The butterfly effect

[K-Dog]

Or more correctly deterministic non-periodic flow, and the lack of it.

There was a visit from the men in black a while back, and we lost some stuff.  Naked Athena was among the losses.  Our video on the server was deleted and our backup system at the time was lackadaisical.  That havoc and loss caused the Diner to improve, I made a backup system, but there was a flaw in my system.  When I encountered the post that used, naked Athena I loaded her back up from my local copy.
     My restore system flaw was exposed when our database was scrambled after I restored it when I wiped it out by accident.  I could not restore it quite right with my backup.  I've since fixed my flaw, and our database is restored with all posts now in categories.  Scrambled did not mean destroyed. 
     The only damage remaining is some topics, but not many, which have been split in two.  I consider that to be a minor issue, and I plan to do much more to refine topics and threads in the future.  Broken topics will be fixed.  Point now is that the Diner is better off now than before the database accident.

Two disasters resulted in substantial Diner improvements,  and I plan more.  the butterfly effect is in here somewhere.

* It was not a good idea to have a restore button in my tools that did not check to see that the backup location was empty before it erased the database to get ready for new data.  That button is now disabled.  One impulsive click was all it took.  I now take checking such things more seriously, I knew I should not have made the button that way I did.  But since it is only a button that I can see I did not think I would forget the danger.  I was lazy.


A few months went by and I forgot the danger.

[K-Dog]

I obviously have a new tool that can move topics between boards.  It works well, but it is not the only tool I need.  Another tool is one which pops individual messages between topics.
    Writing this new tool turns out to be a very deep dive.  It would not have to be, but I am integrating new tools into the Diner like my tools are part of the original software.  A guest user going to my new dashboard will not see what a guest is not supposed to see, even though only mods will be able to see the tool page when I bring it online in the first place.  An original file would have this security and be written to that standard, and so will mine.
    Learning how our software works 'under the hood' is mandatory for things to be hooked in right.  That makes this project a deep dive.  I am not just hacking stuff in.  I have to follow the conventions, and style peculiar to this software.