— QUICK HITS —
Pinside Suffers Major Outage
The largest pinball website in the world was offline for much of last week. A huge thank you to Robin and the Pinside team for all their work getting the site back up as quickly as possible!
We posted a few updates on TWIP’s social media channels to keep people updated:
After Pinside was back up, Robin posted some more information on what happened and what is being done on this Pinside thread:
We’re back!
What a crazy week it has been for Pinside (and a stressful week for me, I might add) with our first major outage in the 20 years or so that Pinside exists. Sure, we’ve had hiccups but nothing like this. The cause: a power surge, followed by a fire in a generator, followed by sprinklers and our server going down. I wasn’t there to see it, but I don’t think it was pretty.
Anyways, we’re running on a temporary server now, hosted all the way over in Germany (well, that’s close for me). Please be nice to it, it’s not as powerful as our previous one and there may be problems. Also, not everything functions yet: We have no e-mail notifications yet. And no maps. And probably a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t work right now. But at least we’re back. I’ll be moving to a brand new server (and a different hosting company) later on but I don’t want to rush that choice.
As for our data recovery procedure. Well there really wasn’t one in place as you may have noticed. Sure I had dual power supplies, dual network uplinks, dual (raid) drives. But I would not have expected a datacenter fire. I should have. I should have had a backup server somewhere, ready to spin up and continue service after a few hours. Truth is, I never got around to setting this up. But I will obviously be working on this, so a downtime like this cannot happen again in the future.
My last database backup was dated 10:02pm, while the server went down 11:39pm. So we lost 1h37m of data. That means any posts, PMs or Marketplace ads placed during that time are gone. And even if they restore our server (they’re still working on it but are now giving me an ETA of “weeks”) I will not be bringing that data back as that would be a technical nightmare.
If you made a donation or marketplace payment, please contact me. I will also be proactively look into any payments made during that 1h37m and take action or contact you.
Speaking of donations. Feel free to make a donation, if you’re happy that we’re back!
Let’s get the pinball talk going again and please bear with me while I try to keep this temporary server running nicely.
— Robin
Did you miss Pinside while it was offline?? Resources like Pinside are kept alive with YOUR support!!
PLEASE CONSIDER A DONATION TO PINSIDE TO HELP SUPPORT THE SITE AND KEEP IT GOING!!!
Loads of Code
Last week new code was released for many different machines from several different manufacturers:
Last Week’s Poll Results
Alien Pinball Shipping
Last week Pinball Brothers shared a post on Facebook showing an Alien standard version box! Check it out:
Melissa from CoinTaker shared in the comments that Aliens are slowly shipping and that larger quantities should be shipping in a few weeks. She also shared a little insight into the XV version showing on the box, as Pinball Brothers are offering just the standard version and limited version:
Interviews
Last week there were two notable interviews on different podcasts:
- The Slam Tilt Podcast: Interview with Dave Brennan from American Pinball
- Flippin’ and Mashing: Interview with Nick Baldridge, creator of Ranger in the Ruins
Installing Expression Light System on Led Zeppelin Pro Pinball
How to Remove a Playfield From a Spike 2 Stern Pinball Machine
PinClash AIQ Qualifying
Reminder – PinClash on Avengers: Infinity Quest is going on now and ends April 30th!
TMNT Limited Box (with Pinball Artwork)
Congrats to Marco Pinball on 50 Episodes of PinTech LIVE!
High quality pinball apparel!
#pinballforall
— Cool and Crazy Stuff —
Billy Madison Custom Pinball
Meet the Ladies of Marco Pinball
New Hobbit Mod from The Art of Pinball
Stolen Metallica – Let’s Find This Thing
The Mystery Of The Metallica Pinball Machine On OfferUp
La Verne Police Seek Help to Locate Stolen Metallica Pinball Machine
Other Quick Hits:
- Happy birthday Doug Polka, Jake Danzig, and Jason Rufer!!
- April Stern of the Union!
- ColorDMD releases Big Buck Hunter!
- IGN: Unboxing the *Amazing* New Avengers: Infinity Quest Pinball Machine
- Brain Junk Podcast: The Shady Game of Pinball
- Article: Local pinball wizards keep the classic arcade game alive
- Article: He’s a wizard when it comes to fixing pinball machines
- Article: St. Louis County loosens restrictions on restaurants, bars, arcades and refs
- Article includes pinball: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Keeps a Sentimental Game Unrelated to NASCAR in His Podcast Studio to Remember His Dad
- Article includes pinball: “I used to wear sleeveless shirts & long shorts just like him” – Novak Djokovic’s brother Djordje on idolizing Rafael Nadal
Other Manufacturers
More
Team Pinball: The Mafia
Circus Maximus: Kingpin, Python’s Pinball Circus
Homepin: Thunderbirds, Chinese Zombies
Suncoast Pinball: Cosmic Carnival
Great Lakes Pinball: Exposé
Dutch Pinball: Bride of Pinbot 2.0, Bride of Pinbot 3.0 (on hold), The Big Lebowski (production/legal issues)
Silver Castle Pinball: Timeshock
Phénix Pinball: Goblin Contest
Pinball Adventures: Punny Factory, Sushi-Mania, Ninja Mania, First Class, Canada Eh!