| | | | | http://www.brickshelf.com/
Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
Please save your files to your computer.
Jennifer
www.peeron.com
| | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
> http://www.brickshelf.com/
>
> Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
> Please save your files to your computer.
Kudos to BS for going above and beyond the call to provide users an opportunity
to retrieve their files.
But my Top Ten list still stands.
Dave!
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
> http://www.brickshelf.com/
>
> Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
> Please save your files to your computer.
Wonderful! Thanks to you and Kevin for arranging this!
Now I know what I'll be doing this weekend: saving all of my photos and every
photo that I love on Bshelf! It still is a shame that Bshelf is going away, but
thanks for the 2nd chance to save photos!
-Lenny
Ps. I use too many exclamation points :p
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
heres how to make a quick and easy
Brickshelf backup.
Dont panic! (Douglas Adams)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jan Folkersma wrote:
|
heres how to make a quick and
easy Brickshelf backup.
Dont panic! (Douglas Adams)
|
edit! link is dead, but this one still works:
http://www.fial.com/bob/partscatalog/download/BSBackup_0013.zip
phew! (almost panic...)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jan Folkersma wrote:
Very nice. Too bad theres not a Mac version (and I dont think anyone will
cobble one up in the next two weeks :-).
--
Brian Davis
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Brian Davis wrote:
|
In lugnet.general, Jan Folkersma wrote:
Very nice. Too bad theres not a Mac version (and I dont think anyone will
cobble one up in the next two weeks :-).
|
No promises, but keep an eye on lugnet.cad.dev.mac tonight or tomorrow. I
started something like this (but quicker and dirtier) Sunday morning before the
https link went down.
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
| As noted here, there is a BSBackup
utility for Windows that helps you batch download the contents of Brickshelf
galleries. (This is of interest at the moment due to Brickshelfs imminent
closure.) Ive written a quick hack to accomplish the same thing on Mac OS X.
Download bscrawl.tcl (7k)
This is a command line script. (Hypothetically, it may also work with Linux or
Windows if you have Tcl and tcllib.) I recognize this is not the ideal Macintosh
interface, so Ill write an AppleScript wrapper sometime soon that you can just
click when youre viewing a gallery youd like to back up.
Assuming youve downloaded the script to your desktop, open the Terminal
application and enter the following commands to move to your desktop folder and
make the script executable:
cd Desktop
chmod +x bscrawl.tcl
|
|
Now you can retrieve your Brickshelf gallery with the following command:
./bscrawl.tcl -m username -dir MyBrickshelf
|
|
where username is your Brickshelf username and MyBrickshelf is a folder you
have created on the desktop to contain your Brickshelf files (you can, of
course, provide a different directory). The script works recursively, so that
your Brickshelf folder hierarchy is reconstructed in the local directory.
If you only want to back up the contents of a particular folder (and its
subfolders), use a command like this:
./bscrawl.tcl -f 233717 -dir ~/Documents/MyFavoriteFolder
|
|
Where 233717 is the folder id you see in the Brickshelf URL for that gallery.
You can also download a gallery (either a folder or a whole account) by
specifying its URL:
./bscrawl.tcl -url http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=233717 -dir ~/Documents/MyFavoriteFolder
|
|
Use the -pause option to specify how many seconds to idle between downloads:
./bscrawl.tcl -f 233717 -dir ~/Documents/MyFavoriteFolder -pause 5
|
|
That summarizes the usage. A few notes:
- Both image and data files are downloaded (.ldr, .txt, .mov, etc.)
- Folder descriptions and keywords are not retrieved
- Existing local files are skipped, so you can efficiently update a local backup by reissuing the initial command (it wont notice changes to the same filename, though). Kind of useless since nothing new is going on Brickshelf now, although this could certainly be adapted for maj.com
- Multi-page folders are handled
- Basic progress messages are printed to the terminal
- Very dependent on Brickshelfs current HTML format
- It was written in an evening, so theres been negligible testing. Im sure there are bugs. You accept that at your own risk. Some of the code isnt very well thought out, either, but it works for me.
I hope some of you find this useful. Let me know how it works for you. As I
mentioned, Ill try to make it more user friendly in the next few days.
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jim DeVona wrote:
|
Download bscrawl.tcl (7k)
This is a command line script. (Hypothetically, it may also work with Linux
or Windows if you have Tcl and tcllib.) I recognize this is not the ideal
Macintosh interface, so Ill write an AppleScript wrapper sometime soon that
you can just click when youre viewing a gallery youd like to back up.
|
Heres a very rudimentary application that does the same thing for those who
arent comfortable using the Terminal:
Download
BrickshelfBackup.app.zip (26k; probably requires Mac OS X 10.4, as does the
bscrawl.tcl script)
Double-click the Brickshelf Backup program to retrieve the Brickshelf gallery
you are currently viewing in Safari. (In other words, first go to the Brickshelf
page you want to download - either a user gallery or a folder - and then launch
this little app.) The program will ask you where to save the backup. It will
then appear to do nothing while it downloads the gallery. In the meantime you
may safely close or navigate away from the page in Safari. An alert will
announce when the backup is complete.
I recommend the command line version because of its greater flexibility and the
fact that you can monitor the progress messages. Were there more time, I might
invest more effort in the interface. As it stands, I hope this is useful.
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jim DeVona wrote:
|
As it stands, I hope this is
useful.
|
Whoa, Jim, this was awesome. Thanks so much:-)
JOHN
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Thanks for that Jim. I got the script working for user backup, and Peter
Bartfai (the author of the original script) also got one working for user backup
(before seeing my email that Id gotten it working). However, while I havent
looked at Peters yet, mine definitely appears more difficult to use than yours.
It requires wget (which Mac OSX doesnt ship with), so it would have to be
distributed in a DMG for Mac users.
Ill probably post the scripts somewhere anyway, so that at least Linux people
can them it if they so desire.
The original script grabbed all .ldr, .mpd, and .dat files from all of
Brickshelf, and I ran that last night, so at least none of the CAD models will
be lost. I dont really have the ability to host them at the moment, but I may
make them available at some point in the future.
--Travis
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Travis Cobbs wrote:
|
Thanks for that Jim. I got the script working for user backup, and Peter
Bartfai (the author of the original script) also got one working for user
backup (before seeing my email that Id gotten it working). However, while I
havent looked at Peters yet, mine definitely appears more difficult to use
than yours.
|
Well, I had the advantage of writing it from scratch specifically for this
purpose. Its funny because I had been thinking about writing a Brickshelf
upload utility (like Flickr Uploadr) but
circumstances resulted in a download utility instead.
|
It requires wget (which Mac OSX doesnt ship with), so it would
have to be distributed in a DMG for Mac users.
|
On the other hand, Mac OS X does come with
curl, so maybe it could be
adapted to use that.
|
Ill probably post the scripts somewhere anyway, so that at least Linux
people can them it if they so desire.
|
OK. The more the merrier! (I think that Tcl and
tcllib come with some Linux distributions,
too, but I dont know for sure, so a plain shell script could be a useful
alternative.)
|
The original script grabbed all .ldr, .mpd, and .dat files from all of
Brickshelf, and I ran that last night, so at least none of the CAD models
will be lost. I dont really have the ability to host them at the moment,
but I may make them available at some point in the future.
|
Wow! I can see how that would be a useful script for testing LDView, too.
Speaking of hosting LDraw files - what exactly is the story with the
Official Model Repository? Is there any
such actual repository? If not, would this be a good time for the LDraw
community to implement the idea? (Forgive my ignorance if this topic has been
resolved one way or the other - Im just curious.)
Anyway, Brickshelf must be going out with a bang as far as bandwidth is
concerned.
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|
|
It requires wget (which Mac OSX doesnt ship with), so it would
have to be distributed in a DMG for Mac users.
|
On the other hand, Mac OS X does come with
curl, so maybe it could be
adapted to use that.
|
There are many instructions how to install wget and even some installers. curl
cant beat wget -m afaik.
|
Speaking of hosting LDraw files - what exactly is the story with the
Official Model Repository? Is there
any such actual repository? If not, would this be a good time for the LDraw
community to implement the idea? (Forgive my ignorance if this topic has been
resolved one way or the other - Im just curious.)
|
No official repository afaik. Last I heard was that we want to build it, but
that requires a developer with the time to build it!
|
Anyway, Brickshelf must be going out with a bang as far as bandwidth is
concerned.
|
Does anyone know the chances of just taking all the Brickshelf files and hosting
them somewhere else? Not brickshelfs functionality, just the files? That way
they can be left up for much longer than July 31st.
James
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, James Reynolds wrote:
|
|
|
It requires wget (which Mac OSX doesnt ship with), so it would
have to be distributed in a DMG for Mac users.
|
On the other hand, Mac OS X does come with
curl, so maybe it could be
adapted to use that.
|
There are many instructions how to install wget and even some installers.
curl cant beat wget -m afaik.
|
I didnt have any problem compiling and installing wget (although I did have to
change the default install path by hand from /usr/local to /opt/local so that it
would be in my pre-existing path). However, I suspect that most Mac users would
be averse to doing that. Having said that, here is Peters sh script (all 844
bytes of it):
http://www.halibut.com/~tcobbs/ldraw/private/bsbackup.sh
To use the above script, run it with the URL of the gallery you want backed up
as the only argument on the command line. I think it will only work if its in
the current directory when you run it. Also, it seems to only back up images
(not sure why that is). Make sure to put quotes around the URL on the command
line, since brickshelf URLs usually include a question mark, which the shell
will try to interpret.
Example:
./bsbackup.sh "http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=169512"
As mentioned, you must have wget installed on your system (which is there by
default on most Linux distros). This script doesnt use the -m option, and
could be (fairly easily) modified to work with curl. I havent done that,
though, and dont plan to.
--Travis
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Travis Cobbs wrote:
|
its in the current directory when you run it. Also, it seems to only back
up images (not sure why that is). Make sure to put quotes around the URL on
|
OK, if you download and run the script now, it should back up all files (not
just images).
--Travis
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | &tIn lugnet.general, Travis Cobbs wrote:
Boy, that is a lot more compact than mine!
|
Also, it seems to only back up images (not sure why that is).
|
It looks like its only considering links to /cgi-bin/gallery.cgi. However,
links to non-image files from the Brickshelf folder pages point directly to
/gallery/username/foo/bar.dat. (Ah, I see you have fixed this.)
|
Make sure to put quotes around the URL on
the command line, since brickshelf URLs usually include a question mark,
which the shell will try to interpret.
|
That advice probably stands for my scripts -url option as well.
|
As mentioned, you must have wget installed on your system (which is there by
default on most Linux distros).
|
For anyone interested, I can confirm that wget 1.10.2 builds on my Mac with the following:
./configure
make
make install
|
|
As Travis noted, though, if you dont have a /usr/local directory (as I do)
you may want to configure a different installation location.
For what its worth, I just did an informal comparison between this script and
mine. I timed the download of my account with each script. Keep in mind that
network variations and in particular Brickshelfs heavy traffic make this a
relative comparison, not an absolute measure.
cd ~/bsbackup-test
time ./bsbackup.sh "http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=anoved"
|
|
This took 24:32 (using the initial version which did not retrieve my LDraw
files).
time bscrawl.tcl -url "http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=anoved" -dir ~/bscrawl-test -pause 0.01
|
|
This took 31:20 to download all my files.
So, it looks like your script is a bit faster as well as a bit smaller.
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jim DeVona wrote:
|
For what its worth, I just did an informal comparison between this script
and mine. I timed the download of my account with each script. Keep in mind
that network variations and in particular Brickshelfs heavy traffic make
this a relative comparison, not an absolute measure.
cd ~/bsbackup-test
time ./bsbackup.sh "http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=anoved"
|
|
This took 24:32 (using the initial version which did not retrieve my LDraw
files).
time bscrawl.tcl -url "http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=anoved" -dir ~/bscrawl-test -pause 0.01
|
|
This took 31:20 to download all my files.
So, it looks like your script is a bit faster as well as a bit smaller.
|
Of course, I just tried bsbackup.sh again - the current version that gets all
files - and it took 32:05. Theres a little quicktime movie in there that
probably accounts for most of the difference as the MPD files are quite small.
So the actual performance difference may be negligible.
And now Ill stop wasting bandwidth.
Cheers,
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jim DeVona wrote:
|
As noted here, there is a BSBackup
utility for Windows that helps you batch download the contents of Brickshelf
galleries. (This is of interest at the moment due to Brickshelfs imminent
closure.) Ive written a quick hack to accomplish the same thing on Mac OS X.
|
Thank you Jim! This was great and saved me a lot of time :)
-Anne
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jim DeVona wrote:
|
- Multi-page folders are handled
|
Yesterday I realized that while my script handled multi-page folder galleries
(URLs like f=1234), it did not handle multi-page user galleries (URLs like
m=username). This has been fixed and version 1.1 is now available at the
same address previously given. The AppleScript version has been updated, too.
This fix has not really been tested.
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Brian Davis wrote:
|
In lugnet.general, Jan Folkersma wrote:
Very nice. Too bad theres not a Mac version (and I dont think anyone will
cobble one up in the next two weeks :-).
|
Actually, I have in my possession a shell script that does something similar,
that could be fairly easily modified to do the same thing. The author
specifically asked that this script not be distributed, though, so Ive asked
him if he can provide the modified script. This should run fine on a Mac or on
Linux.
--Travis
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jan Folkersma wrote:
Thanks for this! It works very nicely.
-Hendo
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | WOW great thanks:)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
> http://www.brickshelf.com/
>
> Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
> Please save your files to your computer.
>
> Jennifer
> www.peeron.com
Thanks.
Didier
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
|
http://www.brickshelf.com/
Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
Please save your files to your computer.
Jennifer
www.peeron.com
|
Great news and glad to hear it!
Grab stuff while the grabbing is good, folks--and a big Thank You to all
parties that made it happen! (Especially Kevin--and thanks for all the years of
hard work you sank into this!)
Play Well and Prosper,
Matthew
The Brick Detective
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Matthew Crandall wrote:
> a big Thank You to _all_ parties that made it happen!
> (Especially Kevin--and thanks for all the years
> of hard work you sank into this!)
Absolutely! I'm really sad to see Brickshelf, and all those wonderful MOC images
go away... but THANK YOU to having kept Brickshelf up and running all these
years, and thank you yet again for the window to have a last browse and grab
through the years and years of accumulated images.
How many Gb (Tb?) are in Brickshelf by this point?
--
Brian Davis
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
> http://www.brickshelf.com/
>
> Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
> Please save your files to your computer.
>
> Jennifer
> www.peeron.com
Thanks Jennifer for the heads up. Thanks Kevin for the years of free service,
and the opportunity for idiots like me to grab photos they foolishly didn't
archive.
Since I'm throwing a "Thanks" grenade, thanks also to Sean Kenney for responding
so quickly over at MOCPages, so that we still have a Lego-pure(except for the
Halo screen shots) site to host images and of course, smack.
-Keith (Thanks to myself for being so awesome)
R.I.P. Brickshelf
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Keith Goldman wrote:
> Thanks Kevin for the years of free service,
> and the opportunity for idiots like me to grab photos they foolishly didn't
> archive.
This struck me as ironic as I was helping myself to my faviourite 5
inspirational photo's from your gallery at the time. Such great work!
God Bless,
Nathan (hope you don't mind)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Hi,
> Thanks Jennifer for the heads up. Thanks Kevin for the years of free service,
> and the opportunity for idiots like me to grab photos they foolishly didn't
> archive.
Yes, indeed.
Thanks a lot for bringing Brickshelf back for a short periode to safe the
photos.
Brickshelf was a great platform for the community to share photos with
everybody. Thanks a lot for doing this, Kevin. A lot of my inspiration I got
from this site.
Regargds,
Barbara
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
> http://www.brickshelf.com/
>
> Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
> Please save your files to your computer.
>
> Jennifer
> www.peeron.com
Thanks to all of those who made this possible.
Jude
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jude Beaudin wrote:
> In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
> > http://www.brickshelf.com/
> >
> > Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
> > Please save your files to your computer.
> >
> > Jennifer
> > www.peeron.com
Awesome! Thanks for the heads-up Jennifer. I had all my stuff backed up, but
there are some photos (not mine) on there I would love to save. Just serves as
a reminder to us all to keep backups of everything. :-)
-Dave
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
> http://www.brickshelf.com/
>
> Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
> Please save your files to your computer.
>
> Jennifer
> www.peeron.com
Excellent news. Thanks to everyone who arranged for this.
Is there any word on the future status of Maj?
-Gaurav
(remove the capital S's in the email)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
> http://www.brickshelf.com/
>
> Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
> Please save your files to your computer.
>
> Jennifer
> www.peeron.com
whom do i kiss, thank and or send a check? also does anyone know just how
large "tera bites" brickshelf is?
ondrew
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
> http://www.brickshelf.com/
>
> Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
> Please save your files to your computer.
Okay, so we've got two weeks to scour Brickshelf for stuff we want to
save...assuming we're around to do so. I can recall at least three AFOLs who
have passed on, and I'm sure there are others. It'd be really cool if their
photos could be archived against the possibility that a new central AFOL photo
repository comes into being, and they can be reposted.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, David Laswell wrote:
> In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
> > http://www.brickshelf.com/
> >
> > Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
> > Please save your files to your computer.
>
> Okay, so we've got two weeks to scour Brickshelf for stuff we want to
> save...assuming we're around to do so. I can recall at least three AFOLs who
> have passed on, and I'm sure there are others.
Some efforts are going on at these places.
http://www.classic-castle.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11064&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc
http://www.classic-space.com/plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?54863
http://www.fbtbforums.net/viewtopic.php?p=331900#331900
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
> http://www.brickshelf.com/
>
> Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
> Please save your files to your computer.
>
> Jennifer
> www.peeron.com
I have noticed the file count has dropped by over 11,000 pictures since
Brickshelf has been back up.
I do not know about others but Im hopping to be able to view all the bookmarks
I have acquired over the years at least once more.
We still have over 2 weeks until the black ages.
Mike Gallagher
MIKESLEGO
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
|
http://www.brickshelf.com/
Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
Please save your files to your computer.
Jennifer
www.peeron.com
|
First, I have to wonder why it is that we are hearing this type of news from you
instead of Kevin. I dont mean to insult, but he has been conspicuously silent
on the closure of Brickshelf. I little information for the community to chew on
would be nice.
Second, since you seem to have some contact with Kevin, is a question. Would
Kevin be willing to turn over the data on his servers to another party? Im less
concerned with decentralization of community photos than I am with the HUGE loss
of archived historical and building references that go with Brickshelf. If the
pegged bandwidth this week has been any indication, he will realize that the
community is loath to lose it.
Please! A little communication! Let us (the community) know what can be done so
that this resource is not lost and can be properly archived.
-Duane
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In lugnet.general, Duane Hess wrote:
|
In lugnet.general, Jennifer L. Boger wrote:
|
http://www.brickshelf.com/
Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31.
Please save your files to your computer.
Jennifer
www.peeron.com
|
First, I have to wonder why it is that we are hearing this type of news from
you instead of Kevin. I dont mean to insult, but he has been conspicuously
silent on the closure of Brickshelf. I little information for the community
to chew on would be nice.
|
Duane-
You heard it from me because I posted first. :) This was public knowledge at
the time I posted. Past history will show that postings from Brickshelf
directly are few and far between.
|
Second, since you seem to have some contact with Kevin, is a question. Would
Kevin be willing to turn over the data on his servers to another party? Im
less concerned with decentralization of community photos than I am with the
HUGE loss of archived historical and building references that go with
Brickshelf. If the pegged bandwidth this week has been any indication, he
will realize that the community is loath to lose it.
Please! A little communication! Let us (the community) know what can be done
so that this resource is not lost and can be properly archived.
|
No one wants this resource to be lost, however I cannot speak to what Kevin is
or is not willing to do, thats a question for him.
I know its incredibly hard to have patience when each day brings 7/31 closer,
but until we know more, well all just have to sit on the edges of our seats.
Once we know more, we can try and put some plans into action.
Jennifer
| | | | | | |