A case repository from 3000 BCE to Present - Xt's UFO Scrapbook

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan

Originally posted by bigfatfurrytexan
reply to post by InS0MnI

 

... It is a shame it had to be censored. While i understand ATS protecting their investment, it seems that with the way MSM censors information (and the criticism ATS members and ownership alike level due to that censorship), it may be time to find a new way around the way posts are altered by mods.

No offense to GEL, who was only doing her "job".

ABSOLUTELY right on the money! I hope the Three Amigo Brass take note of BFT's clearly spot-on observation (again) and make some adjustments. If they don't, I predict ATS has "peaked" and will gradually lose viewership and participation to less intrusive forums.

BTW, just my humble opinion, but "GEL" is one of the most flagrant 'slash-and-burn' "MOD"s on the site... Is that really her "job"???

Originally posted by MrInquisitive
reply to post by Xtraeme

 

OK, a technical question: This 3.11 Gb repository of UFO info seems to be a torrent file at the sites it is available at, yes?

Yep, that's correct.

If it is, doesn't one also have to download some torrent server, or is Scrapbook acting like one?

All you need is a client, something like µTorrent or Azureus. Scrapbook as a tool isn't related to the torrent in any sense whatsoever. Bittorrent is just a way to transfer a file.

From what you write, Xtraeme, one only needs to download the file and uncompress it and then load it from within Scrapbook on Firefox.

Once you've got the file you'll need something like 7zip to extract the contents. At that point just follow the instructions in the readme. That will tell you how to load it in to Scrapbook.

I appreciate a little explanation of what this file is, i.e. is it essentially an archive of html pages ...

Scrapbook does pretty much what it sounds like it would do. It allows you to copy parts of a webpage and then markup the content using a built-in WYSIWYG editor. Here's a full description of its features from the official website:

ScrapBook is a Firefox extension, which helps you to save Web pages and manage the collection. Key features are lightness, speed, accuracy and multi-language support. Major features are:

*Save Web page
*Save snippet of Web page
*Save Web site (In-depth Capture)
*Organize the collection in the same way as Bookmarks
*Highlighter, Eraser and various page editing features
*Full text search and quick filtering search
*Text edit feature resembling Opera's Notes
amb.vis.ne.jp...

or is it an archive of addresses to html pages (as I understand .torrent files to be)?

Giving a really rough overview, a torrent file contains two major things. It has trackers and a hash. The trackers are a centralized source that communicate with the clients to keep track of who currently has what parts of the files. Whereas the hash allows the client to determine if what other people are sending across the line is the same content as what the original uploader intended to distribute.

The idea then is that if everyone is connected to one another, it reduces the amount of data that any one person has to upload. This is why companies like Blizzard and Redhat use bittorrent for their updates. It's time consuming to serve the content to each individual person. So the goal then is to have each user who's downloading also help with the uploading. One of the advantages to this is it means that there's technically no real "up-limit" because the upload speed is the combined upload limits of all the people participating. So the only real restriction in terms of transfer speed is the user's download limit.

... or is it an archive of addresses to html pages ...

Scrapbook doubles as a huge bookmark list. Whenever you copy a small piece from a website it also records the URL and when you copied the content. So you can always go back to the original site by right clicking on the item in the scrapbook tree-view and then click "Open Source URL." This will take you back to the original website.

I'm a neophyte to this torrent stuff, and there are probably a few others here that fall into the same category, who would also like some explanation before downloading something willynilly.

You should always be careful, but .torrent files are pretty mundane. They're tiny and non-executable. However you should always be careful with whatever you download via a torrent. In this case you'll see that all that the .rar file contains are tons and tons of static html files and pdfs, which are conventionally pretty harmless.

For six months now I've been wanting to release a full update to the scrapbook library. Since it's a few days after the one year anniversary of this thread. I decided I would spend some time today updating the library. This time, however, I've hosted the scrapbook on a file sharing site. So theoretically snagging the 7z should be a bit faster and hopefully easier for people to download.

________________

Instructions:

1. Download the file (3.56 GBs compressed, 5.5 GBs exploded) at the following link:

gdxn7b.1fichier.com...

and extract the contents using something like 7zip.

2. To use this library you'll need Firefox. You'll also have to install Gomita's Scrapbook ( amb.vis.ne.jp... ). Or, if you prefer, the plugin can be downloaded from the official Mozilla website ( addons.mozilla.org... ).

3. Once Scrapbook is installed, to access the library you'll need to tell Scrapbook where to find the data. The easiest way to do this is to open up the sidebar by hitting ALT+K or with two clicks from the menu bar select "Scrapbook → Show in Sidebar."



After that you should see an empty tree-view expand out from the left of the browser.



In the upper right corner of the sidebar you'll see "Tools."



Give "Tools" a click and in the drop-down select "Options."



Once the "Scrapbook Options" dialog pops up click "Organize."



4. Now you have to make a choice. If you don't want to create your own personal library tell Scrapbook to "Save data to" the folder where you expanded the RAR (pro-tip: consider unpacking the content to a removable media device like a USB thumbdrive) and, that's about it, hit OK and you're done!





5. On the other hand if you want to keep your options open, click the checkbox next to "Enable Multi-Scrapbook" and hit OK.



Now you'll see three icons to the left of "Tools" beneath the Scrapbook search bar. The rightmost of the three icons looks like a sheet of paper with a light blue stripe covering two thirds of the thumbnail. Once you've found it, click that button and in the drop-down select "Manage."



This should bring up a dialog with the title, "Multi-Scrapbook Manager." To configure the Scrapbook click 'Add,' give the library a name like 'UFO Archive,' browse to the data and hit OK. Then hit OK once more to exit the Multi-Scrapbook Manager.



After that all that's left to do is select a scrapbook. To accomplish this, click the icon that looks like the sheet of paper with the blue-stripe and left-click "UFO Archive."



Once that's completed you should see the content populate in to the side-bar. And voilà, you're done!

reply to post by Xtraeme

For people who prefer English, here's a link to the english version of the download page:

1. Download the file (3.56 GBs compressed, 5.5 GBs exploded) at the following link:

gdxn7b.1fichier.com...

and extract the contents using something like 7zip.

I should have probably made it the default. Oh well.

Originally posted by Xtraeme
For six months now I've been wanting to release a full update to the scrapbook library. Since it's a few days after the one year anniversary of this thread. I decided I would spend some time today updating the library. This time, however, I've hosted the scrapbook on a file sharing site. So theoretically snagging the 7z should be a bit faster and hopefully easier for people to download.

Brilliant. Thank you so much! I had been downloading entire sites with HTTrack, saving and moving around miscellaneous pages, pdfs, etc., and it's been an organizational nightmare. This is obviously a superior way to go about it all. I also really appreciate that you included plenty of sources examining the skeptical points of view.

It's not at all obvious exactly what Xtraeme has done here, so take a look at this pic I took, showing only the 1st level tree structure:



There is a TREMENDOUS amount of excellent information in these files. (About 5.5 GB on disk!) Thanks again for this.

Originally posted by TeaAndStrumpets
Brilliant. Thank you so much! I had been downloading entire sites with HTTrack, saving and moving around miscellaneous pages, pdfs, etc., and it's been an organizational nightmare. This is obviously a superior way to go about it all. I also really appreciate that you included plenty of sources examining the skeptical points of view.

I download a lot of websites myself. I find the scrapbook is typically a little bit better for searching purposes.



It makes it easier to organize as well, because it's right in the browser rather than having to dig around through external files. One of the other features that's pretty nice, that's similar to a lot of spidering tools, is that you have the capacity through the "Save Page As" dialog in the context menu to tell Scrapbook to save several of the sublinks on the webpage.

This can be a bit complicated if you're new to Scrapbook. In the "Save Page As" dialog you have to go to the "in-depth save" section, at the bottom of the panel. It will say "depths to follow links". Next you have to click "1" or greater and "save." Then it will pop up another window. This will allow you to choose which particular URLs you want to save in addition to the original page (see the image below).



This is a great feature. However I don't think it entirely replaces spidering a website and keeping a full local copy.

Just a year or so ago ufologie.net went down and looking around online I couldn't find any mirrors. So I went to the waybackmachine and while a lot of the content was there. It wasn't exactly easy to navigate. Then, of course, over several days I found many of the images and pdfs had gone missing. Luckily I had made a local copy of the website a year before. So I tried to contact Patrick Gross, but even after several weeks of waiting there was no reply. So I checked through several of the mailing lists and saw quite a few people in the community had tried to get in touch as well, but nobody was getting a response.

After a month or two and several continued attempts to make contact I transferred all the data I had backed up out onto my public facing webserver. I figured this way, at the very least, people could have access to an old copy of the information. Then about a year later out of nowhere Patrick launched a new website, ufologie.patrickgross.org. So as a matter of courtesy I redirected all the traffic from my website back to his.

I think it's just the nature of the beast to have to deal with lots of different files. Whether it be in the scrapbook, externally on a webserver, in a physical notebook, managing PDFs, or any data you might scan in. It's always going to be a little bit difficult managing all that information. I think it's just an inherent problem that comes along with having a large volume of data.

The real reason I like the scrapbook is because it's portable. I can just stick it on a thumbdrive and wherever I am I can pop it in to a computer and continue to add content or show others information, should the topic happen to come up. What I'm hoping will happen now that I have released the scrapbook into the wild, is that people will help flesh out various segments I've yet to fully develop.

So say someone is particularly knowledgeable about the 1956 Lakenheath case. They could help build out that section of the library. For instance, I know Martin Shough has done a considerable amount of serious-minded work on the '56 case particularly on the radar end—collecting additional testimony, trying to collate government documents—to better provide a thorough and analytical overview of what happened. Maybe someone knows where more of that research exists. It would be wonderful if somebody saved the new resources into the scrapbook, used the export feature, zipped it all up, and posted it back here to abovetopsecret.com. This way other members could bring that information into their own library. If everyone helped work towards this goal, it would result in an ever growing comprehensive repository of information of what's available online.

That's my hope anyways. Whether or not that happens in practice that's another thing entirely.

It is that time again! Update #3 is ready and available for download.

Xt's Scrapbook - 2013.02.13.7z (6.09 GB compressed, 8.38 GB expanded)

In the future I think I will release a new drop every December as a sort of a Christmas present for ATS.

It should be a fun way to reign in the New Year.

Enjoy.

Another year, another scrapbook! This is the first major "v1" release.

The old scrapbooks were good, but this is the one that finally covers it all.

Xt's Scrapbook - 2013.12.01.7z (9.61 GB compressed, 13.7 GB expanded)

There are a lot of changes, but the largest addition has to be to the chronology. It is probably the most comprehensive list of ufological events ever put in to one place.

Anyhow, happy Kwanzaa, merry Christmas, and a pleasant New Year to one and all!
-Xt

Xtraeme
Another year, another scrapbook!

This is the first major "v1" release.

The old scrapbooks were good, but this is the one that finally covers it all.

Xt's Scrapbook - 2013.12.01.7z (9.61 GB compressed, 13.7 GB expanded)

There are a lot of changes, but the largest addition has to be to the chronology. It is probably the most comprehensive list of ufological events ever put in to one place.

Anyhow, happy Kwanzaa, merry Christmas, and a pleasant New Year to one and all!
-Xt

edit on 2013-12-2 by Xtraeme because: (no reason given)

Does it include all of the previous releases?

reply to post by 1ofthe9

1ofthe9
Does it include all of the previous releases?

Yep, but there is no needless duplication if that's what you mean. The 2013.12.01.7z is the culmination of the last seven years of research all in one big zip. At least the bits I am willing to share anyways.

Xtraeme
reply to post by 1ofthe9

 

1ofthe9
Does it include all of the previous releases?

Yep, but there is no needless duplication if that's what you mean. The 2013.12.01.7z is the culmination of the last seven years of research all in one big zip. At least the bits I am willing to share anyways.

edit on 2013-12-2 by Xtraeme because: (no reason given)

I'll check it out.

1ofthe9
I'll check it out.

Have a blast! Don't get overwhelmed though. And just to make it easy for people to find. The latest greatest ...

Xt's Scrapbook - 2013.12.01.7z (9.61 GB compressed, 13.7 GB expanded)

Xtraeme
Another year, another scrapbook!

This is the first major "v1" release.

The old scrapbooks were good, but this is the one that finally covers it all.

Xt's Scrapbook - 2013.12.01.7z (9.61 GB compressed, 13.7 GB expanded)

There are a lot of changes, but the largest addition has to be to the chronology. It is probably the most comprehensive list of ufological events ever put in to one place.

Anyhow, happy Kwanzaa, merry Christmas, and a pleasant New Year to one and all!
-Xt

I fixed a couple of issues that were brought to my attention by pilotx. The 2013.12.01 version is now deprecated. This should be the final update for the calendar year. Consider this version 1.0.1:

Xt's Scrapbook - 2013.12.12.7z (9.7 GB compressed, 13.9 GB expanded)

Xtraeme
For six months now I've been wanting to release a full update to the scrapbook library. Since it's a few days after the one year anniversary of this thread. I decided I would spend some time today updating the library. This time, however, I've hosted the scrapbook on a file sharing site. So theoretically snagging the 7z should be a bit faster and hopefully easier for people to download.

________________

Instructions:

1. Download the file (3.56 GBs compressed, 5.5 GBs exploded) at the following link:

gdxn7b.1fichier.com... (6/2012)

Xtraeme
Another year, another scrapbook!

This is the first major "v1" release.

The old scrapbooks were good, but this is the one that finally covers it all.

Xt's Scrapbook - 2013.12.01.7z (9.61 GB compressed, 13.7 GB expanded)

I snagged the smaller download, because I noticed the link was still active. Is there a reason to have more then one version other then the smaller size? If the argument is persistent, could we achieve your conclusion without the addition of the "chronology plus" size, in the most recent update, since this doubles the package. I'm aware I'm also speaking for a large number of people interested in the book itself, but are put off by the increasingly large sizes.

reply to post by sighstars


There might be some confusion. The scrapbook isn't a book. It is a digital case archive that encompasses a huge swath of ufology from ancient times to the present. The 7z is a completely self contained library.

Is there a reason to have more then one version other then the smaller size? ...

The data is cumulative. Think of each version as a digest for the year it was released. So the latest drop has updates that focus on events that happened in 2013. I do remove entries in retrospect that I feel warrant pruning. However future updates will probably just include a slow curation or refinement of the data and a more in-depth organization. As is the newest version (2013.12.12) should cover pretty much the entirety of what typically gets lumped in with UFOs. Though I could be wrong!

If the argument is persistent, could we achieve your conclusion without the addition of the "chronology plus" size, in the most recent update, since this doubles the package.

The current release includes the closest thing to what I would consider an assessment or run down of what ufology amounts to, but only because there is so much. I see "UFOs" as a template for how human beings bring in and process new data.

That is the big takeaway.

Once people understand this they'll start to see that the methodologies employed in researching UTOs can be used to tackle understanding any short lived observation. The study of UTOs will eventually amount in a general purpose tool for knowledge acquisition (think something like a tricorder).

Otherwise, on the whole, I don't feel UOs warrant a grand theory or generalization beyond saying that unidentified objects crossover into every area of study and thus have many possible identifications (whether theoretical or mundane). So there is no grand argument pro or con. I simply collected all the hypotheses, misidentifications, the better cases (meaning those that seem to be genuine unknowns not just unidentified), bibliographies, audio, video, images, et cetera and created a structure around it.

To give you some idea of my aim. Basically the project I am working on is a technology to network a crowdsourced heterogeneous sensor array and to automate the analysis of transient low-fidelity inputs (SIGSNO - Science and Intelligence Gathering in pursuit of the Search for New Objects). So perhaps it may help you to think of the scrapbook as a tiny sample set (funny I know) that I use to help give myself a better mental picture of how things can be improved in the future to extract higher quality, unambiguous usable information from future incidents.

Xtraeme
Once people understand this they'll start to see that the methodologies employed in researching UTOs can be used to tackle understanding any short lived observation. The study of UTOs will eventually amount in a general purpose tool for knowledge acquisition (think something like a tricorder).

Otherwise, on the whole, I don't feel UOs warrant a grand theory or generalization beyond saying that unidentified objects crossover into every area of study and thus have many possible identifications (whether theoretical or mundane). So there is no grand argument pro or con. I simply collected all the hypotheses, misidentifications, the better cases (meaning those that seem to be genuine unknowns not just unidentified), bibliographies, audio, video, images, et cetera and created a structure around it.

I'm particularly interested in accounts of alien abductee's and the related materials. Most of the notable accounts have happened prior to the 2013 season, so I should be fine with the smaller download. I may be lucky enough to find more details about something I may have missed via a few google sessions. I have a base knowledge of more then a dozen accounts, off hand here is a specific conclusion that can be reached:

1. September 19, 1961 Betty & Barney Hill Abduction - November 2,1994 O.J. Simpson Murder Trial
2. November 5, 1975 Travis Walton Abduction (fire in the sky) - March 3, 1991 Rodney King Beating
3. August 18, 1991, West Carleton, Ontario Canada "Guardian UFO Case" - February 16, 2013 Meteor Explodes over Russia

1. Repercussion to Civil Liberties
2. Repercussion to Terrorism
3. Repercussion to Cosmic Shift/Ascension

In short, all of these extraterrestrial relations with mankind through the medium of the ufo, in some way. Connect to the Antichrist, and the Ascension of mankind. Or to the general social and economic changes indicative to the period surrounding the Cosmic Shift/Ascension. Without adding conjecture, we can say the UFO experience is a revelation, that will are destined to understand at the destruction of the universe, this is one, cough, possible conclusion.

Xtraeme
To give you some idea of my aim. Basically the project I am working on is a technology to network a crowdsourced heterogeneous sensor array and to automate the analysis of transient low-fidelity inputs (SIGSNO - Science and Intelligence Gathering in pursuit of the Search for New Objects). So perhaps it may help you to think of the scrapbook as a tiny sample set (funny I know) that I use to help give myself a better mental picture of how things can be improved in the future to extract higher quality, unambiguous usable information from future incidents.

In my opinion, such a device would require an understanding or mastery in the - containment of inner space/disbursement of interstellar space/metaphysics of consciousness. The conclusion itself is impossible to obtain without an environment with the hyperdimension, it can only be a hypothesis without ascension. Such a device, I would guess to imagine, would read the fields an object's "inner space containment" reacts to inertly. Immediately you can at least perceive, that several scientific fields would have to be understood as they are required to reach these conclusions.

reply to post by sighstars

Most of the notable accounts have happened prior to the 2013 season, so I should be fine with the smaller download.

I may have given you the wrong impression. The plan going forward is for it to be a yearly digest. The past uploads include substantially more than just what happened over the course of the year. Just be aware the older releases are also missing huge chunks of the UFO landscape. I strongly recommend getting the latest download. Especially if you are interested in CE3+ type cases.

I'm particularly interested in accounts of alien abductee's and the related materials.

My interest is in unidentified sightings that are of the class of unknowns. So, for example, imagine a person is a zoologist and they see a creature run across the street in South America that they can't identify. This is the sort of thing that we should have a technology in place for to better figure out what people are seeing. To infer that every odd, unidentified (possibly unknown) sighting is not local to earth is needlessly multiplying hypotheses.

In short, all of these extraterrestrial relations with mankind through the medium of the ufo, in some way. Connect to the Antichrist, and the Ascension of mankind. Or to the general social and economic changes indicative to the period surrounding the Cosmic Shift/Ascension...

I don't know if I'd conjoin CE3+ cases with civil liberties or other fortean subjects. Assuming abductions actually occur (say something like the Pascagoula case) then it may just be a mundane situation of an alien species passing by the earthen backwaters and picking up a human to see what we are made of.

Though you are right in the sense that most people do associate an eschatological component with their encounters. Why? There is a theory that suggests all history is just an engine to run down scarcity and at the end of that we get a theoretical culmination of society with nothing lacking. The only thing I could think of that fits the description of something that "lacks lack" is by its very nature transcendental.

Since the thread is becoming a bit of a mess and people have expressed interest in downloading older versions of the scrapbook. I've put together a quick wiki page with all of the information in one place:

uto.sigsno.org...

Let me know if there are any problems.

A lawyer friend requested a copy of the latest scrapbook to get up to speed on Mt.Gox (long story).

So everyone gets an update a little early this year.

Xt's Scrapbook - 2014.03.16.7z (10.6 GB compressed, 15.4 GB expanded)
(instructions + previous releases)

For those of you who are curious about Bitcoin. This release (as well as the last one for that matter) includes nearly all you could ever want to know about it.