On Friday afternoon one of the servers at my ISP collapsed and Harmless Sky has been unreachable ever since.
I am told that they worked all weekend trying to fix it, and also that they have taken the opportunity to completely upgrade the platform it runs on, including the operating system and the version of PHP it uses. For the non-techniclaly minded the latter is the programming language that WordPress blogs are written in.
As the new version of PHP (5) is not completely backwards compatible there may be some glitches and I would be very grateful for information about anything that does not seem to work properly.
Perhaps it’s worth mentioning that I run Harmless Sky on a bog standard (and cheap) domestic ISP account. As you know, sceptics are supposed to be waging a carefully coordinated and well funded campaign against the forces of reason as exemplified by the climate community. If I had a proper commercial account the problem might have been fixed more quickly, but then unlike RealClimate I don’t have the backing of Fentons.
My apologies for the break in service. During this evening I will be posting about the ASA decision on the DECC adverts and also putting up a very interesting guest post.
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Just while I think about it, Bishop Hill has an excellent find here:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/3/13/lindzen-on-tvo.html
It really is worth settling down and watching the whole thing as he suggests. Don’t miss the devastating salvo at about 48 mins or the quietly delivered payload in the closing seconds.
Welcome back, Tony! The withdrawal symptoms that were consequential on being without HS were unpleasant.
(Although I must quietly confess that the free time it made available has been a welcome side effect.)
So you weren’t the first of many key sceptical blogs being systematically removed by Chinese hackers in the pay of the British Government?
…or were you….?
welcome back
Tonyb
TonyN
Welcome back!
Max
Great to see Harmless Sky restored! Must have clicked on that Code 503 page at least 20 times over the weekend…
Welcome back.
I missed you guys……..even Peter.
Very many thanks to everyone for their patience and the kind words.
Is anyone else noticing some connectivity problems with pages not loading properly and ‘connection reset’ errors?
Welcome back Tony. I must admit it was a shock to see the site down, and it was a day before I saw the note on Bishop Hill. Boy has it been a struggle to keeping up with all the developments of late, do my job and renovate my House. I need a slave to help me.
One thing I have managed is reading the wind farm scam by John Etherington. I have been truly shocked by what I have read and see the whole energy issue as something that is going to cause immense dispute in this country. Did anyone see the absolutely ridiculous claims by the Welsh assembly yesterday about their renewable plans? Talk about political suicide. It seems Wales will no longer have any hill tops without these ridiculous monstrosities.
Peter:
Your shock is understandable if you were not previously aware of how ludicrous wind energy is. Etherington is a reliable source whose work I am familiar with although I must admit that the copy of his book that I bought in mid-November is still sitting in my ‘to read’ pile.
I live in North Wales and saw the report on the WA’s new energy strategy on the regional news last night. It would seem likely that it is just Jane Davidson hyperventilating in the run-up to the general election.