AKMA’s Random Thoughts

If anything happens to me today, you're going to be sooooo sorry, AKMA!

I guess that a blogger who is concerned enough about the prospect of having one's blog depart not long after the blogger has should make some kind of arrangements in her or his will.

If the author retained any copyright in the blog, it passes by will or by succession, but that doesn't get anyone anywhere if the blog vanishes a few months later.

I imagine you're absolutely right that the data will vanish to the bitbucket of the ISP who closes the unpaid or closed account, or will at least become inaccessible when the nameserver pointers disappear.

How sad indeed. Worse yet, the Wayback Machine is inaccurate at best and has a tendency to forget (my websites from when I was in college used to be there and are now gone).

There is some good news. If the blog has a public or commons license, we could at least legally archive the heck out of it upon hearing the bad news, and could make sure the material stays around where people can get access to it.

Hmm, now, I wonder-- nah. Creating blog-wills and blog-trusts probably isn't a substantial enough niche market for me to build a legal career on. Yet. ;)

Makes it more precious, that blogging is ephemeral. Like all the work you have done with your classes, and your children. The record we leave is like an oral tradition, what passes down would be the possibilities we pioneered, and habits of mind and decorum we foster. Ownership and immortality. "Where are the snows of last year?"

A more important question for me. I am unchurched. Would a blessing stick just as well if you were to deliver it long distance? A service takes place in time. Could you conduct a mini-service for a dead blogger, even though unchurched, by writing an appropriate prayer into the record? No doubt by Rogets rules of order, or whatevever other rules govern such rituals within your denomination, it would not work, probably. You would be saving souls without a license. But I would take my chances, better a blogger-blessing than none at all. As Frost would have said, "Provide, Provide."

Have you seen User Not Found? Unfortunately it's been a long time since there was an update, but I still find the concept both beautiful and sad.

Now when David hears the distant (but fast approaching) tinkling of piano keys, like a large windchime sound, he'll be compelled to look up.

i suggested an enhancement request to Jason @ blogrolling whereby if a blog doesn't get updated in a given period of time, then you could signify this with an coffin icon (or whatever) in the same was as you can signify when a blog gets updated.

Gary, there's a strange, macabre and sick reason I'm so fond of you. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm sure it has something to do with your innovative thinking :).

Yep, who cares? The blog without the person is nothing at all. Now that David's dead, I've no desire to visit his blog or mine his archives at all. The entries are, as Phil says, ephemeral. They merely give me a tenuous grasp of the living person behind them and that person means more to me than the blog (or its entries).

Also, although I might sometimes go weeks without reading someone, they might remain close to consciousness. They certainly remain close to my heart as people. I think here of Elaine. I haven't swapped blogs or mails with her in a while but I trust she is well and happy. At least, that's my wish for her. Where she to throw herself into David's place, thereby saving him, I'd miss her, not her blog.

My imagined Davids, Garys, Steves, Phils and AKMAs are more real and substantial than their blogs. It is they who have souls, not their web sites. Their blogs are kick-ass, though.

I'm hoping to borrow a trick from "Star Trek: Voyager" and hope that there'll be enough technology to build an Emergency Accordion-Blogging Hologram to keep writing in my stead.

It is easy to envision a set of static pages wrapped in an archive (tar, zip, cab...) with some sort of URL rewrite magic for intra-archive references, but that loses dynamic content that requires server side computation.

I suppose that we could wrap sites in deployment description archives, such as J2EE ears, but that pegs the archive to a (quickly changing) platform. This might be the nature of the beast, considering the platform dependencies of any language used to generate the dynamic content.

Or perhaps the solution lies in a foundation whose purpose is to run historical platforms. It might run virtual machines with server images taken upon authors' deaths. It might provide emulators for ancient platforms on which to run ancient clients.

When the author of a gopher service dies, where's that content (long) gone?

Found this at Scripting News...

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/crimson1/pictures/viewer$690

Piano movers in Broolkine, MA....too close to be a co-incidence. David !!!! Look out!!!

i'd wondered about this before:

http://weblog.randomchaos.com/index.php?date=2002-12-05&title=domains+after+death

and then found this site:

http://afterlife.org/

which is "a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to archive Web sites after their authors die and can no longer support them". they're taking volunteers.