Quickest OS X solution for backing up my LJ?

[digitalemur]

Okay y'all, tonight I wanna back up my LJ, since it's what all the cool kids are doing. What's the easiest OS X solution for that?

PS: If the LJ layoffs were karmic payback for my having laughed today when I heard that CDigix was shutting down, I am SO SO SORRY.

Comments

[thecatinthehat.livejournal.com]

why is everyone suddenly backign up LJ?

[siercia]

Another friend just posted up this:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=80934&package_id=244373&release_id=646096

I've not used it, so I have no idea how good it is.

[gee-tar.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't LJ give some sort warning before they sank completely? Also, wouldn't one of the internet archives have backed things up? Perhaps not in the best format possible, but the information would still be there, right?

[adularia.livejournal.com]

The internet archives won't let you access locked posts. I'm not sure they can even index them.

I am personally skeptical that LJ will just go away overnight. For one thing, LJ now has an even bigger Russian community than US, so it seems more likely that the English-language version will be slowly de-prioritized against the Russian. I'm still going to back up, and I'm thinking about moving to Wordpress with auto-LJ posts, but I'm sure it'll still be here in the morning.

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

Actually, LJ wouldn't necessarily give warning. If they can't even give warning and severance pay to their staff, why should they care about their users? I haven't looked at the EULA in detail, but I'd be surprised if there's anything that states that LJ has any responsibility in case your data is lost.

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

I assume that the internet archives would utterly fail to back-up friends-locked posts. Also, a brief check suggests that www.archive.org, at least, has very spotty coverage for livejournals.

I would also not assume a warning. If I were the LJ powers that be, I would fear that warning people that LJ might disappear would encourage people to move off LJ onto other blogging/social networking sites, while also discouraging purchases of paid memberships. In other words, it might cause a "run on the bank" in terms of social capital, thus pushing it under. If that were my theory and I were running the rodeo, I might well keep running it without warning until I had to fold suddenly, hoping to avoid a collapse altogether.

[nhradar.livejournal.com]

http://hewgill.com/ljdump/

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

Well, I used ljdump, the utility mentioned in the entry that r_ness linked to. It was straightforward and took me just a minute. But I assume you probably saw that, so is there a reason you're looking for something else? E.g. something that doesn't require you to use Terminal?

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

Their actions are a little bizarre; I know that I would grumble but pay up if they got rid of free accounts entirely and the fee was reasonable. LJ's worth a certain amount of money to me, if I can't get it for free, but I haven't been paying because I don't need bells and whistles. I assume there are a number of other people in a similar position, but the powers that be seem not to have even tried that before resorting to layoffs.

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

There's also the xjournal solution, which I just did-- instructions here:
http://antennapedia.livejournal.com/238132.html

The script makes you a nice index.html file with the names of all your posts in it. :)

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

Maybe. We would need to know more about what's going on internally to be able to definitively tell whether their actions make sense. For example, imagine that they have two sets of engineers, one here and one in Russia, with basically the same skill sets. It might well make sense to pitch one of those staffs and consolidate. Alternately, maybe their conclusion is that they don't really need much more coding work-- that if they cut costs, their current revenue stream will make them profitable. And assume that they also think that charging more for marginal users will actually destroy their community, thus causing the core users to defect as well. In that case, cutting personnel costs makes perfect sense, and charging more for the people who pay nothing would be highly counterproductive.

Or they could be doofuses. I'm not saying they're not, just that the decision to lay-off people while still offering some functions for free could be correct, even though it could be totally wrong.

[diamonddustshoe.livejournal.com]

Here I thought it was my fault for wishing I had some polite way to boot someone off my reading list that's making me freaking nuts (no one you'd know).

I've read a few articles that seem to say "it's not as bad as all that" so I'm going to just back up things for the sake of posterity and ride it out.

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

Point taken, but I'm taking it as a desperation move rather than a calculated one because of the suddenness and the lack of reassurances.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

some of the drive for secrecy is perhaps because giving hints and giving indications gets you speculated about and possibly mocked on sites like valleyinsider. I hear Yahoo won't even tell its own employees who is getting consolidated to which offices, in towns where it has more than one office, and people are chalking it up managers feeling testy because as word leaked last month about the layoffs, people got REALLY snarky about it on sites where one discusses tech company scuttlebutt. and if it's the russian brass making the decision, well, they're not China but their culture isn't so great on management doing a good job of communicating in order to prepare the workforce for changes....

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

i would really like to stay here but i do want a backup.

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

Oh, hm, I see what you're saying. Though I'm still puzzled by the judgment call of putting out a press release immediately but delaying the announcement to members while rumors fly.