Linkstew

So I had this little problem: Every time I wanted to add an entry to Linkstew, I had to come up with a title and pick some topics in addition to writing the content, and I had to worry about how every entry was going to affect the stew. Which, in short, kept me from blogging all of the little links I read and the little thoughts I had to share. Sometimes they would show up in entries like this, but usually they were lost.

But somehow, rewriting one of my admin scripts tonight led me to a solution that I'm really excited about. Look over there on the right, and you'll see the new "Links To" section.

Links To will contain links to articles I've read lately, and to books I'm reading, and to movies I've seen, and music I'm listening to, and games I'm playing, and so on. The main point is to just collect and share links, but I'll add a sentence or two of commentary on each item (especially on the books/music/movies). I might also post linkless items there from time to time, if I just have a sentence I want to share or something.

It's also got its own RSS feed, so you can subscribe to it separately. Actually, with an RSS reader is probably the best way to read Links To, because you can read my commentary in your reader and the RSS links point directly to the article without involving a middle man. Basically, it's a feed of links with a little commentary.

(Actually, right now the RSS feed is the only way to see my commentary on the links. This will be changing soon, though.)

While Links To is a freer format than the main blog, I built with exactly the same engine, so it got comments and categories for free. I don't really plan to implement "related links to" (mainly because I'm already having enough trouble figuring out where to display all of the content I have), but if you want to comment on a link, you can. Additionally, Links To will be archived right next to the main content both by date and by category.

But while all of this is exciting, adding Links To only hammered home the fact that I'm going to have to do some sort redesign to really accomodate all of this. Right now, for example, my commentary on each Links To item isn't available with a web browser at all. I did a lot of cleaning up of my CSS tonight, but I've got a lot more to straighten up before I can even worry about redesigning.

So, if you have comments/ideas/suggestions about Links To, let me know!

God this entry is awful -- I wanted to talk about how much of a pain having to title blog posts is, and how hopefully Links To will free me from being such a perfectionist, and how now the main content will probably be devoted to longer content and not updated as often and Links To will be updated more often, and more -- but I'm too tired to coherently say all of that, and I felt like I had to explain what exactly "Links To" is... I should rewrite this entry later.

Or I should leave it as my first step towards not being such a perfectionist in my posting. Ha!

Yet more evidence that I have altogether too much time on my hands:

When a reader clicks on the "Random" link over there on the side, they're taken to a random entry in the stew. But as it is, I have no way of knowing which entry a reader randomly sees. When I notice a random hit, I often wonder about which entry a reader randomly ended up at.

But today, I saw someone click the random link, and then saw them follow several links from that random page to other pages within the stew. And, having too much time on my hands, I took destinations and triangulated back to which random entry the links had originated from.

I really need to toss an image that includes the random entry number being displayed as an http parameter on that random page. Y'know, a nice, simple, <img src="random_tracker.gif?noid=entrynumber"> would do the trick.

Is it just me, or has Linkstew been loading slowly lately? In particular, it feels like when I first try to load the site, there's an abnormally long delay before the site starts responding.

Now, there's actually more than subjective feedback you can give me here: In Passing runs on the same web server and accesses the same database as Linkstew, so the only difference between the two is the code.

So, is Linkstew loading unreasonably slow relative to how quickly In Passing loads, or is it just me? Please let me know what you think in the comments.

Well, this is entirely Peter's fault/suggestion, but he brought it to my attention that Linkstew should be nominated for best programmed blog in the 2002 Bloggies.

And well, if I've got you here and wondering why I should be nominated for best programmed blog, I guess I should at least make a bit of a pitch. So, without further ado, here is why I should be nominated for this:

1. First and foremost, there's "The Stew" -- Check out the end of this entry, with the "Possibly related" links. Viewing an entry's expanded page (scroll down towards the bottom) provides an extended list of related entries, as well as the ability to see why the two entries are related. These related entries are computed dynamically by the site, based on what topics each post is filed under. To my knowledge, no other blog has a feature anything like this.
2. Next, there's the self-coded comments system, which allows the user to either pop up the comments in a new window or view the comments inline on a page with the post the user is replying to.
3. There's also self-coded search functionality, which displays all the entries matching the given search criteria as though it were any other page on my site.
4. Random entry viewing, allowing the user to endlessly amuse him or herself with a random entry from the nearly 1500 I've written over the years.
5. Each entry is filed under multiple topics, and the topics are then correlated and related topics included on each topic page. Look at the Linkstew topic, for example, and notice the "Related topics" in the upper right.
6. The front page and archive pages contain "Current Topics" much like the topic pages include related topics, to show what I was talking about in that time.
7. It does all of this, and the only URLs that contain any messy HTTP strings are the search requests. The URL for an entry view looks like http://www.linkstew.org/noid/1485.html. The URL for a topic view looks like http://www.linkstew.org/cat/LinkStew.html. And the URL for an archive view looks like http://www.linkstew.org/date/January2002.html.
8. Not to mention the part where I wrote the whole back-end posting system, that allows me to post without the need of Blogger or any of those other tools. I'd show it to you, but it's kind of password protected... =\

Of course, if you nominate me for "best programming of a weblog site", you should also nominate Fury.com for that same category. And definitely nominate Peter for "best non-weblog content of a weblog site" for his fantastic musical content. And In Passing for "best topical weblog". And if you're wondering who/what to nominate in other categories, check out Peter's list of suggestions.

So nominations have to be in by 10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time on Sunday, January 13, 2002, so make sure you cast your nominations for the 2002 Bloggies soon!

Okay, this thing is pretty cool, and most of the code is actually there in the javascript, but I'm still trying to wrap my mind around where it's coming up with those "links" between nodes.

Yeah, I'm a sucker for networks and graphs.

This is pretty much a quick list off the top of my head, based on what I didn't do this summer and what I know I want to do.

• Read House of Leaves, some Gaiman or another that I haven't read, and Pratchett's The Last Hero (assuming it gets released on schedule).
• Stumble through another semester without failing.
• Play Metal Gear Solid (I'm already half done with it) before Metal Gear Solid 2 comes out, play Xenogears before Xenosaga comes out, etc.
• Do my best to prepare for the release of the Gamecube on November 18th, by hopefully getting ahead in school before it's too late.
• Actually overhaul that other site I work on.
• Actually consolidate my Desktop computers, and turn the remains into a PC for my brother.
• Meet with my advisor to make sure that I'll be able to stay at Berkeley another year, and if I can't stay an undergrad, make plans to take tests and apply to Grad School. Yes, this is as backwards as it sounds.
• Get a life outside of work.
• Dust the untouched corners of my apartment. Notably, the shelves in my room.
• Get new ideas for The Stew from CS 170 and 188, and possibly implement them.

Yeah, that's more than I'll be able to do, and I know it. I'm already performing triage in my head, and yes, the games are (well, not counting the Gamecube) are going to be the first to get the cut.

After only two nights of coding, the shiny and new (but not very different) Linkstew not only has all the features of the old Linkstew, but it's got many new features as well.

So what are these shiny new features of Linkstew? Well...

• Comments. My main use for comments is actually for personal annotation of entries (and to occasionally complain about bad posts), but it's an open system, and everyone is free to contribute. Just hit the "++" link in the corner to join the fray.
• More immediate access to The Stew. A few items of The Stew are now available on the front page, with a link to see other related entries. This is to make it easier to quickly browse around related ideas on the site.
• Related Topics. On the front page, for example, the topics which are most related to the recent entries are displayed in the navigation bar. On a topic page, the topics most related to the displayed topic are displayed. And on an entry page, the entry's topics are displayed. Once again, this hopefully allows a reader to jump around related ideas, much like a person thinks.

And of course, all the features that have always been available are still here. Read Random Entries, or Search for key words from an entry you remember reading months ago, or read by date or by topic. The one feature I know I still need to implement is comment previews, but other than that, I'm really happy with the way the shiny new Linkstew+The Stew is shaping up.

And in honor of all this, I've got a new email address: bsii@thestew.net. And if you don't want to leave a comment about it, that's how you should contact me.

I've been working insane hours at work, and I needed a break from all the coding I've been doing, so tonight I rebuilt Linkstew using Kevin's Furynodes. Yes, coding this site actually is a break from coding for work. I pretty much threw away all of the old Linkstew code, which is kind of depressing, but also huge a relief. Cricky, the old Linkstew was so broken.

Yes, some features from the old version are still missing. But with Furynodes, they'll be real easy for me to add back in at a later date, and they'll work better than before. And I've got plans to display even more metadata for The Stew, including related categories when viewing a category. But in place of the temporarily missing features, you get comments! Woohoo!

I know it doesn't look shiny and new, but it really is. But I basically just recreated the old look and feel, so I'm definitely open to suggestions on how to make the page more usable.

Also, it seems to me like the whole page is running slowly. But I've been having net issues all night, so could y'all tell me if the page feels slow(er)? Or is it just me?

Well, since no one really knew it was there, I've added links to the top three related entries for each post to the front page. I'm not overly happy with the way it looks, but at least now it's clear that it's there.

Instead of posting over the last couple of days, I've been working like mad towards realizing one of the major goals of LinkStew -- A living information network, which calculates relationships between entries based on a number of heuristics, in the hopes of presenting readers with links to entries directly relevant to the post that was just read. Think of it like Amazon.com's "Recomendations" feature -- "If you enjoyed reading this entry, you might also enjoy reading these other entries."

So far, only about 1/5 of all the entries in the Stew implement the feature, but almost all of them in the last couple of months work. To access The Stew, you just follow a link to a particular entry on the site (like this one or the ones in the corner of each post) and look at the list of titles following the entry.

Right now, the Stew isn't updated in real time, because I haven't yet worked in optimizations, forcing the system to work out the relationship between every node in the system. Also, it doesn't take into consideration a lot of the heuristics I plan to add in the future. For now, just take a look at the Stew and let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas, and I'll return to classifying more of my posts, hopefully making the Stew more accurate.