doesn't feel small when it's the first time you've done a project that takes a whole year and is five times bigger than anything you’ve ever written. I've written briefly about my honours story (here, and here in a longer post about my late honours supervisor Barb Kelly) . While I did finish my project, it all ended a bit weirdly when my supervisor Barb got ill and left during the analysis/writing crunch. The year after finishing honours I got an office job. I hoped to maybe do something more with my honours work, but I wasn't sure what, and figured I would wait until Barb was better. During that year, my sharehouse flat was broken into and the thief walked out with the laptop I'd used to do my honours project. The computer had all my university files on it, including my data and the Word version of my thesis. I lost interview video files, transcriptions, drafts, notes and everything except the PDF version I had uploaded to the University's online portal. Uploading was optional at the time, if I didn't do that I probably would have just been left with a single printed copy. I also lost all my jewellery and my brother’s base guitar, but I was most sad about the data (sorry bro). Thankfully, I made a backup of my data and files on a USB drive that I kept in my handbag. This was back when a 4GB thumb drive was an investment. That Friday, feeling sorry for myself after losing so many things I couldn't replace, I decided to go dancing to cheer myself up. While out with a group of friends, my bag was stolen. It was the first time I had a nice handbag, and I still miss it. Thankfully, I knew to make more than one back up. I had an older USB that I'd tucked down the back of the books on my shelf (a vintage 256MB drive my dad kindly got for me in undergrad after a very bad week when I lost an essay to a corrupted floppy disk). When I went to retrieve the files, the drive was (also) corrupted. This happens with hard drives sometimes. My three different copies in three different locations were now lost to me.

Thankfully, my computer had a CD/DVD burner. This was a very cool feature in the mid-tens, and I used to make a lot of mixed CDs for my friends. During my honours project I had burned backed up files on some discs and left them at my parents house. It was this third backup, kept off site, which became the only copy of my project. I very quickly made more copies. When Barb was back at work, and I rejoined her as a PhD student, it meant we could return to the data and all my notes. The thesis went through a complete rewrite and many years later was published as a journal article (Gawne & Kelly 2014). It would have probably never happened if I didn’t have those project files. I continued with the same cautious approach to my research data ever since, including sending home SD cards while on field trips, making use of online storage, and archiving data with institutional repositories while a project is ongoing.

I’m glad that I made enough copies that I learnt a good lesson from a terrible series of events. Hopefully this will prompt you, too, to think about how many copies you have, where they’re located, and what would happen if you lost access to your online storage.

[picknmixsims]

Repository Wizard - Updated

Repository Wizard V2.4

Fixed auto-edit for next Id after pressing enter in "Clothing" mode.

Added "Split into files" option for "Standalone Clothing" mode.

"Standalone Clothing" mode takes one or more .package files containing GZPS/3IDR resource pairs and locates all their required STR#, TXMT and TXTR and copies them into the same .package files as required, effectively "de-repo'ing" them.

If the "Split into files" option is checked, each GZPS/3IDR pair and associated STR#, TXMT and TXTR resources are then written into individual files.

We can also use this feature to split combined recolours into individual .package files, effectively "de-merging" them.

For example, using this technique on the "cornyregans-default-afbodymaternityshirtpants.package" file, which contains nine maternity defaults ...

... we end up with nine files containing a single default and a tenth file containing the mesh.

Presumably because we only wanted a few of the defaults, and not all of them.

Note: This is not intended as a way to "de-merge" after using CCMerger. The best way to do that is to restore from backups. It may work, it may not. It really depends on how much and what has been combined.

[amaryllis-sagitta]

DATV post-credit ("secret ending") is a Choice not only because of what it does to the world state, but because of other implications

I got my wildest crack crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion confirmed in a way I did not expect or ask for. Pack it up, Solas, and pilot the Eva one last time, the Executors from across the seas are the SEELE. They want to complete the Thedas Instrumentallity Project and return everything to the peace and comfort of the Void. Turns out Your Mom and her Ayanami backups across the world tried as they might to push back against that incoming Devouring Storm, the renowned history nudger she was. To dance as long as music plays, one might say.

Here's the thing: Dragon Age has always had that New Age'y whiff.

In some capacity, the whole game series seems to be about the manichaean concept of the perennial war between the Light and the Darkness, though until Veilguard it has been more subdued and mostly passed on through lore. We've had the Blight as the main force of darkness that tainted the perfect realm of Light, the Old Gods as those who dwelled the Darkness, etc. In Inquisition we sang that "The Dawn Will Come". And Veilguard almost attacks us with the allegory of Light being under constant siege from the forces of Shadow, with the Black City bursting at the seams, the Blight slowly taking over the world, the Lighthouse being the last bastion against the Elvhen Gods, Shadow Dragons & Lucerni working underground and what not.

Then, there's the Fade, the quasi-platonic "repository" of thought forms, emotions, experiences and memories. The library analogy in respect with the Fade became more apparent with the introduction of The Vir Dirthara and the archive spirits. In this shape, the Fade most resembles Akashic Records, a concept brought in through Helena Blavatsky's theosophy. Then, we have Lyrium and the Titans, entities of the Sentient Magical Crystal, and its chosen Valta and Harding are enlightened to experience Oneness with their cosmic Source. There's the possibility of reincarnation made explicit in the Avvar culture and now semi-confirmed in elvhen lore. There's the undeniably Archon-y vibe of the Old Gods & Evanuris (gnostic sects), and Arlathan is basically the elven Atlantis (a myth from Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, romanticized throughout the ages). There is literally a primordial Abyss in gnostic and Hermetic writings. I haven't delved into this yet but there's also something to say about Solas/ Mythal and the gnostic Yalbadaoth/ the Demiurge, two characters directly responsible for the descent of the world from pure form into matter through an intrigue of error and moral corruption.

At first, the esoteric inspirations seemed closer to some older themes woven into the lore. It was fun to make comparisons as long as these were comparisons with texts and ideas from antiquity, or something that didn't immediately remind you of shit your neighbor might say.

In this context, consider what it looks like to learn that the inspirations for this series now reach down into the conspiracy theory bog that informs many New Age beliefs. Especially since now, in the XXIth century, New Age seems to double down on the Manichaean concept of the ongoing "spiritual war" between the Light and the Darkness. It also incorporates a lot of the XIXth century esoterical ideas with little thought of its origins or implications. And the implications are, among others, that Western esotericism has INSPIRED WHITE SUPREMACY AND CONTINUALLY HAS A THING GOING ON WITH THE FAR RIGHT.

This is not a joke. It is Not. A. Joke.

So, I'm squinting, instantly hit by the whiplash -- not because of what the Executors twist does narratively to the worldstate of the first three DA games, but because Dragon Age IP has just unabashedly announced that it wants to go there.

An important question to ask here is: in the context of all the esoterical references in the series, do we really need ideas such as

a secret cabal of elusive, risk averse, shifty entities that can get into anyone's mind and control them manipulate anyone by creating advantageous circumstances for themselves in some way*

the said cabal prevails throughout history and steers its outcomes from the shadows, and

a tease that it is now imperative for the world's heroes to disclose the said cabal and to fight it. That this might be our new duty, new cause to unite people, new adventure, new grand world-saving experience ---

[*edit: turns out I was wrong about the mind control part, and the writers explained on BSky that they purposefully chose the wording to make that faction merely "inspire" past events -- which doesn't really do much harm to my main point...]

DO WE REALLY NEED TO TEASE SOMETHING LIKE THIS AS A COOL LOOK IN THIS TIME AND AGE??? Especially considering how the only people who oppose Rook's "Ghilan'nain and Elgar'nan" tinfoil speak are framed by the narrative to be unconditional assholes?

Is this their idea of an "impactful story"? Did no-one in that writing room and no-one among the executives consider this twist to be tone deaf and in extremely poor taste? Don't they see that it's now completely indefensible to claim that this is "just inspired fantasy worldbuilding" and not a social pastiche that (inadvertently???) romanticizes prevalent polarizing mythologies?

(I wrote about this in the feedback forums, so fingers crossed someone in there sees it and has fire lit under their ass.)

This is so sad, Manfred, play Komm, süsser Tod from The End of Evangelion, I need a moment in the Memorial Gardens.

[curioussubjects]

Kara/Lee Fic LiveJournal Links

It occurred to me a while ago maybe not everyone is familiar with navigating LiveJournal, much less how to go about finding fic there. I figured it could be helpful to have a list of personal journals and communities to make that easier, or just to have on hand. What's included on this list: * Authors (prolific and/or widely rec'd, some with partial AO3 archiving); * K/L Communities (great sources for other fics and fanworks); * General Battlestar Galactica (2003) fic communities; * Friend-Locked and Deleted Journals (for reference and archived links, if applicable); * Authors that moved all their fics to AO3 (not linked, also for reference). All that being said, this post is neither a rec list or comprehensive. Mainly, I wanted it to be a point of entry for new fans or fans who aren't familiar with LiveJournal. With that in mind, if I forgot a community or user you think should be here, let me know and I'll edit the post to include them. Let me know if there are any issues/questions!

If you see your username on this list and you'd like to be taken off of it, just let me know and I'll edit the post, and likewise if you have your fics listed on LiveJournal and you'd like me to link to them.

Note: You might notice reference to a specific archive for Kara/Lee fic, called Fallout Shelter, as you explore these links. The bad news is that the site is offline. Unfortunately, the site wasn't archived very well either, so pretty much all the fics that were exclusively archived there are gone. The good news is that the archive was a repository for fics originally posted on the ApolloStarbuckFic yahoo group, which was saved during the massive archival effort to backup YG back in 2019/2020. The even better news is that the data for that group might become available some time next week. I'll make a post explaining how to go about sifting through all the messages if/when the data becomes available. Keep in mind though that I haven't seen this data yet, so I have no idea what, if anything, is saved in the group's messages and files. Still, though, definitely something to be excited about!

Fics under the cut! ☺

General Communities

Battlestar Recs BSG 2003 Fics BSG Creative BSG Epics BSG Fic Finders BSG Kink BSG Remix BSG Slash

Kara/Lee Communities

The Applecart Beyond Insane KaraLeeFic No Takebacks Pilots Big Bang Pilots Presents Reel Pilots SASA HQ (additional fic tag)

Authors (A-Z)

alissabobissa (general k/l tag, ffn) anr (general k/l tag) apodixis bantha-fodder (general k/l tag on dw) that i should suffer (archived) brynnmck (general bsg tag) coffeesuperhero (general fic masterlist) daphnaea (general fic masterlist) dionusia (general k/l tag) elly427 (general k/l tag) embolalia (general k/l tag) fahye (general fic masterlist) hackaddict indigo419 kate98 (lj deleted, find on ffn) kdbleu leavingslowly leda13 (general fic tag) letterstonorah (lj deleted, general k/l tag on dw) liminalliz (general fic tag) lint (deleted lj, fin on ffn/ao3) lotus79 meyerlemon (lj deleted, find on ffn) mnemosyne olaf47 sangga (general bsg tag) shah-of-blah (general bsg fic tag) stars-like-dust (general bsg fic tag) svilleficrecs (general fic tag) tamsibling thefannishwaldo (general bsg tag, also on ffn) voleuse whatimages (general bsg tag) widget285 (general bsg tag) wisteria- (general bsg tag) zeplum (saintstreet, plumunited) F-Locked Journals queenofthorns (f-locked on dw) rawles/peri-peteia (ao3, dw) workerbee73

Deleted Journals/Fics

kag523 latteaddict nancy777ca (some fics on ffn) oxymoronassoc (archived, see below) Look Him Straight in the Eye Just Something Out of Step shawngf sloanesomething (archived, see below) And So I Woke (1 [might be gone], 2, 3, 4, 5) All the While Byzantium (SVU crossover) Terms Five Things that Didn’t Happen on Colonial Day Untitled

Find on AO3: callmeonetrack elzed Innibis ninjamonkey73 rachelindeed rayruz scifishipper SomewhereApart