Dear friends,
I was hoping to avoid having to report this to you, but we might have some major problems with the blog in the near future. This is not critical, but it could be a major headache. Here is what is going on.
The company with which we registered the domain name “thesaker.is” has basically been totally unreachable for over a month now. We tried emails, calling them in Iceland, calling them in the USA – nobody replies. Why this is bad is because over the past month they have been sending me reminders that our domain name expires on the 12th of January. But the page used to renew the registration fee has been down for over a month now, with just a short message saying that it is down for “maintenance”. In other words – we have not succeeded in finding a way to pay them and time is running out. Paying them would be trivial for us, it’s not very expensive, but we cannot do that. And if they have gone out of business, they will soon shut down their domain name servers. Now, the Saker blogs are rented from another company, so our servers will remain up, but the domain name “thesaker.is” will not point to our servers any more.
We are trying hard to get in touch with them, but let’s prepare for the worst. Should the domain name thesaker.is go down, please go to the old blog at blogspot:
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/
Which I will have to use until we sort out this mess.
I am really sorry that this totally silly problem has happened now, especially on the Eve of the Orthodox Nativity (aka ‘Christmas’) but Murphy’s Law seem to be proven yet again.
Also, since it is the Nativity, please give me 24 hours before I resume normal blogging (either here, on our own blog, or on the old blog if we cannot sort out this mess).
My sincere apologies for this.
Kind regards to all,
The Saker
Saker,
Merry Christmas from a visitor at the Jordanville Monastery.
христос се роди, ваистину се роди !
happy xmas everyone!
—–
by formidable and very gracious, all smiles, nemanja radulovic a very joyous piece:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GzLuRjIFh7g
enjoy
Wishing all who visit here, peace and prosperity for 2016.
Enjoyed the Christmas Eve Orthodox service streamed live from Moscow… grand.
Then celebrated Christmas Day service and lunch at to our local Orthodox Church where Father James made a special prayer for Russia… for strength for the Russian leaders to fight evil… etc… made my heart swell with hope.
This is our little bit of Russia down under…
http://www.stnicholaswallsend.org.au/
Saker…Hope your tech issues are sorted soon…
Thank you Babushka in Oz for sharing.
Nice parish and very beautiful children. It shows that you are happy in your faith.
Happy Orthodox Christmas and Happy New Year.
lb, I cannot watch your link in my country..is there another link ?
@ Ann
Try https://youtube.com/watch?v=GzLuRjIFh7g , it worked for me in the U.S.
(in other words, knock off that “m.” part of the address).
What country is Yours dear Ann!?
Anyway, try here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzLuRjIFh7g&list=RDGzLuRjIFh7g#t=117
Христос се роди!
Поздрав из Србије
Really great site there. A bunch of B.S. anti-Russian propaganda can be found there.
charles fasola,
wonder what site did you have in mind?
the earlier link takes one to the music upload, not any anti anything or BS as you put it..perhaps you meant to respond to another post?
That’s a real bummer .I hope that the problem gets solved ; is it possible that some persons ‘hate the truth’, anyways have a great Christmas -easy on the vodka and heavy oh the cheers .
whois info says their office is in Los Angeles. maybe you could get a favor from someone to go knock on the door.
or just let it expire and go with another company or attempt a transfer.
Yes, I hope The Saker just transfers the domain name to another service provider ASAP since it could be moved even without the cooperation of this current provider I believe.
the address doesn’t seem to exist
The original Paul:
Yes, knocking on the door is often the best solution to problems with mickey-mouse domain outfits. The ones that have trouble are little web-design companies who run out of cash and close their doors, taking other people’s domains down. The big registrars don’t have such problems, so if you can find someone to knock on their door, fix up the annual tab, and then you have 12 months to transfer the domain to a reliable big outfit like register.com, godaddy.com, or networksolutions.com
But, by all means, try the door-knocking method.
No worries Saker.
I have noticed a lot of glitches on the blog lately, particularly ‘time-outs.’
Still, you have given us Vineyard ‘crack’ addicts an alternative – thanks.
So enjoy the Orthodox Feast of the Nativity, while the rest of us Western Christmas folk continue to recover from our seasonal excesses..:)
your IP address seems to be 82.221.109.115, but it seems like you are not using the standard port (80). the IP:port combo is the real address the domain name thesaker.is is just a label. I would rather have the raw address to plug into my bookmark just in case your domain name goes down.
This is not a non-standard port, but a shared hosting. On this IP 82.221.109.115 there are many websites, and when the browser connects, it sends in the message header the expected URL (thesaker.is). The web server sitting at this IP then knows which website must be served.
2 workarounds are possible:
– modify the host file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file) and add the following mapping “82.221.109.115 thesaker.is” -> Best solution
– use a browser add-on (ex. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tamper-data/ for firefox) to modify the “Host” header manually when accessing 82.221.109.115 (see doc)
Thanks for that info.. Not being in the field but doing some dns hacking to get around dns problems the most some of us ever got was to just use the IP address.. We don’t know how HTML really works..
I do play with the hosts file.. But I never knew the browser ever sent the link to the server.. So changing the hosts file in reality is not the same as the using the IP address to connect to a shared web server.. Learn something new every day..
Just add the line to your hosts file in \windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts its a hidden directory so good luck getting there.. but open the file directly in an editor.. go to the boot drive with windows and open \windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts will load the hosts file..
then add the line and save the file.. many security programs will protect this file from changes.. So now it wont use the dns to find the IP address.. it is not a solution as others still wont know what the what the IP is to get here.. Kinda like a secret society.. hehheeeeeheeeee
82.221.109.115 thesaker.is
you should see a line like 127.0.0.1 localhost
in the file…
???? really?? they copyrighted a host file?
# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
Saker and Astrology … the kind of recent trouble is a typical one if the material appearance of one thing (Ascendant) is in resonance with Neptunes fog, the more so, if Saturns order is also in the fog. This is the case, as is apparent in the appendix to my research to Sakers blog. This disturbance will remain till 31. of January.
The astrological analysis of the blogs “explosion” in 2014: http://astromundanediary.blogspot.de/2016/01/astrology-with-saker.html
Actually, Mars is retrograde until 25th Jan, which Astrologists always say messes badly with all communications !! mod PS
It is mercury which is retrograde until 25th of January. Mars goes retrograde later in the spring. The last time Israel decided to invade Lebanon was during a mercury retrograde which means things never turn out as planned—there was one snafu after another. If they decide to do the same thing again this January….well the same fubar results will occur.
Also Uranus(higher mind or sudden rapid change of an electrical nature) which is supposed to relate to the internet is being squared by a transiting moon ( timing) today/tomorrow and is within orb( 2 degrees) of Pluto…( death of an old structure) for a few weeks.
Which may relate or not…I think Jupiter ( ruler of MidEast ,Islam and religion) opposing Neptune ( fog of war, higher love or addiction) and Squaring Saturn along with Saturn ( ruler of the Jews) also in a square to Neptune ( higher Love/compassion) has much to do with what is going on in the mid East. Neptune is the anchor and it is strongly placed. Time for the Sunni clerics to break with the house of Saud and for Jews to adhere to the school of Hillel.
Dear, mundanomaniac!
Amazing… Maybe you will do astrological analysis of my life one day?
regards
if i may: all of you lucky enought to be fluent in russian, pay attention to:
Александр Михайлович Хатыбов ‘s work.
you will probably begin to reappraise all that’s been written/said relating to heavenly bodies movement influencing our little space in the universe.
good news is this formidable matematical mind carefully calculated and concluded the old millennia old programme does not apply any more…not since 2009.
Do be careful, whose hands you place your life analysis in….(tho’ astrology is in my non humble opinion, a far safer bet than a ‘shrink’)
Thank you, Scott, would be a honor to me.
By the way, the Russian readership of the German version of my blog, “Mundanes Tagebuch”, is ever-increasing and last month passed the German readership. Amazing.
Anonymus 11:46 wasn’t anonymus, but mundanomaniac
Hi Saker,
Happy New Year!
There should be no problem, AFAIK you can register your domaine name with any registrar dealing with the top-level domaines of your choice. For many years I’ve been using OVH and can say that they’re very reliable, too big to suddenly disappear and not expensive at all.
https://www.ovh.com/
You could ask them what your options and/or necessary procedures are. Usually they answer questions on very short notice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_registration#Domain_name_transfer
Best regards and Good luck!
Jan
If the domain name has the extension .is, then doesn’t it have to be handled by a server located in Iceland?
Are you suggesting registering the domain name (“the saker”) with various extensions (e.g., thesaker.org, thesaker.net, thesaker.com, etc.), to cover all bases?
I am not a techie, so if this is a stupid question, please forgive!
And warm Nativity greetings to all who celebrate tomorrow.
Katherine
Hmm, got the “you are posting comments too quickly” message. So I did it slowly, but it was still too quick . . .
“doesn’t it have to be handled by a server located in Iceland?”
No, the server can be anywhere, but the registrar is likely local. Try http://www.vortex.is/ (they speak English) for more info.
BTW: Little country (e.g. Iceland) domain services are expensive; you can save quite a bit (like, a LOT!) using a huge multi-national
Just like the JJ says, any registrar should be able to take of that problem. At the end of the day everything goes to some outfit in the US. I guess having it registered in Iceland may be safer with regards to someone’s attempt to revoke the domain name.
I agree that the server’s location does not need to be in the territory identified by the domain registration.
Is somebody on this blog live in Island? To go and check in person that what is going on? It is very strange for some reason.
Saker, the domain name and hosting can be separate. You can register your domain name with any reputed registrar, then assign it to any hosting service.
Nemo’s comment means that you are on a shared server. To guarantee reliable service you need to be on a dedicated server. Yes, it cost more but your blegging income should cover the cost. If not take on ad’s or go subscription only.
may you could directly contact icann ?
https://www.icann.org/
The whois for unseen.is gives an intriguing connection
role: Amazon Route 53
nic-hdl: AR64-IS
address: Amazon.com
address: P.O. Box 81226
address: Seattle, Washington 98108-1226
address: US
e-mail: awsdns-hostmaster@amazon.com
created: September 14 2011
source: ISNIC
It looks like unseen uses amazon cloud infrastructure. You may be able to get some info on the status of unseen from the amazon adress. (high;y unlikely)
Your NIC handle is HS412-IS (identify of your DNS records in the system)
Other emails include
admin@unseen.is
isnic@unseen.is
vinh@unseen.is
The unseen website seems to be up. Did they give you any account into – username / password? The NIC handle may be the username. If you could log on, you should be able to make a payment if they really are alive. The postmaster address in the SOA is root@thesaker.is. That may be the email to use to log onto unseen.
However, the DNS entries for unseen seem to be messed up. Maybe they have had problems paying their bills?
unseen’s ISP appears to be advania in Reykjavik
https://www.advania.com/advania/contact-us/
Maybe they can help or offer some advice?
The zip code for ‘Steve Join’ of 90001 is south of downtown Los Angeles but there’s no ‘Palm’ street/avenue there. There’s an ‘East and West Palm’ just south of the LAX airport, but it seems to me the information is incomplete or in error.
role: Unseen ehf.
nic-hdl: HS412-IS
address: I?unnarbrunnur 5
address: IS-113 Reykjav?k
phone: +354 6959991
e-mail: isnic@unseen.is
created: December 12 2013
source: ISNIC
person: Join Steve
nic-hdl: JS374-IS
address: 100 PALMS
address: LOS ANGELES, LOS ANGELES 90001
address: US
e-mail: support.hosting@unseen.is
created: January 14 2015
source: ISNIC
What in the name of God does ANY of the above mean? I feel like the last, sole, only, remaining person of of a lost civilisation. is Christmas merry? i remember watching the orthodox ceremony from Moscow online about 10 years ago. poor Putin… he could barely conceal his yawns and boredom.
Merry Christmas, to anyone bored, to all in Iceland, to all servers of truth in domains of peace, may you move frequently, with grace, to ever renewing sites with bites ad infinitum.
The discussion is around DNS -Domain Name Server without which internet life would be difficult and the web next to useless. It’s an arcane system that like the internet itself was never designed for the purpose it now serves.
The internet was originally designed as a military fault-tolerant communication system, chopping a message up into small packets that could re-route around nuclear devastation and be re-assembled into the original message at its intended destination. The web was built on top of this mess, but it is an amazingly useful mess.
I am playing fast and loose here with this metaphor:
Think of DNS as a system to simplify a building address, like your home, given in latitude/longtitude coordinates or a postal zip code. Unless you have a GPS or a zip code translator finding a building would be difficult. Instead we have city/town names, streets and house numbers. The DNS system is that system that translates the lat/long numerical address into something more useful with the exception that the building is like a mobile home that can move around transparently even to another country without the web address you use (eg. thesaker.is) changing.
Domain names/web adresses or URL (ha-ha! – yet another TLA: Three Letter Acronym, meaning universal resource locator) such as the ‘thesaker.is’ which you are using right now, must be unique and registered with a Domain Name authority. These names are paid for yearly and will eventually expire if not renewed. The name is then up for grabs by anybody else.
When registering there is a physical address and contact name with the registree -who appears to have gone missing.
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/domain_name.html
A crystal clear ‘amazingly useful mess’ – thank you for helping me to understand! perhaps crystal was a bit of an exaggeration, and less murky slightly better. Us lesser humans, (perhaps i am not the only one?), need all the help they can get with matters such as these – where’s the Lord of Host’s when you need him?
Merry Christmas! May the grace, mercy, and peace of our dear Lord Jesus be richly poured out upon you and yours, jdh
Why cant we just use the IP address of / to get here?
instead of /
using http://82.221.109.115/
It used to work before but seems some kind of redirection protection is used now..
http://82.221.109.115/important-message-major-problems-possible-for-the-blog/ shows page not found..
I had the same issue when I was trying to move a domain for someone and the company that was hosting it disappeared. Luckily we managed to find his residence, call him up, explain the situation, and he did his part to release the domain to us so we can transfer it to Network Solutions (not that I’m advertising for them but they’ve been around since forever).
Make sure you mention you’re a customer and have been for X amount of years. That was the magic word that got everything rolling.
You just gotta keep following it up. It’ll be a mission, without doubt. Iceland can’t be that big, if I found someone in the middle of nowhere in America I’m sure you can find this guy.
Just hope there isn’t a bot out there waiting to snipe your domain the minute it goes on the market. Damn bots…..
Merry Christmas Saker and blessing to you and to your family
The Saker,
we live in the uk…near london ..my son is not political.
he runs an isp (from his bedroom basically) but he has an exceedingly fast bandwidth and a large number of servers in data centres in seperate parts of london with the manchester university science park (near where I used to work at ICL) as a back up
You (in my opinion) run the best blog in the world.
You again win my annual award of Best Journalist In the world (this has never happened before – not the same guy in two consecutive years )
If anyone in the world takes your blog down…
we in london will get it back up.
you don’t have to pay
The Saker is no 1 (again)
Thank You
Tony
Hi Saker,
Please accept my best wishes and a very merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.
This may be redundant but I searched: http://whois.domaintools.com/thesaker.is
and found this:
Email is associated with ~43 domains
is associated with ~2 domains
Registrant Org Unseen ehf. is associated with ~35 other domains
Dates Created on 2015-01-13 – Expires on 2017-01-13
IP Address 82.221.109.115 – 12 other sites hosted on this server
IP Location Iceland – Hofuoborgarsvaoio – Reykjavik – Advania Hf.
ASN Iceland AS50613 THORDC-AS THOR Data Center ehf (registered Feb 18, 2010)
Whois History 31 records have been archived since 2015-01-17
Whois Server whois.isnic.is
Website
Website Title The Vineyard of the Saker | A bird’s eye view of the vineyard
Server Type Apache
Response Code 200
SEO Score 77%
Terms 1831 (Unique: 803, Linked: 1077)
Images 80 (Alt tags missing: 9)
Links 282 (Internal: 201, Outbound: 76)
Whois Record ( last updated on 2016-01-06 )
domain: thesaker.is
registrant: HS412-IS
admin-c: HS412-IS
tech-c: JS374-IS
zone-c: HS412-IS
billing-c: HS412-IS
nserver: ns9.unseen.is
nserver: ns10.unseen.is
nserver: ns11.unseen.is
nserver: ns12.unseen.is
dnssec: unsigned delegation
created: January 13 2015
expires: January 13 2017
source: ISNIC
role: Unseen ehf.
nic-hdl: HS412-IS
address: Iðunnarbrunnur 5
address: IS-113 Reykjavík
phone: +354 6959991
e-mail:
created: December 12 2013
source: ISNIC
person: Join Steve
nic-hdl: JS374-IS
address: 100 PALMS
address: LOS ANGELES, LOS ANGELES 90001
address: US
e-mail:
created: January 14 2015
source: ISNIC
If anyone in Reykjavik could help The Saker, the local contact appears to be”
IP Address 82.221.109.115
IP Location Iceland – Hofuoborgarsvaoio – Reykjavik – Advania Hf.
ASN Iceland AS50613 THORDC-AS THOR Data Center ehf (registered Feb 18, 2010)
or
role: Unseen ehf.
nic-hdl: HS412-IS
address: Iðunnarbrunnur 5
address: IS-113 Reykjavík
phone: +354 6959991
Thank you.
I opened advania@advania.com and found this contact info:
Tel +(354) 440 9000 advania@advania.com Gudrunartun 10, 105 Reykjavík
Dear Saker,
happy New Year to you and the entire Saker team. Regarding the DNS, why not just publish the IP address(es) of your servers now, such that we can directly use them instead of the domain name?
Kind regards,
Marcel
“why not just publish the IP address(es) of your servers now?”
Doesn’t work. The IP address has been redirected to hyperspace
Nice satire :-)
Well, reality is similar to hyperspace: the IP address itself seems to point to a server (farm) hosting many websites. Trying to access a website by the server IP results therefore in a server responding “I do not know which site you want”. This could be solved by configuring the server (farm) such that “http://82.221.109.115/thesaker.is/…” is understood as intended.
Hi Saker ! thanks for the update, will keep in touch for sure, on the old blog if necessary…what a drag…
I hope you and your family have a great Christmas ! Is there a big community of Russians in your neck of the woods ?
Ann
Merry Christmas Saker and all my Orthodox brothers and sisters. Hopefully this year will be a year of peace.
Mercury is retrograde.
I warned about this previously. The US Pentagon, the CIA and Zionist Israel decided years ago Mrs. William Clinton was to be the next US President. Evidently the actually criminal US Corporate US election donations have flooded money on her campaign which is only possible since 9/11 was a false flag, known one year in advance and allowed. In order to remove the US Constitution. The US NATO control arm that post 9/11 exploded across Europe is used to permanently remove all EU International Humanitarian Law through each membership. Both China and Russia are surrounded by hostile war arms.
Assassination has not yet been used against the Saker structure but with Clinton in power, that will change, and is changing today. You can see that change clearly by how the US Federal Government is responding to the Bundy Brothers stand off in order to invoke American Constitutional Law, no longer existing since 9/11..The only method possible to guide such a nation is Police State power, of which the deaths of innocent black US civilians are proof. CIA use of the Bilderberg Group, stolen from Netherlands and Europe by the US CIA in 1954 confirmed, the usefulness of a Clinton Presidency to US hegemony. The steamrolling of that goal is presently in full war mode.As the mass sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany attest as well. Why didn’t German NATO use it’s intelligence services, the best in Europe, joined to US Homeland Security and US NSA, to stop the assaults before they began? German NATO never warned the German police? Why not?
Merry Christmas to all.
Saker, may you sort the domain problems out quickly and get time to be with your family for the Orthodox feastivities.
May 2016 be a year of great positive change for humanity and our Earth.
This looks like a boycott… Good luck!
Thank you Saker for letting us know and good luck.
Happy Christmas Saker and team.
This is probably not related but then again it might be; at the hospital in my city in Australia the server has blocked your site! I can get Al Manar, Asafir, RT etc but not your blog!
Saker, I read daily but this is my first response as I feel I can help.
You are able to change registrars without the help of the old registrar.
Choose a new registrar, make sure they deal with the .is extension.
Find their procedure for moving the domain name registration without release of the old registrar. Usually it is some days and then the move happens if the old registrar does not respond.
Move the domain name registration.
Would be good to get in touch with the new registrar, tell them what is happening and they will help with their procedure.
It may be that the first registrar simply has problems or has gone out of business. It may be and I’ve seen it a few times lately that someone is after your domain name, either for financial or for nefarious reasons.
Keep it up bro and Merry Christmas from Paris
For Mod
Here is the link for the Iceland registrar. http://www.isnic.is/en/
get the same info here at at the whois link.
Expires 13 January 2017
Has anyone done some investigation of the emails saying the
DN is about to expire? Just a thought.
Thanks Roger …yes we have done extensive investigation … everything leads to a dead end. Links lead to servers in California, Delaware and Viet Nam. All links are dead ends in terms of contacting a person or company. I thinking that we are being spoofws, however we still can not connect to our registrant either via phone or email to verify credentials. Mod – hs
My son has checked thesaker.is and tells me the expiry is January 2017. This means it has already been renewed possibly automatically, and you should have no problems.
Hello Saker,
I believe you are a Orthodox Christian. Therefore let me wish you and your family a merry Christmas from France.
Keep on the good work!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrograde_and_prograde_motion
Here’s a low down on mercury retrograde, with visual. It’s high up, not low down, and also, only apparently appears retrograde,and is, in fact, not. But appearances may be deceptive, especially those running around in circles.
Perhaps it’s all about re-evaluation, and slowing down, and spiritual contemplation – o yay, any more of that and i’ll go spare – save me jesus now, merry Christmas Saker.
Is it resolved?
Whois result seems to confirm that:
domain: thesaker.is
registrant: HS412-IS
admin-c: HS412-IS
tech-c: JS374-IS
zone-c: HS412-IS
billing-c: HS412-IS
nserver: ns9.unseen.is
nserver: ns10.unseen.is
nserver: ns11.unseen.is
nserver: ns12.unseen.is
dnssec: unsigned delegation
created: January 13 2015
expires: January 13 2017
source: ISNIC
Reported by is.whois-servers.net on 1/7/2016 at 3:22:31 PM (UTC 0)
yes we are aware of the jan 2017 expiration date … its just that we keep getting these warning email about a cutoff in 6 days and we are unable to contact our registrant .. no phone no email … maybe closed up … we are still trying to verify and we hope you are correct
Is your registrar the unseen.is? The web site appears to be up and running. At least I can get to the login page…
http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/unseen.is
Post the info about your registrar if it’s not unseen.is, maybe someone has additional info.
Also keep in mind that it is possible that somebody take over the “abandoned” domain name, and then ask for ransom, or redirect to ads page.
Saker, why don’t you just register the domain name “saker.is” with someone else when the current registration expires? With some respectable company?
Sorry to hear about the server troubles. Although I am seeing that there are a lot of experts here, so I hope that all will be solved before the date expire.
On question about Orthodox Christmas: I am reading these days that Orthodox Christians use to do four weeks of fast and also it is done on Christmas Eve, i.e. yesterday ( quite opposite of what we do, I mean, we of Catholic cuture/ education, who eat in excess on Christmas days and New Year´s Eve and then this brings its consequences ). Well, here in the Basque Country we eat in excess in all celebrations…..
Also I find Mr. Putin noticeably slimmer these days, I wonder if he also does fast:
http://static.kremlin.ru/media/events/photos/big2x/po92eke57mpBTQMv8zaMCu1qHr10QlM9.jpg
This is a good reminder of what to expect in the very near future. Time to make a more elaborate plan with possible work arounds in case of harassment or sabotage. I see lots of commenters have good technical skills. Maybe someone can suggest ideas for hardening this sites’ defenses. A total internet shut down will not happened right away but I expect glitches will multiply as the information war heats up.
In any case, Merry Christmas Saker!
Thanks for doing what you do.