Your picks for everything fannish

Doing this back in January was a lot of fun so I look forward to this! Anything? Oh dear, I hardly know where to begin (and most of my links were lost when my desktop computer was burned in August, so I'll have to get hunting.)

Clever "title" for this round btw.

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Woot! Yep, lots to choose from this round :)

So sorry to hear about the lost computer!

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I'll have to go back to the January posts to make sure I don't repeat myself - I'm already thinking I'd like to do my "top 5 video picks", because I can list those off the top of my head easy-peasy.

And thanks - I had an apartment fire back on August 19th and the fire itself pretty much destroyed one room - the bedroom with all the computer equiptment in it - but the smoke and water damage destroyed or damaged the rest. Not an experience I recommend.

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Definitely not :( I hope 2014 brings better things.

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Here's hoping!

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shapinglight

I shall be plugging some oldies but goodies.

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Excellent!

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I have what's probably an odd question. While I've found plenty I want to recommend, there are stories I'd like to rec but can't find links to. Can I list my top 5 stores I'd rec if I could find the links? Hopefully it would work out as a other people tell me how to find the stories kind of a thing. I'm totally cool if you don't want to go there but I figured it can't hurt to ask.

Seems like I had something else I wanted to say - other than I'm having a blast reading through old fics - but I can't think of what it was.

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Oh, and now I remember. I'm posting this question early to give you plenty of time to decide, since it seems to be an odd one.

Thanks!

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It's not as new as you might think ;)

The answer is yes, you can! A few years ago we noted that many reccers run into these problems as people close accounts or entire websites go down. So anyone looking for particular fanworks can ask for help from readers in finding them as part of their rec list.

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cool. Thanks.

And here I thought I was the only wierd one! ;-)

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Thank you for asking that question! It's very timely for me, what with the whole "my desktop computer went up in the blaze and the THOUSANDS of links/bookmarks I'd stored there are lost." *sigh*

This time around instead of "my favorite metas" I'll go with My favorite meta writers and make it easier on myself. *lol*

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Ouch! Sorry to hear about your computer. I've been through that myself but it's been a number of years. *knocks on wood*

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Thanks! It was actually an entire bedroom that was burned up but the rest of the apartment suffered smoke and water damage so we're in another place right now. Word of advice: if you're going to bother buying external harddrives to back up all your stuff? Have at least one of them in another room from the computer. (We had three external harddrives in the bedroom with all the other computer stuff. Dumb. but hey, no casualties and that's what matters.)

But our PC many years ago just crashed and burned out before that. Computers are tricksy things.

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Looks at my backup which is currently plugged into the computer. Thanks, that's good advice. Maybe I should just do that then.

Haven't had a room burn down since I was in sixth grade, many decades ago, when our attic caught on fire. Happily I noticed it and everyone got out of the house safely, but we had to live in a trailer for some time while the house was being repaired. Of course in sixth grade living in a trailer on the front lawn was sort of cool.

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Looks at my backup which is currently plugged into the computer. Thanks, that's good advice. Maybe I should just do that then.

This is where something like a La Cie portable external harddrive comes in handy, it's light and easy to move to another room. (One of our desktop ones was a Guardian maxiumus that was suprisingly heavy and who wants to cart that around?) I think having two is a good idea just not in the same room. (What were we thinking again?)

Given all the smoke/water damage in other rooms, it still might have been damaged anyway. We only have a computer because my sweetie grabbed her laptop before running out of the house.

You were the one who noticed the attic had caught fire? How did that happen? Was it an electrical short? Were you frightened when you saw it.

Of course in sixth grade living in a trailer on the front lawn was sort of cool.

I bet - sort of like being on vacation but not, right? How long were you in the trailer? I'm sure after a while the novelty must have faded. (probably faded for your parents a lot sooner especially trying to cook and all that jazz.)

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I did notice it. My sister and I had gone to bed - we shared a room then - and I heard a noise from the attic. I think I thought it sounded like water on the roor. I certainly wasn't thinking fire but I peered under the door rather than opening it. I don't recall being afraid. I remember thinking Fire! I've got to tell Mom. I ran downstairs to tell her and my sister followed. She says I hadn't said anything to her, that she was just wondering what was going on. I don't recall if I said anything or not, but it's a good thing she did follow because Mom would have freaked if she were still upstairs. Mom sent us to the neighbor's house. I rememeber a bunch of fire trucks (well in my memory it was a lot of them; there probably weren't that many there) and the police were there. A number of cops showed up because my Mom worked for the police department. Most of the burning was in the attic, but I do remember a big hole in the living room ceiling (the living room was below the attic). My Mom tried to take that as an opportunity to throw out our old toys but my sister and I rescued them from the garbage.

I don't recall how long we were in the trailer. It seems like it was there for just like a day or something but I know that's not true. Bees started nesting in the trailer around the time the house was finished, I do recall that.

The fire department didn't find anything to cause the fire. They told Mom that my sister and her friend must have been playing with matches up there. Mom believed them but my aunt Alice, who was living with us at the time, didn't. She said that Jackie would have looked guilty if that had been the case.

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I don't recall being afraid. I remember thinking Fire! I've got to tell Mom.

You weren't afraid? that's really amazing.

They told Mom that my sister and her friend must have been playing with matches up there. Mom believed them but my aunt Alice, who was living with us at the time, didn't. She said that Jackie would have looked guilty if that had been the case.

a.k.a. they couldn't find a cause, so blame the little kids.

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Yeah, Jackie was pretty upset that she got blamed.

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As well she should be!

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Yep.

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My backup is one of those little drives, sticks into the side of the computer. I don't know what you call them. They replaced CDs the way CDs replaced floppies. So, I could easily move it somewhere else. Good on your sweetie for grabbing the computer. I imagine it would be frustrating not to have one.

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You mean a flash drives! We've had a few of those - like floppies, those are very fragile and die quickly. They're meant for a small amount of information. I really don't see them as replacing CD's so much as supplimenting them. (but then again I don't use CD-R's or RW's as often as I used to, Partly because of the external drives and also because I store all my photos on Photobucket.) Our La cie external harddrives can be set to back EVERYTHING up in the computer once a day or whenever you want. Usually once they fill up, they kick off the oldest backups.

Or you can manually have them just back up certain files. they're very durable -and if my sweetie had been willing to ante up the $50 to the computer guys, it's possible they may have been able to retrieve what was stored there. Including drafts of fics and metas I'd been working on *sniffle* (I can never predict when she's gonna go into miser mode, after spending hundreds and thousands on a new ipod and whatsits and whoseits.)

I am glad she grabbed the laptop - although I wish one of us had thought to grab one of the harddrives (which were on the other side of the room from where the fire started.) She was focused on trying to put out the fire and save her two pairs of eyeglasses (which were a lost cause) and I was just trying to get her to grab some clothes and get the hell out of there.

The next few weeks were frustrating having to go to coffee houses for wifi until we got cable - which meant I had almost no access because the laptop is actually her's anyway, not mine. Then I really realized how much of an ADDICTiON the internet is!

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Oooh, no glasses? That's bad.

I save individual files rather than the whole drive. I copy them to the flash drive as well as mail them to myself. So, if the computer does go belly up and I lose the flash drive, I've still got access to the important files.

Internet is an addiction. I just recently got it at home. I used to go to the library for my Internet. My current computer doesn't play as nicely as I'd like with the Internet, although it's only been a real problem a couple of times. On the other hand, those times were really, really frustrating! grrrrrr and use of nasty (but amusing) icon! ;-)

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