Our little community here at waka waka waka is deeply concerned about the sudden disappearance of our friend Horace Jeffery Hodges’ outstanding website, The Gypsy Scholar. According to Blogspot his site “has been removed”, but anyone who knows Jeffery know that he would never close down his blog — at which he has written daily posts for years now — without announcing his intention to his readers.
Jeffery writes from Seoul, South Korea, where he is a professor of English. He writes often about the local culture, and although he is always the very model of tact and civility, it may be that some of his opinions have irked the university he works for, or even the government (Koreans are apparently rather prickly about such things).
Jeffery, if you are reading this, we all hope that this is just a temporary technical problem, soon to be repaired, and that you and Sun-ae and the kids are all fine.
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I don’t know what has happened and also cannot contact Blogger to find out. I did finally get to a non-Korean login site for Blogger Help but after logging in, only a blank nothingness came up. I seem to be stuck. Perhaps someone could find out for me?
Jeffery Hodges
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JK seems to have found some problems with Middle Eastern, Indonesian and SE Asian connections. The apparent problem is an undersea cable however there may have occurred a DNS or an “uplink” thing. It’s very difficult to determine the precise problems just now.
Best guess is by oh, 0500 CST (I can’t guess how that would translate to GMT) anyway, it’s complicated. Russia apparently used the net to cut off gas shipments to Ukraine. As to why that would matter, I don’t know.
JK doesn’t even have a college degree.
Well, it’s good to hear from you, at any rate–I was about to fire off an email.
I’ve never used Blogger or anything other blogging software, so I wouldn’t even know where to begin…
Jeffery, I looked into it but it seems that you have to contact Blogger yourself. Did you see that a Korean blogger was arrested for “doom-mongering”? http://clusterstock.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/blogger-arrested-in-korea-for-doom-mongering
When I saw that headline I at first thought it might be you! But seriously, could that have something to do with it?
I hope to see you back soon, Jeffrey, with archives intact.
I second Deogolwulf, Jeffery. We miss you!
Thanks, everyone, for wishing me back. I’m also wishing since I’m relatively powerless to act.
I’ve had difficulty contacting Blogger from my home computer. In fact, I’ve been unable to do so at all. I did manage to report the problem from a university computer, but other than an automatic reply telling me that my request had been noted, I’ve heard nothing. Kevin Kim is therefore handling some things for me — such as reporting the problem from Stateside. I’m stuck at home for the next week, so I guess that I’ll be relying on Kevin for further investigation.
I have to wonder if Blogger is having a bigger problem, for a friend in the UK reported:
“Blogger has been odd lately. 2 days ago it removed all the pictures from my blog . . . and anything I posted showed up as ‘deleted’.”
Perhaps somebody could inquire about Blogger problems more generally. Regardless of the source of the problem, I’ve reported it as an accidental deletion, i.e., “I accidentally deleted my blog.” I didn’t, of course (at least, I think not), but that button for admitting accidental deletion, among the multiple choices presented, seemed the most prudent.
No, I’m not the fellow calling himself “Minerva” who was arrested here in Korea for spreading false rumors about the financial world, e.g., that Lehman Brothers would fail (oops, that was one of the true rumors).
Anyway, three days have passed without my blog and also without any substantive response from Blogger, and I’m beginning to grow worried about losing a lot of valuable writing that I’ve done over the past four years. Some of what I’ve blogged is academic, some creative, some anecdotal, some political, some . . . well I could go on and on, but the main point is that I have tried to write well, and sometimes succeeded, so I’d hate to lose that.
I did spend two hours collecting my poems form cached versions as soon as I learned that my blog had disappeared, for some of those poems were composed online and existed nowhere else, but I lack the time to go through cached versions of all my posts.
Consequently, if I can’t get my blog restored, I will have lost so much irretrievably.
Jeffery Hodges
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Keep your chin up, Jeffery, I have a feeling it’s going to work out. I very much doubt that the files are gone from the Google servers; it’s just a matter of getting help from the right quarters. We’re working on it!
Thanks, Malcolm. I know that you and Kevin are both very capable individuals, and I appreciate your friendship and efforts — as well as the efforts of all my friends, who all seem more capable than I in dealing with technical matters.
Jeffery Hodges
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