T w e n t y S i d e d
So back when my webcomic was all the rage, my little website here wasn’t really able to handle the load. I was using a small plan on a small webhost and the traffic was crushing me. A friend-of-an-internet-friend offered me some space on their sever. I took it, put the webcomic on it, and everything was awesome.
It’s been eight years. Apparently everyone forgot about this little arrangement. Last week someone finally took the hosted images down and my webcomic vanished. Of course, I can handle the traffic now. It’s no problem. But…
I don’t have the images.
I’ve looked around, and I can’t find the DVD backup. It might be hidden someplace obscure in the attic after the move last year. I don’t know. I probably have the source images on a DVD somewhere in the attic. But even if I found it, those would be the raw images with random names. It would take hours to re-size them all and sort out all the file names.
SO.
Before I tear the house apart and begin a massive project like that, I’m wondering if anyone out there has a backup of the images. Yes, I realize how absurd it is to be asking THE INTERNET for my own webcomic. But that seems to be the most expedient way to get the thing back. Ideally, I’d love it if someone could just put all the files in a zip where I could download them. Hopefully still with their original filenames.
Anyone?
EDIT: Nevermind. Looks like I found them. Can’t find my 2007 backups, but I found my 2008 backup, which had the goods. It’ll take me a little time to get all of these pulled from DVD, uploaded, and then update every. dang. post. But I’ll get it done. DMotR should return soon.
EDIT II – Son of Edit: Okay. I half-assed it and modified the script I use for embedding images. Instead of altering all 144 posts, I just had it strip out references to the old host. Images are uploaded and everything should be working again.
EDIT III – Revenge of Edit: Also, I restored the category browser (look in the sidebar to the right) which I managed to delete last time I messed with the site. So you can now browse by category again. Also, this is a great reminder that it’s been ages since I did a detailed backup. I rely on source control and google drive for small stuff, but the really bulky stuff hasn’t been backed up in years.
EDIT IV – Edit Harder: Man, these archive DVDs are a goldmine. Photos I forgot about. Pictures of dice I no longer own. Maybe I’ll freshen up some of the dice images around here.
Could Have Been Great
Here are four games that could have been much better with just a little more work.
Chainmail Bikini
A horrible, railroading, stupid, contrived, and painfully ill-conceived roleplaying campaign. All in good fun.
Bethesda NEVER Understood Fallout
Let's count up the ways in which Bethesda has misunderstood and misused the Fallout property.
Steam Summer Blues
This mess of dross, confusion, and terrible UI design is the storefront the big publishers couldn't beat? Amazing.
Free Radical
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
Did you try archive.org and its Wayback Machine? It’s a long-shot, but they sometimes *do* archive images, I’ve found.
I checked the first few posts and it’s definitely there – https://web.archive.org/web/20070220193642/http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612
BLESS YOU!
Edit: Beaten to it by others!
You could probably write a script in a couple of hours that would harvest the pages from the wayback machine and stick them back into wordpress for you.
“EDIT III: Revenge of Edit: Also, I restored the category browser (look in the sidebar to the right) which I managed to delete last time I messed with the site. So you can now browse by category again.”
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
Most of the comics appear to be back (yay!) but some of the extras links, like this one:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1331
still appear to be broken. Possibly they were hosted elsewhere?
Thanks. Should be fixed now.
Shamus I really loved your D&D take of the LotR, do you think you will ever do the same thing for Hobbit? I would absolutely love to see that, and Im sure a lot of people who loved your LotR comic would too :)
This guy is also still broken. Seems like the image is there, but the image tags are wrong.
Oh God, way to panic me for a second there! Every once in a long while, I like to go back and binge on my favorite webcomics, DMotR very much included. That and the comic is a treasure. I might be able to finish off Outlast with an even pulse, but coming home to see “I just accidentally the webcomic (lolj/k)” was unkind to my heart.
Oh dang, I wasn’t expecting this little post here. Thanks for stopping to notice, and for fixing the comic, Shamus (glad you found your backup too)! :D
“Pictures of dice I no longer own.”
What manner of insanity is that? What could ever cause a die to cease being owned by you?
The persons I permanently borrowed them from permanently borrowed them back.
The NERVE!
Strange definition of ‘to own’ but fair enough.
I find my dice numbers are in a constant flux as well (usual range is +/- 2). Last time I checked I found 14 of a type of dice that I know for a fact I only ever bought 12 of and that no one I know would ever even consider buying. Where are they from?!? Is this some dice dimension portal?
Heh, if you didn’t find it, I would have been able to help. I compulsively save all webcomics I read (and batch-download the whole archive). :)
Do you have a tool for that?
There are a couple of webcomics that I read and would like to download in batch.
Not really. I just use bash and wget.
If I can find a pattern to the images, I’ll create a loop and wget them directly. If there’s an archive page, I’ll use a loop to download the HTML pages, grep for the comic pages and then grep those for the images. If the images are only connected using “next” links, there’s a small script I wrote ages ago I adapt for that comic. It’s all very manual. :)
Hah, you wouldn’t have happened to ever read The Parking Lot is Full it was a comic I followed religiously in my formative interneting years. I went to look back at the archived version of the webcomic … only to discover whole swaths of the comics deleted from the ‘archive’ for questionable content.
Very annoying. Seems all copies have vanished down the internet memory-hole.
No, sorry, never read it, can’t help you there.
But yes, things like that is exactly why I download those.
PLIF was awesome and it’s a horrible shame most of it is gone.
I’m glad they’re recovered. The comic is what got me reading your stuff, after it was recommended on a certain Monastic Newsgroup way back in the day. It’s still probably dragging people in…
I have a full wget backup of your site from April 2010, but unfortunately it has none of the DM of the Rings comics. I think it’s because they were hosted on another server.
Glad to hear I don’t have to sift through my old computer for my copy. A few years ago I downloaded all the image to put on a thumb drive for my brother, so that folder is likely somewhere on my old computer.
First two things I thought of…
> Yes, I realize how absurd it is to be asking THE INTERNET for my own webcomic.
You’re in good company:
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/574706-only-wimps-use-tape-backup-real-men-just-upload-their
> Man, these archive DVDs are a goldmine. Photos I forgot about. Pictures of dice I no longer own. Maybe I'll freshen up some of the dice images around here.
http://xkcd.com/1360/
Yay category navigation, I have really been missing this feature. :D
As I suggested before, spend a bit of money on a Synology NAS with two disks, and have the backups of the whole family automated. A manual backup is not a real backup.
Heh, this is great news. I just started re-reading it a little while ago. Still holds up.
Just incase you ever run into this problem again: https://web.archive.org/web/20080715000000*/http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/
This happened to me with my first webcomic. But I didn’t back it up.
On the plus side, it was one of the worst gamer webcomics of all time, so I’m not too crestfallen that it’s lost to the ages. But the part of me that feels history should be preserved(even the bad parts) does feel slightly mournful.
Glad to see DM of the Rings has not been lost to us.
As someone who recently had a hard drive fail and then did something stupid and then remembered he’d made a backup only to find that the backup drive was also having problems, I just want to give a PSA to everyone in this thread: Backups! And backups of the backups. And test the backups. We’re cramming terabytes of data into tiny regions of magnetic platters these days and it’s terrifying how easy it is for things to go wrong.
Not that it matters now, but I’m also pretty sure I could have dredged up my wget backup of your comic; I don’t bother doing stuff like that these days but back when I was on dial-up I’d grab sites via the university internet for easier reading =) Still, it’s not like I have them at my fingertips; Bryan has already linked the relevant xkcd – I’d have to go through several layers of files to reach them!
Even when I read far enough to see you had the webcomics back, I was worried for a minute that when I checked the site, your wonderful creations would no longer be accompanied by all the wonderful comment threads. Of course I love DMotR, but I also love all the memories and jokes and everything shared by the commenters, too; they make it an even more rich and memorable experience.
On the subject of backups:
http://www.crashplan.com — they are pretty damn awesome imo
and to make sure your eggs are not in one basket:
http://www.backblaze.com — less awesome than crashplan, but still great
For a grand total of about $10 per month you get two off-site backup locations with unlimited storage.
I liked this Whole comic series.
I’m very glad you found them . And as absurd as it is to ask the internet for help , I think you would have found it with the fans you’ve made.
I was here because I was hoping to read them again , and share with a few friends.
great cautionary tale for backing up work that matters.
Looking forward to your doing The Hobbit when the DVDs for all 3 finally come out. The first two films were OK to good, but not as good as Lord of the Rings — The Hobbit’s story has been spread too thinly, and changed too much. Do a webcomic and you’ll probably have something more fun than the movies!
It’d be great if you could tackle the Hobbit next. It’s one of my favorite books and follows the “adventurer” theme more closely, plus, there’s more loot at the end. Think of it as the DM having learned from his mistakes and enticing the original players back. Then having them groan as soon as Gandalf appears and starts monologging. :)
Oh wow, that would be the perfect way to present The Hobbit. Aragorn, Gimli and Leg-o-lass would decide not to keep their characters, deeming them unlucky (due to the lack of loot and other happenings), or in Aragorn’s case, the supreme monotony of being king, which he never realized before. They’d either roll up hobbits or just decide to take the actually heroic characters from before, whichever way you want to approach it.
Shamus, please do this!
Super glad this was recovered. DMotR is a bit of internet history. It’s personally fucked up the way a few friends and I watch movies and I’d hate if I went to explain to a new acquaintance why me and the guys are laughing about the main character rolling a nat 20 that it’s like DM of the Rings and they just could never experience it.
You must never remove or delete this material, for it is Epic Literature; removing it would result in the cultural impoverishment of the entire cosmos.
So…
Now the new trilogy is out, do you intend to make a Hobbit parody comic?
SO want this to happen!
The whole crew plus some other players come together with the same DM for the sake of a drinking game.
First rule: Drink every time you feel the railroading intensifies.
What happens if they kill gollum in Hobbit? He was still alive before Legoass killed him.
Enjoyed this, thanks!
Last post.
I always preferred EDIT III over IV. Sure EDIT IV had a new engine, but was…well a new engine, so it’s buggy and broken half the time and it isn’t even that pretty anymore. I ‘unno. III just holds up better IMO.