When I first saw my website up again yesterday, I was not surprised that it was back-dated to 20 Dec 2009 (because I was told earlier) and not happy about it too.

What I have done to restore my websites are:-

1.  Replace the database with my backup copy.  I really want to thank myself that I have done it on 1 Jan 2010.

2.  My website now had missing pictures, then I had to dig out photos that I have posted since 20 December 2009 until the latest.  Can you guess how many photos I had to upload?  187 photos.

3.  There were error warning messages (luckily it’s only warning but not error) because the new server is using new version of PHP 5.3.  The messages appeared on the very top of my website which make everything out of alignment.  Instead of waiting for the web host to solve it, I tried to dig out the source code of my wordpress and try to solve it.

All of the  warning messages are similar:-

Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in \home\xxxx\xxxx.php on line xxx

I solved it successfully by digging out the files searching for the line number stated, and then edit the codes:-  Any syntax with & new should be change to new and the problems gone.

***  However, this morning, I noticed that the web host has change their PHP to an older version :O .  Luckily, it did not affect my website layout again.

I am faster than the web host to fix the problem, may be they were too busy, and I wanted my website to be in good condition as soon as possible.

4.  SiewPeng and I have 2 posts written on 1 Jan and 2 Jan 2010, they were not in my backup.  Therefore I have to retype copy and paste them and repost the photos again.  We always keep a copy of what we have written.  :)

5.  Next, I try to search my email to see if there is any comments from our visitors which can be restored, but cannot find any.  :(  I know there were missing comments.

Should I consider myself lucky because those were the only things that I have lost permanently?

I have also spent extra hours to fix the problems above, but I have learned something new in PHP.

Again, most importantly I have learned that BACKUP IS IMPORTANT.

I have considered to move to another host.

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I have a strange feeling when I first saw my website after a few days.

It looks strange to me, and I thought that I have taken time machine and went back to the past because the old posts are shown on the home page.

What would you feel if your blog’s homepage is showing you older posts?

ColinJong.com has just woke up from a long sleep. It has been sleeping since 02 Jan 2010 around 9:00 pm (88 hours).  It has gone into half-die mode on 03 Jan 2010 morning for a short while, but completely unconscious until noon time today.

This is because the server where ColinJong.com has been staying in, had hard disk drives failure. (Primary and Secondary spoiled at the same time.)  The worst news is the web hosting company could only restore it back-dated to 20 Dec 2009 which means we have lost our most latest posts and comments of 2 weeks!!!  Luckily I have my database backup on 01 Jan 2010, but I still lost some comments from visitors.

Sorry if you posted your comments on 1st or 2nd Jan 2010 and your comments did not appear. Please post your comments again.

Let me show you the announcements from the web host, it is very dramatic:-

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Sun 03/01/2010 10:58

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Mon 04/01/2010 08:31

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Mon 04/01/2010 14:17

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Mon 04/01/2010 15:59

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Tue 05/01/2010 10:02

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Tue 05/01/2010 14:16

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Tue 05/01/2010 20:48

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Wed 06/01/2010 06:49

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Wed 06/01/2010 13:44

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I have learned a lesson:- Prepare for the unexpected, BACKUP IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, it saves ColinJong.com’s life.

Again, it’s our blog’s birthday.  :)
Again, we would like to thank all our readers for your supports.  :)
We hope you enjoy everything that we have shared with you.

In these 2 years or 731 days, we have written 357 posts, which means we have updated our blog every 2 days in average.  We have had long holidays, and we have had short holidays too.  The more posts we have,  has given us more traffic, and the more holidays we have, we got reduce in traffic.  Yes, traffic is one of the main encouragement for us.

In this two years, SiewPeng and I have been to quite a lot of places (locally).  We fly to Ipoh quite frequently, and we have been trying to explore Kuching and the whole Sarawak thoroughly.  We will continue to explore Malaysia (our country) for the coming years until we have left our footprints on all the places where we can find the natural and artistic elements.  We are the tourists of our own hometown.

We have been to Perth, Australia sooner than it was planned which made us wrote 17 posts about it.  Plus we were there with my dream camera that allow me to extend my photography capabilities.  Two of our dreams have come trues, and we added more things to our wish lists.  Are we greedy?

My sister gave me this keychain a few days ago when she came back for Raya holiday.  She might not know that I consider this give as a birthday gift for ColinJong.com.  I asked her to read my blog, but I think she never does that.  Anyway, I thank her for the gift.

SiewPeng’s sister gave us these while we were in Australia.   I did plan to post it today when this blog is exactly 2 years old, but we can’t wait and had written a post about it months ago.  Thanks to SiewPeng’s sister.

Nobody knows what will happen in the next coming years, but we can put our effort to shape what is going to happen as we desire.  I will continue to practice my photography skills, write more quality posts, and hopefully ColinJong.com can attract more traffic.

Happy Birthday to ColinJong.com.
and
Thank you again for your supports.

It has been more than 10 days we did not update our blog due to some business busyness.

I was busy with: -

1.  Car problem:  My car timing belt break again in 15 months with the mileage of 15k km only.  (Luckily I can use my father’s van for about 1 week but it’s quite difficult to find parking everywhere, plus there was traffic jam everywhere because of road closure for the DUN opening).  - will blog about it soon.

2.  Bank: Since I am a treasurer of a religious organisation, I need to go to bank more frequent than usual for last week.

3.  Project: Start a new project of seting up PCs with Ubuntu OS and link them up to a server.

4.  Farming in Facebook.  :p

5.  and many many big and small matters.

This is not the longest record for taking a long break on blogging, but I can see that the web traffic from search engine has dropped.  I think we should back up with more schedule posts. :p

-  This will be the photo that I will use to represent Perth.  Thanks to Alan and Alicia for bringing us to see the amazing night view of Perth.

We just came back to Kuching yesterday evening, the trip was short, rush and tiring, but at least I have some photos and videos to show you here.  You will be expecting the coming posts will be all about Perth, Western Australia.

As SiewPeng and I lived in Toowoomba before, we compared many things that we have encountered in Perth here.  There are too many similarities that give me back my memories of 6 years ago.  The smell in the supermarket, the sound of the traffic lights, the temperature of the air, the shapes of the notes and coins, Australian slang, some of the food, snacks, and many other things make me miss Australia a lot.  And now, we were very excited because we were in Australia again.

Our mission for going to Australia was to settle some matter on SiewPeng’s sister studies here, we spent a lot on bus and taxi and we walked as well.  The roads and streets are not as complicated as I thought.  Next time, we prefer to rent a car.  We walked about 2 km to take a train to Perth CBD from Cannington, and we have only less than 2 hours in the city where we took the bus called “blue cat” at somewhere around the bell tower.  That was the only time we turned into visitors in Perth.

The most important thing is we hope to have more time with SiewPeng’s sister because she is going to stay here and we would be leaving in few days time.  I believe she will be our tour guide next time we come here again.

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I like the way Australian pronounces the word “here”,  it sounds like “Hia”.