Dear readers,
As you’re probably aware, the site was down for much of the past week. The lowdown is that the old blog, Sublime Oblivion, was infected by a nasty pharma hack that destroyed its SEO ratings. There was however a silver lining, in that it allowed me to carry out a reorganization that I’ve desired for quite some time.
In addition to blogging about Russia, I also wrote about a variety of other topics: China, geopolitics, sustainability, futurism, the causes of economic growth, book reviews, etc. I have separated these two divergent vectors. The Russia stuff now has its own dedicated domain at http://akarlin.com/; in a way, this is a back to the future kind of thing, as Da Russophile was the original name of my blog back in 2008. Everything else, for now, will remain here, at http://akarlin.com/. Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds.
The old domain, and the Sublime Oblivion brand in general, I intend to reserve for my future fiction (including an eponymous fantasy series). Arctic Progress, which was also affected by the pharma hack, will get a new start and a new look in the coming months, but will remain at the same location.
None of the old material was lost. However, in my transition to WordPress.com, the image attachments to the old posts were all lost, nor is it possible to FTP them in. That is why the images have all gone. As there are 1,000 odd of them, re-attaching them all will take quite some time, but rest assured it will be done.
Blogging will resume now. Thank you all for your understanding!
And welcome back to you as well, Anatoly; I have updated my Sublime Oblivion link. Would you prefer that it be called Da Russophile in the blogroll as well?
Hi Mark,
Please make it “Da Russophile.” That’s the name of the blog now, after all. S/O no longer has anything but a historical association with it.
Anatoly,
About re-attaching the images: If the attachments are gone because the filepath of each image is stored in the database and your image directory has changed when switching to new blog, then this can probably be updated all at once by writing few lines of sql in database application. I can help, if necessary.
Thanks, that’s really appreciated, but problem is I’m now on WordPress.com (i.e. not self-hosted) and users don’t have access to the SQL database due to security.
The best interim solution is probably to restore the images folders at sublimeoblivion.com as most of the image hyperlinks still point that way, and perhaps later I could get WP.com to work on this.
Welcome back.
I’m in the middle of translating Russia’s Sisyphean Loop. Can you please call me by email to talk about it?
You can’t access my e-mail address? It is [email protected] mail ru
Great to see your blogs back up and running!
Glad you’re back up and going, mate. Keep up the good work.
Tom
Thanks. There’s quite a few Toms around but I think I know which one! 😉
PS. Why the Greek flag in red?
Hi AK,
Good to see you are back and I hope the hacking problem has been fixed.
Jen
PS – That reminds me, I should look at updating my gravatar. Everyone’s been talking to a bunch of yellow flowers.
Dear Anatoly,
And indeed a very hearty welcome back. Has it really been only a week. As an addict of your blog I have felt in true cold turkey.
PS: I’m afraid I cannot help you with any technical matter. I am the most untechnical and untechnological person in the world. Amongst my friends it is a standing joke. I cannot even text with my mobile phone!
Dear Anatoly,
I am coming to the Bay Area in a couple of weeks–would love to take you out for a drink or a meal if you are free. How do I contect you?
Best Nick Eberstadt
Hi Nick,
I sent you an email. Sorry for the delay; I didn’t notice this comment from the start. Great idea, I’d be very happy to meet you too!