A short update: After accidentally, and boneheadedly, deleting my website’s database (right before I did a backup), I can safely say that the majority of the former website, with updating edits, has been restored.
By far the worst thing was restoring blog posts. Unfortunately, I waited a little too long to utilize Google’s cached version, which had all my posts archived, so I had to use the Wayback Machine (side note: this site is AWESOME). They only had one page of updates, but I’m pretty sure it was my 10 most recent posts (so a couple of really early Blog posts are now lost in the ether). Now, you might be saying: Alex, why did you update old blog posts? Well, I dunno, posterity’s sake? It was a part of my academic life, so why not? Obviously I wouldn’t do it if web caches didn’t exist, but since they do and it was easy to implement it.
Anyway, I’m going to try to keep this blog updated with the comings and goings of my academic life, so stay tuned!