LJArchive
Thanks to tpau for pointing out the layoffs at LiveJournal. If this article is to be believed, it's probably not the end of the world -- everybody's laying off right now, and I can't say I'm entirely astonished that LJ is consolidating. But it's a good reminder that backing up one's journal is a good idea, just in case.
Thanks also to her for the pointer to ljArchive, a tool for doing exactly that. It's not a panacea -- it's .NET-based, so mainly intended for Windows, and I gather from its LJ community that some users have had reliability issues with it. But I found it quite nice: easy to install, easy to use, and quick. It took just a few minutes to get it up and running, and just a few more to download my entire journal (about 1800 entries and 14000 comments, so that's nicely efficient). It's open-source freeware, and even comes with a reasonably good viewer for reading and searching your journal. In fact, the search functionality is so fast that it may be the easiest way to look up old entries.
So I'd strongly recommend to Windows users that, if you don't already have a solution in place, it's worth downloading ljArchive and backing up your journal. I put the odds of LJ collapsing fairly low still, but it's always better to be prepared...
Thanks also to her for the pointer to ljArchive, a tool for doing exactly that. It's not a panacea -- it's .NET-based, so mainly intended for Windows, and I gather from its LJ community that some users have had reliability issues with it. But I found it quite nice: easy to install, easy to use, and quick. It took just a few minutes to get it up and running, and just a few more to download my entire journal (about 1800 entries and 14000 comments, so that's nicely efficient). It's open-source freeware, and even comes with a reasonably good viewer for reading and searching your journal. In fact, the search functionality is so fast that it may be the easiest way to look up old entries.
So I'd strongly recommend to Windows users that, if you don't already have a solution in place, it's worth downloading ljArchive and backing up your journal. I put the odds of LJ collapsing fairly low still, but it's always better to be prepared...