I’ve been reconstructing a lot of missing content, and pages, on this site, as I have neglected and left it idle, for some time. I point to social media platforms, as the reason, where I could easily place my photo and video with quick descriptive texts that grab a quick attention of my tiny audience, on those real estates.
But, I enjoy writing and rambling, and the best place to do that, isn’t on some IG post, as such a post could easily put off audiences who are looking for a quick doom scroll experience. But, I do want to get back to blogging (someone’s gotta trend a better word), at least, a lot more than once every six months, as you can tell from my previous posts.
I’ve already had the idea of reconstructing my content here, about a couple of years ago. It’s why you see me post something in between big breaks, once in awhile, to keep the site seemingly active, for the last few years. I was overwhelmed by the thought of searching (and many times, with failure) and recovering older content, that seemingly are missing, on my local drives. With no maintenance and upkeep, the site became broken and in disarray, changing servers and WordPress updates. And, each updated post, I’m apologizing for not posting (to only a few small people who may have seen the posts). Most people won’t notice the missing content, but they prob do notice I may have changed the theme/design, ever so often, to give an impression that rayhom.com wasn’t being neglected.
I have no clue, or have any data, on who may be visiting my site, other than an occasional,”Hey, Ray, I read your latest post,” from a fellow colleague. That’s encouraging enough, for me to continue posting something, that my ramblings aren’t in vain. I am hyperconnected to a lot of people, who are my good, and close friends, who seem to pay attention to what I do online.
So, how am I recovering the content? I found an old backup, that was dated around April 2010. I swear I have a more recent file, at least before Covid, but I have been unsuccessful in locating one. My site did crash, at some point, maybe early 2020s? And, had somehow removed the majority of my pages. The site looked broken. I have located raw HTML copies of a few pages, on my local drives, but most of my post were created online, in the WordPress dashboard. And, also, I did have a bunch of files, that weren’t backed up, on a laptop that died on me, towards the end of 2022, and never able to recover/repair. It was a rough loss, but nothing that harmed me, permanently. A good number of files were in the cloud. But, not related to my site. Advice: Back up your sh!t constantly!
So, how am I recovering the content, that’s seemingly lost forever? By utilizing the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. The site crawls the Internet, at occasional scheduled times, to find pages that have been updated or changed. It feels random, as I do have to do a bit of detective work, on what available dates, the pages have been captured. So far, I’ve been able to reconstruct backwards, up to mid-2019. I’m sure I can find more, as I found a bunch in the 2010s. So, I’m slowly bridging the missing pages from my 2010 WP backup, and working backwards through the 2010s.
My guess, it will take me about two months, to recover it all. I do a few pages a day, and try not to get overwhelmed. I do get an emotional nostalgia bait reaction, when I read some of these posts. It’s like rediscovering an old journal I hid, in my closet. There are a few posts, that are a bit cringey. Nothing that would damage me, but it’s pointless to repost them, as they’re more like “I’m showing off about something that no one would actually care about” ramblings. Most of the stuff I’m reviving are related to tech, comic cons, and traveling, which are the themes of this blog.
The first post, I had revived was my post about having met S-Factor (now known strictly as Sharyn Maceren) at Tower Records, about a couple of decades ago. She had discovered my post, in 2011, and we have since become social media friends. And, I get an occasional visitor, like that, where someone has reposted a link to my site. So, I’m just trying to repair broken links, that may be connecting back to me, online.
Other links, also include my online and media appearances. Older stuff, prob don’t work anymore, mainly because the sites are defunct. I’m still trying to recover my first online horror film interview, with RavenBlack, on Shannon Clark’s The Chainsaw Mafia site, but that’s a tough one, as the site didn’t last long. And, although Archive Wayback did crawl the site, it didn’t crawl my particular interview. At least, none that I could find.
Another online interview I did, was with AARisings. I am still friends with Nelson, who was the owner, of the site, now also offline, but he was able to provide me a raw HTML, of the interview, which I reconstructed, and placed under the post where I announced I was interviewed. And, in fact, we became good friends, that he invited me to be part of a monthly board gaming group, that he host. He initially taught me how to play Zombicide, and now we’re board gamers. You can find the interview here: Interview on AARisings, which is exactly 11 years, since I had republished it.
It’s still an ongoing process, but I’m in a good place now. I may start posting, once a week, to avoid one long apologetic post, every half-a-year. I do enjoy writing these post, even if only maybe like two or three people read them. I’ve lasted this long. I mean, look at this old mock-up Windows Media player, that I found from 2006. I didn’t produce my first short film until 2009, or so. But, hey, I’m on IMDB now, and my site is still here. I must be doing something right, I think.
