Hoke’s Ramblings

Now that I have ‘live’ internet at my fingertips, my web development hobby is slowly gaining momentum again.

Yesterday I threw together two little widgets, after reading this excellent tutorial on Screen-Scraping.

The first is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time: Take the excellent TV guides from www.tvsite.co.za and put them into a mobile-friendly format, so I can get my guides on the go.

The URL for this is: http://www.hokemon.com/scripts/tv.php - The next day, or the week’s schedules are available as links at the bottom of that page.

And for my next trick: Get the upcoming movies releases right in your RSS aggregator! Nu Metro has a very extensive ‘forthcoming attractions’ page, which I took the liberty of adapting into an RSS feed.

Stick this link in your aggregator: http://www.hokemon.com/scripts/movies.php, or click the button to add it to your Google home page. If you want to limit the number of items to, say, five then append ‘?n=5‘ without the quotes.

To spare Nu Metro the hassle of being bombarded with requests, I only get the list once per day, and generate the feed locally the rest of the time. This should reduce their bandwidth (and mine!) and stop the mconsidering me a thorn in their side. Not that they should, ‘cos it’s free advertising for them, anyway.

Having recently been blessed with the wonders of ‘broadband’, I started browsing arround Google Video. Then is struck me it’s a great place to get exposure for my LOTR/Matrix spooflet, so I uploaded it. Probably violated all sorts of copyrights and what-not, but it’s all in the name of fun, eh? You can check it here.

I got ADSL!

Still gotta play with it - Right now using Telkom’s guest account, I can only browse SABC - So I’ve got a really expensive hi tech TV guide

I am too tired of the whole thing to rant about my lengthy ordeal, so I’m just putting it all behind me. Good zen and all that.

One major bummer, however, is that the ADSL Router I bought (Billion 7202GR2) in anticipation of ADSL aeons ago, is now discontinued, and the 7300’s are less than I paid for it back then.

It seems Telkom has a lot to live up to. I have just received a letter from Workman’s Compensation regarding an accident in January 2002.

(And speaking of Telkom, I’m told I should expect to hear my ‘next’ installation date within 48 hours.)

Nothing is more fun than accusing your friends or lies and deceit. At least, that’s what I found out after playing ‘The Shotgun Affair’ thie weekend. After almost nine months of waiting, because of weddings, losing the host’s guide and frantically trying to track down a copy from the manufacturer etc etc etc, we finally got to play. Man, what a hoot. Everyone dressed to the nines, which really set the atmosphere, and each player developed their own characters remarkably, which made for a really immersing experience.

It’s a really well thought out game, with everyone guessing right to the end, with accusations flying left, right, centre, up, down and back again. Of course, Lina was the first to put all the pieces together. That’s why it’s no fun watching movies with her
All in all, a great evening’s entertainment, with good (or should it be bad) company, great food and delicious bubbly, wine and port - it was a stately manor, after all!

Mugshots of the suspects are here.