Bare Naked Larry

Monday, April 25, 2005

More about Memes and a link to Political Ramblings

A shout-out to FGL of http://flying-green-leprachaun.blogspot.com -- I still don’t know your real name. FGL has left a couple of comments, so I suspect he will stumble through sometime soon. FGL gave me a little scare by mentioning the link http://www.memestreams.net. I had thought they’d beaten me to the punch on my MEME Watch tool (see last post). It may have some similar elements, but I haven’t found the direct analog yet with casual browsing to MEME Watch. Memestreams appears to be a social networking tool centered on common interests/ideas/memes. Of course something like MEME Watch may well have been implemented elsewhere and implemented better, but this one is my own and thus gives a certain pride of accomplishment in the making of.

It has only been up a little over a day, but no one seems to have tried it even experimentally. I will write a separate info page for MEME Watch in the near future, but let me impart a few additional facts about its use and purpose. Each user can track up to 9 memes. If you use reuse a meme number you will overwrite the old meme search and its history, so be careful. On the other hand if you make typos or change your mind you can overwrite an existing search. Please play nice, there aren’t a lot of defenses built into this implementation, it is not intended to be a commercial distribution. I make no guarantee that memes will be left in place for the extreme long haul, childish, trivial, or profane entries will be deleted by me without explanation or apology. This is not a commercial venture and I could loose my server privileges tomorrow. Use and hopefully enjoy, but do not depend on.

How Meme Watch works: every time there is a visit to BNL the wrapper CGI updates one meme listing by making a call to yahoo.com and getting a count of web references to the phrase being checked. If the number of references has changed it adds the new number of references and date to an on going file for the meme. If no change, it marks the day of the last check. Only one check to be performed per meme per day max. Currently visits far outnumber memes, so all memes should be keep up to date in good order. The reason for choosing Yahoo.com over Google.com is that Google.com detects that it is a non-browser query and returns no info (the automated query by the CGI is not performed by a browser, the CGI is a program running behind the scenes on the server). I may in the future join a Google.com developer program, but that would limit BNL to 1000 queries per day. Granted I am currently only performing three automated queries per day with my own entries of interest, and it is unlikely BNL would ever need more than 1000 queries per day, but it seems like a lot of effort to join and then have your resource use limited. Generally I like Google.com, but in this case I’m liking Yahoo.com’s less restrictive practices. Then again Yahoo.com could change to being closed to non-browser use at any time, and I would be forced to go the developer registration route with someone.

OK enough Tech-Talk, onto politics. If I haven’t bored people to death, maybe I can turn them off with my political views. I find I am keeping Excellent Karma on Slashdot.org, but I am much more often getting the trollish responses or unfair knee-jerk negative moderations than normal. In those few cases I almost always get modded back up, but it never use to happen. I even have one self avowed enemy or “Freak” on Slashdot, so maybe it’s just a sign that I have arrived and am getting noticed more. I’m probably still boring most with techie details so here is the link to my most recent political editorial entry to Slashdot.org “Sometimes even I don’t Listen to Me”. It may sound like some introspective musing, but is really a rambling political expository just barely avoiding becoming a diatribe. I really couldn’t think of a better tittle, I usually think I am quite clever in naming my posts, maybe this is a sign it is utter bullshit.

For those that are interested in Larry’s love life, it is non-existent for now. I should have forced myself to go out at least once last weekend, but I huddled over the keyboard and indulged my geek side instead. This coming weekend I will find something to do that satisfies the voyeuristic set of you that may be out there in the retelling. For people more interested in blogs of a more interpersonal nature and less eclectic you could always jump over to my other less frequently updated, but much longer and emotionally honest postings in Larry’s Life -- an ongoing autobiography of my dating life.