...enough to bring me back to Ecency/Hive for the time being. (Sorry, no Notebook entry till further notice.)
Early on Sunday afternoon, another round of music stockpiling came to a rest, and as usual, I was already overwhelmed from it. To top things off, the spare laptop I've depended on for some two years now bricked out on its storage limits; even clearing the Windows Update residue (a day or so earlier) wasn't enough. (At press time, the laptop's "Storage and reserved" files take up 19.0 GB out of the already meagre 29.0/32 GB allotted.) I Googled up the usual troubleshooting advice; one thread on the TenForums suggested that iTunes, and Chrome, installation lint might be to blame. With the File Explorer, I decided to see for myself with C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Update/Download/{HASH ID WITHHELD}--whereupon I came across several Chrome installer folders from versions 78-85. The installers happened to rest in Version 81's slate; the rest were empty. Once I trash away one of them, will it get me ~60 MB of space back (just so MP3Tag, QGIS, Wilbur, et al. can breathe more easily)? Let's hope.
Furthermore, Volume 5 of Reflections is due for tomorrow, and the accompanying queue--plus the last two territories on my explr.fm, Zimbabwe and Monaco--aren't waiting much longer. (In Joseph Katembula's stead, I've chosen an open-source replacement from an urban act named SpekkTrumn, while last month, u/TheDoctorDances1940 pointed out the tiny, enclaved-in-southeastern-France principality from where Stéphanie--whose "Irresistible" hit Adanson's logs only once back in summer 2015--hailed. Although I recently did tag her under the right country to attempt rectifying the gap...)
On a related note: Vanilla Player will be phased out for good after I write this, now that we have Musicolet.
Then on Monday, just as the overwhelm rolled on, the notion of Referata jumped back into my head. Founded in 2008 by Yaron Koren, Referata--for those new to this feed--is a now-dormant wiki host whose key selling point was Semantic MediaWiki. A major hacking episode in April/May 2019 brought the service down to its knees, en route to lingering life support for the next 15 or so months. The last anyone reported on it was a downtime apology from parent firm WikiWorks this July, and an update to its meta site's WikiIndex listing concerning a database crash by September--and that was it until I decided to break some more silence on the matter today. Back when Referata was still in operation, I was an admin apprentice on the home site, and managed no fewer than four wikis pertaining to my pet projects: The Rogatia Encyclopedia + WikiSevton, The Dixwell Dossier (Unspooled), and the more ambitious Relformaide Dictionary.
During this May and June, I returned to the Rogatia Encyclopedia (no thanks to a redesign of said fictitious island nation)--and then the RFM Dictionary--as the lights started to turn back on for both efforts. When Referata's network briefly disappeared until sometime in June, my enthusiasm soured--and even though it came back for another month or so (I hit a Google cache dated August 11 today), my music-curation efforts (plus a few more attempts to redo Veritas--you may be aware of how that went) took precedence instead. Come this month, it's apparently struggling under a 503 error, with no clear indication of whether it will return. Either Koren might've taken another break, or he got busy with coding/wiki meetups and seminars and such this summer...
Still, be glad I backed up my RFM root tables when I could (again, at the time of the hacking); meanwhile, the older Rogatia remnants may be accounted for via ArchiveTeam's efforts. As for the other two, all the better to clear the way for a restart (since their companion book projects have long stagnated on the wayside with no end or deadline in sight).
Better yet: Consolidation is in order. And no, not the conglomerate kind. As I stated before, everything from the RFM roots to the Rogatia rundowns to the latest in KLPC's catalogue will eventually come together--all in one place. Easier to handle, easier to manage. Later today, I'll finally sign up for a ByetHost wiki and give ConstantNoble.ByetHost5.com a shot--complete with SMW functionality, custom namespace support, and closed registration (if these go through). Otherwise, I'll have to go semantic-free and join the crowd at Miraheze--whose entry barrier is higher. One way or another, that day was bound to come.
If all goes well, could the balance among said projects be restored/normalised? That remains to be seen--and stay tuned for those first 1,000 words.
So that's all we've got to relate until next we meet. In our next Notebook, a behind-the-scenes rundown of those first several volumes, plus that first line and a couple more fan pics of Sam. Till then, please take care, stay connected, wipe everything down...and God bless.
All of us, and Mr. Floyd's family.
(3030)