Kirk Tuck's Visual Science Lab Blog

Regular readers of Kirk's have doubtless noticed that his popular blog "The Visual Science Lab" in inaccessible today. This is no doubt very temporary; Kirk asked me to tell you that he's working on the situation and hopes it will be resolved soon.

[UPDATE 6 p.m. Central Time: VSL is up again, none the worse for wear.]

It's no fault of his. Longtime TOP loyalists might recall that the same thing happened to me at Blogger. Blogger is apparently entirely automated, so when some algorithm or whatever pegs you as a possible offender in some way, there's no way to do anything about it—in June of 2007, at least, there was no way for me to get in touch with a human at Google about it, short of getting on a plane to Mountain View and throwing a pebble at someone's window. The vagaries of using a free service.

I was panicked about it at the time—unnecessarily, it turned out. But it did initiate our move to TypePad, which has been our home ever since. TypePad isn't free, but it provides customer service. (Good customer service, too.) Worth it to me. At the time, Michael Reichmann at L-L kindly passed the word along to my readers, so I'm happy to pay the favor forward and do the same for Kirk.

I'll pass along any further news from Kirk, and I'll post a notice when VSL is back up and running. You can do Kirk a favor by passing the word along to any other photo communities you frequent: it wasn't something he did, and, he'll be back soon.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

MJFerron: "Kirk announced yesterday that he would be taking some time off for the holidays and would not be adding new posts until after Jan 1. If there is such a thing as good time for a blog to perform a technical meltdown this would be it."

Mike Hunter: "'At the time, Michael Reichmann at L-L kindly passed the word along to my readers'...which by the way is how I discovered your site. Now I've got to check out Kirk's...."

kirk tuck: "Thanks Mike. I really appreciated the notices. So did my readers. I am amazed it was resolved so quickly. I'm now looking at TypePad...."

Comments

[Pierre Munson]

Kirk Tuck has indicated that he will be on vacation until after the New Year. Once the site is back up, it is still worthwhile to check out his old posts but don't expect new ones until 2013.

[Kevin Purcell]

Kirk's last post on Dec 19th was "Blog Note: We'll be on vacation until after the New Year. Hope you have a nice Holiday!!!!" so he wasn't intending to post much in the next few days.

I wonder if Blogger didn't like all of the photos he posted in that entry? Weird.

RSS of course is your friend (especially as he does full text in RSS). It's cached in my reader.

[Daniel S.]

Awful timing, too---his latest post was about going on vacations for the rest of the year. I hope he can solve the situation soon, or at least push it out of his mind until the New Years so he can enjoy his vacations in peace.

[MJFerron]

Kirk announced yesterday that he would be taking some time off for the holidays and would not be adding new posts until after Jan 1. If there is such a thing as good time for a blog to perform a technical meltdown this would be it.

[John Krumm]

Blogger (and other Google products) can be infuriating with the lack of human service. I recently transferred all my posts to a Wordpress blog, which at least offers some support. But Blogger is actually easier to customize without having to delve into CSS and such. They give you a lot for free, but make you suffer for it if something goes wrong.

[Bob]

He did say yesterday that he was going on vacation until after New Years. I did think that the missing blog this morning was a little drastic though.

Maybe the Blogger automation system misinterpreted his notice to us readers.

Hmmm, why did I even look this morning if I knew he was going on vacation????

[Robert Roaldi]

Thank you, nice of you to do this.

[Ed Kirkpatrick]

Humans at Google?
Really?
who'd have guessed...?

[Jim Hart]

It's back (although Kirk is still on vacation) 4:45 p.m. Eastern

[Peter]

The old adage "you get what you pay for" rings more true on the Internet than almost anywhere else.

[Bill Stothers]

Kirk's blog pops up for me. I assume that means it's working again. But on TOP, everything following your disclaimer on the post suddenly drops into tiny agate type. I've noticed this before, but it seems to correct later. This has been happening for a few weeks as near as I can remember.

[Mike Johnston]

"Blogger (and other Google products) can be infuriating with the lack of human service. I recently transferred all my posts to a Wordpress blog, which at least offers some support. But Blogger is actually easier to customize without having to delve into CSS and such. They give you a lot for free, but make you suffer for it if something goes wrong."

John,
I actually taught myself the rudiments of html by messing around with the Blogger template. I kinda miss that, actually.

Mike

[Rene Theberge]

Mike,

The site seems to be back up now - 7:15 PM.

Rene

[Ooooh Scary!]

"This is no doubt very temporary..."

Well, of course it is.
Tomorrow is 12/21/12.

[Bryce Lee]

IMHO the only daily fix for me is T.O.P.

[Steve]

Get yourself a Bluehost account and do a self hosted Wordpress website. I run several blogs and it's the only way to go and it's cheap!