George F. Will: Donald Trump is the GOP's chemotherapy. The last paragraph here burns so brightly with rage that it transcends rant and becomes oddly beautiful.
Scraping Together RSS with Node.js
The other day I was sitting around thinking about scraping a website (as one does) and I was frustrated by the complicated regex I was going to have to write to pick the data I wanted out of HTML. (Your classic two-problems problem.) So I started daydreaming about being able to scrape sites using jQuery selectors to get the elements I needed.
Then I thought, how about using a pure JavaScript environment like Node.js? I like servers and I like JavaScript, so it seems like I should like Node.js just fine. With a bit of searching I came across a great tutorial: Scraping the Web with Node.js and I was off and scraping. The cheerio module had already solved my jQuery selection problem.
At this point I could easily grab the data, but I was frustrated thinking about wrangling it into a consumable format. I was starting to get in the Node.js mindset and thought, "I bet there's a module that can help with this." A few minutes of searching later, node-rss was installed.
It took a bit of wrangling to get my first RSS feed going, but I was surprised at how quickly it all came together. It's not so different from firing up cpan and including modules in Perl scripts. But npm is just friendlier. Being able to run
So yeah, the Node.js script I wrote goes out and fetches Likes (favs, stars, hearts, etc.) from Medium, Twitter, GitHub, and Hacker News and returns RSS feeds with those likes. This lets me bring all of my favorites from those places into one spot where I can then do other things with them, hooray! I put the code up on GitHub: Recommended RSS.
Then with the help of forever I set it up as a service and I'm aggregating away. My to-do list for this little app includes caching and handling dates. I wonder if there are modules for those.
Then I thought, how about using a pure JavaScript environment like Node.js? I like servers and I like JavaScript, so it seems like I should like Node.js just fine. With a bit of searching I came across a great tutorial: Scraping the Web with Node.js and I was off and scraping. The cheerio module had already solved my jQuery selection problem.
At this point I could easily grab the data, but I was frustrated thinking about wrangling it into a consumable format. I was starting to get in the Node.js mindset and thought, "I bet there's a module that can help with this." A few minutes of searching later, node-rss was installed.
It took a bit of wrangling to get my first RSS feed going, but I was surprised at how quickly it all came together. It's not so different from firing up cpan and including modules in Perl scripts. But npm is just friendlier. Being able to run
npm install in a new environment takes some the tedium out of your day.
So yeah, the Node.js script I wrote goes out and fetches Likes (favs, stars, hearts, etc.) from Medium, Twitter, GitHub, and Hacker News and returns RSS feeds with those likes. This lets me bring all of my favorites from those places into one spot where I can then do other things with them, hooray! I put the code up on GitHub: Recommended RSS.
Then with the help of forever I set it up as a service and I'm aggregating away. My to-do list for this little app includes caching and handling dates. I wonder if there are modules for those.
Strange Loop IP Spoofing Talk
An engineer at Cloudflare shares some data from the front lines of fighting DDoS attacks. He also makes the connection between DDoS and service centralization and offers some potential solutions. (Unfortunately I don't see any incentive for big companies to fix this problem.)
An engineer at Cloudflare shares some data from the front lines of fighting DDoS attacks. He also makes the connection between DDoS and service centralization and offers some potential solutions. (Unfortunately I don't see any incentive for big companies to fix this problem.)
Talking about money in public is awkward but so helpful and necessary to independent developers. Indie Hackers looks like a great attempt to pool some collective knowledge. [via anil]
Prime Reading
If you're an Amazon Prime person you might want to head over to their new Prime Reading to see what's available. They've made a bunch of Kindle books, magazines, and graphic novels free for Primesters. If you need a place to start you can't go wrong with classic Moebius or early Peanuts.
Really nice to see PRX's RadioPublic using RSS and open standards to extend podcasting rather than working to lock people into a particular client.
False Depth, JavaScript, and Surrealism
I didn't want an iPhone 7. I mean, I don't want one. The improvements are incremental at best. And that fake depth of field!? That's gimmicky, right? You can't simulate beautiful bokeh. You need heavy glass. Then I read this take: iPhone 7 Plus Depth Effect is Legit. Hmph.
Ah, front end JavaScript frameworks. Let your heart soar as you read how they've been rated in The State of JavaScript 2016. Then cry tears of knowing sorrow as you read How it feels to learn Javascript in 2016.
Speaking of surrealism, Salvador Dalí keeps appearing in my news. Taschen is republishing Dalí's 1973 cookbook. A cookbook? What's next? Finding out he had a long lost collaboration with Walt Disney at some point in 1945? And that it has been reconstructed for viewing on our personal screens? Yes:
And and?! He illustrated a version of Alice in Wonderland? Yes. Or is it all Mirage?
Ah, front end JavaScript frameworks. Let your heart soar as you read how they've been rated in The State of JavaScript 2016. Then cry tears of knowing sorrow as you read How it feels to learn Javascript in 2016.
Speaking of surrealism, Salvador Dalí keeps appearing in my news. Taschen is republishing Dalí's 1973 cookbook. A cookbook? What's next? Finding out he had a long lost collaboration with Walt Disney at some point in 1945? And that it has been reconstructed for viewing on our personal screens? Yes:
And and?! He illustrated a version of Alice in Wonderland? Yes. Or is it all Mirage?
Grey Greenhouse
Filbert Bin
Pumpkin Time
Link Finders
The latest episode of Reply All is all about online scams: #78 Very Quickly to the Drill. As a balance to all of the scamminess mentioned, they talked about a service called The Ring Finders. It's an organization that lists people with metal detectors across the country who will help find lost wedding rings. It was a great way to end the episode, and a good reminder that lots of people have the impulse to help—and people can get problems solved with that help.
That train of thought led me to the idea that there should be a website called The Link Finders. There's nothing more frustrating than knowing you've read a certain article or seen a certain piece of information that you can't find again. I wrote about some strategies for finding lost sites in 2006: Finding Lost URLs. It's a recurring theme in MetaFilter's backchannel, MetaTalk. There are two of those types of post on the front page as I type this: someone read something on MetaFilter somewhere, they've tried their personal searching bag of tricks, they come up empty, and they need assistance finding it.
Seeing that process in public is satisfying. Someone has a specific problem, others chime in with suggestions, and most of the time the person finds their bit of info. If the information is also of interest to you it's even better. You get randomly referred to a link you might not have seen otherwise and you get a sense that there is justice in the universe.
Lazyweb, go!
That train of thought led me to the idea that there should be a website called The Link Finders. There's nothing more frustrating than knowing you've read a certain article or seen a certain piece of information that you can't find again. I wrote about some strategies for finding lost sites in 2006: Finding Lost URLs. It's a recurring theme in MetaFilter's backchannel, MetaTalk. There are two of those types of post on the front page as I type this: someone read something on MetaFilter somewhere, they've tried their personal searching bag of tricks, they come up empty, and they need assistance finding it.
Seeing that process in public is satisfying. Someone has a specific problem, others chime in with suggestions, and most of the time the person finds their bit of info. If the information is also of interest to you it's even better. You get randomly referred to a link you might not have seen otherwise and you get a sense that there is justice in the universe.
Lazyweb, go!
Morning River View