http://elmcity.cloudapp.net is down; hosting terminated?

[jwmh]

Hi Jon - @judell ,

- communication channel: -

Sorry for doing this on GitHub; I realize this is a platform for reporting software bugs, rather than hosting issues.

So I'm not sure if this is the best way to notify/contact you, but it seemed the most likely to stand out, and the also the most context-relevant approach.

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- issue summary -

For at least the past twenty-four hours, I've been unable to load http://elmcity.cloudapp.net
... and I'm sure you're already aware -- maybe you (or someone at Microsoft) terminated the project's hosting?

- details / what I've tried: -

"Server not found."

• Doesn't work from a web proxy, either. (I tried two.)
• Tried http://isup.me:
  ** Yesterday, it reported that "It's not just you: elmcity.cloudapp.net is down."
  ** Today, it reports that "It's just you: ... is up"...
  ...but that doesn't explain why the several web-proxies I've tried aren't able to load it.
  *** (possibly there's been a DNS migration, and it hasn't finished propagating?)
• When I try pinging it, it either returns "host not found", /or/ I get a reply from localhost (depending on which system I try to ping from; don't have admin access here, so I can't modify the DNS settings to check further).
• I didn't see anything about termination of the ElmCity service on your blog, nor on your Twitter, nor when I do a domain-specific search of your personal website ((site:jonudell.net) AND ("elmcity" OR "elm city" OR "elmcity.cloudapp.net")).

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Am seriously hoping it's still around, and/or there are/will be other hosting options available.

::sigh:: if not, there's always @activate (http://activatehub.org) (it's a fork of @calagator: a calendar-syndication service like ElmCity, but for Portland's tech community :-) )

Still, I think ElmCity is in some ways better; both have their strengths.
.... I like many of ActivateHub's features more (e.g. sorting not only by events, but also by venue, as well as by organization), but prefer other aspects of ElmCity's features, and minimalist/"clean" UI/layout.

Also, ElmCity is general, whereas Activate!Hub's and Calagator's only hosted instances (that I know of) are more topic-/genre-specific.
That would be the biggest loss, if ElmCity disappeared -- all of the collected and syndicated calendar feeds and configurations.

Joseph

P.S. Are you aware of "Calendar Map"? It's fantastic, for whenever I'm visiting a new area (provided I have a google calendar feed to plug into it) : http://chadnorwood.com/projects/gcm/

Sorry again for all the exposition: I realize this really isn't the place for it, and I wasn't sure where else to post... this seemed the closest, still-non-ideal, shot for public long-form related to ElmCity.

[judell]

Hi @jwmh,

Yes, it's down and will probably stay that way. I ran into an Azure billing issue and while trying to resolve it realized that my heart just isn't in this project any more.

I do apologize for not sorting that out in a more orderly way.

If there is interest I can certainly provide the collections of iCalendar URLs which, as you suggest, are valuable regardless of which service aggregates them.

[jwmh]

Jon,

Completely understandable; I've been there myself with many things.

Thanks so much for the response.

Yes-
I would love to have as much data / metadata / website config
settings / etc as you're comfortable spending time collecting and
providing.
(... bearing in mind that, if it's just the iCal URLs and you don't
feel like going further, that in itself would be something I'd really
appreciate.)

Thank you again.

Also-
What are the system/platform requirements for running this, if one of
us wanted to take the source and host it elsewhere (are the req's listed in
one of the files)? Would you be OK with that?

• Joseph

[jalbertbowden]

@judell
sorry to hear about the sunset of this project. I would love to have the urls too, specifically Virginia's, but I'm sure others will find the other 49 states useful as well.
Cheers,
Albert