scedasticity

I'm not going to try to explain the entire background to this here... some explanation is here and the entire project to date is here.

Previously we were trapped in a seemingly endless yet curiously uninformative description of a scene involving an altar; some priests; and an idol.

The scene is STILL NOT OVER, and now... yeah, we’re back to the standard subgenre issues with women.

Two sentences in this paragraph -- I’m going to ATTEMPT both of them.

Deep breath.

This is adapted from https://github.com/bbolli/tumblr-utils/blob/master/tumblr_backup_for_beginners.md.

•  1. Get Python 2.7.12. Later versions may not work. 
  • a. Link is here: https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-2712/. As of my writing there are two OSX options; unless you haven’t updated in a very long time you probably want the second one, for OSX 10.6 and later.
  • b. Clicking on it will download an installer package. You have to have authorization to install software on your computer, and you have to have enough space to put the software -- it will tell you how much space it takes.
  • It will give you an opportunity to change where it installs it, but you can probably leave it as the default.
• 2. Get the tumblr-utils code: tumblr-utils.zip
  • a. This is a zip file. Once it saves in your downloads, open it and it will unzip, and let you choose where to save the resulting folder, which has a long name starting bboli-tumblr-utils.
  • b. The folder has nine files in it. The one you are concerned with is called tumblr_backup.py. Do not try to open it -- it would probably try to open in something weird, and you don’t need to.
• 3. Find Terminal. Terminal is the Mac equivalent of Windows console.
  • a. Approach one: Look in your main Applications folder; there should be a subfolder called Utilities, and Terminal should be in there.
  • b. Approach two: Use the Finder search window. “Terminal” will get a LOT of results searching “This Mac”, but sort by kind, only one of them should be an application.
  • c. Open Terminal.
• 4. Find out where Terminal is... the proper term for this is the working directory, but I’ll describe it as where Terminal is living.
  • a. It is probably living in the active user directory -- it’s a superfolder holding Documents, Downloads, Pictures, etc.? If so, the command prompt will probably end with the computer user ID followed by $.
  • b. To make sure, type in pwd and hit enter/return. This requests the “path to the working directory”, and it should spit out something that tells you how to get to where Terminal is living from Macintosh HD.
  • c. (It’s theoretically possible to change this, but it’s a lot harder in Macs than PCs for whatever reason, so it’s easiest to bring the files to Terminal.)
• 5. In Finder, copy tumblr_backup.py to wherever Terminal is living.
• 6. Execute the python file from Terminal.
  • a. After the command prompt, type python tumblr_backup.py yourblogname (replacing ‘yourblogname’ with your actual blogname obviously). This will create a folder called ‘yourblogname’ in that same working directory, with an index, etc, as described in the original post.
    • i. It will say it is looking at groups of posts in the blog as it runs. This is normal.
    • ii. It may throw up some errors if it encounters posts containing image files which aren’t there anymore or images which don’t allow downloading. This means it won’t grab those images, but the overall download is still working.
    • iii. When it is done it will say yourblogname: [number] posts backed up, and give a new command prompt.
  • b. If you want to export only a particular tag: python tumblr_backup.py -t tagname yourblogname
    • i. A tag of multiple words: python tumblr_backup.py -t “tag name” yourblogname 
      
    • ii. Multiple tags: python tumblr_backup.py -t “tag name”,tagname yourblogname 
    • iii. I have only tried this with two tags, and only with the multiple word one first, but in theory it should accept as many as you want in any order.
    • iv. It will still say it is looking at all the posts on the blog, but it will only save the ones with the tag.
  • c. If you want to do more than one export, it will try to name them all yourblogname, so change the name of each export folder in Finder before you start the new one. (I didn’t actually try doing it without this precaution, so I don’t know if it overwrites or gives an error or compensates somehow, but probably better to avoid it.)
• 7. Good luck