#i have the entire system running from our backup server so i guess

[nerdpoe]

???

!!!!!!

#i think the main office of my job just got hit by a tornado #i don't work at that location but a bunch of people said they were leaving their workstation #to go to shelter #and then the entire system froze and died #...i uh....hope my coworkers are alive. #just cuz i hate this job doesn't mean i want them dead the fuck #i have the entire system running from our backup server so i guess #it's just my location right now #and we gotta keep working

[solalunar-eclipse]

Scars You Can’t See -  Chapter 9

Chapter title: Final Blow

Word count: about 4000 words

Author’s Note: This was originally just going to be an apology for posting this chapter a week late, but now. Now @khinesthetic has made this wonderful, amazing piece of fanart for SYCS, so. This chapter is going to be their appreciation chapter. (Also, please check out the rest of their blog for more cool art!)

Warning for another panic attack on Shadow’s part. If I’ve written something badly in that section, please let me know.

First  | Previous  |  Next

...

Rouge paced back and forth in the old, tacky motel room that served as the current residence of Team Dark, the worn carpet muffling the clicking of her boots as she moved.

Shadow watched her through vaguely glazed-over eyes, thinking over the basic rudiments of a plan that the bat had laid out for them for the tenth time. The fortress they had in their sights was less than half an hour away- an easy drive compared to some of their extensive cross-country trips. Omega was given the job of getaway driver, despite his protests...unfortunately, a giant five-foot-tall robot was not exactly equipped for this level of stealth.

The two Mobians, then, would have to sneak into one of the most secure facilities on the planet, hack into some of their most secure files without tripping any alarms or otherwise having anybody notice, download all of those files onto their tablet, also without anyone realizing, and get out of said building alive.

This would have been an easy task, usually- the team would have taken it without reservations had it been an assignment from G.U.N. But now, Shadow and Rouge were both heavily underprepared and undersupplied, to say the absolute least. No briefings, no special equipment, and no backup besides Omega. Just them, their wits, and their powers.

And even assuming they survived and escaped capture on the spot...none of them dared to think about what their lives would be like afterwards, if everything went exactly as planned.

As it was, they had tried to get a full nights’ sleep, but they probably wouldn’t be able to get much more rest time than that if they hoped to stay ahead of G.U.N. and successfully complete the mission. So today was the only day to do it.

Right now, the team was just killing time until late afternoon. They thought (or rather hoped) that the guards would be a little more tired by that point, and if the mission took the right amount of time, they might even be able to escape into the night with relative ease. Rouge had planned it all out on the drive over, and sometimes Shadow was truly impressed by her level of tactical skill- especially since she had never had any sort of formal training throughout her line of work. 

Rouge really knew what she was doing.

As time passed, the team tried their best to remain sharp, but it seemed that even resting could become tiring after a while. Eventually, Omega stood up and looked down at both of them. “I have run some calculations. Your mental faculties will continue to deteriorate at a rapid pace if we remain in this room for much longer. This will in turn lower our possible chances of success. We must leave immediately so that our success rate does not fall further, considering it is already dismally low compared to most of our usual missions.”

Shadow frowned, rubbing his brow. Ordinarily, he would have responded to Omega by now, but at the moment, half of the robot’s words had barely even registered. Yet he shouldn’t even be able to get this tired, let alone suffer such consequences from a week or two on high alert.

“Ugh…” Rouge groaned, hauling herself upright. “Let’s just get this over with. I’m too worn out to worry about this anymore. We just do it, and what happens is what happens.”

“Agreed.” Shadow said simply, still trying to ignore the effects of his weariness.

Omega’s eyes turned into their ‘angry’ shapes, but it didn’t seem to be directed at them. “Your cortisol levels have been far above normal for over a week. This level of exposure is highly unhealthy. We must remedy this as soon as the mission is over.”

“Yeah.” Rouge muttered quietly. “If it’s ever over.”

“Studies show that negative thinking precludes negative results. The reverse is also true, for strange reasons unknown to me, as I am not organic. Cease your pessimistic comments, and we will drive to the G.U.N. Fortress immediately.” Omega said firmly, walking out the door. Shadow vaguely realized that the E-series robot had been taking charge more and more over these past few days, and that he’d also become a lot less...enthusiastic around the same time. 

While the hybrid didn’t know if Omega could be worried, the idea that he might be was just a little bit flattering.

…

The drive there was short, barely enough time for Shadow and Rouge to work themselves up into ‘mission mode’. All of the adrenaline that the former had felt last time was barely present now, replaced by a sort of frazzled sensation that made it feel as though every nerve in his body had been overused until it was barely even functional. 

They parked a long ways away to avoid the notice of its various high-tech security measures and just sat there for a second.

The team had been here so many times for various reasons: meetings, briefings, work parties...but this was going to be the first time they entered it illegally. (Or at least, it would be for Shadow. They both suspected that there wasn’t a well-known building in the country that Rouge hadn’t broken into, for kicks if nothing else.)

The robot left the engine running in case of an emergency, switching on his communicator. “Alert me if there are any problems and I will come help you. I will happily destroy this building for a distraction. Or to find you. Or even just for fun.” 

It seemed that Omega had still retained all of his violent tendencies, at least. 

The two rushed over to the entrance, making sure that the guards wouldn’t see them- a practiced maneuver at this point. Rouge carefully turned the two security cameras so that they faced the sky, all without setting off any alarms.

Shadow tucked himself into the niche that held the metal sliding door while Rouge tapped away on the holographic screen near the doorway. His suspicions about the bat having infiltrated this building in the past were confirmed when she whispered to herself, “Let’s see if the backdoor I left is still there...a-ha!” 

She typed in a code on the keypad: 4-8-6-7-8-9. At this point, the entire system automatically let her in- she even had the highest clearance to go with her fake account. Within moments, the door was unlocked with a quiet ‘whoosh’. (Ordinarily, there would have been at least five different checks to pass after this point to get inside, including fingerprint and retina scans.)

Rouge smirked at him before entering the building. “The code is ‘GUN SUX’, in case you’re wondering.”

Shadow could almost have laughed.

They didn’t need to sneak through the halls as much this time, since Shadow decided that it would be better to utilize a few Chaos Controls to get them past some particularly crowded sections. They couldn’t have made it past the ridiculous amounts of security measures- including automated gun turrets- otherwise. This fortress was one of the most protected places on the planet. There was a reason the President had been held there during the Black Arms invasion.

The twisted tangle of halls was specifically designed to confuse intruders, there were cameras to cover nearly all the blind spots, and guards passed every area by in two minute intervals. The hybrid thanked his lucky stars that he was with Rouge, since she seemed to be aware of every tiny flaw in the system, from a glitchy camera that hadn’t been replaced to which guards tended to slack off. He became more and more impressed with his friend’s skills each time she offered him a set of directions that worked without a hitch.

Once, they were nearly discovered, though. A pair of loud footsteps echoed around the metal corridors, sending both Rouge and Shadow into high alert. Quickly, the bat tugged him into an empty room, tucking them both behind a plain desk and out of sight.

“I guess G.U.N. actually switched up the guards for once, ‘cause this guy always used to be paired with another slacker,” she whispered as they walked by, completely oblivious to the two Mobians less than fifteen feet away. They were completely silent, unlike the guards at the old information warehouse- the fortress was much more important to G.U.N. and required a higher level of training and sophistication to maintain its security.

As soon as their steps had faded, the hybrid teleported them both to Rouge’s next location, which was even deeper in the complex. By now, they were several levels below the ground, but they still needed to travel farther to reach the secure servers that comprised G.U.N.’s major database.

Ordinarily, they would have used the elevator, but those didn’t have keypads, just card scanners. If any of the three had attempted to use their cards (which they wouldn’t have anyway, since the system kept track of who scanned their cards at what time) the entire complex would likely have gone into complete lockdown and they would have failed their mission.

Unfortunately, the excessive teleporting left Shadow’s Chaos stores running low, to say the absolute least. He dropped to his knees the second that they entered the main computer room, panting slightly as he leaned his head against the wall while staying out of sight. “You still gonna be good to take care of the rest, honey?” Rouge asked gently, brushing her fingers through the fur on his head. For a moment, he wanted nothing more than to pass out on the floor and remain like this forever, but then he paused, bewildered.

“Why am I so tired? I was literally just resting half an hour ago, and now look at me.” he groaned, looking down at his power inhibitors. He hadn’t had access to a Chaos Emerald in ages, so maybe that was the problem? His fingers brushed over one of the golden rings as he considered taking them off- that would provide him with a boost of power…

“No.” Rouge said decisively, holding his wrist so that he couldn’t release the inhibitor. “I’m not having you passing out on me in the middle of our escape, alright? It’s too risky to do that right now.”

“Either way, I’m going to run out of energy soon- wouldn’t it be better to get some more strength?” Shadow asked, his eyes narrowing. 

She tightened her grip on his wrist briefly to make her point before releasing him. “As much as Omega wants to come in and blow this place up...no. There’s so much more that could go wrong, Shadow, and I’m not willing to risk that.” The bat folded her arms, asserting herself as the one in charge...which she always was.

Shadow glowered, frustrated both with himself and the general circumstances. However, he forced himself to listen to her orders, since she usually knew what she was doing- an impressive sign of respect for him. “In that case, I’ll barely be able to do more than a couple of Chaos Spears. You’ll have to move quickly, Rouge.”

They walked among the stacks of black plastic and tiny flickering lights, searching for one specific computer to link into. Within a minute, the bat had discovered exactly what she was looking for and plugged in a cheap second hand tablet that she’d bought with some more of their spare money.

This tall black piece of hardware was part of a stack all the way at the back of the room, shoved into a corner and covered in dust. It looked completely useless and outdated.

At least, if the viewer wasn’t one who could recognize that these models were actually newer than the rest. The dust, the placement, it was all designed to let the computers pass underneath the average person’s radar and keep G.U.N.’s most secret files under high security, multiple firewalls, and the latest in antivirus technology. 

Rouge, however, was by no means an average person.

Meanwhile, Shadow thanked any member of the pantheon that might be listening that they were getting the job done now. Their resources were running low, so he hoped that after this they could go hide somewhere and get a job to survive. Hiding wasn’t ordinarily his preferred reaction (it had never been his preferred reaction, honestly) but it was starting to sound an awful lot better than the current ball of stress that was his life.

“Alright, we’re in.” Rouge whispered quietly, having used her ‘all-access’ password to enter the system yet again. 

The hybrid peered over her shoulder, curious to see what kind of documents she would discover...only to find that most of it was very confusing, to say the least. There seemed to be no sense of organization, to the point where he could barely tell if it was on purpose or just done badly. As a relatively organized person himself, he quickly grew frustrated by the complete lack of any sort of pattern among the various files.

There was at least one part done purposefully, though, because the folder Rouge wanted to access (labeled ‘requisition forms’ in the middle of a video section...suspicious) was blocked by a passcode. The first two tries- TOWERS and CMNDR- didn’t work. 

The bat closed her eyes and bowed her head. To the untrained eye, she might have seemed like someone in defeat, giving up at the first sign of a struggle.

Shadow knew that she was just trying to focus and tap into her skills.

Eventually, she sighed resolutely. “Let’s give this one a go.” She typed in five familiar letters.

M-A-R-I-A.

It seemed that his sister had touched many lives forever, since it worked. Rouge clicked through a few of the files, her eyes widening with each one. Shadow was certain that his own were equal in size, watching as G.U.N. detained people for weeks without trials, arrested innocents doing perfectly legal things, and pulled many others over on the street and forced them to submit to searches without reason.

In short, hurting ordinary people who they were supposed to protect.

It truly felt as though something sick and twisted had taken root inside of the organization, indeed, that it had been allowed (even encouraged) to spread and grow until it choked the life out of every positive reason that had ever been part of G.U.N.’s founding. All that seemed to be left now was a paranoia-ridden, overly-violent military force with little to no conscience or accountability for its actions.

Eventually, the bat closed the folder, downloading the entire thing onto her device. “Let’s go already!” Shadow hissed, hating the idea of staying a moment longer than was absolutely necessary.

“No.” Rouge whispered. “We end this here. Now. Today.”

Then, she maneuvered the folders into a different part of the server, and smiled bitterly. “They can’t claim it’s faked very well if it comes from them.”

And then the master thief uploaded that entire section of their database onto the Internet, through G.U.N.’s website and every single one of their social media accounts, with one short sentence to accompany it: Doesn’t seem like you’re very good at your job, ‘Guardian Units of Nations’.

Shadow grabbed her by the arm as soon as she finished. “Alright, now come on! We have to go, they’ll figure it out soon enough!”

Rouge logged out and unplugged the tablet, and the two of them rushed to the door and peered out of the glass, waiting until the guards had passed. As they rushed outside, the bat remembered to close the door in absolute silence. Then they hurried down the hall, moving as quickly as they could. Rouge flew and Shadow skated to keep the noise level as low as possible, the faint hiss of Chaos energy and the occasional flap of wings the only sound they made as they ran.

They took basically the same route as before, only using a slightly longer path due to the hybrid’s low energy. It still went well at first, as they kept hidden whenever any guards came near. At any rate, there were no shouts of “intruders!” going off as they rushed upwards, through the halls, and towards the exit.

About halfway up a stairwell, though, several things happened in quick succession.

Alarms began to blare throughout the entire building, and red warning lights began to flash all over. The complex began to go into high alert, although the doors remained open to allow the soldiers to get from one place to another quickly. Although the two former agents couldn’t see it, they knew that all important rooms (including the main server area) would have a set of steel guards placed over them by now, so it was good that they had already completed most of their mission. “How did they figure it out that fast?” Rouge gasped, startled. 

That was when they heard the stomping of guards entering the stairwell, heading downwards towards the computer rooms- and their position.

Shadow stumbled on the stairs, the alarms and lights and those sounds triggering his most horrible memory of all. The raid on the ARK had already been brought forcibly to the surface recently, so it was still a particularly raw spot for him. He faintly felt his friend clasp his arm and begin to drag him forward and up, trying to keep him safe despite the walls of his own mind closing in around him. Remembering that he had to flee, the thought across both past and present situations of get out get out get out RIGHT NOW powered him enough to hold on back and even begin to pull her along.

A pair of guards heard him stumbling on the stairwell and began to fire at them as they ran, forcing the two to dodge bullets as they rushed up the stairs. Rouge flew the hedgehog directly up a level of steps before letting him drop and hit the stairwell running, since they didn’t have enough time for her to properly set him down. The gunfire only added to Shadow’s confusion- that and the dark metal walls of the next hall left him blinking and dazed, struggling to recall where he was...or when he was.

This...this is the Fortress, right? No...but that wiring on the walls…

He grabbed someone’s hand- Maria? Rouge? didn’t matter, he had to keep her safe either way- and rushed faster, faster, through the halls and up more stairs, dodged the gunfire, kept running- look there are some doors, why are there doors on the ARK? It looks like Mobius outside- doesn’t matter- we have to get out so let’s go-

They burst through the double doors, Shadow breaking the sound barrier as he did so while Rouge tried to ride the air currents he created as well as she could. It took all of her strength just to cling to his hand so that she wouldn’t be completely blown away by the force of his movement. 

Shadow vaguely heard the screech of car tires and heard Omega shout “I AM ON MY WAY. RUN.” as they blew past him.

His heart was pounding in his chest and his ears and he felt too hot and he could barely breathe, but he had to keep going. His legs were shaking but he pushed onwards through the difficulties, barely even thinking. 

He couldn’t even see the mountains or the sea. His entire world was just the ground ahead of him and the hand in his own.

He had to run.

Eventually, Shadow heard a whirring noise, turning his head to see a helicopter bearing down on them in the sky. The sight of something even more obviously impossible on the ARK than the doors or the grass shook him out of his confused memories slightly, only to leave him out of focus and disoriented. 

Figure it out later, right now you have to move!

Bullets began to spatter across the grass, blasting from double machine guns mounted on the helicopter, and he heard Rouge- yes, it was Rouge, not Maria- yell something along the lines of “What the actual hell?!”.

Shadow didn’t want to know how anyone had ever decided that chasing down two rogue agents, one of whom could break the speed of sound, with a helicopter spraying the entire area with deadly, aerodynamic pieces of steel was the right way to get them back. Or the smart way, honestly. Already, the helicopter’s fuel was running low, considering that their engine had to be supercharged to keep up even for this long.

He rushed into the nearby woods as it fell back, not stopping until they reached the base of the mountains nearby. They crouched underneath a rocky overhang, and Shadow slowly worked to come back to himself fully.

He had escaped with his companion this time…

His unfocused eyes slowly blinked and he shook his head slowly, trying to drive the lingering images from his head. “I’m here, hon, I’m here.” Rouge said softly, and his ears twitched, trying to shake the nagging feeling that this entire situation should be completely different.

“I gotcha, Shadow, but we’re going to have to move eventually...I can hear them starting a search party.” She scoffed. “Stupid of them to be so loud when they’re hunting a bat.”

The hybrid took one deep breath, and then another. “I’ll be alright.” he said quietly, his unwanted thoughts finally receding into the background enough to allow him to focus. He saw Rouge smile at him faintly, squeezing his shoulder once before giving him some space.

A minute or two later, a stick snapped to their left, and both of the highly skilled, rigorously trained Mobians shrieked (in an impressively high register for Shadow especially) and whirled around, ready to fight. Both relaxed, though, upon seeing that it was only Omega, who in turn gave them a quick once-over. “You are both a mess and G.U.N. will be here at any moment. They will begin to sweep this area soon and we must be far away when they do so.”

“Where do we go now?” Shadow asked quietly, his mental capacity strained nearly to its limit.

“Somewhere. Anywhere out of the way, where we can hide out until things quiet down.” Rouge sighed, her eyes downcast.

None of them were looking forward to what came next- a long wait until G.U.N. gave up searching for them, cut off from all of their friends, where they couldn’t go by their real names or enjoy their usual pastimes….

….and that was if they were lucky.

They got back into their car, again, and set off down the highway, again, looking for a place to hide.

Again.

(Shadow was tired of hiding. Sometimes he found himself wondering, as Rouge kept an eye out for nothing more than a sheltered area to pull their car into for the night, if it wouldn’t be better to just give up entirely...but the sheer idea of G.U.N. winning, especially of being put back into stasis, was too horrifying for him to bear.)

He’d rather suffer a lifetime of fear and of looking over shoulders if it meant he could spend it with Rouge and Omega than return to the endless frozen quiet of a stasis pod.

And as they pulled into the woods and began to cover their car with a decent amount of brush and leaves many hours and two states later, he almost felt a sort of resigned peace. Knowing that they had done what was right and that he would get to be with his two closest friends for a while longer was...not bad, all things considered. Sighing, he lay back in his chair, one hand linked with Rouge’s and Omega’s hand resting next to his ears.

They could hide together, at least.

…

In the morning, he woke up to shouting.

“This is the Guardian Units of Nations! Surrender peacefully or we fire!”

Rouge stared at him, her eyes wide.

Shadow was frozen in place- he didn’t think he could have moved had he tried.

Oh, chaos.

#shadow the hedgehog #rouge the bat #e 123 omega #scars you can't see #sycs #team dark #ugh part of this got deleted twice so sorry if any of it's weird #i had so much i was going to say here but now i can't remember it :( #anyway #hopefully this chapter turned out well it was supposed to be the big important one #despite the cliffhanger the next chapter should be less stressful #i've been looking forward to chapter 10 for a long time #and please. if you haven't already done so then check out khinesthetic's blog. please. it's so cool. #(also shadow would never voluntarily go back to his stasis pod. if sega says so then they're wrong and that's just a fact.) #sol’s fanfiction

[aethersea]

fake married + poorly timed confession + the leverage ot3? or any component ship, i'm not picky xD

as it happens, I was already planning on writing a fake married fic for the ot3! so this is more fic than fic description, though I couldn’t really convince myself that any of these three would full-on confess in the middle of a con which is, of course, the most poorly timed you can get. but here you go and please enjoy, mind the cut!

for this ask meme, which is still open

Parker and Eliot crash a senator’s garden party, posing as a married couple so they can be each other’s cover while each one sneaks off in turn. When Eliot needs to take a quiet moment to get rid of the guards on the roof, he excuses himself from the conversation in the parlor with a grin and a, “Better go make sure the little lady’s not having too much fun without me!” This wins a round of chuckles, and Eliot rolls his eyes as he turns away.

Parker, a few seconds later and out in the garden, just blurts out, “I’m going to look for my husband,” and clomps off.Sophie, keeping the senator busy at the buffet table, turns her eyes to the heavens in supplication.

Eliot meets Nate on the roof once the guards are dealt with, and leads him down to the senator’s bedroom so he can lie in wait and be all spooky when Sophie sends the senator up to look for his watch. Parker, meanwhile, is raiding the senator’s office safe for something Nate can blackmail him with. It’s a tightly timed con, but Eliot has a good four minutes to get himself back to the garden before the house guards notice that something’s gone wrong on the roof.

Or so he thought—they must have better failsafes in place than they’d realized, because Parker almost gets caught on her way back from cracking the senator’s office safe. Eliot, who’s half a corridor away and only just done getting his shirt and hair back in order, huffs in exasperation and rushes to intercept the guards about to reach her.

He rushes fast enough that he reaches her first, and instead of letting him barrel past her, Parker grabs him and swings him up against the nearest wall.

When the guards turn the corner, they find the two of them passionately making out. Parker pulls away from Eliot and says, with a drunken giggle, “You boys here to join the fun? Careful, my man here’s mighty possessive.” She lays her head on Eliot’s shoulder, and he takes the hint and glares the guards away.

- - - - - - -

Eliot does not talk to Hardison about this. The absence of that talk is a palpable weight in the van as they drive away from the senator’s house. Nate and Sophie can feel it too, he knows, from Nate’s wince and Sophie’s brief but sympathetic smile. It’s not like Hardison and Parker are—It’s not that they don’t—Well they are, actually, but—

Eliot takes a deep breath and lets it out through his nose. Hardison and Parker are dating, and even before that Parker had really only ever kissed Hardison on cons, but Hardison isn’t possessive, no matter the spike of horror that flashed through Eliot at Parker’s words to the guards. He has to know that Eliot would never try anything with Parker, would never hurt either of them like that. It’s fine. It’s going to be fine.

Still, he’s deeply relieved when Nate says that their next angle of attack is going to involve Hardison and Parker handling the real estate agency, just the two of them, while Eliot provides backup for Sophie almost all the way across town.

- - - - - - -

That relief means that Eliot is not even remotely braced for it when, at the last minute, the plan changes.

It turns out that the mobster’s cousin runs the real estate agency. This explains why the agency’s involved in the first place, but not how, so they still need to get Hardison in there to do his magic on their servers. “Alright,” Nate says, “Eliot, you’re switching with Parker. The mob might be hiding the drugs at the agency, so keep an eye out for guards.”

Hardison groans. “Come on, Nate, I already booked the appointment for Mr. and Mrs. Dallanby! Newlyweds, they just got back from their honeymoon in Kenya, I—I set up the facebook pictures, man—”

“We’ll just have to hope they didn’t do a background check,” Nate says, and Hardison grumbles but Eliot hears keys clicking on the line as he switches the personas around. “If they did, you’ll just pull a Bogota Chop Shop on them.”

So Eliot has to gun it across town to meet Hardison in front of the realtors’. (Parker, making the same trip in reverse, reaches Sophie a full five minutes earlier, because she is a maniac who should never be allowed behind a wheel.)

Eliot and Hardison still have not talked. Eliot tries not to think about that as he pulls into the agency parking lot and Hardison hops out of Lucille to join him. Somehow he is still trying not to think about it when Hardison takes his hand, pulls him through the front door, and introduces them as “Mr. and Mr. Dallanby, oh were you expecting a Mrs. Dallanby? Of course you were, of course, why do I even—I guess we should go somewhere else, hmm, what do you think about that? Come on honey, we’re leaving! I’m so sick of—”

Eliot finally pushes past the weird anxiety that won’t let go of his brain and manages to say something empty and reassuring, and then the receptionist is nervously insisting it was just a typo in the system and offering them coffee while they wait, and Hardison grumpily allows himself to be pulled away toward the waiting room couch.

He doesn’t drop the act there, though. He leans against Eliot and—and snuggles up against him, and somehow Eliot’s arm is around Hardison’s shoulder, and something inside him panics and tries to pull away but Hardison grabs his hand and yanks it down and hisses, “Look the goddamn part!” and there’s nothing Eliot can do but sit there and take it.

They still haven’t talked. Eliot can feel the tension in Hardison’s shoulders. He swallows hard and tries not to think about it.

- - - - - - -

No one at the restaurant opening should recognize him, but Eliot keeps out of the serving area anyway. It’s not hard—whenever the owner comes out and says someone wants to meet the chef, he just snarls that he’s too busy and ignores the woman until she goes away. It’s a lie—he’s only had three days with this kitchen team but he must grudgingly admit that they’re on top of things. Eliot keeps an eye on it all anyway, making sure the prawns don’t overcook and the beef doesn’t boil, with only half an ear for the drama happening in the serving area.

Hardison and Parker are building up to a fight. Eliot does his best to tune out Parker’s insults, Hardison’s anger, and Sophie’s careful coaching on when to escalate and when to wait. He’s not on until later, when the senator shows up; for now his biggest concern is fixing the garnish on these flounder fillets. Something’s still not quite right––maybe some shallots…

The argument in his ear crescendoes and crests. Hardison storms off in a rage. Parker fakes a few weirdly convincing sobs. For such a wooden grifter, she’s surprisingly good at pretending to cry. It’s barely a minute before the divorce attorney sitting behind Parker turns around to offer his services. Eliot can practically hear Sophie’s smug smile.

Hardison goes back to Lucille, or so Eliot thought. When he admits to himself that he’s micromanaging the kitchen more than he needs to be and retreats to the pantry, ostensibly to fetch some carrots but really to cool down, he finds Hardison leaning against the door, fiddling with his phone and munching on an apple.

Eliot almost snatches it out of his hand. “Don’t take those,” he snarls. “They’re for the chicken waldorf, not for you.”

Hardison shrugs, that slow grin of his spreading across his face. “I’m a thief. What do you expect?”

Eliot rolls his eyes and shoves past him to get the carrots. When he turns around, Hardison is framed in the doorway, blocking his way out. Before Eliot can snap at him, he says, “Hey man, are you okay?”

Eliot raises his eyebrows, unimpressed. This is a long con, but not a difficult one. And he got to punch out three of the senator’s security staff just a few days ago. He’s fine.

“You’ve been kinda off these past few days. And you disappear the moment we break for the day.” Hardison doesn’t shrug or quirk a smile to take the edge off his words, like most people would. He looks steadily at Eliot, eyes gentle, and keeps his voice soft and calm. “You know we’re here for you, right? If you’re having trouble with something, or if you just want to talk, we’re here. You’re not alone anymore.

“Our mikes are off,” he adds belatedly, gesturing with his phone. “Just us here.”

It’s a special kind of courage, being entirely sincere with someone, opening yourself to the possibility of whatever they might throw at you. Hardison screams when Parker drops him off of even two-storey buildings and panics at the first threat of violence, but in his own way he’s braver than the rest of them put together. It’s admirable. It’s terrifying. Eliot glares, feeling his fingers clench around the carrot leaves, and knows that there is nothing he can do to intimidate Hardison even a little bit.

It’s not out of fear, then, that Hardison lowers his gaze and steps aside so he’s no longer blocking the only exit. It’s a concession, freely given.

Eliot has a brief, violent internal argument.

He can still hear Parker keeping the lawyer busy and Sophie advising her on how much to flirt, but after all these years of practice it’s easy enough to tune it all out and just listen for his name. He takes a deep breath, and then another.

“You and Parker are good together,” he says. Hardison’s eyes flick up, surprised but almost managing to hide it. “And I’m—I’m so happy for you both.” He doesn’t notice the way he ducks his chin a fraction until after he’s done it, bracing for a punch he knows won’t come. “And you know that I don’t—that I would never—Look, she’s your girlfriend, I’m not ever going to…to even try to…”

This whole being brave thing isn’t working out too well. Hardison is watching him with patient incomprehension. Eliot squares his shoulders and opens his mouth to do this right, but before he can, someone in the hallway cries out, “Girlfriend?!”

Hardison jumps. Eliot lunges forward to grab him and shove him into the pantry, so Eliot is between him and whoever this is, but it’s too late, there’s a hand reaching out and shoving Hardison’s chest, pushing him away from the door—

The hand is followed by an angry waitress—Jenna? Jamie?—who is utterly and bafflingly furious. “You asshole!” she yells over Hardison’s confused spluttering, “I hope she does divorce you!”

Eliot puts out an arm to block Jemima’s rampage, and she turns her look of absolute disgust on him. “Chef, were you aware this jackass is married?”

“Eliot!” Nate says in his ear, at the literal worst possible moment. “You’ve got incoming!”

“Married!” Joanna screeches in Hardison’s face. She’s not quite straining against Eliot’s arm, but she’s conveying through body language and intonation that she’s about three seconds away from violence. “And you have a girlfriend!”

Hardison’s face is absolutely priceless. At a better moment, Eliot would stop to appreciate it, but right now there are three mobsters rounding the corner just a couple feet behind Hardison, and they recognize Eliot from the real estate agency. “Mr. Dallanby?” one of them says, sincerely confused.

Hardison jumps again and glances over his shoulder. “Mr. Dallanby?” another mobster says.

The third one gasps. “You have a girlfriend?”

“He does!” Jen crows. “He’s a goddamn cheater!”

“Oh that’s messed up,” the first mobster says. The other two mutter their agreement. They step forward until they’re looming menacingly behind Hardison. The second mobster turns to Eliot and says kindly, “Are you okay, Mr. Dallanby?”

Hardison is stiff as a board, his eyes wide in a silent plea for Eliot to do something. Eliot, absolutely nonplussed, opens his mouth and closes it several times before he manages, “I’m fine, thanks. It’s—we’re working it out.”

There’s an unintelligible commotion in his ear and Jackie is starting to realize that something’s up. Eliot wonders desperately if this is a nightmare. The first mobster, who seems to be in charge, steps forward and offers, “If you need a hand, son, or if you need a moment to process this—”

“That’s okay,” Eliot says hurriedly. He’s trying to parse the jumble in his ear, and it’s not working but he’s pretty sure the main concern is that he and Hardison have gone off comms and not gone back on again. “I’m—we’re good.” He steps forward and grabs Hardison’s hand, pulling him away from the mobsters.

This, unfortunately, puts him right next to Janice, who declares in strident tones, “Oh no you are not! You have a wife back there, asshole, you can’t just cheat on her and expect—“

At that precise moment, the senator walks around the corner behind the mobsters. “I thought we were supposed to meet in the—Ted Dalton? What are you doing here?” Because of course, they had to be conning the one senator in all of Congress who actually learns the names and faces of every guest at his garden parties, well enough to recognize Eliot three entire days later and dressed as a chef.

The mobsters frown. “Wife?”

Parker, skidding around the corner behind Eliot with an audible squeak of tennis shoes on linoleum, says quietly, “Oh shit.”

#finx writes #leverage #leverage fic #leverage ot3 #I'm planning on cleaning this up and putting it on ao3 #but if I am lazy I may just put it up as is #I do rather like how it came out

[marlinspirkhall]

Tomorrow Never Comes, Chapter 07: “Not A Single Friend”

Content Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Chapter Word Count: 3,799

[Chapter 6] [Chapter 7] [Chapter 8]

Further CW: Major Character Death

 Light streams through the window, and Jim rolls onto his side with a sleepy smile. “Morning,” he hums.

Spock watches him intensely, and it’s only when his eyebrows raise slightly that Jim realises he’s trying to communicate.

 “The bond?” He croaks, pushing himself up on his elbow.

 Spock shakes his head. “It didn’t survive…” His brow furrows. “The planet’s restorative abilities did their job too well.”

 Over the next few days, Spock becomes more withdrawn. It doesn’t worry Jim, exactly; Spock always does this whenever they reach a new obstacle. Perhaps he blames himself. Hell, Jim’s been inside his mind; he knows he blames himself.

 Jim throws himself back into research. He scours every archive he can find, reading the names of wanted smugglers in this sector, anyone who could have disappeared here, anyone who could have a clue. If getting out of here is the only way for them to retain their bond- and their bond is the only thing which will make Spock happy- then he needs to find a solution.

 Jim sits near the guardrail, his legs dangling over the edge of the Veranda, and hears soft footsteps behind him. He turns, with a sad, slight smile.

 “I was thinking about Earth,” Jim murmurs. “Being trapped here almost makes it easier to cope with. Do you find that?”

 Spock gives a hesitant nod. “Earth was similar to this planet in many ways-”

 A huff of laughter. “No, I mean- I can almost pretend that being trapped here is the only reason I won’t see it again,” Jim whispers.

 Spock nods, and joins him beside the guard rail.

They sit in silence for a moment. The dark leaves of the forest rustle all around them; the first warning of the oncoming weather, and Spock wraps his arms tighter around Jim. When the first drops fall, they barely feel them; too lost in one another’s mind.

 With storms like these, eternity is hard to weather. Jim tries to keep track of time, but, if it was hard before, it’s impossible now. He would have thought Spock’s own, immaculate sense of time would keep him in check, but, instead, he wonders if he’s rubbed off on him.

 ‘Or perhaps I was never as good at keeping time as you thought.’

 ‘Well, spending time trapped in a time-loop will do that to a person,’ Jim comments.

 Spock massages his temples, as if dispelling a headache. ‘Perhaps we should practise your ability to block certain thoughts. It’s not necessary for me to know your every thought.’

 ‘Ah, but you love it.’ Jim kisses him.

*

 Once it’s repaired, they take the shuttle for a short test flight over the forest. They don’t dare take it further until they have a more concrete escape plan, but Jim stays in the front seat a little longer once they’ve landed, double checking every part of the controls. There’s a lot about this shuttle he doesn’t understand- it’s got features he’s never seen before: some are experimental, some are prototypes. There’s an abundance of suspicious and dangerous-sounding subroutines. A large file size piques his interest, particularly because it’s nestled within a list of comparatively smaller files.

File Name | size

 11292254qDefp.mp4 | 28.5TB

 11302254RsTwy.mp4 | 22.23TB

 11312254Ghtf2.mp4 | 58.334601151 PiB

 12302253lCmdp.mp4 | 21.56TB

 He stares. 58 pebibytes of information. It must be using all the shuttle’s available memory space. He searches through its parent folders.

 ‘Overseer Protocol: Active.’

 Curious, he selects it.

 ‘Admin override required.’

 He inputs Leland’s password, but the system refuses to accept it. Whatever the overseer protocol is, it was clearly intended to keep Leland in line. It takes Jim a couple of tries to override the system without the password.

 There’s a bleep.

 The video files load in their raw form: dates, followed by a series of timestamps.

28 Oct: 24:23:09

 29 Oct: 25:00:00

 30 Oct: 19:30:03

 The screen flickers, and freezes for a moment as the numbers load.

 25:56:03

 An error sound.

 625:56:04

 5625:56:05

 31 Oct: 45625:56:07

 He exhales. The seconds keep ticking up. His heart pounds in his ears.

 He chooses the file from October 30th, and picks a timestamp towards the end. The screen pulls up two videos, side-by-side. Two cameras. One of them displays the exterior of the shuttle, the other, the interior. The int. screen is pitch black, and the ext. is extremely dim. The only sound is the faint rustle of the trees, battered by the wind. He rolls the video back, and lands on footage of the three of them on that first day, unloading the shuttle. He clenches his fist as he watches the early relationship between Leland and Spock, and he considers just how far he’s come. In some ways, it’s a miracle he ever got away from Leland at all; and a cynical part of him wonders if, perhaps, he never did. Jim glances to the entrance to the basement with an uneasy feeling.

 Spock has moments like the other night- flashes of affection- and then seems to draw back in on himself. Granted, Jim never expected it to happen all at once, but he almost believed that would be it- one final mind meld, and he would be able to save Spock. He’d forgotten, of course, just how many times Spock had melded with him before. It could be that first times- all the times which were erased from Jim’s memory- are easier than the second.

 He assured Spock that he’s not trying to get him to behave more human, not holding him to Vulcan stereotypes or standards, or a strict section-31 regimen, as Leland would have. But, still, there are days where he cannot reach him.

 He watches as he and Spock enter the forest, and Leland begins to move the crates of power packs towards the entrance of the basement.

 Jim clicks the video off, and chooses an entry from the 29th. More of the same. Leland, crashing the shuttle through the Martian dome with barely a scratch.

 As for that final entry…

 The shuttle must have continued recording the whole time they were in the time-loop. The internal clock is programmed for the Martian 25-hour standard, perhaps because Mars Colony was the last chartered place the shuttle landed on, though the days aren’t nearly as long on Heirin- they’re perhaps nineteen, twenty hours maximum.

 There are perhaps six Earth-years’ worth of footage crammed into this one device. He wonders how many recordings there are of himself or Leland dying, and his stomach turns. He doesn’t really want to know, but the monitor could have other uses. He ends the recording manually, and switches to a new recording. He waves his hand in front of the screen experimentally. The interior camera appears to be built right into the screen.

 He disconnects the monitor carefully, and weighs it in his hands for a moment. It’s small, and relatively weighty. He considers showing it to Spock, but, after a moment’s hesitation, he drags it into the server room. He’s not sure if Spock would want to be reminded of how long he’s spent here. Not yet.

 He plugs the monitor into the console, though it appears to have some internal, backup power-source. The video files have disappeared- no doubt stored in the shuttle, as the monitor’s internal storage is comparatively smaller. Jim leaves it by the consoles for now.

*

 Jim is attempting to balance on one leg.

 “What are you doing?”

 “I’m trying to see if I can build up-” Jim falls over with a cry. “- Muscle,” he hisses, rubbing his hamstring with a grimace. He stands back up, and resumes the position. “We still don’t know if our bodies are entirely replaced each morning, or if it only happens when one of us is injured.” He poses. “How does my butt look?”

 “The same as usual,” Spock says, dryly.

“Well, it’s early days,” Jim shrugs.

 Spock hesitates, then steps a little closer. “I doubt it’s possible for you to gain much more… ‘muscle’ in this particular area,” he says, tactfully.

 Jim shoots him a glare over his shoulder, and promptly overbalances. “There’s that Vulcan tact, I see.”

 “This could help prove it, once and for all.”

 “It is futile to attempt to prove something which runs so contrary to the laws of physics-”

 Jim grabs his hand, and, with one sharp tug, Spock lands in the mud beside him, and they bump heads.

 “Law of gravity,” Jim says, sheepishly, as he rubs his nose.

 As far as he can tell, their bodies seem incapable of going through any kind of change. Gaining/losing weight, scarring, telepathic bonds- none of them seem to stick. They really do seem to regenerate each morning, without exception, though the rest of their surroundings wither. And we’ll never age. It’s practically immortality, Jim thinks.

 If only we weren’t stuck here.

*

 The next time Spock melds with him, a bond forms almost immediately, as it did before.

 ‘I guess that means we’re exceptionally compatible.’

 Spock tilts his head. ‘We know each other well. A bond is an inevitable side effect.’

 ‘That’s what I said!’

 Despite its futility, Jim convinces Spock to bond with him again. And again. It becomes a strange sort of game, a dance; to go to sleep each evening aware of the other, with the ability to broadcast their every thought into the others’ head, and renew it each morning.

 ‘Are you familiar with Greek mythology?’ Jim asks. Spock appears in front of him, stern and disapproving.

 ‘If I were not, I could get the information from your mind.’

 ‘Right,’ Jim laughs. ‘At first, I thought we might be living the life of Sisyphus, cursed to roll the same boulder up the hill every day. But, every time I look at you, the story of Tantalus comes to mind.’

 Spock’s eyebrows twitch. The landscape shifts, until Jim is standing neck-deep in water, watching ripples on the surface of a great lake. Spock stands on the shore.

 A large willow tree looms over Jim, its leaves a delicate, olive-leaf green. Something flutters across his face, pale pink and soft. A single petal. Jim smiles serenely, and glances at the underside of the tree. Improbably- and, perhaps, illogically- it is covered with cherry blossoms, the like he hasn’t seen since Earth.

 “Which am I, Jim?” Spock says, in a booming whisper. His voice echoes all around him, syllables melting into great, crashing waves. “The water you can never stoop to drink, or the fruit which is just out of reach?”

 Jim focuses on the falling petals, their delicate red hue looking less familiar by the moment, and contemplates their similarity to the rocks on Heirin. Everything about this planet is overpowering: drenching, seeping into them, even in these stolen moments of serenity. Jim knows better than most how easily alliances can be shattered by violence, and, reaching out, he touches one of the petals.

 “Neither,” he answers. He takes a deep breath. “I know what you’re scared of- that I, like Leland, view you as a prize to be won- but I don’t.” He considers for a moment. “But, I do need you. You are only like the water because I need you to sustain me. Only like the fruit because I’m willing to wait for you to fall. This… Time loop, this trap we’re caught in- I wouldn’t be able to survive it without you. You’ve demonstrated that, time and time again.”

 As he’s talking, the water level shrinks to his waist.

 “I don’t want to be trapped here, but there is one benefit- it gives me time to wait.”

 Spock blinks. “For what?”

 “You.”

 Spock reaches out, and catches a falling petal. “You could be waiting for a long time.”

 The echo of laughter. “As far as we know, we have eternity.” He holds his hand out, and Spock appears next to him. He wraps his arms around his shoulders and kisses him slowly.

 They’re so deep in the meld that it takes daybreak to pull them out of it. Jim wakes up in bed blinking in the light. Spock is curled on his side next to him, his hand outstretched towards Jim’s forehead. It’s almost easy to believe that he fell asleep this way.

 He reaches out, and cards a hand through Spock’s hair. For a moment, he allows himself to pretend that they’re just two lovers, lying together on a lazy Sunday morning with no responsibilities, and nothing else to do. But, it isn’t Sunday, and, somewhere below them, Leland is waking, too.

 He kisses Spock’s wrist. He twitches in his sleep, his brows pulling together, perhaps sensing Jim’s troubled thoughts. Jim rises, and hurries downstairs as quietly as he can without sacrificing speed.

 Leland’s “rise and shine” doesn’t have time to fall from his lips.

*

 Jim spends a pleasant morning with Spock before returning to the server room for his usual dig through The Klingon archives. His Klingon has gotten really good recently, and he’s sure there must be something he’s overlooked in the top-secret war files. As he goes to input the now-familiar sequence, something catches his eye in front of him.

 ‘Mars-Colony gang members reported missing […] with the exception of T’Gar Taag, who was apprehended last Tuesday-”

 His eyes widen, and he leans back in his chair, eyes darting around the printings and clippings laid out on the walls.

  ‘Crash-landing results in bloodbath […] sole survivor, Lewis McAllister-’

 Sole survivor. Jim reaches forwards, bringing up the scribbled translations of the Klingon tomes he was able to piece together. It’s only legend.

 A time loop, sparked by the spilling of innocent blood.

 A hazy memory from that first night. Perhaps it’s so hazy because it’s the last thing he remembers before he was murdered: Leland, sitting opposite him in an unknown cave, firelight painting his face, and the walls, a deep, intense red. “When the battle ended, there wasn’t a single enemy left.”

 “And not a single friend, either,” Jim had joked.

 He’s not laughing now. He sits in the server room for a moment, hands trembling as he contemplates his next move. Then, he rises, tears the clippings from the wall, and heads for the door. On his way out, he doubles back, and grabs the monitor which he tore from the shuttle, hugging it to his chest as he runs through the beginnings of rain.

 He enters the stronghold through the main entrance, and enters the central hall. Spock is upstairs, meditating. After a moment’s deliberation, Jim stashes the print-outs under the cushions of the sofa. As for the monitor…

 He grabs an axe from the wall, and steps into the downstairs bathroom.

 The shower runs. It provides an interesting background to Jim’s conversation with himself. The green light paints his face a sickly sheen, and he looks almost… Undead. It’s not entirely inappropriate, he thinks grimly, as he sets the axe and the monitor in the tub, and hits record.

*

 Spock wakes up alone, which isn’t entirely unusual, but he feels strangely uneasy.

 Downstairs, Jim sits at the dining table, papers laid out all around him, as is customary for one of their escape-planning sessions; although it’s been a while since they’ve had one. The change in their surroundings is immediately apparent.

 “You’ve redecorated,” Spock observes, lightly.

 The remaining knives, weapons and tools have vanished from the walls, and Jim gives him a strange smile. “I thought we could use some… Variety.”

 Spock lifts an eyebrow, and settles in the chair opposite him. He only needs to study his face for a moment.

 “You’ve found a way for us to leave,” he realises.

 “No,” Jim closes his eyes. “Not us, exactly…”

 Jim points to one of the headlines, then the others, and begins to explain. As he listens, Spock’s heart begins to pound in his chest, and he struggles to remain outwardly calm. He feels every bit as trapped as he did that first night, when Leland had pointed a phaser at him.

 He remembers the clatter as the power pack had fallen into the gap in the ceiling, and his eyes dart, momentarily, upwards.

 “- But,” Jim catches his breath, “There’s another option.” He swallows. “We could stay here, together. I know I’ve said it before, but- we don’t need to eat. We don’t even, technically, need to sleep. That’s paradise, to some people. Maybe as close to it as we’re ever going to get. We’d never get old, and we could live our lives in relative comfort, until one or both of us was ready to…” He swallows. “Leave.”

 Spock’s face twitches. The idea is almost tempting. Except...

 “Rise and shine, campers!”

 He turns to the door. “There will always be Leland.”

 “A small price to pay for paradise,” Jim says.

 Spock purses his lips, and begins to rise from his seat.

 “No.” Jim pushes his chair back, and places a hand over Spock’s. “Allow me.”

 Spock slumps, and watches as Jim exits onto the Veranda.

 Footsteps, quickly, down the stairs.

 Voices. A scuffle.

 A body hits the ground.

 Outside, Jim drags Leland’s body towards the forest, and Spock watches them until they’re out of sight.

 He sits. He sits and contemplates, for how long, he does not know.

 He considers everything that Jim had told him. With his strength, it would be easy to kill Leland with his bare hands. But, Jim? If the man turned on him, he would certainly have the physical strength to defend himself, but there are other factors to consider.

 “Theoretically, if we’re here long enough… Axes will blunt. Knives will wear down.”

 They would have to kill Leland with their bare hands, day after day after day. And- if ever Jim got bored of him, as humans are wont to do- he would have to rid himself of Spock in the same, clumsy way. Vulcans are patient, Leland had said. But, he was raised by humans, and he has murdered his fathers too many times to cling onto any concept of remorse. For surely- surely- somewhere, after years of two-person solitude in this desert of companionship, Jim will tire of a world where the only person to quench his thirst is a Vulcan. Spock can foresee it with almost-perfect clarity: a day where Jim will bore, and he will only be able to repay him in blood.

 As if moved by some external force, Spock hurries upstairs, and retrieves one of the empty phasers which Leland had left in the third drawer of the nightstand. Then, he returns downstairs, and pushes one of the dining chairs to the center of the room.

 He climbs onto it. Blindly, he reaches into the gap in the ceiling, searching for the power pack which Leland had lost, yesterday and so many years ago. After all this time, there’s no guarantee that it will still work, and a part of him hopes that it won’t.

 So much has changed since that first night. In many ways, they have become complacent of the danger Leland poses to them, a danger which is very likely to return.

 And, there are so many ways that it could go wrong. If, one day, either one of them forgets to kill Leland, he could kill one or both of them instead. They have already been clumsy too many times. If it happens again, and Leland succeeds in killing one of them by mistake, they would lose their memories. Even if a mind meld could partially restore them, it would put them at a dangerous disadvantage.

 And Leland need only be lucky once.

 There are other things, too. Spock appreciates an adherence to routine; he does not know if the same is true for Jim. And, when one takes into account the enormity of eternity, it may not even be true for himself.

 A part of him longs to put it to the test. To see how many eons they could go on thriving in this remote place. Never growing older, even as the stronghold around them was eroded by the winds of time. They could repair it, to a point, but, eventually, they would have to rebuild it from the woods that surround them. Fashioning their own tools as the old fell to ruin. That would certainly speed up the daily ritual of what must be done.

 A small price to pay for paradise.

 But, truly, how many times could they bear the stain of Leland’s blood? The man isn’t innocent by any stretch of the imagination, but, if there’s any truth in the terran concept of “purgatory”, has enough time elapsed to pay off his debt? At any rate, they’re not dealing with a world of terran invention, but it can’t be a Klingon one, either: in this instance, The Last Man Standing would be without honour.

 How long before the ravine to the East becomes full of identical corpses, as the clearing in the woods was once overcrowded with Jim’s? And, in truth, is still overcrowded. There’s no room to start a life together on a planet littered with one another’s bones.

 Mining the planet by hand if they had to. Perhaps they would even uncover the buried Time Crystal which keeps them trapped here, and a way to destroy it. But, even as he allows himself to dream, he knows it’s impossible. If there is any pattern to his life so far, any truth in the instruction given to him by Leland, it is this:

 Vulcans are patient. Humans are not.

 Most importantly, any exceptions aside: James Kirk is not. Jim, the man who bet the late Christopher Pike that he could graduate in four years, and have command of his own ship in five. Jim, the man who cheated on The Kobayashi Maru.

 Still, the test was designed to be unbeatable. And, perhaps- perhaps- if Jim Kirk was willing to sit an unbeatable test three times- he may not be so impatient after all. Perhaps, somehow, through the combined stubbornness that’s sustained them so far, they will find another solution-

 The door opens behind him. Spock swings round, still balanced precariously on the chair, and Jim stops dead in his tracks.

 Without breaking eye contact, Spock slots the power pack into place, and levels the phaser at Jim.

 Jim stares at him, open-mouthed. Spock steps down from the chair, and Jim settles into a grim smile. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t run.

 They stare at each other like exhausted children, waiting for a drawn-out game of make-believe to finally end.

 Humans are impatient, Spock assures himself. He waits for Jim to make the first move, but he doesn’t even twitch. Conceivably, they could both stand here forever.

His fingers find the trigger.

 He is impatient.

 He fires.

[Chapter 6] [Chapter 7] [Chapter 8]

#tomorrow never comes #star trek fic #star trek aos fic #star trek discovery fic #spirk fic

[suzettepu76-blog]

Answered: Your Most Burning Questions About web hosting service provider in Delhi

The Web Hosting Delhi enterprise puts the entire picture with each other as if it have been too simple and effortless to deal with. online search engine optimisation services Delhi is a flexible internet site layout and SEO optimization company in Delhi. very last, the Hosting Delhi overview describes the characteristics and benefits of the Firm and permits the end users to buy the solutions from the Group. It can't be concluded devoid of looking at the qualities of the company. For transfers with the airport, take a look at the positioning with the airport you're arriving at, as you can ordinarily discover neighborhood general public transportation is a great deal more cost-effective. usually no person would be able to view our Internet site! When you start hunting for a hosting enterprise in Delhi, you'll notice there's if possible a substantial amount of cpanel World-wide-web internet hosting organizations. The web-web hosting firm could Supply you with with a site identify.

How To Make More Delhi based web hosting By Doing Less

Commonly, the location that sells domain identify presents hosting providers also, but you might want to check out thinking about other internet hosting programs. once you know the sort of small business it will be, you may Find a domain name from any on the web pages that offer area names. It can be done to acquire web hosting expert services from the exact same registrar or from Yet another company. for example, to be able to preserve your domain identify, You have to fork out hosting providers and domain registration fees on a standard basis. As soon as you've got made your absolutely free Taste, the next point to try and do is usually to market it to inspire folks to register in your checklist. usually there are some instead beneficial resources I will increase more about through the entire page To help you in obtaining a Idea of what is available to assist you triumph Or perhaps you happen to be trying to promote wise Living firm but usually are not undertaking and you hoped. When you are only starting up on the internet along with your incredibly initially website, you've quite a Studying curve facing you. any one aiming to commence an Online enterprise must have many sources just before it's possible to assemble and market An effective web page. E-commerce internet hosting is a favourite substitute For numerous on-line corporations. You could also discover other internet hosting services additional ideal determined by your prerequisites. Some hosting products and services give a refund need to they fall short to satisfy their uptime assure, but it surely won't Lower it since each downtime will set you back. With all the different choices provided inside the field, it can be overpowering to select the right web hosting company that fulfills your needs. That host presents a slew of offers and marketing codes you are capable of choose from. an ideal Flash Intro web site has an important function to inform regarding your services. Get your site on-line with a great deal About Internet hosting. there are many non-tech explanations for why you would possibly pick one host above A different. When it must do with deciding upon the ideal Webhosting company, on the other hand, the sheer decision can experience frustrating.

If Delhi web hosting Is So Terrible, Why Don't Statistics Show It?

internet hosting can be a procedure to upload a set of internet internet pages on the net and allow it to generally be obtainable from wherever and whenever. many Internet websites are employing Flash game titles as a means to promote their content material and solutions. a lot of paid Hosting services also offer you unlimited Area for your site, that may support position your thoughts at simplicity. chances are you'll established most browsers to notify you in case you happen to be presented a cookie, or you may commit to block cookies with your browser, but be sure to remember that when you select to erase or block your cookies, you ought to re-enter your original user ID and password to obtain use of specified parts of the Internet site and some sections of the web site wouldn't get The work done. When using that host, it's essential to obtain a protected and strong server. A Flash Web-site is a web site that's designed working with Flash in which the content material is easily modified to fit your wishes. If you do not know HTML you must use an HTML editor which include Microsoft Frontpage, Hotdog, or Dreamweaver which is somewhat more Sophisticated. like this Design suggestions for assorted styles of graphics are presented. Indeed, the system of some parts of the method is likely to be based upon skimpy knowledge and just mirror the most educated guess achievable. many of the Internet websites which have been designed using the Internet standards load faster, have far better search engine position and therefore are simpler to update all the time. Our excellent flash shows are exceptionally economical and match your organization demands.

Webji Hosting Pvt. Ltd. Address: Shop #27, Ajmer Rd, Tagore Nagar, Jaipur, Rajasthan 302021 Phone: [phone] https://webji.in/ Reseller internet hosting is extremely reasonably priced and regularly prices just some dollars per 30 days. that promo code for web hosting features an excellent range of capabilities. that provides some great applications for 1st-time Web-site homeowners who want support picking out a domain identify for their on the internet business. A hosting firm is a company that houses House over a server for you to retail store your internet site as well as the relationship necessary for Other individuals to entry and benefit from your web site. Though your hosting corporation may possibly give a complimentary area with acquire of the web hosting prepare, It is suggested which you sustain your domain name separate inside the party you ever ought to migrate. Some Net hosts give you unlimited e-mail accounts, which is a fantastic alternate for everyone who operates an on-line business. Not all web hosts source you with the selection to create in excess of one email tackle by means of your domain identify.

How To Win Clients And Influence Markets with web hosting services in Delhi

you're going to be responsible for protecting all sides of your site, which includes every little thing from your hardware to any purposes that you put in on your internet site. according to your company product and dimension, you are going to choose a web hosting enterprise with regards to the components stated beneath. Many shared Website hosts give limitless regular info transfers and storage, so other elements may possibly enable you decide on which assistance is most fitted for the organization. Moreover, The shopper help won't seem like stellar. So where the price of web hosting for any US customer might not be a massive offer, with the Indian customer it can be relatively a substantial sum. A cheap Indian web hosting prepare will not provide the processing electric power, RAM and disc home to cater to all of your necessities and you also are going to have to spend more of your time and energy handling the load troubles or downtime in a while. If You use a web page, you need to lessen your running expenditures and keep the fees as low as feasible. If area is taken from various enterprises, dns (nameserver) options ought to be created. When multiple web sites benefit from a singular server, It is known as shared web hosting. Make specified you end up picking a web hosting enterprise which helps you to backup your internet site files and databases within the celebration of this type of emergency. numerous the hosts we've outlined offer you a absolutely no cost area and have a control panel to make the handling of your web site very simple. Some affordable web hosting firms have bad purchaser treatment and fail to react to consumer requests well timed. Some Internet hosts will request their clients to subscribe for an especially prolonged interval in exchange in the really low cost tags. You furthermore mght want hosting services that include exceptional purchaser companies. excellent reseller internet hosting products and services will probably be the ones in which the deals are made and the costs quoted are also instead good.

[minrcrafter]

Vanilla Essence [PVP] {1.12.2} {Custom Features}

Vanilla Essence

Hi there! You have just discovered Vanilla Essence.

Just give me the IP: ve-mc.com

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Introduction

My name is Thanos (also known as Biskotaki in-game) and I launched this server back on May 2017. I am studying computer science in college and I feel Minecraft is a great way to practice on my programming skills. I have been hosting Minecraft servers for a while.

Vanilla Essence is a semi-vanilla server that offers a unique Minecraft survival experience. It's a place where you can peacefully work on the projects you had in mind and never had a chance to start. You can get on with friends, make a claim to protect your resources and get straight into work.

Unlike most servers, Vanilla Essence is not following the pay-to-win scheme. All donations come with rewards that are entirely cosmetic and have no impact on gameplay. You will not see OP guys running around with premium, overpowered kits and equipment.

There's a twist. The standard survival experience that Minecraft offers usually gets boring after a while, so I decided to step up the game a little bit. I have programmed a custom plugin using Spigot that adds a whole bunch of new unique and exciting features into the game. You'll see me talking about loot chests, events, iron coins and player shops in a bit.

Vanilla Essence has a small but dedicated team of three Moderators which ensure that the server is always in one piece and nothing "extreme" is taking place. We truly hope that this is the right place for you and your friends.

Details

The current map is 10,000 by 10,000 (trust me, it's big enough), nether and the end are both accessible.

PVP: Anywhere, Mobs: On, Explosions: Off, Fire spread: Off

Vanilla Essence aims to use minimal plugins yet offer powerful and intriguing features.

Plugins:

Vanilla Essence: Our custom plugin which offers most of the core features on the server.

Advanced Ban: This is our main plugin to punish all the rule breakers.

Core Protect: The standard block history plugins out there to keep track of grieferes and trouble makers.

Grief Prevention: One of the best plugins for player claims, you can protect your chests, make plots, manage land permissions or even build towns.

Votifier: We use this plugin to get notified every time a player votes for our server so we deliver the appropriate rewards :).

Spartan Anti-Cheat: Premium anti-cheat that aims to block most of the commonly used hacks in Minecraft. If someone is trying to use something, Spartan will know.

WorldEdit & WorldGuard: We use those plugins to setup protected regions and plots, nothing special.

Buycraft: This plugin makes sure that all donation rewards are delivered on time. Basically connects our shop with the server.

Custom Features

This section aims to answer this question: What's different from standard vanilla servers?

Loot Chests

Loot chests are normal chests that contain valuable treasure. Every time you mine a solid non-flammable block, there is a chance of a loot chest being dropped. There are three tiers of loot chests: common, rare and legendary. As you've probably guessed, rare loot chests contain better rewards than common loot chests, and the same applies for legendary loot chests. These mysterious chests can give you an extra incentive to go mining.

Events

Every hour you will notice an event is undergoing. Events are special challenges that come with great rewards. You can participate and try to win the objectives of each event. Winners are rewarded with the most powerful loot chests on the game, an event loot chest. Event loot chests contain a fair amount of iron coins and enchanted diamond equipment (tool, weapon or armor).

Coins and Trades

As you probably read in the previous section, there are two types of currencies in the game: iron and gold coins. Iron coins can be acquired by winning events or trading with other players. You can use iron coins to purchase top of the tier items from a villager market at spawn, where each villager has a set of custom trades. Most villagers accept gold coins, where one gold coin is a stack of iron coins (64 iron coins -> 1 gold coin). You can get your hands on some really cool items such as: special pickaxes (ex. break mob spawners), enchanted diamond armor, mob spawn eggs, end-game items and more.

Player shops

We recently added a shops world where each player can purchase a plot with coins and build their own shop (literally). That means, once you have a plot to work on, you are able to sell resources, tools, weapons, anything. The prices can range from ores (coal, iron, gold, diamond, emerald) to coins (iron and gold). Our custom chest-sign system is greatly simplified to make the shop setup less frustrating and enjoyable. Buying from other shops is as simple as opening a chest and clicking on the item you'd like to purchase.

Statistics

All players have a custom /stats menu that keeps track of their progress in the server. For example, one can find the total amount of loot chests opened. This menu also keeps track of deaths, kills and even a death/kill ratio. It can further be customized with a custom description and likes (yes, literally!). A custom description can be set with /description <text> and players can "like" someone by clicking on the emerald of their respective /stats <player> menu. There are certainly a lot of details here, but you'll be able to have a better grasp of those features in-game!

Leaderboards

In order to promote some competition in-game, we have placed leaderboards (armor stands with text basically) at spawn that keep track of the top three players with the highest count for each statistic. Furthermore, milestones such as "100 total loot chests opened" are announced in chat.

Vote rewards

Vote rewards can certain help if you don't have many resources to start with. Those who /vote for the first time are rewarded with a basic Starter Kit and by continuing to vote daily, just like loot chests, several resources are given. Voting is very important because it can help by boost our rankings in the server listing websites (higher rank => more players).

Battle Mode (in development)

Battle mode is a unique mode evolved around the combat aspect of the game. For the PVP fans, this mode is going to get players into arenas and setup fights with a huge variety of kits. Leveling system, experience, unlockable kits, coin rewards are all included. Stay tuned!

Rules

We have compiled a simple set of rules that all players must follow. This is essential so we can maintain peace and order on the server. We have done our best to maintain simple and reasonable rules.

Be friendly, promote a positive attitude and always be respectful.

Do not repeatedly send messages in chat.

Do not advertise other websites or servers.

Do not accuse others of hacking without evidence.

Do not use alt accounts for your own advantage.

Do not use offensive or inappropriate skins.

Do not use glitches and exploits to your advantage.

Do not use hacked clients or xray resource packs.

Staff

Biskotaki: Owner and main server administration

Passionate_Rhino: Moderation

GhostMonkee: Moderation

BirdOfLight: Moderation

What's next?

We are really looking forward into meeting you in-game! We hope you spend some quality and enjoyable time on the server. Here's what you can do next:

IP to connect with: ve-mc.com

Backup IP (if the first one doesn't work): vanillaessence.serverminer.com

Discord: http://ift.tt/2tKroXr

Website: www.ve-mc.com

Support Email: [email protected]

You made it, thanks for your time.

#Minecraft servers #minecraft

[itsupportandconsulting]

SkyViewTek Managed IT Services Allow Hassle-Free Office or Remote Work

Many businesses are shifting business models to incorporate more remote work. This move is welcome to many employees, but the change involves many challenges that businesses may be unprepared to meet, such as proper cabling, connection strength, and cyber security. Recently, SkyViewTek owner Bernie Orglmeister met with VIEWS Digital Marketing Agency to discuss some of the challenges, and the ways that SkyViewTek managed IT services help to make the transition less stressful. Read the entire interview transcript below, or watch the video.

Transcript of Interview: Mary Stewart (MS) and Bernie Orglmeister (BO)

MS– SkyViewTek specializes in proactive monitoring managed IT services for businesses with 10 to 100 employees. Can you tell me a little bit more about what that means? BO-Sure, so basically we’re an outsourced IT department for companies that don’t have one. We are proactively monitoring and maintaining their infrastructure. We have a tool that checks on computer servers and network equipment and reports into our server, and is proactively fixing issues before their clients sometimes realize there’s an issue. So we think it’s a small investment to really keep everything up and running all the time. MS– Right, you can’t afford to go down so, especially small businesses can’t afford to have their network go down. And like you said things happen behind the scenes that they don’t even know are happening until there’s a glitch. BO-Correct. MS– So normally this time of year you’re probably busy setting up new office networks and moving businesses into new office space that sort of activity and so what is happening with the Covid-19 restrictions? How are you helping your current clients? BO-Yeah, 90% of what we do is remote so we’re still monitoring those networks remotely; we’re still fixing issues. It’s actually more important now and sometimes there’s nobody in the office and people are trying to access the resources remotely. When the Covid hit we had a lot of requests from people saying “Hey I need to have, like, people work remotely can you help us set up something?” So, some of them, for which we had a little better infrastructure in place and some have remote access were able to expand the number of people accessing their servers. Some other people that were not ready yet. We had to say we need to–it takes a little more planning than just saying “hey turn this on” you know? It’s more complicated than that unfortunately. But the proactive clients are still enjoying our proactive services. And when some major disaster happens you know, somebody has a battery backup that the battery dies, you know, we put on our gloves and masks and disinfectants. We understand how important that is for our clients, so we’re able to do that for them. MS– Alright, well that’s good that you have that option and I guess, like you said there are not people in the office, so there’s less exposure anyway. Correct. MS– You talked a little bit about them moving into the home environment and having things they didn’t expect. What are some other things that you’ve seen? Some things that maybe they didn’t think about that have become factors and you had to help them with, whether clients or new prospective clients. BO-Yeah, some clients they just said take your desktop home and, you know, plug it in and you should be able to work. And unfortunately there’s more to it, especially if you have a little bit more complicated network, where we have a server which is validating logins for security reasons. You can’t just take a computer home and expect it to work. So we had to address that with certain clients that it definitely takes some planning. It’s not just “hey everybody go home and take your computer.” It just doesn’t work that way. And when you take your computer home, you know, you’re using your home network so now, you know, you’re using your Comcast router, a lot of people are on Wi-Fi at home so their desktop doesn’t work on Wi-Fi, and some people are surprised by that. Some people they are using their home computers which might not be up to snuff with corporate requirements. Some people are using Windows 7 at home, which is not supported by Microsoft, so it’s not getting security patches. They don’t know what their antivirus situation is, you know, so unfortunately it takes a lot of planning to get this done. It’s something that we definitely can do, and we will work with all our clients the best we can to implement all that. You know – a network, in general, is only as good as your infrastructure, as your cabling. So, you know, at the office if you have bad cabling your computer might not be as fast, your voice over IP may not work properly. Now you’re taking this home with unknown setups, unknown cabling, it just adds to the whole complication of getting all this going. MS– Right, and security issues, depending on the type of company that you’re working with, must be a factor. BO-Yeah, security is number one right now. I mean, you know, we – not just us, but all, the entire industry – expects a lot more security breaches with people working remotely, with patched and remote access solutions, you know. So, now you’re extending your corporate network to people’s homes without planning and without understanding what they have, so it’s going to become a big issue and we’re working with our clients to try to A) educate them and B) come up with a plan. We can extend some of our tools to their home computers and monitor those, and patch them, and make sure the antivirus is running. But, again, it takes a little planning. MS– It takes a little planning and, it’s like you said, things that they didn’t expect. Maybe they expected to have the issues with people running into the background, kids at home, and things like that, but not these technical things. They think everything should work, right, like you said because it does at work. It works at work, it should work at home. BO-Right. Yeah, and plus if you’re at home, all of a sudden you’re competing with your kids on Xbox, just trying to play Fortnite with somebody, and your internet is slow and, you know, let’s say you have Voice Over IP and you plug it into your home network and, you know, the quality of the call is not good because you’re sharing with everybody who’s locked at home with you right now. The new normal, unfortunately will require an investment in a little bit of an infrastructure and, especially if you care about your corporate network, you need to be able to control a little bit of what your home employees are doing to maintain integrity of your network. Especially if you’re under HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley where you need to have, when you’re under regulatory mandate to have a secure network. MS– Yeah. Wow that’s a whole other issue and that’s something that you guys, you deal with that all the time but having to do it on a whole ‘nother platform, kind of new location. BO-Correct. Yeah, it’s been challenging but also a lot of fun work with our clients. MS– Well that’s good! Do you have any advice? I mean other than what we’ve talked about, do you have any advice for a small business owner who’s trying to decide do they NEED proactive monitoring, do they need something all the time? BO– Well we think with the new normal now people are slowly opening up. You know, businesses are adjusting and trying to figure out how they’re gonna move forward so we think proactive monitoring right now is more important than ever because it takes that off your plate, right. So you don’t have to worry about “Oh my god I don’t have to plug in a USB in and do a backup of my day and then take it home” like, you know, we have a company who’s taking care of all that for us. So we can focus on how are we, you know, do we have a employees that are gonna work part-time or full-time from home, all the time, you know. Are we gonna make adjustments to the office space, do we need this bigger office anymore? Do we need to show stuff, you know, save some money here. So we can help the companies during infrastructure adjustments and definitely, you know, A) keep everything secure and just allow the business to focus on what they need to do right now. It’s one less thing for them to focus on and worry about is the IT infrastructure we can do all that for them. MS– Yeah, that’s what I mean there. Like you said the other thing is, that’s enough on a normal basis but there’s so much new, now, that they’re gonna have to explore and figure out. Nice to know that they can relax, and that they’re covered on the IT end, and that when things come up they have somebody to call. BO– Exactly. So, again we can, 90% of what we do is remote. We can maintain, fix, adjust remotely. If we need to go inside for emergencies we can do that, but I think going forward long-term planning you know, with how our business is adjusting for this new normal, are readjusting, you know, for Phase 2 of this COVID – let’s be ready to go, and hope the businesses keep running without having to worry about IT.

Learn About SkyViewTek Managed IT Services

SkyViewTek has a great deal of experience helping businesses by designing and setting up networks for office moves or expansions, setting up secure systems to protect data, and providing ongoing managed IT solutions. For information about how SkyViewTek Managed IT Services can help you focus on your business by taking care of the IT headaches, contact us today at 610-510-5006.

Blog is originally published at: https://www.skyviewtek.com/skyviewtek-managed-it-services-allow-hassle-free-office-or-remote-work/

#managed it services

[blaurascon-kzk]

KZK Discord Digest [Week of Dec 20 - Dec 26]

SUMMARY: Hope everyone had a good Christmas, or at least, a good Wednesday! The last round of Elemental Kirins - featuring the Teknika, Nova, Aeterna, and Ragnarok - is finished! You can catch these four and the previous 10 Elemental Kirins in Okarthel now - http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Okarthel/205/47/16 The Teknika was originally released without a Bento tail, opting instead for a Bezier curve tail to avoid warping. A Bento tail has been added - grab the redelivery if you need an update. There have been a few bugfixes for the Elemental Kirins as of the other day - a few fixes for the new 4 and a permissions fix in the Glacia (and Ender, if you haven't gotten that fix already). Drop by Okarthel and hit the Purple redelivery terminal to get new copies. The Teknika, Nova, and Ragnarok include VERY BASIC mesh bodies in order to make use of materials, especially emissive maps. No, we don't intend to start making mesh bodies in the future - the designs for these kind of required them. I'll be working with Kat soon to get some appliers out for folks who'd prefer to use their existing body. These kirins follow the same rigging format as the previous kirins - unrigged hands, legs, neck, etc. This is mostly to keep them uniform design-wise with the previous kirins, which came out before we adopted bento hands & rigged necks / legs, etc. Kat's taking the next two days off to rest and recharge.

______

Dec 22

KatLast Sunday at 5:01 AM @everyone Stick a fork in em cuz the Kirins are Done! Out now, are the third and final wave of Elemental Kirins--The Ragnarok, Nova, Aeterna, and Teknika!

If you've already preordered,  then just hang tight, and your redelivery should be sent to you shortly. And if it doesn't deliver within a couple of hours, just swing by the main store and poke the purple terminal.

Or if you're one of those folks with too much L and plenty of avs on your hands, I'm more than happy to do a manual send so you don't get nuked if you poke the terminal.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding.

As part of this sale, you can also purchase the previous 10 Kirins: Ember, Ender, Lumina, Oceana, Terra, Zephyr, Glacia, Alloy, Magicka, and Storm! @everyone Apparently at some point flame issued an update to the resender to allow the return of individual purchases. I'd completely forgotten about this--that said, hang tight while preorders are delivered!

KatLast Sunday at 5:58 AM @everyone seems theres some demand for a bento tail for the teknika. I elected to go with the scripted option because I wanted the inorganic shapes to remain rigid. I will patch in a bento tail tomorrow evening. (Technically tonight)

KatLast Sunday at 6:15 AM @everyone last message for tonight, promise. Please forgive the spam:

Just report any major issues in #Kinzart-support I'll review everything in the morning. All updates will be free, so please do not worry. Thank you all for patience and understanding.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need sleep.

KatLast Sunday at 2:15 PM @everyone Didn't get as much sleep as id've liked but I've got a lot to get done today.

Today I'll address a lot of reported issues: Alloy vendor has been fixed, if yours failed to send please message me.

Ragnarok Female body will be fixed, Teknika bento tail will be added.

The ragnarok and nova necks 'cut off' at the bottom. These necks aren't rigged, so not much I can really do about that. Adding rigged parts to everything will add a significant amount of work to my plate, and raise the prices.

Kirins predate my wider adoption of Bento hence why it lacks Bento hands/fitmesh legs. The final 4 Kirins were released this way to remain in line with previous releases. Future content of this nature (for other avatars) will use current/updated design philosophies.

These LE kirins have always been about designing unique parts, specifically for modding, hence their static nature.

I digress, Blau's been cataloguing issues in Support for me so I will be sure to review that and address them in an update either tonight or tomorrow. Thank you for your patience.

______

Dec 23

KatLast Monday at 8:35 PM @everyone I've been picking away at the fixes for the recent release of Kirin Elementals, specifically addressing the glitched scales for the Ragnarok and the lack of a bento tail for the Teknika (intentional but there was enough of an outcry that It seemed unreasonable not to comply).

I've also heard the cries for a stripdown for the latest wave. I will only be including a stripdown function for the Teknika, as its the only one of the LEs to include a large number of scripts. Ones like the Nova and Ragnarok only have scripts in the Static tail, head, ears, hands, and jaw objects(not the mask) I hope that is amenable to you all.

I'm also going to take the time to address permission issues for a few of the older Elementals. If you have noticed a permission conflict with any of the attachments for the previous waves, please post about them in #kinzart-support.

Lastly, I'll be addressing the lack of a proper unpacker, missing adult overlays(only for System body), and the other small stuff I typically packed. It was so late when I was packing things, and I was so tired from burnout that I'd missed a bunch of stuff.

Everything should be ready to go later tonight or tomorrow, depending on how early I log off tonight. Thank you all for your help in squashing these annoying bugs, and for bringing issues to my attention.

And, I have heard a few complaints about texture resolution issues for the Nova scales, and concerns about the bottoms of the necks having 'edges' where the scale prims cut off. As I've said before, these Kirins are static, and predate my wider adoption of bento/fitmesh parts. I wanted their design philosophies to be unified, so that each retains the same versatility as the previous waves.

In the future, when I make stuff like this for newer releases, Those will use newer features. On the Nova's texture resolution concerns: Be aware that those layers use the SLUV. It has awful texel density, and there's fuck all I can do about that. I wanted textures that could be used on both the SL body and my own custom scale layers so.. they're sadly a fact of life. Blame SL's garbage sampling and compression.

______

Dec 24

KatLast Tuesday at 4:36 PM @everyone The Nova, Ragnarok, Teknika, and Aeterna Kirins have been updated to include a proper unpacker, missing miscellaneous odds and ends. In addition, the bugged Female Ragnarok basic body scale weighting on the right shoulder has been resolved. The Teknika now includes a Bento tail(as the default unpack), along with HUD controls. The Teknika also included an AUC specifically for stripping down the non essential scripts once you've finished editing your avatar. Remember to keep backups of your boxes, or a scripted modded version in case you want to go back and make changes, or need replacement parts.

The Glacia left thighfur permissions have also been fixed, and a reminder that at some point in the past, I fixed the bugged tailspade for the Ender.

If you guys run into any more issues, pertaining to the performance, permissions or glaring visual issues like rigging or incorrect textures, please let me know.

As mentioned before, I'm going to work with Blau to get some appliers made and available for you all, as the BASIC mesh bodies included with the Teknika, Nova and Ragnarok were not intended to be anything beyond showcasing the materials and textures made for the body. Remember that our skins will fit any body that supports the SLUV.

Thank you all for your patience! You can retrieve a replacement from the redelivery terminal now. :slight_smile:

KatLast Tuesday at 4:55 PM @everyone Mk not.. entirely sure what's the hangup--the redelivery terminals are being infuriatingly slow. I don't know the cause, or how to improve it at all. I've already messages Flame to see  if we can look into the issue. In the meantime, just.. avoid using the terminals, I guess. If you need something redelivered, message myself, Blau or Straylight. We can issue resends from the server. :slight_smile:

______

Dec 26

KatToday at 1:41 PM @everyone I hope everyone had a wonderful christmas morning, for those that observe it, and a great Wednesday for those who don't.

I myself took a nice 10 hour sleep last night because that's the most sleep I've had in weeks. I'll be taking today and the next 2 days off, to recharge my social and artistic batteries and address the ever growing issue of mess in my house. My fiance's mother keeps sending her home with shit and we've yet to sort the first 3 loads she's sent us with because of how busy we've been XD'

However I'll still pop on daily to answer any messages, resolve any delivery issues, ect. :slight_smile:

#kzk-dd #kzk

[proibblog]

4 Things to Do Immediately If Your Kids Are Hacking

https://ift.tt/2qNn9td

Kids born only a decade ago have far more tech prowess than their parents. This false sense of technical skill leads many kids to infect their parent’s home computers and devices with malicious software.

Unless the parent has a job in a tech field, their children’s understanding of technology far exceeds their own. This can be dangerous in many ways.

So what can you do about it?

Parents: Take Back Control

Many parents might know enough to install parental monitoring software on computers or mobile devices that kids use.

Unfortunately, doing so is not usually effective, since anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of basic hacking tools can bypass parental monitoring software.

There are much more effective ways to control what your kids may be doing online, and you don’t need a PhD in computer science to do it.

Following this simple guide will allow you to regain control of what’s going on within your home network.

The Dangers of Raising a Script Kiddie

The rise of hacking movements like Anonymous, and countless movies and TV shows that glorify computer hacking, gave rise to the popularity of “hacking” among children and teens. For kids who’ve been nursed on iPads, this is especially true.

The reality is that you don’t need advanced coding skills or a college degree in Computer Science to enter into the shadowy world of hacking.

An example of this was 20-year-old Kenneth Currin Schuchman of Vancouver, Washington, who was responsible for developing a massive botnet that hacked over 500,000 internet routers across the world.

Federal investigators tracked down the attack to what they called a “hacking amateur” known as “Nexus Zeta”, a frequent poster on hacker forums. They sized him up as an amateur due to the lack of hacking knowledge he displayed on those forums.

Yet, Schuchman used existing hacker code and tools to build a malicious botnet the likes of which Federal investigators had only seen from more sophisticated hacker groups.

If you don’t think your little budding hacker could ever get in this kind of trouble, consider that Schuchman was an unemployed, disabled 20-year-old living with his father. He had no formal computer training, and no resources to purchase advanced computer systems. He was working out of his bedroom and messing around on hacker forums, using basic hacker tools and code.

Schuchman is now facing Federal charges and possibly prison time.

How Your Child’s Hacking Can Impact You

My family often turns to me for technical advice. In one case a mother in the family reached out about her iPhone, SMS messaging, and even her bank accounts getting compromised by a hacker.

She advised that she suspected one or more of her kids were interested in “hacking”. This fact raised alarm bells for a number of reasons.

If your child is into hacking, your computers and devices could be compromised in the following ways.

Pirated or Free Software (Trojans)

Having a child interested in hacking increases the odds of getting infected with a Trojan horse application.

A Trojan horse is an application that’s disguised as a seemingly innocent application. This could be a simple hacking tool or a pirated movie or game downloaded off the dark web.

It’s a dangerous infection because it can create a backdoor on the computer, modify files, or steal sensitive information.

And you don’t need sensitive information to be stored on the computer for it to be accessed. The Trojan can use keylogging tools to track your keystrokes when you type in a password on banking or credit card websites.

The Dark Web

Kids who believe they’re “hackers” are often the first to dive into the dark web. In most cases, this involves using the Tor network to download pirated music, movies, and more.

Unfortunately, used the wrong way, it could also deliver malware or other viruses.

If you’re accessing servers located within the Tor network itself, it’s relatively safe so long as the files that are downloaded are not infected themselves.

Where the danger comes in is when the Tor network is used to access the regular internet. “Exit Nodes” are servers where Tor traffic is funneled out to the web, and there have been examples in the past of unscrupulous exit nodes threatening the security of that traffic.

Exit nodes can attempt to:

Steal passwords

Inject malicious code into trusted downloads

Steal personal information

For kids, using the Tor network is just one aspect of feeling like a hacker. Unfortunately, they may not fully understand the ramifications of things like exit nodes or injected malicious code.

And if your child is using the Tor network to access any of your accounts (like your Apple ID or Facebook account) using non-encrypted channels, then your own accounts could be compromised.

How to Take Back Control (For Parents)

If you’ve discovered your kids are actively hacking, there are a few steps you need to take immediately to clean your devices and protect your network.

1. Lock Down Your Router

The very first thing you need to do as a parent is take control of the internet. That means taking control of the router right at the source, where the internet comes into your home.

On your own PC, open a CMD prompt and type: ipconfig.

Now, open up a web browser and type that IP address into the URL field.

You’ll see a login screen. The login ID is typically “admin”. If you don’t know the password then you’ve probably left your router wide open without any security. Unfortunately, this is a common mistake too many people make. If you can log in without typing in any password, then this is the case.

Make sure to set an admin password no one can guess.

When you first log into your router, you may see that your firewall is disabled, or set with low security. You should also look for any unusual devices on your network that you don’t recognize.

Check with your kids to see what devices they’re using, and keep in mind that smart home devices will be listed here as well.

Preferably, choose a security level that blocks dangerous peer-to-peer apps kids use to download pirated content, like BitTorrent.

Your router may also have a “parental control” area where you can strictly limit access to specific websites or sites that contain keywords. You can also only allow router access from specific devices and nothing else.

Most importantly, once you update your router password, do not provide it to your kids.

They might have been able to bypass parental controls on their computer or smartphone, but they won’t be able to bypass your router security unless you’ve used a short password that’s easy to guess.

For more, see our guide to securing your router.

2. Lock Down Devices

Most major wireless providers today offer the ability for parents to apply safeguards and other controls to how children access the internet.

Services like this let you do things like:

GPS location tracking

Limit screen time

Content filtering

Control what apps can be installed

Just keep in mind that resourceful kids who are into hacking will likely try to jailbreak their iPhone or root their Android so they can do whatever they want. You can install apps on those phones to check if they’ve been compromised. Check them at least monthly.

3. Reset Your Computers and Mobile Devices

Unfortunately, if your kid has been actively downloading and running hacker tools on your network, or downloading pirated content, the safest approach is to start fresh.

This is especially important if you suspect any device on your network has been infected.

This won’t be easy, but it’s the best insurance that your household will be clean of all Trojan horses and other malware.

Before you do any of these steps, make sure to back up important documents, files, images, and video to something like an external hard drive.

Restore all Windows computers to factory default

Restore all Mac computers to factory default

Reset all Android smartphones under Settings, Backup & reset

Reset all iPhone or iPad devices

While this may seem like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly, it’s necessary.

From experience, I can assure you that it’s very difficult to know which device compromised your banking credentials or credit card account. Cleaning up all devices is the only way to eradicate a particularly determined hacker from your life forever.

4. Reset All Passwords

Once your router is locked down, household device activity is controlled, and all of your devices are clean, it’s time to reset all of your account passwords.

You can only do this step after the cleanup. If any keylogger software was running on any of the devices prior to cleaning, the hacker would just recapture the new passwords again.

Make a list of all accounts you use, including accounts that have your credit card or banking information stored.

Some examples might include:

Apple Pay or Google Pay

PayPal

Your Apple ID

All social media accounts

All email accounts (especially ones used for password reset confirmations)

Banking accounts

Credit card accounts

Media accounts like Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon

Once you’ve finished all of your password resets, your entire household should be eradicated of the infection.

Additional Safety and Security Tips

The only way to maintain a household free from the threat of hackers is to follow a strict set of security protocols. Hold your kids responsible for these same rules.

The most important way to protect yourself as a family:

Don’t share passwords within the family

Keep individual accounts like Apple IDs or email accounts

Avoid saving credit card details into gaming accounts your kids use (like the PlayStation network)

If possible, don’t share computers or smart devices between adults and kids in the family

If your kids break these rules, take away their devices to show that you’re serious.

Talk to Your Kids About the Dangers

While these measures may seem dramatic, the effects of malware or Trojan software leading to a stolen identity and money getting taken from your bank account are much more dramatic.

Don’t wait until you become a victim. Talk to your kids about what can happen when they download infected pirated content from peer-to-peer networks, or use hacking tools that can’t be trusted.

Turn your child’s interest in hacking into a productive interest in computers and technology. Encourage their interest in computer security and cryptography, but make sure they understand the inherent dangers of hacking. And make sure they understand the dangers of downloading pirated games, movies, and other content.

Image Credit: marcinmaslowski/Depositphotos

Read the full article: 4 Things to Do Immediately If Your Kids Are Hacking

The post 4 Things to Do Immediately If Your Kids Are Hacking appeared first on Arewa Programmer .

from Arewa Programmer https://ift.tt/2Fn59Qw

#Tech

[elmoreelmore17-blog]

RankerX - bitcoin - 260

How To buy DeepOnion, Ethereum And Other Cryptocurrencies On-line: A Guide For Total Freshmen

Chrome Internet Store Ledger Wallet DeepOnion

However that doesn’t make the forex ineffective. Whereas, Electrum DeepOnion Wallet resolves this challenge as it doesn’t obtain the DeepOnion blockchain and the wallet will be recovered totally from a passphrase, called seed. 'Howells began mining something referred to as DeepOnions'. Python Blkmaker - A shopper library for the getblocktemplate mining protocol, written in Python. The client is a fully fledged node of the DeepOnion community, meaning that it can hook up with other nodes and assist verify and relay transactions, though it can not mine. 2. November 11th: Major shopper and server upgrades. For the full node my thought is to run a QBitNinja.Server domestically, together with DeepOniond. - It's a good idea to have a number of copies of this printed wallet as a backup in case you lose it. Upon getting a good information of how the DeepOnion trading works then now you can commit your DeepOnion to it. None of those had been concerned with crypto early on, but now there's tons of interest, together with from governmental agencies. For those who don’t fancy a bodily paper-based wallet, keep in mind that there is a ton of alternatives to safely store your crypto assets.

The one area when there may be little doubt that DeepOnion reigns supreme over Litecoin is the acceptance of the crypto as forex. To a new DeepOnion person, this data may appear daunting. You may then use this info as a baseline to determine if you must improve your hardware. DeepOnions are positioned in Purchase Sell DeepOnions | Prompt Funding In the present day internet wallet from where you pays your DeepOnion purchases immediately. For those who sell a service or product, you may provide customers the choice to pay in DeepOnion, which will grant you the chance to earn DeepOnion. Holding your wallet’s backup on the cloud may lead to disaster if that backup service supplier is hacked. If you happen to only have a backup in your seen DeepOnion addresses, you will not be able to revive your entire cash. Main DeepOnion exchanges and wallet platforms have begun to implement backup encryption programs, the multi-signature know-how and provide hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallets to secure consumer funds. Coinbase: One of many most widely used digital wallets is Coinbase. One of the layers will handle smart contracts, while Cardano can even run decentralized purposes (Dapps).

MyCelium, considered one of the primary on this class is a popular cellular wallet and has won awards as properly. Perfect money - DeepOnions adder software is the primary ever created software program on the web and by World Digital technology. Once more, you is not going to be the first (or final) which are behind on a day when all his DeepOnions away. “It is price reminding everybody that it won't be really safe to enter your private key or mnemonic time period to get a pre-current wallet into any internet site. Brian makes a case for DeepOnion long run. When a DeepOnion miner finds a block, it receives newly minted DeepOnions identified because the "Block Reward". Unfortunately, if a registrar receives a court docket order from a authorities, it could not matter what area extension is used. Can I view the status of my promote order? Remember the fact that in order to handle your DeepOnions with the Xapo net wallet, you will need to have an internet connection. The true Bob would possibly even have tens of DeepOnion addresses.

DeepOnion addresses are case-delicate. The one thing that has modified is that DeepOnion has change into aggressive to Apple’s own cost system. Because it gets tougher over time, the system is predicted to generate fewer DeepOnions over time. They had been more like future currencies, that can be usable in round 18 months’ time when the development team bought round to releasing Android and iOS wallets. Using the Custom Transaction possibility, you might be presented with extra choices. That is why it is necessary for us to discover other choices to make cash which is not going to interrupt our day-time or night-time job. It can be cheaper, faster and easier to use than unusual money. Are you able to guess why many such Exchanges are shifting abroad? Exchanges have themselves turn out to be a danger think about DeepOnion pricing with many occasions corresponding to thefts and closure shaking investor confidence and triggering sudden (and steep) declines or volatility in pricing.

$50,000 per day. Most exchanges offer a FAQ web page online the place the different levels of verification are explained. Some wallets are designed for desktops; others are better for cellular devices. There are a whole lot of DeepOnion wallets accessible out there in the DeepOnion world. So I went out looking round currently and found some of these. Hype has dictated that cryptocurrency contributors seek out assets for speculation instead of sensible applicability, making a challenge for the ecosystem to grow and sustain itself. On this page, you'll study exactly how to buy DeepOnion and store it on-line securely inside a cryptocurrency wallet. Currently, He serves on the Board of Directors for the DeepOnion Foundation, is Tech Contributor to Forbes Magazine, and Op-Ed Contributor to American Banker. The assault 1902 marked an taxable concept within the fragment of amount DeepOnion issue historical past knowledge in thailand.

FV: Being an entrepreneur normally involves a series of missteps before lastly nailing the best concept. In contrast to many different cryptocurrencies, Ripple designed XRP to be distributed by them to market contributors, quite than being created through a coin mining scheme. deeponion coin has created numerous believers and disproven plenty of critics. Low transaction speed limits DeepOnion’s effectiveness as a forex. In his article, DeepOnion Lightning Community is constructed upon DeepOnion’s blockchain experience, making peer to peer micropayment transactions by way of off-chain. That means you possibly can carry the system around and make transactions anywhere near a telephone network. * new DeepOnions, they are awarded by the community for a valid string. $20 billion (£15 billion) price of cash into DeepOnions, with assist in 32 international locations. Three. 256 bits' value of random knowledge. Should you suppose that is the case, be certain to quickly comply with the subsequent steps.Don’t panic! In the event you don’t back up your software and your computer breaks down, you lose your cash eternally. Once you have sent the money to somebody, there isn't any rollback. The validation is a fundamental bankable asset that is particularly fitting for theorists who speculate a rising within the affirmation and significance of DeepOnion as a method for portion and instead money. That's the factor a few secure asset. Moreover, the superior thing about this wallet is that it features much the same as messaging in email or Fb.

What’s the distinction between a hardware and software wallet? Even in the case of injury to your hardware wallet, you possibly can restore your DeepOnions simply with the recovery phrase. Trust, our legal system and property rights (real and mental) are massively necessary, and, in fact, that listing of army hardware helps fairly a bit. Along these lines, the excavator's( Pc processors) keep the system running. While DeepOnion's digital nature makes it appealing for e-commerce, Gallippi acknowledges that there are still some kinks in the system that must be ironed out. All they need is an android system. This implies you need to seek out out if DeepOnion mining is even profitable for you. It is like choosing every other service on the market. Kindly observe my arrows as indicated above to fill your Electronic mail, PASSWORD (should contain letter and alphabet), Tick the terms of service button and click on Proceed.

[to300leadershipjournals]

Week 5 - April 2nd & 4th

Digital Innovation, Privacy, Security, Sustainability, Positive Business

I attended the Michigan Undergraduate Consulting Conference a few weeks ago and this year the theme was “The Age of Information.” Our afternoon keynote speaker, a higher-up at McKinsey, spoke entirely about how Cybersecurity is one of the top things on every CEOs mind after the scandals with Target, Chipotle, and Equifax (which we talked a little about in class!). 

What we talked about in class today about the Panera case and if they were ready or not for the attack and they clearly weren’t -- it reminded me of the cybersecurity stress test our keynote speaker gave us. As he added more and more details to the plot, I grew more and more horrified. I didn’t know how to deal with this. Neither did many of my peers, I’m guessing. Nor do the CEOs McKinsey uses this training on, according to the keynote speaker. 

What we covered in class with Panera, Sony, and the city of Atlanta really drove in the point that cybersecurity is important. Maybe as business leaders we don’t need to know the technical coding behind our business’s defenses, but we need to know, in common terms, what’s going on. Firewalls. Encryption. Two-factor authentication and data backups and regular stress-testing of our system to see who can and cannot get in.

(No joke, the company I interned at over the summer hired another company every year to come on-site one day a year and spend that entire day just hacking into our systems)

Previously, I thought all the cybersecurity measures websites put into place were annoying. Having to have an 8+ character long password with uppercase and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters, and oh it also can’t be too similar to your previous password! Plus you have to change it every 90 days! My mother and I used to commiserate over the additional effort, but I understand now! My two-minute long annoyance could save a company millions of dollars, to say nothing of the intangible benefits in brand image, customer trust, etc. (#PRISMframework). 

In slightly less cybersecurity news that doesn’t remind me of the PCI training workshop I accidentally went to last summer because I thought the interns had to go too, I also really enjoyed discussing the Hostgator case! I feel like technology is blindly hailed as a sustainable alternative to printing everything without anyone taking into consideration its own energy usage. 

I didn’t know that half of the energy usage by a data center wasn’t even to run a data center, it was just used for heating and cooling! And that for Hostgator at least, they didn’t have any systems in place to check which servers were running, so they’d waste energy on servers that weren’t even on! But it was great to learn how Hostgator (1) cared about issues like this and (2) leveraged technology to improve its usage. 

Favorite Learnings:

When Professor Melville walked us through a cybersecurity breach, letting us pretend to be criminals and asking how we would have pulled it off. Crowdsourcing ideas from the class really broadened my perspective on how many ways criminals could get into a system as well as deepened my understanding of how a system works! 

The Sony case and how three servers had the password “password”

The Target case and how it happened not because Target itself was unprepared, but because it contracted a much smaller company with a much lower level of cybersecurity to oversee store maintenance, and the hackers were able to get in through that channel

Did not happen in this class but in my internship last summer, the IT department was secretly running a phishing stress-test on us and I FLIPPED OUT bc I clicked on their fake phishing link without knowing it was fake AND I THOUGHT I PHISHED THE ENTIRE COMPANY!

Shout out to my IT Intern friend though who had been dropping hints the entire summer by bringing up all these cybersecurity scandals -- honestly without his constant mention of it, I probably wouldn’t have been as vigilant with my emails or even realized after I clicked the link that it looked like a phishing scam

Philosophical Shower Questions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=88&v=MQaUH3OpUBs

Throwback to my BA 200 report that was on Macy’s! I learned then that Macy’s uses Microsoft’s AI to manage its omni-channel experience, but as I was doing research on ERPs for our final project, I stumbled onto this video demonstrating it! Macy’s uses a chatbot that connects to its own APIs so if a customer asks for previous order information, the chat bot can pull it up! 

This represents an overall trend of Macy’s trying to integrate tech into its stores (to compete with Amazon? To fight the declining mall traffic that’s hitting all the department store retailers right now?). They’re installing these little tablets in dressing rooms (currently piloting in California) that will bring clothes you request through a chute into the dressing room which, as an incredibly lazy individual, sounds very appealing and probably would get me to spend more. They have also installed kiosks at the entrance of every Macy’s to handle returns, give directions around the store, and other functions. Last, Macy’s is focusing on a truly omnichannel experience with their website and mobile app. 

I have to wonder how successful al this integration with technology has been, where Macy’s will go in the future, if other retail competitors are following suit or if this could be a key differentiator in the future, and how this fits into Macy’s CVP + target audience of less tech-savvy baby boomers (#StrategyTriangle, #BA200&TO300). 

[almondmarketingagency-blog]

What is a website backup and why you need one

Most businesses now have a website and in order for that website to be live it must be hosted on a server. The IP address of the server combined with your business URL is what delivers the stuff you’ve been looking for. It might sound complex, but it is simple fit the people who set it up, configure or maintain it!

What could go wrong?

The server where your website files sit, whether that be ‘in the cloud’ or in a freelancers spare bedroom, is a physical piece of hardware, and that makes it vulnerable to failure.  This failure could be down to a number of things:

Security breach

Everyone that has heard the word ‘website’ has also heard the word ‘hacked’. Hacking is a major issue that you have to face.  There are many ‘types’ of hack, from a brute force attack – which is an automated ‘bot’ guessing thousands of passwords a minute – to more sophisticated breaches. For example those that get into the root files through something like a plugin, and install malware on the website itself.  Whatever the hack is, they cost a lot of time and money, not to mention the loss of credibility with customers. Doing all you can to minimise the chances of a hack occurring, or reducing the impact when it does, is only a good thing.

Accidental deletion

To clarify, the site files and the database sit on the server and power the whole website.  You won’t (or shouldn’t) ever need to concern yourself with these, only your web developer or hosting company will ever touch them.  It is possible, because humans are involved that there may possibly human error and someone deletes your site off the server.  Think about that – someone just simply deletes your whole, entire, website with a couple of errant clicks.  A reputable company hosting your site with really good infrastructure, will take a copy of the entire server every night and transfer that to another completely separate server. However if it is a small company or a friend hosting your site, it is highly likely you now have no site at all and no way of retrieving it.

Malicious deletion

One thing that is less common, but something to consider is malicious deletion. You may have a disgruntle employee with access to the content management system (CMS), the facility that allows you to make all the content updates. They may not even work for you anymore, but if their access credentials haven’t been changed, they can log in and cause all kinds of damage.  While they might not be able to delete the core site files (the actual site architecture), they would be able to delete all the content that is on the site, or perhaps worse, write all manner of ‘inappropriate things’.  With content deletion you would notice, with new content slipped in, you may not.  If they have access to the server and the site files, you may have an even bigger problem on your hands.

Server Failure

A server is a piece of physical hardware, and therefore it can break, no different from your laptop or your phone.  If the site isn’t backed up, then the inability to get the server working will mean that your website cannot be restored.

How can I avoid these things happening?

Ensure you have a good policy in place that allows you to monitor who has access to what, and as soon as an employee ceases to work with you, or there are employee relationship issues you can restrict, or remove access to avoid any issues.

There is a step that you can take however which means that you’re covered for every eventuality, and that is having a robust backup schedule in place.  So how do you get this?

01 – Find out who hosts your site and their backup regime. What is the disaster recovery plan? Just in case the worst happens

02 – Ask if you can get a physical copy of your website site files and database sent over to you as a zip file, so if the absolute worst happens, and your site is completely deleted, you have a copy of your site on your hard drive

03 – If a backup schedule is available, ask what it is and establish whether it is enough.  For instance if the site is backed up every three months but you add and amend content three times a week, you stand to lose a fair bit of content.  Ideally you want it backed up every night

04 – Make sure that you check your site regularly for any issues and that backups from longer periods are saved.  If your site is backed up every night and you have been hacked, each new backup will overwrite the old one – effectively a bad copy replacing your existing good copy.  Unless you establish you’ve been hacked immediately, your restore copy (from the night before) may not be the clean version.  This is why you need a series of backups taken so you can go back to various points in time with a ‘clean copy’.

05 – When you write content for your website, make sure it is saved elsewhere as opposed to just being added to the website directly.  That way if the worst happens and your content is wiped, you still have a copy of it to paste back in the CMS – for example as I write this blog, I’m writing it and saving it as a Word document so I can retrieve it if needed in the future.

06 – Make sure you keep your website and plugins up to date, and ensure you have as few people as possible with access to the server and the CMS, and those that do have really solid passwords so there is less chance of a security breach.  For more information on passwords and site security read our blog and for more information on keeping your site up to date, read the blog we wrote on site security.

How Square Daisy can help with website development and website back up hosting

Having a good hosting package with a decent backup regime is like insurance, it feels like a pain paying for it…..until you need it and wish that you had made the investment.  We make the process pain free, deliver a great service and help you to understand how it all works, because after all, you only know what you know, and why on earth would you know about hosting infrastructure.  Read more about our hosting services on this page of our website.

If you’ve recently lost your site through unfortunate circumstances, we can help you get back up and running with a temporary site while we build a bespoke, new one for you.  Never waste a good crisis as Churchill said!

Square Daisy specialise in building quality websites using Wordpress as the content management system. We have a great process and use really clean code. We deliver bespoke designs and provide training, and support, pre and post launch, so you know how to use your spanking new site. We also work with you to develop optimised content, enhance your organic search ranking, set up and manage paid search campaigns and social media channels, and also implement automated marketing systems for your digital world. https://web.squaredaisy.com/

Square Daisy Web

Website Design Surrey - Square Daisy Web - Building Quality Websites If you're looking for website design Surrey based Square Daisy create fully optimised, high quality websites that will make sure your business gets seen.

#website back up #back up #website

[joya34blanco]

How to Create a Solid Backup Strategy for Your Photos

Most people take reasonable precautions when engaging in activities that are potentially unsafe or harmful, like wearing seat belts in a car or even washing your hands before eating. The benefits of these basic procedures are easy to understand which is one reason these practices are so widely adopted. But things look quite different where our digital lives are concerned; in other words, a backup strategy.

Every mobile phone, laptop, and personal computer stores your photos, documents, and other data on either a small memory chip or a spinning hard drive and it is not uncommon for these to fail. In fact, due to the nature of how hard drives (which are still by far the most common method of storing data) operate, they are guaranteed to wear out over time. It’s just a question of when. Anyone even remotely concerned with making sure their digital files are safe and accessible one, five, 10, or even hundreds of years from now needs to have a solid backup strategy in case the unthinkable happens.

Don’t let your photos disappear when your computer fails.

The challenge

One problem with creating a backup strategy is that it can seem so complex and convoluted it’s difficult to even know where to begin. From clouds to closets to safe deposit boxes, the world of data backup has so many options it’s enough to make your head spin. I’m going to explore three common options in this article, but before I get too far I want to remind you of the words of Carl von Clausewitz who said, “The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.”

Don’t get so caught up with finding the ideal backup strategy that you don’t do anything at all. The important lesson, no matter which method you use, is to create copies of your data – especially your photographs – so you can still get them if something bad happens.

3-2-1 Strategy

One of the best ways to approach backing up your data is the 3-2-1 strategy:

3: Have three copies of your data.

2: Keep them in two separate places.

1: At least one must be offsite.

This might seem like a lot of hassle, but it’s similar to most things in life that require small behavioral changes. Once you get over the initial setup of utilizing a backup strategy it becomes a habit or better yet, a completely transparent activity that just happens in the background. As someone who has lost data, and has had friends and family lose thousands of photos thanks to computer failures and hard drive corruption, I can confidently say that it is well worth your time to back up your data. It won’t save your physical life, but it could save your digital life.

A good backup solution doesn’t have to be complicated and can help make sure your memories stand the test of time.

Option #1 – External hard drives

googletag.cmd.push(function() { ruleset_slots.push( googletag.defineSlot( “/1005424/_dPSv5in-post-mobile(300×250)”, [300, 250], “pb-ad-0” ).addService( googletag.pubads() ) ); } );

Inside nearly every personal computer is a spinning hard drive that rotates at a mind-numbing speed of 5400-7200 rotations per minute, every day, for as long as the computer exists. Over time, hard drives have proven themselves to be simple cost-effective vessels for storing massive amounts of data. However, their mechanical nature makes them not only prone to failure but quite expensive and time-consuming to recover your files and photos if something does happen.

Because of these caveats, one of the simplest methods of backing up your data is to use software to make a clone of your hard drive onto – you guessed it – another hard drive. This duplicates everything on your computer so you can instantly access it in the case of an emergency. Thanks to the relatively inexpensive nature of external hard drives and backup software (which is often bundled with hard drives) the process is mostly painless.

Backup hard drives are a cheap and effective way of making sure your data is safe.

File recovery

Mostly, that is, until it comes time to actually recover your data. In my experience, this method of file backup is best when your entire computer dies and you need to start from scratch, at which point a clone of your hard drive can be used to create an exact copy on a new computer. I have had to do this a few times with excellent results, and except for re-registering some serial numbers with Adobe I was up and running again in no time.

However, if you accidentally delete some data, such as an entire folder of images, and need to recover just those specific things from your backup it can be tricky depending on the software solution you are using. Apple’s Time Machine, for example, is designed to facilitate the easy recovery of an entire computer’s worth of data but many people (myself included) have found themselves more than a little frustrated when restoring individual files or folders. Microsoft includes software called Backup and Restore which will do the same thing for Windows users. Either one of these is a great solution if you want a simple way of making sure all the data on your computer is saved and stored in the event of a complete hard drive failure.

One significant benefit of both Time Machine and Windows Backup and Restore is that they run automatically in the background so you never have to think about it once you set them up. However, one drawback is that because they only backup to external hard drives, if you lose data to a catastrophic event such as a fire or flood, chances are your backup drive will be toast also. For that reason I like to keep a second backup hard drive at the office where I work and switch the hard drives out every Monday. That way even if my house explodes in a freak meteorite incident everything but the very latest files and photos will still be available on my backup drive at work.

Mac users can use Time Machine to easily create automatic backups on an external hard drive.

Extra options

If you really want to go the extra mile with an external hard-drive-based backup plan, you can set yourself up with a multi-drive solution where all your data is copied to not only one, but several hard disks at the same time. This is called a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Drives) system and while it’s more costly than a single drive solution, it’s virtually guaranteed to protect against data loss. If one of the drives in a RAID array fails you can usually just swap it out with a fresh drive and continue backing everything up.

Finally, if you are going to use external backups it’s important to keep them encrypted so prying eyes or thieving scoundrels can’t peek at your data. Time Machine lets you do this with the click of a mouse, and Windows has an option to do this as well using a setting called BitLocker. This adds a huge layer of security to your backups while taking almost no effort on your part. I highly recommend doing this.

BitLocker offers a great solution for Windows users who want a simple and effective backup strategy.

Hard drives are so cheap these days that it’s hard to go wrong with this type of solution. If your backup drive ever goes belly-up you can buy another one for the price of a few movie tickets. I recommend buying a drive that is double the capacity of your computer’s internal hard drive which means you can restore old copies of files long after they have been deleted from your computer.

Option #2 – Save your data to the cloud

googletag.cmd.push(function() { ruleset_slots.push( googletag.defineSlot( “/1005424/_dPSv5in-post-mobile(300×250)”, [300, 250], “pb-ad-1” ).addService( googletag.pubads() ) ); } );

If you don’t want to bother with the hassle of setting up an external hard drive, encrypting your data, and switching out drives every week or every month, another good option is to go with a cloud-based backup service like CrashPlan, BackBlaze, or Carbonite. These companies offer paid plans that backup all the data on your computer, or just a portion that you specify, to their own servers automatically. In terms of convenience, these services are hard to beat since they require almost no interaction from you after the initial setup.

Drawbacks

One of the downsides is the price, as they require a recurring monthly or yearly fee which, though usually not too expensive, can add up over time. They also make the act of restoring all your data, such as in the event of a fire or flood, more difficult than just hooking up a spare hard drive with a full copy of everything. Thankfully many cloud-based services will actually mail you a hard drive with a full copy of your data on it for an additional fee if you really need to do a full restore of your entire computer. You also have the option of logging into your account from a web browser and selectively downloading individual files or folders, which can be useful if you just need to retrieve specific items and not restore your entire computer.

One of the major drawbacks of cloud-based backup options involves actually getting your data to them in the first place. While broadband internet access is becoming increasingly common around the world, upload speeds still lag far behind download speeds. According to BackBlaze, a typical home internet connection will let you upload 2GB to 4GB per day, which means it could take several months to backup your entire hard drive! If you shoot in RAW and are constantly filling up your memory cards, you might find cloud-based backup services to be quite limiting unless you have a very fast internet connection!

Other cloud-based options are available that specifically address the needs of photographers. Google Photos allows unlimited storage for JPG pictures up to 16 megapixels, and Amazon allows unlimited photo storage for Prime members. Flickr, that longtime stalwart of online photo sharing, gives users 1TB (Terabyte, or 1024 GB) of storage for free. Services like Dropbox, OneDrive, and Apple’s iCloud offer paid plans that allow you to backup massive amounts of photos and other data for a fee while also syncing them across your devices.

Even if you already share pictures on social networks, it’s a good idea to have a full backup of all your images and a dedicated cloud-based solution is a nice way to accomplish this.

Shop around for the best cloud option for your needs

If you are thinking about using a cloud-based solution I would encourage you to investigate some options and see what you think would work best for your needs. I have used CrashPlan, BackBlaze, and Carbonite, as well as solutions like Arq which store your data on the Amazon cloud. Each of these has its own strengths and weaknesses and because of that, it is difficult to recommend a single cloud-based solution as every individual has their own needs.

All of them are good, and you really can’t go wrong with any of them if you currently don’t have a backup solution in place. I also like to caution people that when you utilize free services like Google Photos or Flickr it’s a good idea to review their Terms of Service so you know exactly what information and personal data you are giving up in exchange for the free use of their storage.

Option #3 – DVDs and Blu-Rays

Longtime computer users might fondly remember the days when CD-ROM drives first entered the scene. In those heady days of the mid-1990s the idea of putting as much data as you could fit on an entire 500MB hard drive onto one single CD was basically a computing miracle, and as CD drives became more prevalent they also became a good way to backup data such as documents and photos.

However as digital cameras rose to prominence in the early 2000s it became painfully obvious that backing up data to CDs and, subsequently, DVDs was too slow and cumbersome to be a good solution. Burning the discs took time, and getting files off them could be a chore especially as more and more computers abandoned these types of disc drives altogether.

So why in the world would this type of solution even be considered as part of a balanced backup strategy in 2017?

Behold the classic Compact Disc. You might not give this type of media much thought nowadays, but it can still be an essential component of a comprehensive backup strategy.

Cost and drawbacks

The answer to this question is mostly related to cost. Blank discs are cheap, and even if your computer doesn’t have a disc burner you can buy an external one for about $50-100. CDs hold about 600 MB of data, or enough for your vacation photos if you shot on medium-quality JPG. DVDs hold about 4.5 GB of data or a couple months of pictures (if you shoot RAW this will be more limited). Blu-Ray discs hold about 25GB of data or enough for an entire year’s worth of JPG images which make them very well suited for long-term image backup. Even if you already use a hard drive or cloud solution, it’s still a good idea to make regular backups of your pictures to some type of physical disc that you can then store in a safe deposit box or even mail to a trusted friend or family member.

googletag.cmd.push(function() { ruleset_slots.push( googletag.defineSlot( “/1005424/_dPSv5in-post-mobile(300×250)”, [300, 250], “pb-ad-2” ).addService( googletag.pubads() ) ); } );

One of the notable downsides to disc-based backups is that this media is prone to the same harsh realities of time as any hard drive. Sooner or later all discs that you create at home will fail due to a concept known as “bit rot” which is when the layer of dye inside a CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray that actually contains your data deteriorates over time. It might be a few years or 50 years, but it’s almost certainly going to happen to every disc you burn.

Thankfully some drives are capable of burning a special format of Blu-Ray called M-Disc which is supposed to keep your data safe for hundreds of years. Even though the actual discs are a little more expensive it could be well worth it to make sure your images aren’t lost to dust and decay over the years.

It might be worth your time to dust off that old DVD or Blu-Ray burner and use it as part of your photo backup plan.

Annual plan

When adding a disc-based component to your backup strategy I recommend making it part of an annual ritual instead of something you do monthly or weekly. Get a Blu-Ray burner so you can store all your pictures from the whole year and make the process of burning a disc and taking it to a safe deposit box an annual tradition. It might seem silly at first, but it could really save your digital life if you ever need it.

The Solution

The great challenge with backing up your digital images is that all methods have their positive and negative aspects, no one single solution is best. And very few things in life are truly permanent, so even if you physically print your pictures they will eventually fade and will also be susceptible to mold, moisture, or physical damage.

Any digital backup option is better than none at all. If you leave your photos on your computer or phone without duplicates then you are at risk of putting all your eggs in one basket which is almost certainly guaranteed to fail. The solution, then, is to do something to make sure your pictures don’t meet a premature digital demise. It could be a second hard drive, a cloud-based solution, making a Blu-Ray disk, using a combination of all three, or another method I didn’t even mention.

My father still has a hard drive sitting in his closet filled with thousands of images he may never see again. The disk failed years ago and was not backed up. The same thing has happened to many photographers around the world. Don’t let it happen to you.

Read more here:

What about you? What solution do you use to make sure your pictures are backed up and ready to access if you need them? There are hosts of other solutions I didn’t address in this article and I’m sure other DPS readers would like to know what ideas you have and what works for you. Please share in the comments below.

googletag.cmd.push(function() { ruleset_slots.push( googletag.defineSlot( “/1005424/_dPSv5in-post-mobile(300×250)”, [300, 250], “pb-ad-3” ).addService( googletag.pubads() ) ); } );

The post How to Create a Solid Backup Strategy for Your Photos by Simon Ringsmuth appeared first on Digital Photography School.

from Digital Photography School https://digital-photography-school.com/create-solid-backup-strategy-photos/

[repwincoml4a0a5]

How to Create a Solid Backup Strategy for Your Photos

Most people take reasonable precautions when engaging in activities that are potentially unsafe or harmful, like wearing seat belts in a car or even washing your hands before eating. The benefits of these basic procedures are easy to understand which is one reason these practices are so widely adopted. But things look quite different where our digital lives are concerned; in other words, a backup strategy.

Every mobile phone, laptop, and personal computer stores your photos, documents, and other data on either a small memory chip or a spinning hard drive and it is not uncommon for these to fail. In fact, due to the nature of how hard drives (which are still by far the most common method of storing data) operate, they are guaranteed to wear out over time. It’s just a question of when. Anyone even remotely concerned with making sure their digital files are safe and accessible one, five, 10, or even hundreds of years from now needs to have a solid backup strategy in case the unthinkable happens.

Don’t let your photos disappear when your computer fails.

The challenge

One problem with creating a backup strategy is that it can seem so complex and convoluted it’s difficult to even know where to begin. From clouds to closets to safe deposit boxes, the world of data backup has so many options it’s enough to make your head spin. I’m going to explore three common options in this article, but before I get too far I want to remind you of the words of Carl von Clausewitz who said, “The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.”

Don’t get so caught up with finding the ideal backup strategy that you don’t do anything at all. The important lesson, no matter which method you use, is to create copies of your data – especially your photographs – so you can still get them if something bad happens.

3-2-1 Strategy

One of the best ways to approach backing up your data is the 3-2-1 strategy:

3: Have three copies of your data.

2: Keep them in two separate places.

1: At least one must be offsite.

This might seem like a lot of hassle, but it’s similar to most things in life that require small behavioral changes. Once you get over the initial setup of utilizing a backup strategy it becomes a habit or better yet, a completely transparent activity that just happens in the background. As someone who has lost data, and has had friends and family lose thousands of photos thanks to computer failures and hard drive corruption, I can confidently say that it is well worth your time to back up your data. It won’t save your physical life, but it could save your digital life.

A good backup solution doesn’t have to be complicated and can help make sure your memories stand the test of time.

Option #1 – External hard drives

Inside nearly every personal computer is a spinning hard drive that rotates at a mind-numbing speed of 5400-7200 rotations per minute, every day, for as long as the computer exists. Over time, hard drives have proven themselves to be simple cost-effective vessels for storing massive amounts of data. However, their mechanical nature makes them not only prone to failure but quite expensive and time-consuming to recover your files and photos if something does happen.

Because of these caveats, one of the simplest methods of backing up your data is to use software to make a clone of your hard drive onto – you guessed it – another hard drive. This duplicates everything on your computer so you can instantly access it in the case of an emergency. Thanks to the relatively inexpensive nature of external hard drives and backup software (which is often bundled with hard drives) the process is mostly painless.

Backup hard drives are a cheap and effective way of making sure your data is safe.

File recovery

Mostly, that is, until it comes time to actually recover your data. In my experience, this method of file backup is best when your entire computer dies and you need to start from scratch, at which point a clone of your hard drive can be used to create an exact copy on a new computer. I have had to do this a few times with excellent results, and except for re-registering some serial numbers with Adobe I was up and running again in no time.

However, if you accidentally delete some data, such as an entire folder of images, and need to recover just those specific things from your backup it can be tricky depending on the software solution you are using. Apple’s Time Machine, for example, is designed to facilitate the easy recovery of an entire computer’s worth of data but many people (myself included) have found themselves more than a little frustrated when restoring individual files or folders. Microsoft includes software called Backup and Restore which will do the same thing for Windows users. Either one of these is a great solution if you want a simple way of making sure all the data on your computer is saved and stored in the event of a complete hard drive failure.

One significant benefit of both Time Machine and Windows Backup and Restore is that they run automatically in the background so you never have to think about it once you set them up. However, one drawback is that because they only backup to external hard drives, if you lose data to a catastrophic event such as a fire or flood, chances are your backup drive will be toast also. For that reason I like to keep a second backup hard drive at the office where I work and switch the hard drives out every Monday. That way even if my house explodes in a freak meteorite incident everything but the very latest files and photos will still be available on my backup drive at work.

Mac users can use Time Machine to easily create automatic backups on an external hard drive.

Extra options

If you really want to go the extra mile with an external hard-drive-based backup plan, you can set yourself up with a multi-drive solution where all your data is copied to not only one, but several hard disks at the same time. This is called a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Drives) system and while it’s more costly than a single drive solution, it’s virtually guaranteed to protect against data loss. If one of the drives in a RAID array fails you can usually just swap it out with a fresh drive and continue backing everything up.

Finally, if you are going to use external backups it’s important to keep them encrypted so prying eyes or thieving scoundrels can’t peek at your data. Time Machine lets you do this with the click of a mouse, and Windows has an option to do this as well using a setting called BitLocker. This adds a huge layer of security to your backups while taking almost no effort on your part. I highly recommend doing this.

BitLocker offers a great solution for Windows users who want a simple and effective backup strategy.

Hard drives are so cheap these days that it’s hard to go wrong with this type of solution. If your backup drive ever goes belly-up you can buy another one for the price of a few movie tickets. I recommend buying a drive that is double the capacity of your computer’s internal hard drive which means you can restore old copies of files long after they have been deleted from your computer.

Option #2 – Save your data to the cloud

If you don’t want to bother with the hassle of setting up an external hard drive, encrypting your data, and switching out drives every week or every month, another good option is to go with a cloud-based backup service like CrashPlan, BackBlaze, or Carbonite. These companies offer paid plans that backup all the data on your computer, or just a portion that you specify, to their own servers automatically. In terms of convenience, these services are hard to beat since they require almost no interaction from you after the initial setup.

Drawbacks

One of the downsides is the price, as they require a recurring monthly or yearly fee which, though usually not too expensive, can add up over time. They also make the act of restoring all your data, such as in the event of a fire or flood, more difficult than just hooking up a spare hard drive with a full copy of everything. Thankfully many cloud-based services will actually mail you a hard drive with a full copy of your data on it for an additional fee if you really need to do a full restore of your entire computer. You also have the option of logging into your account from a web browser and selectively downloading individual files or folders, which can be useful if you just need to retrieve specific items and not restore your entire computer.

One of the major drawbacks of cloud-based backup options involves actually getting your data to them in the first place. While broadband internet access is becoming increasingly common around the world, upload speeds still lag far behind download speeds. According to BackBlaze, a typical home internet connection will let you upload 2GB to 4GB per day, which means it could take several months to backup your entire hard drive! If you shoot in RAW and are constantly filling up your memory cards, you might find cloud-based backup services to be quite limiting unless you have a very fast internet connection!

Other cloud-based options are available that specifically address the needs of photographers. Google Photos allows unlimited storage for JPG pictures up to 16 megapixels, and Amazon allows unlimited photo storage for Prime members. Flickr, that longtime stalwart of online photo sharing, gives users 1TB (Terabyte, or 1024 GB) of storage for free. Services like Dropbox, OneDrive, and Apple’s iCloud offer paid plans that allow you to backup massive amounts of photos and other data for a fee while also syncing them across your devices.

Even if you already share pictures on social networks, it’s a good idea to have a full backup of all your images and a dedicated cloud-based solution is a nice way to accomplish this.

Shop around for the best cloud option for your needs

If you are thinking about using a cloud-based solution I would encourage you to investigate some options and see what you think would work best for your needs. I have used CrashPlan, BackBlaze, and Carbonite, as well as solutions like Arq which store your data on the Amazon cloud. Each of these has its own strengths and weaknesses and because of that, it is difficult to recommend a single cloud-based solution as every individual has their own needs.

All of them are good, and you really can’t go wrong with any of them if you currently don’t have a backup solution in place. I also like to caution people that when you utilize free services like Google Photos or Flickr it’s a good idea to review their Terms of Service so you know exactly what information and personal data you are giving up in exchange for the free use of their storage.

Option #3 – DVDs and Blu-Rays

Longtime computer users might fondly remember the days when CD-ROM drives first entered the scene. In those heady days of the mid-1990s the idea of putting as much data as you could fit on an entire 500MB hard drive onto one single CD was basically a computing miracle, and as CD drives became more prevalent they also became a good way to backup data such as documents and photos.

However as digital cameras rose to prominence in the early 2000s it became painfully obvious that backing up data to CDs and, subsequently, DVDs was too slow and cumbersome to be a good solution. Burning the discs took time, and getting files off them could be a chore especially as more and more computers abandoned these types of disc drives altogether.

So why in the world would this type of solution even be considered as part of a balanced backup strategy in 2017?

Behold the classic Compact Disc. You might not give this type of media much thought nowadays, but it can still be an essential component of a comprehensive backup strategy.

Cost and drawbacks

The answer to this question is mostly related to cost. Blank discs are cheap, and even if your computer doesn’t have a disc burner you can buy an external one for about $50-100. CDs hold about 600 MB of data, or enough for your vacation photos if you shot on medium-quality JPG. DVDs hold about 4.5 GB of data or a couple months of pictures (if you shoot RAW this will be more limited). Blu-Ray discs hold about 25GB of data or enough for an entire year’s worth of JPG images which make them very well suited for long-term image backup. Even if you already use a hard drive or cloud solution, it’s still a good idea to make regular backups of your pictures to some type of physical disc that you can then store in a safe deposit box or even mail to a trusted friend or family member.

One of the notable downsides to disc-based backups is that this media is prone to the same harsh realities of time as any hard drive. Sooner or later all discs that you create at home will fail due to a concept known as “bit rot” which is when the layer of dye inside a CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray that actually contains your data deteriorates over time. It might be a few years or 50 years, but it’s almost certainly going to happen to every disc you burn.

Thankfully some drives are capable of burning a special format of Blu-Ray called M-Disc which is supposed to keep your data safe for hundreds of years. Even though the actual discs are a little more expensive it could be well worth it to make sure your images aren’t lost to dust and decay over the years.

It might be worth your time to dust off that old DVD or Blu-Ray burner and use it as part of your photo backup plan.

Annual plan

When adding a disc-based component to your backup strategy I recommend making it part of an annual ritual instead of something you do monthly or weekly. Get a Blu-Ray burner so you can store all your pictures from the whole year and make the process of burning a disc and taking it to a safe deposit box an annual tradition. It might seem silly at first, but it could really save your digital life if you ever need it.

The Solution

The great challenge with backing up your digital images is that all methods have their positive and negative aspects, no one single solution is best. And very few things in life are truly permanent, so even if you physically print your pictures they will eventually fade and will also be susceptible to mold, moisture, or physical damage.

Any digital backup option is better than none at all. If you leave your photos on your computer or phone without duplicates then you are at risk of putting all your eggs in one basket which is almost certainly guaranteed to fail. The solution, then, is to do something to make sure your pictures don’t meet a premature digital demise. It could be a second hard drive, a cloud-based solution, making a Blu-Ray disk, using a combination of all three, or another method I didn’t even mention.

My father still has a hard drive sitting in his closet filled with thousands of images he may never see again. The disk failed years ago and was not backed up. The same thing has happened to many photographers around the world. Don’t let it happen to you.

Read more here:

What about you? What solution do you use to make sure your pictures are backed up and ready to access if you need them? There are hosts of other solutions I didn’t address in this article and I’m sure other DPS readers would like to know what ideas you have and what works for you. Please share in the comments below.

The post How to Create a Solid Backup Strategy..

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mhio8s

#DIYS

[repwinpril9y0a1]

How to Create a Solid Backup Strategy for Your Photos

Most people take reasonable precautions when engaging in activities that are potentially unsafe or harmful, like wearing seat belts in a car or even washing your hands before eating. The benefits of these basic procedures are easy to understand which is one reason these practices are so widely adopted. But things look quite different where our digital lives are concerned; in other words, a backup strategy.

Every mobile phone, laptop, and personal computer stores your photos, documents, and other data on either a small memory chip or a spinning hard drive and it is not uncommon for these to fail. In fact, due to the nature of how hard drives (which are still by far the most common method of storing data) operate, they are guaranteed to wear out over time. It’s just a question of when. Anyone even remotely concerned with making sure their digital files are safe and accessible one, five, 10, or even hundreds of years from now needs to have a solid backup strategy in case the unthinkable happens.

Don’t let your photos disappear when your computer fails.

The challenge

One problem with creating a backup strategy is that it can seem so complex and convoluted it’s difficult to even know where to begin. From clouds to closets to safe deposit boxes, the world of data backup has so many options it’s enough to make your head spin. I’m going to explore three common options in this article, but before I get too far I want to remind you of the words of Carl von Clausewitz who said, “The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.”

Don’t get so caught up with finding the ideal backup strategy that you don’t do anything at all. The important lesson, no matter which method you use, is to create copies of your data – especially your photographs – so you can still get them if something bad happens.

3-2-1 Strategy

One of the best ways to approach backing up your data is the 3-2-1 strategy:

3: Have three copies of your data.

2: Keep them in two separate places.

1: At least one must be offsite.

This might seem like a lot of hassle, but it’s similar to most things in life that require small behavioral changes. Once you get over the initial setup of utilizing a backup strategy it becomes a habit or better yet, a completely transparent activity that just happens in the background. As someone who has lost data, and has had friends and family lose thousands of photos thanks to computer failures and hard drive corruption, I can confidently say that it is well worth your time to back up your data. It won’t save your physical life, but it could save your digital life.

A good backup solution doesn’t have to be complicated and can help make sure your memories stand the test of time.

Option #1 – External hard drives

Inside nearly every personal computer is a spinning hard drive that rotates at a mind-numbing speed of 5400-7200 rotations per minute, every day, for as long as the computer exists. Over time, hard drives have proven themselves to be simple cost-effective vessels for storing massive amounts of data. However, their mechanical nature makes them not only prone to failure but quite expensive and time-consuming to recover your files and photos if something does happen.

Because of these caveats, one of the simplest methods of backing up your data is to use software to make a clone of your hard drive onto – you guessed it – another hard drive. This duplicates everything on your computer so you can instantly access it in the case of an emergency. Thanks to the relatively inexpensive nature of external hard drives and backup software (which is often bundled with hard drives) the process is mostly painless.

Backup hard drives are a cheap and effective way of making sure your data is safe.

File recovery

Mostly, that is, until it comes time to actually recover your data. In my experience, this method of file backup is best when your entire computer dies and you need to start from scratch, at which point a clone of your hard drive can be used to create an exact copy on a new computer. I have had to do this a few times with excellent results, and except for re-registering some serial numbers with Adobe I was up and running again in no time.

However, if you accidentally delete some data, such as an entire folder of images, and need to recover just those specific things from your backup it can be tricky depending on the software solution you are using. Apple’s Time Machine, for example, is designed to facilitate the easy recovery of an entire computer’s worth of data but many people (myself included) have found themselves more than a little frustrated when restoring individual files or folders. Microsoft includes software called Backup and Restore which will do the same thing for Windows users. Either one of these is a great solution if you want a simple way of making sure all the data on your computer is saved and stored in the event of a complete hard drive failure.

One significant benefit of both Time Machine and Windows Backup and Restore is that they run automatically in the background so you never have to think about it once you set them up. However, one drawback is that because they only backup to external hard drives, if you lose data to a catastrophic event such as a fire or flood, chances are your backup drive will be toast also. For that reason I like to keep a second backup hard drive at the office where I work and switch the hard drives out every Monday. That way even if my house explodes in a freak meteorite incident everything but the very latest files and photos will still be available on my backup drive at work.

Mac users can use Time Machine to easily create automatic backups on an external hard drive.

Extra options

If you really want to go the extra mile with an external hard-drive-based backup plan, you can set yourself up with a multi-drive solution where all your data is copied to not only one, but several hard disks at the same time. This is called a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Drives) system and while it’s more costly than a single drive solution, it’s virtually guaranteed to protect against data loss. If one of the drives in a RAID array fails you can usually just swap it out with a fresh drive and continue backing everything up.

Finally, if you are going to use external backups it’s important to keep them encrypted so prying eyes or thieving scoundrels can’t peek at your data. Time Machine lets you do this with the click of a mouse, and Windows has an option to do this as well using a setting called BitLocker. This adds a huge layer of security to your backups while taking almost no effort on your part. I highly recommend doing this.

BitLocker offers a great solution for Windows users who want a simple and effective backup strategy.

Hard drives are so cheap these days that it’s hard to go wrong with this type of solution. If your backup drive ever goes belly-up you can buy another one for the price of a few movie tickets. I recommend buying a drive that is double the capacity of your computer’s internal hard drive which means you can restore old copies of files long after they have been deleted from your computer.

Option #2 – Save your data to the cloud

If you don’t want to bother with the hassle of setting up an external hard drive, encrypting your data, and switching out drives every week or every month, another good option is to go with a cloud-based backup service like CrashPlan, BackBlaze, or Carbonite. These companies offer paid plans that backup all the data on your computer, or just a portion that you specify, to their own servers automatically. In terms of convenience, these services are hard to beat since they require almost no interaction from you after the initial setup.

Drawbacks

One of the downsides is the price, as they require a recurring monthly or yearly fee which, though usually not too expensive, can add up over time. They also make the act of restoring all your data, such as in the event of a fire or flood, more difficult than just hooking up a spare hard drive with a full copy of everything. Thankfully many cloud-based services will actually mail you a hard drive with a full copy of your data on it for an additional fee if you really need to do a full restore of your entire computer. You also have the option of logging into your account from a web browser and selectively downloading individual files or folders, which can be useful if you just need to retrieve specific items and not restore your entire computer.

One of the major drawbacks of cloud-based backup options involves actually getting your data to them in the first place. While broadband internet access is becoming increasingly common around the world, upload speeds still lag far behind download speeds. According to BackBlaze, a typical home internet connection will let you upload 2GB to 4GB per day, which means it could take several months to backup your entire hard drive! If you shoot in RAW and are constantly filling up your memory cards, you might find cloud-based backup services to be quite limiting unless you have a very fast internet connection!

Other cloud-based options are available that specifically address the needs of photographers. Google Photos allows unlimited storage for JPG pictures up to 16 megapixels, and Amazon allows unlimited photo storage for Prime members. Flickr, that longtime stalwart of online photo sharing, gives users 1TB (Terabyte, or 1024 GB) of storage for free. Services like Dropbox, OneDrive, and Apple’s iCloud offer paid plans that allow you to backup massive amounts of photos and other data for a fee while also syncing them across your devices.

Even if you already share pictures on social networks, it’s a good idea to have a full backup of all your images and a dedicated cloud-based solution is a nice way to accomplish this.

Shop around for the best cloud option for your needs

If you are thinking about using a cloud-based solution I would encourage you to investigate some options and see what you think would work best for your needs. I have used CrashPlan, BackBlaze, and Carbonite, as well as solutions like Arq which store your data on the Amazon cloud. Each of these has its own strengths and weaknesses and because of that, it is difficult to recommend a single cloud-based solution as every individual has their own needs.

All of them are good, and you really can’t go wrong with any of them if you currently don’t have a backup solution in place. I also like to caution people that when you utilize free services like Google Photos or Flickr it’s a good idea to review their Terms of Service so you know exactly what information and personal data you are giving up in exchange for the free use of their storage.

Option #3 – DVDs and Blu-Rays

Longtime computer users might fondly remember the days when CD-ROM drives first entered the scene. In those heady days of the mid-1990s the idea of putting as much data as you could fit on an entire 500MB hard drive onto one single CD was basically a computing miracle, and as CD drives became more prevalent they also became a good way to backup data such as documents and photos.

However as digital cameras rose to prominence in the early 2000s it became painfully obvious that backing up data to CDs and, subsequently, DVDs was too slow and cumbersome to be a good solution. Burning the discs took time, and getting files off them could be a chore especially as more and more computers abandoned these types of disc drives altogether.

So why in the world would this type of solution even be considered as part of a balanced backup strategy in 2017?

Behold the classic Compact Disc. You might not give this type of media much thought nowadays, but it can still be an essential component of a comprehensive backup strategy.

Cost and drawbacks

The answer to this question is mostly related to cost. Blank discs are cheap, and even if your computer doesn’t have a disc burner you can buy an external one for about $50-100. CDs hold about 600 MB of data, or enough for your vacation photos if you shot on medium-quality JPG. DVDs hold about 4.5 GB of data or a couple months of pictures (if you shoot RAW this will be more limited). Blu-Ray discs hold about 25GB of data or enough for an entire year’s worth of JPG images which make them very well suited for long-term image backup. Even if you already use a hard drive or cloud solution, it’s still a good idea to make regular backups of your pictures to some type of physical disc that you can then store in a safe deposit box or even mail to a trusted friend or family member.

One of the notable downsides to disc-based backups is that this media is prone to the same harsh realities of time as any hard drive. Sooner or later all discs that you create at home will fail due to a concept known as “bit rot” which is when the layer of dye inside a CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray that actually contains your data deteriorates over time. It might be a few years or 50 years, but it’s almost certainly going to happen to every disc you burn.

Thankfully some drives are capable of burning a special format of Blu-Ray called M-Disc which is supposed to keep your data safe for hundreds of years. Even though the actual discs are a little more expensive it could be well worth it to make sure your images aren’t lost to dust and decay over the years.

It might be worth your time to dust off that old DVD or Blu-Ray burner and use it as part of your photo backup plan.

Annual plan

When adding a disc-based component to your backup strategy I recommend making it part of an annual ritual instead of something you do monthly or weekly. Get a Blu-Ray burner so you can store all your pictures from the whole year and make the process of burning a disc and taking it to a safe deposit box an annual tradition. It might seem silly at first, but it could really save your digital life if you ever need it.

The Solution

The great challenge with backing up your digital images is that all methods have their positive and negative aspects, no one single solution is best. And very few things in life are truly permanent, so even if you physically print your pictures they will eventually fade and will also be susceptible to mold, moisture, or physical damage.

Any digital backup option is better than none at all. If you leave your photos on your computer or phone without duplicates then you are at risk of putting all your eggs in one basket which is almost certainly guaranteed to fail. The solution, then, is to do something to make sure your pictures don’t meet a premature digital demise. It could be a second hard drive, a cloud-based solution, making a Blu-Ray disk, using a combination of all three, or another method I didn’t even mention.

My father still has a hard drive sitting in his closet filled with thousands of images he may never see again. The disk failed years ago and was not backed up. The same thing has happened to many photographers around the world. Don’t let it happen to you.

Read more here:

What about you? What solution do you use to make sure your pictures are backed up and ready to access if you need them? There are hosts of other solutions I didn’t address in this article and I’m sure other DPS readers would like to know what ideas you..

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mhio8s

#DIYS

[minrcrafter]

Vanilla Essence [PVP] {1.12.2} {Survival 20k Border} {Loot Chest} {Challenges} {Coins & Trades} {Player Shops} {Statistics} {Leaderboards} {Vote Rewards} {Discord}

Vanilla Essence

Hi there! You have just discovered Vanilla Essence.

Just give me the IP: ve-mc.com

Introduction

My name is Thanos (also known as Biskotaki in-game) and I launched this server back on May 2017. I am studying computer science in college and I feel Minecraft is a great way to practice on my programming skills. I have been hosting Minecraft servers for a while.

Vanilla Essence is a semi-vanilla server that offers a unique Minecraft survival experience. It's a place where you can peacefully work on the projects you had in mind and never had a chance to start. You can get on with friends, make a claim to protect your resources and get straight into work.

Unlike most servers, Vanilla Essence is not following the pay-to-win scheme. All donations come with rewards that are entirely cosmetic and have no impact on gameplay. You will not see OP guys running around with premium, overpowered kits and equipment.

There's a twist. The standard survival experience that Minecraft offers usually gets boring after a while, so I decided to step up the game a little bit. I have programmed a custom plugin using Spigot that adds a whole bunch of new unique and exciting features into the game. You'll see me talking about loot chests, events, iron coins and player shops in a bit.

Vanilla Essence has a small but dedicated team of Moderators which ensure that the server is always in one piece and nothing "extreme" is taking place. We truly hope that this is the right place for you and your friends.

Details

The current map is 20,000 by 20,000 (trust me, it's big enough), nether and the end are both accessible.

PVP: Anywhere, Mobs: On, Explosions: Off, Fire spread: Off

Vanilla Essence aims to use minimal plugins yet offer powerful and intriguing features.

Plugins:

Vanilla Essence: Our custom plugin which offers most of the core features on the server.

Advanced Ban: This is our main plugin to punish all the rule breakers.

Core Protect: The standard block history plugins out there to keep track of grieferes and trouble makers.

Grief Prevention: One of the best plugins for player claims, you can protect your chests, make plots, manage land permissions or even build towns.

Votifier: We use this plugin to get notified every time a player votes for our server so we deliver the appropriate rewards :).

WorldEdit & WorldGuard: We use those plugins to setup protected regions and plots, nothing special.

Buycraft: This plugin makes sure that all donation rewards are delivered on time. Basically connects our shop with the server.

Custom Features

This section aims to answer this question: What's different from standard vanilla servers?

Loot Chests

Loot chests are normal chests that contain valuable treasure. Every time you mine a solid non-flammable block, there is a chance of a loot chest being dropped. There are three tiers of loot chests: common, rare and legendary. As you've probably guessed, rare loot chests contain better rewards than common loot chests, and the same applies for legendary loot chests. These mysterious chests can give you an extra incentive to go mining.

Events

Every hour you will notice an event is undergoing. Events are special challenges that come with great rewards. You can participate and try to win the objectives of each event. Winners are rewarded with the most powerful loot chests on the game, an event loot chest. Event loot chests contain a fair amount of iron coins and enchanted diamond equipment (tool, weapon or armor).

Coins and Trades

As you probably read in the previous section, there are two types of currencies in the game: iron and gold coins. Iron coins can be acquired by winning events or trading with other players. You can use iron coins to purchase top of the tier items from a villager market at spawn, where each villager has a set of custom trades. Most villagers accept gold coins, where one gold coin is a stack of iron coins (64 iron coins -> 1 gold coin). You can get your hands on some really cool items such as: special pickaxes (ex. break mob spawners), enchanted diamond armor, mob spawn eggs, end-game items and more.

Player shops

We recently added a shops world where each player can purchase a plot with coins and build their own shop (literally). That means, once you have a plot to work on, you are able to sell resources, tools, weapons, anything. The prices can range from ores (coal, iron, gold, diamond, emerald) to coins (iron and gold). Our custom chest-sign system is greatly simplified to make the shop setup less frustrating and enjoyable. Buying from other shops is as simple as opening a chest and clicking on the item you'd like to purchase.

Statistics

All players have a custom /stats menu that keeps track of their progress in the server. For example, one can find the total amount of loot chests opened. This menu also keeps track of deaths, kills and even a death/kill ratio. It can further be customized with a custom description and likes (yes, literally!). A custom description can be set with /description <text> and players can "like" someone by clicking on the emerald of their respective /stats <player> menu. There are certainly a lot of details here, but you'll be able to have a better grasp of those features in-game!

Leaderboards

In order to promote some competition in-game, we have placed leaderboards (armor stands with text basically) at spawn that keep track of the top three players with the highest count for each statistic. Furthermore, milestones such as "100 total loot chests opened" are announced in chat.

Vote rewards

Vote rewards can certain help if you don't have many resources to start with. Those who /vote for the first time are rewarded with a basic Starter Kit and by continuing to vote daily, just like loot chests, several resources are given. Voting is very important because it can help by boost our rankings in the server listing websites (higher rank => more players).

Battle Mode (in development)

Battle mode is a unique mode evolved around the combat aspect of the game. For the PVP fans, this mode is going to get players into arenas and setup fights with a huge variety of kits. Leveling system, experience, unlockable kits, coin rewards are all included. Stay tuned!

Rules

We have compiled a simple set of rules that all players must follow. This is essential so we can maintain peace and order on the server. We have done our best to maintain simple and reasonable rules.

Be friendly, promote a positive attitude and always be respectful.

Do not repeatedly send messages in chat.

Do not advertise other websites or servers.

Do not accuse others of hacking without evidence.

Do not use alt accounts for your own advantage.

Do not use offensive or inappropriate skins.

Do not use glitches and exploits to your advantage.

Do not use hacked clients or xray resource packs.

Staff

Biskotaki: Owner and main server administration

GhostMonkee: Administrator (Community Management)

PhireChu: Moderation

akaOtter: Moderation

beerye3: Moderation

What's next?

We are really looking forward into meeting you in-game! We hope you spend some quality and enjoyable time on the server. Here's what you can do next:

IP to connect with: ve-mc.com

Backup IP (if the first one doesn't work): vanillaessence.serverminer.com

Discord: www.ve-mc.com/discord

Website: www.ve-mc.com

Support Email: [email protected]

You made it, thanks for your time.

#Minecraft servers #minecraft