Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
I keep getting asked what will happen to the website when the diary ends in 2012 (or 1669). And so that I have one place to point people for the answer, here’s the current plan, such as it is.
Some people will be getting together in London to celebrate/commiserate the end of the diary!
After a few days, I’ll change the front page of the website so that it makes for a better general introduction to the diary. It will probably feature links to diary entries for the current day in all the years of the diary, and probably all or some of the text for one of them.
I’ll probably include other things yet to be decided: Links to (and maybe excerpts of) interesting or popular diary entries or periods (such as the Great Fire). Links to In-Depth Articles or particularly good Encyclopedia entries. Any other ideas welcome!
Other than the front page, the website will definitely stay much as it is, and will remain online.
After running this site for nearly a decade I’m looking forward to a break from having to pay it attention (even if only a small amount at times!) so often.
Also, it seems more appropriate that we should accept that Pepys has stopped writing. It was a big event for him, and it should be a big event for us — re-starting things immediately diminishes the effect I think.
I might turn off the ability to add new annotations at some point after the diary ends — I expect there won’t be many new ones added after a while. But the site still has to filter an awful lot of spam annotations and, eventually, it may be simpler to accept no new annotations at all.
When 2013 starts, I might start showing the diary again, in order, on the front page, in the RSS feed, and by email, from 1st January 1660. If so, it might be a “read-only” experience, with annotations turned off. As I’ll already have all the diary entries in the system, with all their links, this shouldn’t require much of my time once it’s set up.
At the start of 2013 I might also start @samuelpepys on Twitter again, from 1660. I’d like to see this happen, because I enjoy his tweets, but it would be more work — I only have the final few years of the diary already prepared in tweet form from this time around.
So, that’s it. If you have any other questions about what happens when the diary finishes, do ask!
18 comments | Permalink | Tuesday 3 January 2012 | Housekeeping
You may have noticed that the Recent Activity page has been problematic this past week, with the lists of recently-commented-on pages disappearing. It’s all back now, and working OK, but it won’t be updating as frequently as it used to.
The problem was that generating one of those lists took the database four or five minutes, and while this was happening many other operations were held up. It has been the case that whenever a new annotation was posted then the appropriate list would update immediately. Which, of course, meant that every single new annotation required the database to do nothing else for a few minutes.
I’ve looked into ways of making this operation more speedy but it looks like there’s no easy way to do so. The only option for this to happen more quickly is to move this website to a more high-powered webserver — which would be good, but this far into the Diary, and so close to the end, I’m not keen to make such a drastic move!
So for now we have a compromise: The Recent Activity page is back, but it will now only update once per hour. Occasionally you might notice some things slowing down a lot, but it will be rare. This will also, hopefully, mean that posting annotations will be faster than it used to be (“that’s not hard” you might be thinking!).
As ever, let me know if you notice anything particularly wrong, and thanks for your patience.
1 comment | Permalink | Saturday 21 January 2012 | Housekeeping
For those unable to make it to the end-of-Diary gathering in London, but might be closer to Massachusetts, here’s something for you!
UPDATE: “Due to Mother’s Day, the Wayside Inn where we’d originally planned to meet has no availability. Once we get a final headcount we’ll pick a location nearby with a similar venue. We need to get final numbers by May 1. Please email Carl for further details, or to confirm, at carl_wickstrom@comcast.net .” (24 April 2012)
From Carl in Boston and Jeannine Kerwin:
Where the Diary is ending in May, the folks in the Massachusetts will be getting together on May 13th at 1:00 PM, for a “Dutch Treat” lunch at the Wayside Inn, Sudbury MA, USA. Lunch menu here.
Feel free to come for lunch, a snack or a just a visit. We’ll try to make a reservation in advance so if folks can please confirm if they will attend and how many, we’ll get a proper place set aside. Please check your calendars as it may be the last chance to drink at toast to Sam with fellow Pepysians!
We’ll try to firm up the final numbers in early May.
For further details, or to confirm, feel free to contact Carl at carl_wickstrom@comcast.net.
4 comments | Permalink | Tuesday 31 January 2012 | Events