Older blog entries for prozac (starting at number 30)

An Adaptive Sorting Technique for the Web

Web-sites such as news.google.com can provide a more personalized presentation to visitors by applying a simple sorting technique.

Long lists of information--principally of Web-links--can easily be sorted by probable interest so that links a user may be most interested in gravitate toward the top of the page.

Google's news page is a good example to explain how to apply this technique. (http://news.google.com/)

Google's news page lists news article links from many disparate yet related sources--from traditional new sources such as Time and CNN to online news such as Salon.com and Slashdot.org. The list is sorted in (what appears to be) an arbitrary manner.

There are two levels to Google's sorting approach; links are categorized first--Political, Entertainment, Science, Sports, etc. Each category is sorted by publication time, latest first. What Google has (intentionally or not) basically applied a weighting factor to each link: Category and Time. By further weighting with keywords--something Google has capability of already--Google can simply maintain a selection history for each unique user, and use it to sort by this weighting factor.

For example, if we were to look at my viewing history, one would find that I rarely view articles categorized as Sports and Entertainment, and mostly view articles categorized as Science and Politics. If there were a list of keywords attached to each article-link Google would have a measure of what kind of articles I mostly view.

Google can then sort the articles list to my probable liking--articles most likely of my interest at the top.

See how the United States is arming the world.

Makes me ill.

"The artist learns what to leave out."
   -- Ray Bradbury

Sometimes it pays to re-write. I finally do not feel apprehensive about releasing more code -- I have re-written, taking many things out, PHPPyu. I feel good about its quality and its usefulness.

(PHPPyu is a mini Web Portal written in PHP with Blog/BBS like features.)

Added BBS features to PHPPyu: couple of forums, mail to users, finger feature, etc. Kind of like the Waffle BBS (if you have ever seen it). New and different -- different from any other Web BBS I have seen.

People actually posted to the story. Cool.

Still no passwords for user accounts. I wonder if it will work.

Yet another PHPPyu release. It is almost at the Alpha stage! (PHPPyu is a PHP Web-Portico.)

I have created -- don't know if anything like it exists -- what I am calling Inter-net-active Fiction, a mystery story that anyone on the Internet can contribute to.

(Oh yeah, http://www.vsy.cape.com/~jennings/index.php3?arg=story/)

PHPPyu updated. Finally I got cookies working. Still in pre-release mode (i.e. still finding small bugs and areas to be improved).

Do you think a web-portal site, not too unlike Advogato, would work when there are no passwords?

PHPPyu updated. I came up with a rather cool (if I must say) file-manager for the Admin page. I started user support.

I missed three meetings this week but got to my home group's this morning and I feel much better. I am responsible.

Just updated PHPPyu, The Web Portico -- just some optimizations.

I find that writing code is like, to me, writing literature (fiction, essays, etc.), in that I write a draft as a proof of concept first. Once I feel that I am on the right track and have something working I re-write it. I go through several drafts before I feel that the code is good enough. It is actually a fun process for I always get better code.

Works for me anyway.

The discussion about Blogs has supplied me with many an idea for PHPPyu. Perhaps I will look into making it more "bloggy". I could call it "Plogger" or "P.H.Plogger"!

Have updated PHPPyu, mostly just code optimizations.

Like a writer, always editing with each new draft, I find myself always seeking ways to optimize the code. Most code I write is done in that manner. I usually do a "first draft" just to prove a concept, without worry about how the code looks. Once I have something working I re-write it, all the while thinking of re-use and of future maintenance. Sometimes I do multiple drafts before I feel the code is "right."

It works for me.

My latest Open Source project is what I am calling a Web Portico, which is a small (tiny) Web Portal without need for a database.

I wanted a site that had similarites to PHPNuke but I found it too complicated to customize and modify. O, sure, there are "themes" and such, but further modification required a great understanding of the core of programming model, and I was having trouble figuring it all out. (That I had to modify an SQL record to change an HTML menu was the last straw that caused me to abandon it.) That was a while ago so things may have changed -- and I do not mean to 'dis PHPNuke, because it is a cool thing -- just not suited for me.

So I have been fooling around with my own PHP fired site. Can be found here: http://www.vsy.cape.com/~jennings/

It is like a blog/article/feedback site that is really, really, really small in amount of PHP code used. It stores content as text files, not SQL records. It does not allow "users" but does allow for user comments.

Well, it has kept me busy these past few months of my recovery.