Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
From Pepys’ writing we can tell he was writing at the end of each day, about the day’s events. Therefore each day’s entry will be posted at around 11pm UK time.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Wednesday 1 January 2003 | Housekeeping
If you read the diary via RSS, you should probably check in on the RSS feed of this mini-weblog too, so as not to miss out on changes to the site: RSS v0.91 or RSS v1.0. Although you’re unlikely to read this if you use RSS and never come to the site…
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Thursday 9 January 2003 | Housekeeping
Do you use LiveJournal? You may or may not know there’s a Pepys’ Diary user. But something seems wrong with it becuase, if you scroll down, some days appear repeatedly. I’ve never used LiveJournal, so if you know what might be causing this, then do let me know!
3 comments | Permalink | Friday 10 January 2003 | Housekeeping
Apparently the problem with the LiveJournal version of Pepys’ Diary entries should be fixed now. Thanks to everyone that contacted me about it.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Monday 13 January 2003 | Housekeeping
A few people (such as in these annotations) have asked that diary entries display the day of the week. The reason I haven’t done this before is because I’m attempting to keep the diary content as close to the original as the web format (and the translations through Victorian editors and Project Gutenberg’s processes) allow. Pepys’ diaries included the month and year at the head of a page and each entry was marked with just the date. Occasionally he seems to have noted Sundays, but not always.
So, the question is, do I include weekdays on each entry, and if so how? Feel free to discuss this below…
28 comments | Permalink | Monday 13 January 2003 | Housekeeping
In an annotation I’ve now lost (sorry), someone asked for more links to pages for people and places other than those that already have footnotes in the 1893 text, so that readers can add annotations. This is something I’ve considered, because the Victorian footnotes are somewhat erratic. However, if I added such links for every person and place mentioned, I’d be worried there would be too many extra pages for incidental characters about whom we will never have anything to say. That said, if you have a desire to annotate a character or place that doesn’t currently have a footnote page, simply email me with the name and the entry in which they’re mentioned. I recently set up pages for Pepys’ wife and maid after just such a request, and it’s not a problem.
8 comments | Permalink | Monday 13 January 2003 | Housekeeping
I created new pages for Hawly (an employee of George Downing along with Pepys) and Will’s (Pepys’ favourite drinking house). These seemed to be cropping up a lot so it made sense to stop any confusion and give them separate pages. If you have other nominations for their own pages, let me know.
1 comment | Permalink | Saturday 18 January 2003 | Housekeeping
Please excuse a technical note… I made a few tweaks to the site today to try and handle a few glitches that had been pointed out to me. The basic font size had been measured in pixels, something I’d never done on a site before. I now remember why I hadn’t done this: Internet Explorer on Windows doesn’t allow the user to resize a page’s text if its size has been set in pixels. So it’s now set in ems. This may make the default text size look larger or smaller for you — if it’s completely unreadable let me know your browser and operating system.
I’ve also tidied things up a bit for those using versions of Netscape 4.x. It’s not pretty, but at least it’s readable! One problem though… I’ve managed to make the form for adding Annotations appear, but it still doesn’t work. The div below the textarea is mostly being displayed behind the textarea, rather than below it. This hides some text and on the Preview page the buttons don’t work. If you know CSS and can work out how to shift the text following the textarea down, do let me know! I was using Netscape 4.7 on Windows XP.
10 comments | Permalink | Monday 20 January 2003 | Housekeeping
Up to now we’ve been reading entries for January that I entered some time ago, and it’s now time for me to enter the next batch. So I’d like to know how people feel about the amount of links to People and Places pages. At the moment I create a new page if the 1893 edition has footnotes for an item, if a reader requests a page, or if it seems obvious to me that it might be useful.
Would you like more of them? While I could make every person and place into a link I don’t think this would necessarily be a good idea. We don’t know anything about some of the people and there may be little if anything to say about some of the places. If a lot of these pages have little content I can imagine one might get frustrated with clicking links that often end up with nothing at the end of them.
So, is the current amount of links about right? If you want more, any thoughts on how to judge when a new person or place deserves a page? Thanks for your thoughts.
18 comments | Permalink | Tuesday 28 January 2003 | Housekeeping
David Quidnunc has suggested we should discuss a general policy on plot spoilers in annotations. Sometimes it seems necessary to divulge something that happens in the “future” to explain a point, but given that most of us don’t know what’s coming up for Pepys this might spoil any suspense. He says:
In the 25 January notes, “Bored” has a good point about plot spoilers — if we mention now something about Uncle Wight that happens years in the future, we’ll likely have forgotten the matter by then. On the other hand, I want to ask you to create a page for Uncle William Wight. Perhaps on that page we should be more careful about a plot spoiler, since we can expect it to be around whenever Wight comes up in the diary again.
I also have a feeling that plot spoilers don’t really matter when they concern historical figures that Pepys may not even meet (Fairfax, for example).
How many readers actually care about plot spoilers? I’m convinced some do. Is it all right with even those readers if the rest of us to mention plot spoilers if we just label them “Plot Spoiler: ” somewhere up front?
So, what do you think?
27 comments | Permalink | Saturday 1 February 2003 | Housekeeping
Several people have suggested something I’ve been thinking about for a while: general pages for background information in addition to the People and Places pages. Given the amount of general information that is posted to diary entries that will be of use again in the future it seems an extremely sensible idea. It should help people who are new to the site find out common information without it having to be repeated too often (although we should accept this will happen nevertheless!).
There are two questions however: What pages should there be? And what should be the policy on annotating the pages? To address these in order…
It may be useful to divide the pages into categories, with more specific pages within each category; these pages should be usable for some years to come, so several shorter pages in a category may be more manageable than a single very long page. Going by things that have been posted so far my initial suggestions for categories/pages would include: money, weather, maps, general reference, London, clothes, food, politics, royalty, religion. I’m not sure whether language should be included though — it’s a huge topic and I’m not sure how such a volume of small amounts of information (word definitions) could be usefully organised to allow annotations. Maybe the search function means there is no need for this?
As for annotating policy I tend to think that fewer “good quality” or “useful” posts would be better than a large amount of chatter and questions, especially given the length of time over which the pages need to be available. I’m tempted to forbid questions on these pages and only allow information/explanation and links to other sites.
So, what do you think about all this? Any thoughts on the annotation policy? What other categories would you like to see?
28 comments | Permalink | Friday 7 February 2003 | Housekeeping
A while ago a few people asked how they could support this site. To be honest, there’s no need — it only costs me time and this is what I enjoy spending my time on. However, if you do feel the desire to make some kind of contribution, I recently put up a page that details how you can do so, hopefully by donating to parties other than myself! But really, don’t feel you have to.
(I hesitated in pointing this page out to be honest, but a couple of people have just noticed the new link to it and suggested I did so.)
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Monday 10 February 2003 | Housekeeping
All my fault; the perils of inputting new diary entries in the small hours! Sometimes this is going to happen and I’m not always online to notice. Thanks for all the concerned emails. You can be sure that if anything was to intentionally, as opposed to accidentally, change regarding this site it would be announced here.
And many, many thanks to all those who have sent money to Movable Type or Project Gutenberg, or bought me gifts! It’s all most surprising and brings a smile to my grumpy face!
6 comments | Permalink | Sunday 16 February 2003 | Housekeeping
I have just deleted several annotations from the 25 February 1659/60 entry, sparked by a lengthy posting by Hhomeboy of an obituary of the historian Christopher Hill. Not only was it far too long but it was also irrelevant to the events of the day. This prompted much discussion of the worth of such a post.
If this was a general discussion forum I wouldn’t have deleted the comments; I don’t like censoring such things. However, please remember this is not a chat forum. Annotations should be as brief as possible and directly relevant to the day’s events or the current discussion. I realise that some of the most interesting threads have been when things have drifted “off topic,” which is perfectly fine, but do ask yourself whether your annotation will contribute to someone’s understanding of the diary when they read it in several years’ time. If you can’t find a suitable place to post something, ask me where it should go, rather than stick it somewhere it doesn’t belong.
As well as relevance, try and keep annotations to a maximum of 2-3 paragraphs (although there are always exceptions) and avoid repeating information from further up the page. Pretty much everyone is doing great on this front, but it’s just a reminder! Thanks so much for all the work so many of you are putting into this; it’s bringing entertainment and education to huge numbers of people. And, if anyone still wants an obituary of Christopher Hill, you can find one at the Guardian.
If people feel the need for a general discussion forum outside of the annotations, feel free to discuss it below. I’m all for it, but am also concerned important information might be posted there rather than to the diary annotations.
36 comments | Permalink | Friday 28 February 2003 | Housekeeping
It’s a leap year in 1659/60 which means we have two diary entries today, the 28th and 29th of February.
Update, 12.21 am GMT, 1st March: Anyone who looked at these entries before this time will probably have missed the 28th entry. Or something. Things got a little confused by me publishing two entries on the same day. Should all be fine now. I moved a couple of annotations to the 28th entry where they belonged.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Friday 28 February 2003 | Housekeeping
As previously mentioned, I’m currently looking at adding some kind of discussion forum. This would mean we can restrict diary entry annotations to more specific information, references and explanation, and move longer discussions elsewhere. This way those who are only interested in reading the diary and having obscure words and themes explained don’t have to wade through long conversations, and those who wish to discuss further can do so.
But I’d like to know what, if anything, you want to do with such a forum. Are there topics you’d have liked to discuss in the past? Are there things you want to start conversations about? Should any forum have discussions linked to each days’ entry or would a more free-form format be suitable (ie, just starting discussions on any topic when you like, rather than one per day)? Are there features you feel a new forum must have?
Or maybe you can’t see any need for another forum; if so tell us why. I tend to think there is a need, because at the moment the annotations are dauntingly long for anyone who just wants to read and understand the diary (rather than discuss it). But I’m happy to be proved wrong if enough people don’t see the point!
The overall aim of a new forum should be to make the annotations briefer and more pertinent. But as for the details… I’d like to hear from you.
59 comments | Permalink | Sunday 9 March 2003 | Housekeeping
So it seems some people don’t want a discussion forum at all, and some think it might be a good idea. Given there appears to be little immediate demand, it seems a good idea to take a step back and look at what annotations should be. Having done that we can decide if our guidelines leave out other kinds of commentary that deserve an alternate home.
Previously, Pauline suggested some guidelines that seem a suitable starting point for discussion:
Is there anything you would add to this? Anything you don’t agree with? I would add some kind of guideline about a suggested maximum length for annotations — not a maximum number of words as there’s no quick way to count them, but perhaps a number of paragraphs (I previously suggested 2-3). And I’d add that a space should be left either side of a link to ensure it works as expected. Other than that… over to you!
44 comments | Permalink | Monday 10 March 2003 | Housekeeping
You may have noticed the annotation format has changed, with the person’s name and the time now at the top. I hope this makes things easier for you.
Also, I’ve written something that marks which annotations are new since your last visit. It’s not foolproof, and because it relies on cookies(?) it’ll get confused if you use more than one computer or web browser to view the site. But I hope it’ll help make clear what you’ve yet to read. The Recent Annotations page is marked similarly.
It could be that right now everything is marked as new; this is what happens on your first visit. If you visit again in a couple of hours it should mark any new annotations correctly. The device “resets” itself after 90 minutes. So if you’re reading the site continually for 90 minutes then suddenly everything that was marked “new” will become old, and it’ll start watching for new annotations again. That may or may not make sense; I know it confuses me. Let me know if it seems things are going very wrong for you…
By the way, once I’m sure it’s working, I’ll make the code available so any other webloggers can use it.
5 comments | Permalink | Friday 14 March 2003 | Housekeeping
A thought occurred to me recently… I was wondering if anyone was itching to write more about aspects of Pepys or the time he lived in. If so, maybe it would be worth creating a new section of the site for such articles. Every so often a new essay/article could be posted up and readers could, as ever, post comments. Any topic related to the diary or the times would be welcome (individual people, politics, language, fashion, etc.) and they could of course be rather longer than diary annotations. It might be a daft idea, or there might not be enough people interested in writing things — let me know what you think.
(This isn’t intended to be a substitute for any kind of discussion forum, which we’ve discussed at great length already. I may still do something to assist in separating or sorting different kinds of diary annotations, but that’s an issue separate to these essays.)
21 comments | Permalink | Wednesday 26 March 2003 | Housekeeping
You may have noticed a couple of small changes. First, any footnotes from the 1893 edition of the diary have moved from the right-hand column to below the relevant diary entry. Since adding the Background Info links to the right column the footnotes have been a little obscured and several people have missed them when they appear. The new position keeps the reading of each diary entry in a straight vertical line down to the reader annotations.
The Recent News links on the front page have been reduced, as there aren’t so many these days, and a link has been added to The Story So Far page. This is becoming increasingly important for readers new to the site, who won’t have time to catch up on all the previous diary entries. The page will be kept more or less up to date as the diary continues.
I’ll also be altering some of the site’s font sizes and other style elements shortly, to tidy things up a little. Hopefully you won’t notice the difference… But let me know if anything looks more wrong than usual.
7 comments | Permalink | Tuesday 15 April 2003 | Housekeeping
I’d just like to remind people to be careful with their annotations. Recently there have been more errors appearing, more lengthy posts, and more annotations that should be in the Background Info section.
First, there have been an increasingly large amount of errors and duplicate posts — the Preview functionality is there so you can proof-read your annotation and check any links before finally posting it. If you right-click (or Control/Command click) a link you can open it in a new window, which won’t disrupt your annotation. Every mistake requires some work from me to correct it which I’d obviously prefer to keep to a minimum! Pause and think before posting.
Second, please keep annotations brief. The guidelines still recommend 2-3 paragraphs and this should be the normal maximum. While the line is always blurry I’d prefer to keep annotations informative rather than discussive. It’s a shame if I have to delete something you’ve spent a lot of time over just because it’s too long.
Third, do check whether your diary annotation would be more useful to everyone in the Background Info section.
I’d like to pre-empt the inevitable discussion this will cause about the format of annotations, and whether it should be changed (something we’ve discussed at great length before). There is no chance of me changing the current format right now. Later in the year I may be able to change things to allow different varieties of annotations. I could, however, easily start a discussion group (email and/or web-based) now for more lengthy and general chat about the diary if people would find it useful. Let me know!
That said, thanks to everyone who’s contributed useful and fascinating information over the past few months; it’s greatly appreciated by many people.
29 comments | Permalink | Wednesday 30 April 2003 | Housekeeping
Unfortunately, some people don’t know when to shut up. I’ve decided to ban “Hhomeboy” from posting on this site. I’m reluctant to do so, especially as he obviously has a great deal of knowledge to contribute. He has refused to restrict his relentless pomposity and snarkiness masquerading as advice. I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve asked me to ban him before now and so I hope this doesn’t seem overly vindictive or authoritarian. He’ll no doubt take this as more “evidence” of my inability to take criticism, something that I hope will be news to all those whose welcome comments have benefited the site.
No method of banning is foolproof, but if he fails to keep away I will do my best to delete his annotations. For the record, no one else has come remotely close to being banned, so I hope this won’t make anyone else worried! And, please, do not post any gloating or personal comments below; we’ve had enough of unpleasant behaviour and I’d like to move on. Thanks.
| Tuesday 6 May 2003 | Housekeeping
A while back Languagehat sent me a link to a site about handwriting in the 16th and 17th centuries. I set up a Background Info page for handwriting, but thought the site was interesting enough to point out here too.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Tuesday 13 May 2003 | Housekeeping
Yesterday I altered the way the fonts on the site are defined, and wondered if anyone would notice. Todd did, so I thought I’d mention it here in case anyone else wonders why something’s different. Most people shouldn’t notice much difference, a few should notice some improvement, especially on small text and with browsers set to display text smaller than usual. I’ve tested it on most browsers on Windows and Mac OS X, but let me know if you have any problems.
5 comments | Permalink | Thursday 15 May 2003 | Housekeeping
I’m sorry the 16 June 1660 entry was late in appearing… my computer developed problems just as I was about to enter another batch of diary entries. All OK now though.
Also, yesterday I made a slight tweak (which I should have done sooner) that means if you check ‘Yes’ for ‘Remember Personal Info’ on an annotation form, your details should appear in every form automatically. Previously they were only remembered for that diary entry.
5 comments | Permalink | Tuesday 17 June 2003 | Housekeeping
Half a year in… it seems like the diary’s been going a long time, but we’ve only just begun! Thanks to everyone who’s contributed annotations to the site — I’m sure I speak for many people when I say the diary has come alive thanks to the information and discussion posted over the past few months. Here are some statistics for you about the diary so far…
13 comments | Permalink | Tuesday 1 July 2003 | Housekeeping
One of the first links on the front page of this site is to the Story so far page. This is intended to be a brief introduction to Pepys and his world, for anyone who’s just joining us as we progress through the diary. The lower third of the page is supposed to be a summary of what’s happened since the diary began but, as you can tell, it’s rather out of date.
I’ve been meaning to update it for some time but I’m realising I simply don’t have the time to make a decent job of it. Coupled with the fact that many of you have a better feel for the diary’s events than I, it makes sense if I hand over responsibility for keeping this up to date to someone else.
It shouldn’t require much time — it only needs updating occasionally, perhaps after major events — and inputting the text doesn’t require technical knowledge (although very basic HTML would be an advantage). So, if you’re keeping up with events and feel you can occasionally summarise them as a well-written introduction for newcomers, do drop me a line (rather than posting below).
Oh, and you’re not committing to performing this task for the next nine years! No obligation!
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Thursday 17 July 2003 | Housekeeping
I’ve noticed recently that annotations seem to be drifting “off-topic” quite frequently. This can be interesting and enlightening but please do be aware that annotations should enhance the particular diary entry, not just now but also in many years time. The annotations about pasties and MAs have tended to stray rather off the beaten track, as have some of the parallels between diary events and today’s politics.
I realise opinions vary on this, and it’s far from the end of the world. Just consider this a gentle reminder to keep things relevant and not to forget the annotation guidelines. Most people don’t need reminding so thanks, as ever, for all the worthy contributions!
17 comments | Permalink | Monday 21 July 2003 | Housekeeping
I had a few emails recently about annotations posted where the users’ names linked to porn sites. These are “comment spam” and are an increasing problem on weblogs. I generally delete them when I check through all the annotations every few days, but this time they were apparently more noticeable!
There are several methods of combatting these, and Six Apart (the company that produces Movable Type, the software Pepys’ Diary uses) is also thinking about it. When I get time I’ll look into implementing something, especially if it becomes more of a problem.
In the meantime… I will spot the spam eventually, so don’t worry about letting me know unless it’s particularly offensive or obstructive (most of it is pretty brief and anodyne, aside from the link to a porn site).
4 comments | Permalink | Thursday 23 October 2003 | Housekeeping
As an update to the previous item… I’ve made a change that will hopefully stop at least some of the “spam” appearing amongst annotations. For a while… Hopefully I haven’t broken anything else, but let me know if you notice anything has stopped working!
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Sunday 26 October 2003 | Housekeeping
The server Pepys’ Diary is hosted on may be moved and/or otherwise reconfigured at some point in the next week or two. If so, the site won’t be available for a short time — possibly several hours, hopefully no longer. If there’s any further news while the site is down, I’ll post it to the discussion list, as that’s hosted at SmartGroups.
But with any luck, you’ll barely notice!
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Sunday 16 November 2003 | Housekeeping
Many people have had problems accessing the site over the Christmas period. The web server was moved to a new (and temporary) location just before Christmas but it appears that many ISPs were very slow to update their DNS records, which point www.pepysdiary.com to the computer serving its pages. Anyone using those ISPs were therefore unable to reach the site, because their computers couldn’t find the new server.
The records appear to have updated within the last day or two, so hopefully everything is back to normal (although if it isn’t, you won’t be reading this!). Apologies for the problem, but I’m afraid there was little I could do. If a similar situation arises again, the best place to go to make sure you’re not alone is the Pepys’ Diary discussion list. You don’t have to join to read the messages; click the ‘Message’ link in the left hand column to read them.
1 comment | Permalink | Wednesday 31 December 2003 | Housekeeping
Those of you who have explored the Background Info section will have found the lists of ‘TrackBack’ links for each item; kind of an index that lists when each item has been mentioned in the diary. (See also this for how the lists are generated, and this for an attempt at explaining TrackBack.)
However, it has never been ideal: links were often duplicated; links to diary entries were often in the wrong order; on some pages the list of links was getting unwieldy; and not all relevant diary entries were linked to.
The first problem was due to strangeness with the software that I won’t go into here. While I haven’t fixed the cause, I have written some tools that make it easy to tidy things up so duplicate links shouldn’t be a problem now.
I’ve also changed the format of the links and worked out a way to keep them in order. See, for example, the list for Sir John Lawson or the longer one for Elizabeth Pepys. Hopefully those are a bit easier to take in at a glance (here’s what Elizabeth’s used to look like). The formatting goes a little askew on heavily-linked items, like Sandwich, but I think it’s still an improvement.
That only leaves the problem of missing references to the diary. Early last year I didn’t create as many links as I do now, so many eary references don’t appear. Now I’ve fixed these other problems it’ll be more worthwhile me going back and adding these in (when I have time).
As ever, do let me know if something doesn’t look right for you, or you have any suggestions for further improvements.
(UPDATE: I wrote a little bit more about the technical side here, if you’re interested.)
2 comments | Permalink | Wednesday 14 January 2004 | Housekeeping
If you read Pepys’ Diary (or this recent news weblog) using an RSS reader, then you should note that the URLs of the feeds have changed. The new locations are all linked to from the other formats page. The old URLs should continue to work, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they break at some point over the next few years…
2 comments | Permalink | Wednesday 4 February 2004 | Housekeeping
It’s been a while and we’re probably due for a reminder about the content of annotations. There is a set of guidelines which you should be aware of before posting annotations, although I hope no one finds them so daunting as to be off-putting!
Over the past week I’ve deleted several comments that have been blatantly off-topic, usually referring solely to present-day events. I don’t like to do this but, as most people here know, references to current affairs are only useful if they help our understanding of Pepys’ era. So please hold back from making political points.
And don’t forget that the discussion list is the place for any Pepys-related thoughts that aren’t directly relevant to a diary entry or Background Info page.
If you notice an annotation which you feel is out of place, please email me the URL of the page (or the direct link to the annotation, using its ‘Link’ text) — I do, eventually, look at every annotation but having errant posts pointed out for me makes for a much swifter response.
As usual, these warnings only apply to a few people, and most of you have nothing to worry about — you’re all doing a grand job, and continuing to help everyone (now and in the future) understand Sam’s life and time. So thank you.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Thursday 11 March 2004 | Housekeeping
There were a couple of problems on the site over the past few days: a few error messages appearing and 18th April 1661 failed to appear. Unfortunately web server upgrades coincided with me being on holiday, so I wasn’t aware there was a problem until now.
All is now well. The error messages were only appearing briefly and you can now read the missing 18th April 1661 diary entry.
4 comments | Permalink | Wednesday 21 April 2004 | Housekeeping
If you’ve been using the site over the past week you’re lucky if you’ve missed all the spam comments flooding the annotations. If the past four days are anything to go by we can expect around 500 of these to appear every night, even with the current safeguards in place. (For what it’s worth, I’m getting a similar number of spams appearing on my personal website.)
Obviously, I need to take stronger measures. The most likely solution will be to install the latest version of Movable Type. This has an optional feature that would require people to create an account and log in on the TypeKey website before posting annotations. TypeKey is a free site that allows you to post comments to any weblogs implementing its technology, with a single username and password.
Hopefully I’ll have a chance to try the software out this week and see how it works. If anyone has alternative suggestions I’m more than happy to hear them! Until then, please bear with me…
3 comments | Permalink | Wednesday 2 June 2004 | Housekeeping
On Monday I will be upgrading the software used to run the site, which will hopefully make it possible to stop the spam links to porn sites appearing in annotations (another few hundred appeared last night). Hopefully all will go smoothly, but this is an advanced warning that if you notice something broken on Monday, I’m probably already trying to fix it!
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Saturday 5 June 2004 | Housekeeping
I mentioned that I would be upgrading this site’s software so that a simple log-in would be required before posting annotations. This would hopefully help cut down on the large amount of spam appearing in annotations. Unfortunately, the software I was upgrading (Movable Type 3) seems to need a bit more work… rather than try and work round a few problems I’m going to hold off and wait for official fixes. I’ll post another message here whenever I next plan to do this. (If you’re really interested in the problems, there’s more here.)
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Monday 7 June 2004 | Housekeeping
Last night a whole week of the diary appeared on the site… Apoologies if this has spoiled your enjoyment in any way. I updated Movable Type (the software used to run this site) but forgot to re-implement the customisation that copes with the automated posting of 343 year old diary entries. So it posted everything! I’ll try and remember this moment next time I upgrade…
I realise annotations were posted to some of these “future” entries… they’ll now remain hidden until the relevant diary entry appears, at which point they’ll become visible again. These annotations will still be listed on the Recent Annotations page I’m afraid, but the links won’t work until the entry appears.
Sorry again!
4 comments | Permalink | Tuesday 2 November 2004 | Housekeeping
This site will shortly be moving to a new server — although there haven’t been many problems due to the current server, there will hopefully be even fewer at the new one!
Because of the move a number of things may happen, possibly at some point this week:
I’ll post further details as soon as I know more precisely when the move is likely to take place. Thanks for your imminent patience!
9 comments | Permalink | Monday 21 February 2005 | Housekeeping
As promised, the server is moving, and I am about to switch off the ability to post annotations (it may have happened by the time you read this). This makes it easier for me to transfer the database without losing anyone’s contributions. The site should be back to normal in a matter of hours, although it’s possible these things can take a day or two. Thanks for your patience!
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Thursday 24 February 2005 | Housekeeping
If you can read this, then it means you’re viewing the site on the new server. Phew!
The only thing that’s not working at the moment are the TrackBacks — the lists of pages on other sites that are linking to pages on Pepys’ Diary. But there aren’t many of these, and I’ll work out how to make them show up soon, hopefully. If you do find something else that’s wrong, do email me. Thanks for your patience.
1 comment | Permalink | Thursday 24 February 2005 | Housekeeping
Well it looks like most things are settling down at the new server. There have been a few little glitches, but I’m hoping this is due to the changes taking a few days to propagate around the internet.
However, so far I’ve had no luck with getting the script which posts new diary entries to run. It should post a new entry every evening, but it’s currently generating strange errors on the new server. So, until I work out how to get it running, updates won’t be as regular as they have been, as they require me to be online to press a button. I’ll do my best to keep up though!
4 comments | Permalink | Sunday 27 February 2005 | Housekeeping
After another batch of spam hit the annotations last night I’ve installed the new SpamLookup filter which, along with the existing MT-Blacklist will hopefully reduce the floods of spam about cruises and more dubious products to a few drops.
I mention this mainly because there’s always a chance this will accidentally block valid annotations — if you have problems posting annotations over the next few days, do let me know.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Wednesday 13 April 2005 | Housekeeping
I think most people are aware of the discussion group over at SmartGroups, where people talk about Pepys-related topics that don’t directly fit in to the daily annotations or any of the other sections of the site. I’ve now decided to start a new social group where anything goes.
If you want to talk about topical events, share jokes, or have any other kind of conversation that isn’t directly related to Pepys or his times, then the social group is the place to do so with other readers of this site. The original discussion group is the place to go for purely Pepys-related conversations. I hope this pleases everyone, or, at least, most people!
1 comment | Permalink | Monday 3 October 2005 | Housekeeping
You may have noticed that some punctuation characters in annotations are appearing strangely on the site recently. This happened since I upgraded Movable Type, the software used to run most of the site.
Since the “upgrade” it seemed that if a curly quote, or other unusual character, is used in an annotation it appeared as a question mark (?) when Previewing, and as a muddle of strange characters when the annotation was Posted. I was baffled at first, but after spending more time investigating I’ve realised the cause of the problem and have hopefully fixed it.
This won’t fix problems in annotations posted over the past couple of weeks, but I’m going to look back through them and try and fix some. Do let me know if you notice the problem recurring in new annotations. Apologies for the inconvenience.
(For the technically-minded, the problem was caused by the site’s pages using “iso-8859-1” rather than “utf-8”. Although I’ve no idea why this was no problem before upgrading to Movable Type 3.2.)
2 comments | Permalink | Monday 24 October 2005 | Housekeeping
I think this is a topic that came up in the early days of the site, but that was a long time ago and I thought it worth raising again.
Obviously, to help us understand the diary we want to draw on other sources, particularly the Latham & Matthes edition. However, please be aware that we shouldn’t simply quote large chunks of these in annotations. One or two quotes from a source would be no problem. But sources such as L&M’s Companion volume are being quoted fairly frequently, and at some length. Over the life of the diary this adds up to replicating an awful lot of someone else’s work and copyright material.
I realise it’s tempting, and certainly helps our understanding, but please bear in mind that such material should be quoted extremely sparingly. Please paraphrase or pick out a few salient facts rather than quoting at length. I can’t give you exact guidelines, because I’m not a copyright lawyer, so please stop, think, and use your own judgement.
I’m sorry that this will require some effort and restraint, but I’d prefer to avoid any problems over copyright materials, rather than have to deal with them retrospectively. Many thanks.
1 comment | Permalink | Wednesday 7 December 2005 | Housekeeping
If you post annotations on the site you may well have found you get error messages when trying to do so. It’s happened to me a few times and I don’t post nearly as much as many of you, so I can only apologise for your frustrations!
You may have realised that despite the error message, the annotation always (or usually?) works OK — if you click your browser’s Back button to return to the diary entry page (or Encyclopedia page) and then Refresh, your annotation should appear.
I’m not sure what’s causing this problem, and this is obviously not a long-term solution. I’m hoping to make some substantial improvements to the site over coming months which will fix the problem, so do bear with me… Thanks.
Oh, and a belated Happy New Year!
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Thursday 12 January 2006 | Housekeeping
You’ve probably noticed that annotations are looking rather odd at the moment — the text is too large and there are no paragraph breaks. I’m not sure what’s up — Movable Type isn’t formatting them correctly all of a sudden — and for the moment I’m stumped.
I’ve asked the Movable Type folks for advice, and I’ll have another look when I have time later, but please bear with me for now… Thanks.
1 comment | Permalink | Monday 6 March 2006 | Housekeeping
Thanks for being patient over the last few days of nastily unreadable annotations. I’ve finally found the problem and everything should be working fine (well, as fine as it was last week, anyway). I’d changed a setting in Movable Type without realising what other effects it might have. If you want to know more about the cause read on here.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Thursday 9 March 2006 | Housekeeping
If it’s not one thing it’s another… All the Encyclopedia pages have a section at the bottom that shows when that person, building, or whatever is mentioned in the diary. These links are generated automatically by Movable Type’s TrackBack facility. It’s been a bit flaky at times but has mostly worked.
However, like annotations, TrackBacks are susceptible to spammers. Although Movable Type does a good job of filtering the spam from the real requests for links, the spammers still try. Every time they “ping” the TrackBack script it causes a little bit of work for the web server.
Recently the script received more than 20,000 hits in a single hour, causing the computer that my websites share with other peoples’ websites to slow to a crawl. Understandably, the company that runs the web server disabled the TrackBack script. It’s probably best if I leave it that way for good.
I’ll try to find time to write some code to keep the Encyclopedia references up to date, but for a while I’m afraid they won’t be updating. Sorry!
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Thursday 16 March 2006 | Housekeeping
A couple of months back I said that the references in the Encyclopedia — which link back to the diary entries on which a person, place, etc was mentioned — were no longer updating. I’ve just finished some work that means these should now be complete and up to date at last! It’ll be a couple more days before I get round to making this happen automatically for new diary entries, but by next week everything should up to date on a daily basis. As ever, let me know if you spot anything that’s broken.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Wednesday 10 May 2006 | Housekeeping
Due to a huge flood of spam, that shows no sign of stopping after an hour of me fighting it, annotations are currently disabled. I’ll post an update when they’re enabled again.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Thursday 11 May 2006 | Housekeeping
I’ve switched the ability to annotate back on. There’s no more spam appearing right now, but it’s possible it will appear again. If so I’ll have to think of some better solution to the problem.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Thursday 11 May 2006 | Housekeeping
No sooner have I cleared one lot of spam, but another appears. I’ve no idea why they’ve suddenly appeared in such numbers over the past week.
I’ve now switched annotations/comments off for all parts of the site until I can implement a solution - sometime over the next couple of days I hope.
The first step may be trying Akismet , and if that doesn’t do the job we’ll all have to log in using TypeKey to post comments. I’ll keep you informed…
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Wednesday 17 May 2006 | Housekeeping
Annotations should be back, and functioning, across the site now.
We’ve been having two problems. First, spammers automatically hit the Movable Type comment script many times over (without physically filling in the forms), which causes a load on the server, resulting in the site’s hosts, Pair.com, disabling the script. I’ve now changed the name of the comment script and will keep on moving it periodically in the hope this will stop some of the automated attacks.
The second problem is that some spam isn’t being filtered by Movable Type. This means that (a) the spam appears on the site, and (b) every page hit by spam is rebuilt. When the site has a lot of comments, and is being hit by a lot of spam at once, this results in even more server load, and even more likelihood of Pair.com disabling the script. To combat this I’m trying Akismet’s spam filtering, which is reportedly very good.
If spam still gets through we’ll have to start logging in before posting a comment, which shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. But if load on the server continues to be a problem, I fear the only solution will be for me to upgrade to a server that isn’t shared with other peoples’ websites, although I’d rather avoid that hassle and expense. Cross your fingers…!
Let me know if you find any problems.
9 comments | Permalink | Thursday 18 May 2006 | Housekeeping
Everyone on the SmartGroups discussion group should have been notified already, but for everyone else… The Discussion Group is moving to Yahoo! Groups because SmartGroups seems to be increasingly unreliable — messages often arrive days after they’ve been sent. So if you want to join the new group, you can sign up here.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Saturday 24 June 2006 | Housekeeping
Early on Thursday evening, UK time, I’ll be doing some work on the site to try and find what’s causing the relentless “Internal Server Errors.” This means that the look of the site will change drastically, as I try out some simpler templates, and there will be a lot of test annotations appearing from me.
I’ll post a message on the front page when I begin work, and again when I’ve finished. Hopefully with some positive results…
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Tuesday 27 June 2006 | Housekeeping
I’m about to start work on the site, to find out the cause of the “Internal Server Errors”. The appearance will change dramatically and test comments will be posted. I’ll post again when I’ve finished.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Thursday 29 June 2006 | Housekeeping
I’ve spent the evening trying to work out why “Internal Server Errors” are generated so often when annotations are posted. I’ve tried simplifying the templates Movable Type uses to generate the site’s pages, to the point of reverting to the software’s default, very simple, templates. Although I saw some improvement I was still seeing errors around 10-20% of the time.
I think that the Recent Annotations page was one of the bigger causes of the problem, and for the moment that page won’t be updating. I realise this is annoying, and before long I may find a way of creating this that doesn’t impact on the comment-posting process.
In the meantime, please be patient. I’ve posted a message to ProNet, and hopefully someone will have some ideas there. I’d be interested to know if you find things better or worse sense I switched off the Recent Annotations page — post your thoughts below or to the new discussion group.
6 comments | Permalink | Thursday 29 June 2006 | Housekeeping
You’ll be pleased to know that the Recent Annotations page is back. It used to be re-built every time an annotation was posted, which might have been one of several factors contributing to the Internal Server Errors. The page is now built whenever the page is viewed which will take some load off Movable Type’s comment-handling script (actually, the page is never built more than once every two minutes, so it may occasionally lag a minute or two behind).
I think it’s working correctly, but let me know if you notice anything particularly odd. Also, if there’s anything about the page that could be improved, so it’s a better quick overview of all that’s happening on the site, do post below or to the new discussion group.
5 comments | Permalink | Sunday 2 July 2006 | Housekeeping
In a moment I’ll be switching off the ability to post annotations. I’m about to move this (and my other sites) to a new server and I need to switch off annotations to make sure nothing’s lost in the process. When everything is working on the new server I’ll post a message there. Because it can take a while for the news of a site moving to work its way around the internet, it could be hours or days until you can see the new server. Hopefully it won’t be too long!
(Annoyingly, my decision to move servers came only days before Pair.com, the current hosts, implemented something that I think has solved the problems we were seeing with posting annotations! Too late unfortunately, as I’ve paid for a new, hopefully more powerful, service, and it’s time to move.)
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Wednesday 9 August 2006 | Housekeeping
If you can read this, you’re seeing the site on the new server, and annotations should be working again. I expect something will break somewhere along the line, but hopefully things are OK…
11 comments | Permalink | Wednesday 9 August 2006 | Housekeeping
I’m switching the ability to annotate off temporarily while I try and fix the bug that’s causing comments to be truncated…
4 comments | Permalink | Tuesday 15 August 2006 | Housekeeping
Apologies for the lack of new diary entries — I haven’t been any busier than usual, but what with one thing and another I completely forgot to enter another week’s worth of entries this week and the supply has run dry! I’ll catch up later today or tomorrow.
4 comments | Permalink | Friday 15 September 2006 | Housekeeping
Today I’m making a lot of structural changes to the encyclopedia section of the site, in preparation for allowing people to volunteer as editors for specific entries. So expect things to look broken from time to time until I post a message to say it should all be working again…
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Friday 13 October 2006 | Housekeeping
I’ve now finished updating the code that runs the encyclopedia section of the site. There are a few differences to the layout of pages, but the biggest reorganistion is invisible. It will now, at last, be easier for volunteer editors to manage individual encyclopedia pages. Stay tuned…!
2 comments | Permalink | Friday 13 October 2006 | Housekeeping
Sometime this Sunday (21st) I’m going to be doing some major work on the site. I’ll be switching off the ability to add annotations while doing this. The site may well look broken for a little while too. I’ll post a message when everything’s up and running again. I thought it was time for a new lick of paint around here…
3 comments | Permalink | Friday 19 January 2007 | Housekeeping
Although I hoped to make a lot of changes to the site today, I haven’t quite got everything ready. Rather than start now and stay up into the night I’m going to postpone the changes for the time being. Sorry for the false alarm! I’ll try and give some warning when I next have a chance to get this done, sometime in the next week or two.
3 comments | Permalink | Sunday 21 January 2007 | Housekeeping
All being well I’ll be making some changes to the site sometime this afternoon/evening (Friday, UK time). I’ll be temporarily switching off the ability to post annotations while I do this, and the site may look broken during this whole process. I’ll post another note when everything’s finished.
3 comments | Permalink | Friday 2 March 2007 | Housekeeping
At some point this weekend, probably on Saturday afternoon, UK time, I’ll be upgrading the software that powers this (and other) sites. This will mean that first I’ll hide all the forms for posting annotations (so nothing is lost or broken in the switch-over) and then things might look a bit odd if I break something. Hopefully it won’t take too long and I’ll post here again when it’s all up and running.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Friday 19 October 2007 | Housekeeping
I updated the Movable Type software this afternoon, which meant shutting off annotations for a short while. Everything should all be back to normal now. If you see notice anything not working quite right, do email me or post a message below. Thanks for your patience!
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Saturday 20 October 2007 | Housekeeping
This weekend, probably Saturday afternoon or evening, UK time, I’ll be moving Pepys’ Diary to a new webserver. My hosting provider is gradually moving all websites to new machines and our time has come. The benefit will be that if the server crashes in future it should be back in action very quickly — it can currently take over an hour for the sites to reappear.
In order to avoid losing any annotations during this process I will, as usual, be removing all the annotation forms on the site before I make the move. Sorry for the slight inconvenience. I’ll post another message when everything is moved over.
1 comment | Permalink | Wednesday 26 March 2008 | Housekeeping
The site is now living on a new webserver and everything should be back working again as normal.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few little problems lurking somewhere that I haven’t fixed yet, so email me or post a comment below if you find something not working as it should. Thanks.
3 comments | Permalink | Sunday 30 March 2008 | Housekeeping
I’m sorry for the continued lack of the lists of recent annotations on the Recent Activity page. The database queries that were generating these were taking a few seconds each to run and I’ve been trying to cut back on my sites’ use of the database. I’ve had a quick attempt at making these more efficient but haven’t had any joy yet.
There is a way I can get Movable Type, the software that runs the site, to generate these lists automatically when a new annotation is posted, but I’d like to change the way the software is installed before doing this. (For those interested, I’d move MT to run under FastCGI which should be more efficient.)
I hope to have time to do this, as well as upgrading Movable Type to the latest version, which should also increase efficiency, some time over the next week or so. Apologies again, but it’s been one of those busy weeks.
3 comments | Permalink | Wednesday 11 June 2008 | Housekeeping
You’ll be pleased to read that the Recent Activity page is now back. Sorry it’s been away for so long, but my time is short at the moment.
An unfortunate side effect of the recent upgrade to Movable Type seems to be that suddenly more spam is getting through in annotations (and on the comments on my other sites). I’m not sure why this is at the moment, but I’ll keep my eye on it and delete them as soon as I can. The next (very imminent) update to the software promises a new method of stopping spam, and there are other things we could try, such as requiring people to log in before posting annotations.
If you see any spam that’s older than a day or two, please do let me know, otherwise assume that I’ll remove it when I’m next online. Thanks for your patience.
6 comments | Permalink | Tuesday 24 June 2008 | Housekeeping
As I feared, spammers have found the form for flagging annotations and have begun submitting spam through it. These days spammers just send spam through any form they can find, whether it does them any good or not.
So I’ve switched on a feature I built into it, just in case, which requires you to answer a (currently very simple) question before you can flag an annotation. Hopefully it will be enough to stump them. We’ll see…
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Sunday 19 October 2008 | Housekeeping
A technical glitch, followed by my lack of attention, has prevented Pepys’ Twitters from appearing since Wednesday. Sorry about that. Rather than flood Twitter with the missing updates, here they all are, and things should continue as normal from the last one… (All times are UK time, and approximate.)
23 July 1666, 8am. My books now growing numerous, and lying one upon another on my chairs, I lose the use to avoyde the trouble of removing them.
23 July 1666, 1pm. Reflecting upon the ease and plenty that I live in, I could not but with hearty thanks to Almighty God ejaculate my thanks to Him.
23 July 1666, 5pm. They conclude this to be much the best fleete, for force of guns, greatnesse and number of ships and men, that ever England did see.
24 July 1666, 12pm. To the office, where little business done, our heads being full of expectation of the fleete’s being engaged, but no certain notice of it.
24 July 1666, midnight. Busy very late, till midnight, drawing up a representation of the state of my victualling business to the Duke.
25 July 1666, 10.30am. By and by come people out of the Parke, telling us that the guns are heard plain. And so every body to the Parke.
25 July 1666, 11am. The guns were plain to be heard; though it was pretty to hear how confident some would be in the loudnesse of the guns.
25 July 1666, 2pm. It astonished me to see my Lord Barkeshire waiting at table, and serving the King drink, in that dirty pickle as I never saw man in my life.
25 July 1666, 5.30pm. Mrs. Martin is in mighty trouble for her husband at sea, when I am sure she cares not for him, and I would not undeceive her.
25 July 1666, 11pm. Set down Mr. Spong in London, and so home and with my wife, late, twatling at my Lady Pen’s, and so home to supper and to bed.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Sunday 26 July 2009 | Housekeeping
I’m sorry to be writing this, but Keith Wright, who posted annotations on this site under the name Bradford, passed away unexpectedly on 13th October. Keith had been active here since the start of the diary and we’ll greatly miss his contributions.
Sadly, Keith suffered a complication of his blood pressure medicine on Wednesday which resulted in a cardiac arrest and the doctors were unable to revive him. I’m sure our thoughts are with his friends and family.
Although I exchanged a few nice emails with Keith over the years I regretfully know little about him other than that he often proof-read books.
If you have any memories of Keith from the past few years, please do share them with us below.
UPDATE: Jeannine Kerwin sent this PDF which the Library of America (for whom Keith did much work) has kindly allowed us to post here. It is an article about Keith from their newsletter from two years ago. (22 October 2010)
19 comments | Permalink | Friday 15 October 2010 | Housekeeping
A little admin update… A few years ago, as a result of a database move, a lot of annotations were accidentally cut short across the site. It’s taken a while but most, or maybe even all, of these have now been restored to their full length.
Enormous thanks must go to one reader, Max Wainer, who has diligently flagged more than 1,600 such annotations across the site for my attention over the past couple of years. Without his efforts I would probably never have got round to fixing so many, so thank you Max!
There may well be other annotations that have snuck through unfixed, but getting on for 2,000 have now been restored. So anyone reading through the earlier diary entries will now have the full benefit of all your collective work and thoughts.
2 comments | Permalink | Monday 15 November 2010 | Housekeeping
I recently bought the 1668-9 volume of Sam’s diaries, in the usual HarperCollins / University of California Press edition of Latham & Matthews. Unfortunately, although it looks superficially identical, they recently seem to have changed the paper and printing and it looks much cheaper than all the previous volumes I’ve bought.
As I was making a more general point, and it’s not specifically about Pepys, I posted about it on my personal site, but I thought readers of Sam’s diaries might be interested too. I might look for a second-hand copy instead, just to complete the set!
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Friday 3 December 2010 | Housekeeping
In 2008 I put together a family tree for the extended Pepys ancestry. A few weeks ago Alan Lawrence pointed out an error in the family tree (thanks Alan!), so I’ve taken this opportunity to extend the tree as well as correcting the error.
The main additions are around the Kite/Fenner/Joyce side of Pepys’ mother’s family, and the Wight/Sutton/Norbury branch — all those people who get referred to as “cousin” or “uncle/aunt” but who I’ve never quite got to grips with in terms of their position in the family.
As before, you can view the family tree on the web, or download a printable PDF, which stretches over three sheets of paper. Both versions let you click the name of anyone who appears in the diary to jump to their Encyclopedia page.
If you spot any errors, or can think of anyone else who should be featured, either post a comment below or send me an email.
3 comments | Permalink | Thursday 3 February 2011 | Housekeeping
The survey is now closed.
You may have seen this linked to from the front page already, so apologies for the duplication, but I’d appreciate it if you could answer this quick, anonymous, three question survey.
It’s rather hasty, and maybe I’ll do a more substantial one another time. Either way, I’ll share the results with you in a few days. Thanks!
3 comments | Permalink | Wednesday 16 February 2011 | Housekeeping
You’ve no doubt noticed that many of the little pop-up descriptions of people, places, etc. in diary entries are lacking descriptive text. Which is a shame, especially for those who aren’t too familiar with the diary and Sam’s world. So I’ve put together a list of the most frequently-appearing topics that are currently lacking brief summaries.
If you feel inclined, pick a topic, click through to its Encyclopedia page, where there may be annotations and more to help you, and have a go at composing a brief description. We’re only looking for a maximum of 50 words for each one.
You can post your summary in the comments below, or email it to me. And if you fancy writing more than one, that would be great. I’ll cross out any for which I receive descriptions, to try and avoid duplication of effort.
Here are the 100 most frequently-mentioned topics in the diary (number of mentions shown for each):
If you fancy writing a summary I’m sure current and future readers of the diary will be grateful!
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Tuesday 29 March 2011 | Housekeeping
Over the last few days there has been an increasing amount of spam annotations appearing. I’ve now added an extra question to the annotations form which will hopefully prevent automated spammers from successfully posting things. It’s a simple enough question that you shouldn’t have any problems with it!
Many thanks to Mary and, especially, Paul Chapin, who have been doing a grand job flagging spam annotations for me to delete. It’s made my response much quicker and easier.
I’ve had an increasing number of spam comments on my personal site too — more than one a minute for a while on Friday afternoon — and have ended up switching comments off entirely for the moment there.
Let me know if you have any problems with the new system when posting annotations. It’s an annoying extra hurdle, but hopefully it will keep the site free from spam.
2 comments | Permalink | Sunday 26 June 2011 | Housekeeping
Apologies for the formatting problems on the site at the moment. I won’t be able to fix them for a few days. Thanks for your patience.
Update: I’ve managed to patch things up a bit so most of the broken pages should look OK. Many of the “tooltip” info boxes won’t appear over links, and other things might still be broken, but I’ll be able to fix those in a few days. (10.56pm, UK time)
Update 2: The site should be back to normal now. For some reason Movable Type (the software this site runs on) had truncated the template which is used to generate the start of each page. This meant that lots of the crucial code was missing from any newly-created or updated pages. (Monday 11th July)
5 comments | Permalink | Thursday 7 July 2011 | Housekeeping
If anyone likes to keep the latest version of the extended Pepys family tree to hand, you should note that I’ve just updated it. The only addition is some of the Pickerings, distant relatives of Samuel by marriage through the Montagus. Let me know if you ever think of more people who can be added to this ever-growing chart!
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Friday 14 October 2011 | Housekeeping
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!
9 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
I’m afraid I’ve had to stop the Recent Activity page from updating again. The database queries that make these listings are very slow and they’re holding up other features of the site, such as posting annotations.
I’ve tried various alternative methods of making these lists but seem to keep coming up against the fact that the database is a bit low-powered to perform actions with the number of annotations we’ve accumulated plus the many spam annotations that get caught. So I’m looking into moving the database to a more powerful server and will hopefully have things up and running again before too long.
Thanks for your patience!
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Thursday 2 February 2012 | Housekeeping
I had a brainwave about how the Recent Activity page is generated and it seems to work. The page is now re-created every five minutes and seems to do so without keeping the database occupied for ages like it used to. Fingers crossed it’ll keep working like this from now on.
There might be occasions when it lists fewer recent things on the page, depending on the distribution of where annotations are… but it’s certainly better than nothing.
(For the technically minded and interested… Previous versions of the page required joins between the database tables holding annotations and entries, and this was too much for the shared server to cope with without making temporary tables etc. In the most recent previous version of the page, this was taking a few minutes for each of the page’s four lists, and prevente any other queries on the annotations table (such as posting a new annotation). I realised I could get much the same data without any joins, and this takes seconds. Much simpler!)
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Friday 3 February 2012 | Housekeeping