eschlwc

i thought it would be up by now. i think he's having some operating system issues.

JohnDThompson 

It's back now:

Bike Pictures on bulgier.net

thinktubes 

+

romperrr 

So just discovered bulgier thanks to this thread. If you need me, I'll be nose deep in catalogs.

eschlwc

joy of joys!

P!N20

[thread dig]

I can't access bulgier.net, just me or is it down?

He's a member here, but I can't find his username to mention or PM.

I think I've got his e-mail address somewhere...

JohnDThompson 

Looks like it's down:


https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/bulgier.net.html

P!N20

Thanks. I've sent Mark an e-mail in case he isn't aware.

P!N20

That was quick.

Here is Mark's explanation:

clubman 

Note to self. Send Mark a few dollars.

Always been there and an incredibly useful site.

bulgie 

Ha ha a thread about me that's been going since 2013 and I'm just now noticing it.

Sorry for the periodic unreliability. I host the server at my house, access via whatever is the cheapest, lowest-bandwidth option available. Currently CenturyLink (local baby-Bell), but whenever they annoy me too much or try to raise my rates, I switch to Comcast – until they raise their rate and I have to switch back to CenturyLink. I tend to get the introductory rate for new customers, then switch a year later when that runs out. Yes I'm a cheap bastard.

I do take the long-term availability semi-seriously. I will not pull a wooljersey.com style disappearing act, if I can help it. The server is on redundant server-grade (but old) hardware, and I take backups now and then. Backups are kept offline to avoid ransomware or other hacking related loss. No offsite (cloud) backups though, so if my house burns down, it'll take out the backups too. Also I won't live forever – I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.

So I encourage users to scrape all the files and store them yourself, as a sort of distributed offsite backup. We don't need everyone to do that – probably 2 or 3 people with a copy of the files would be enough redundancy. My limited bandwidth would make it pretty slow if a bunch of people took it upon themselves to scrape everything, all at the same time.

I could put it all on a SD card and snail-mail it to anyone who wants to be my offsite backup without the slow download issue. The /pics/bike folder is about 3 GB. If you just want the /catalogs subfolder, that's about 1.6 GB. 3,633 files in 330 folders.

It would be awesome if there's someone who'd be willing to upload them all to some sort of public hosting site (say Flickr), organized into albums for each subfolder, but I realize that's a lot of work. I am too lazy to do that myself. That would improve the availability issue, and the data is probably safer there. Faster downloads, options of different sizes (resolution) and probably other advantages too that I'm not thinking of. I should have started it that way in the beginning, but I don't think there were free photo hosting sites back when I started in the '90s. Or I wasn't aware of them.

I don't have to have my name on it. Anyone willing to make such a Flickr site could have ownership and all the bragging rights – which as you know, are considerable!

Cheers
Mark

P!N20

Paging @cuda2k

Is this something that could be added to Velobase? I mean, there's already plenty of catalogs there, makes sense to have them all in one place.

bulgie 

Aw, ain't that sweet.

Currently, hosting the site costs me pretty much zero, just the electricity that the server consumes. And in the winter, the waste heat from the server is helping to heat my house, so bonus!!

The only reason anyone might want to contribute is if they want me to pay for a static IP address, to avoid these outages every time they change my address for no reason, and it takes me a few days or a week to notice.

A single static is $10/month with a one-time $75 setup fee. So if I got about $200 in contributions, that would pay for a year of static IP, which I think is the minimum to be worth doing. Anyone who feels that's worthwhile can contribute at paypal at bulgier dot net (un-munge that address to prove you're a human not a bot.)

If contributions fall short of $200, then I won't get the static IP. Include a note with your contribution saying whether it is contingent on the static IP, and I will refund any funds that were noted as contingent. Otherwise I will spend any non-contingent funds on bike parts, and raise a toast to your health.

Cheers
Mark

bulgie 

I don't know. Anyone here willing to do the research to answer that, and/or do the uploading?

Thanks,
Mark

clubman 

Done. I've enjoyed those catalogues so I'm in for a tenner.

francophile 

Hey @bulgie we should talk. I'm more than happy to host the files long-term for you if that's what you need. I'm also happy to host your domain if you prefer, same offer I've tossed out to miamijim and cuda2k in the past. I have a 15-20 year old LAMP-based Dreamhost reseller account I use for my family and side business stuff, plus hosting a few different NPOs and "worthwhile" information sources I personally find value in (like Bulgier.net). I can't and won't be ridding of it anytime soon due to my business stuff on there. Dreamhost is really serious about keeping changes to a minimum, quite a difference from worrying about getting thrown a new IP out of the blue.

ThermionicScott 

Thank you for gathering and hosting that info, Mark @bulgie. I've always enjoyed it.

SurferRosa

bulgie , you down again?

Cheers.

bulgie 

Well, "down" is such a harsh word -- I prefer "unreachable"

Thanks for alerting me.

[expletive-deleted] CenturyLink changed my address on me, for no reason other than to extort more money out of me. I won't negotiate with terrorists!

Should be up now, though there can be up to a 1-hour delay before your local "phone book" gets updated with the new addy.

BTW love your handle. Best album by the best band. "Towering genius disdains a beaten path" –Abraham Lincoln