Tag getflix (3)
blah, screw it
Mood: blah
Posted on 2008-01-28 09:57:00
Tags: getflix politics
Words: 194
Another session of being frustrated at my getflix project has led me to give up the idea, possibly forever. Not only is it frustrating to do,
- I have a lot fewer movie ratings than music ratings, and I don't think the statistics are going to be particularly interesting
- The only way to get the data out of Netflix is screen-scraping (looking for particular text in the HTML) which is a) certainly against the Terms of Service b) very fragile to Netflix changing things, even small things, which means that I would have to keep maintaining it, which is pretty certainly not going to happen, so it has a limited lifespan anyway
So, begone! Next project might involve Django (per spchampion's suggestion) if I can think of something interesting to do with it.
Go Obama! He won the South Carolina primary by a wide margin, and won the coveted endorsements from Edward Kennedy, JFK's daughter, and xkcd. (not to mention Lawrence Lessig, who now focuses on anti-corruption issues) We'll see if he's able to compete on Super Tuesday (a week from tomorrow). This is the most exciting primary season in my admittedly short political life :-)
role reversal, music recommendations
Mood: calm
Music: Carly Comando - "Everyday"
Posted on 2008-01-17 10:18:00
Tags: getflix music projects work
Words: 485
This week I've been in the odd position of being really excited about work and not so excited about non-work projects. Work has been going really well - a lot of the setup for my big project is done so I'm getting into the fun part. The non-work project of pulling down Netflix ratings and analyzing them is pretty similar to what I've done in the past, but has enough different parts that just aren't interesting to leave me totally unenthusiastic about working on it. But I've already done enough that I feel like I should finish. I'll put it on hiatus for a while.
We've been catching up on Simpsons episodes from the last few months with people, and as a result I've seen "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind" twice in the last week or so. It's a pretty good episode, but the part that struck me both times was the montage-like scene where it shows lots of pictures of Homer throughout his life to some hauntingly beautiful piano music. Anyway, djedi found the song, which is called "Everyday" by Carly Comando and I bought it last night - yay for Amazon MP3! The scene itself is based on Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years which is pretty creepy in itself, although the music really amplifies that. Good stuff all around, and I feel bad I missed this all the way back in 2006.
Yesterday at lunch I was really happy because of a problem I had just solved, so I went out to Pars Deli, a greek place at 183 and Burnet. Unfortunately, the parking spots are deceptively thin, and so as I was pulling in I heard a noise and realized I hit the car parked next to me. After I parked and got out, the car looked like a mess, but I could brush off most of it. (dust from my bumper or something?) There was still a scratch that was very narrow but kind of long, and I wasn't quite sure what to do, and I was mad for having done it, so I just walked away to the deli. It didn't take long for my conscience to get the better of me and realize that that was a pretty stupid/selfish/horrible thing to do, so after I ordered I went back out there and left a short note with some paper I found in the car. Not my finest hour - "doing the right thing...eventually" isn't exactly high praise.
I have a few Best Buy gift cards and kinda prompted by that I'm looking for some new music. Definitely getting the new Radiohead album, other options include "Year Zero" by Nine Inch Nails, "Distortion" by The Magnetic Fields, maybe something by LCD Soundsystem ("Sound of Silver"?), maybe something by Arcade Fire. I am open to suggestions! (surprisingly hip suggestions stolen from the AV Club's best of 2007)
getflix revamped again!
Mood: okay
Posted on 2007-12-19 10:23:00
Tags: getflix projects work
Words: 85
So I spent some time updating this script to pull your Netflix ratings and after redesigning the database tables a bit (which was fun since it isn't something I usually do) I think it's about done. Now I need to add in some analysis or something :-)
We had our release party for the new NI smart camera (get yours today!) yesterday at 300, a bowling place that feels clubby. (there were music videos playing on screens in front of lanes and such) It was fun.
This backup was done by LJBackup.