2020-03-29 - Tracking my Reading
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Way back in the before time, the long long ago, I stopped using
Amazon's Goodreads. I could go into more detail on the rationale
and design goals, but I wrote all about it on my blog and its all
still there for your enjoyment.
https://ascraeus.org/escaping-another-silo/
Since moving more of my headspace off the web, I've struggled, a
little, with the fact that my setup didn't translate all too well
to plaintext and gopher. I like having this small reminder of what
I'm reading, how far I'm into something and what I want to read
next, and to access that has meant going back onto the surveillance
net.
Well, I finally managed to get something done this weekend. If
you've been hanging around the #gopher channel on the tildeverse,
you may have seen me asking a few silly questions about php. This
is why.
The gopher server I use - geomyidae - allows cgi-scripting. Its
what I use for my phlog, which in that case is a few lines of
shell. My reading database uses json, so I needed to go back to an
old favourite language - PHP - mainly because it has incredible
power for the manipulation and display of arrayed data.
Once I'd gotten my head into what I could achieve with the
language, coding up an acceptable page was just a matter of trial
and error. What's I have now is access to the information I need;
this isn't for anyone else, although anyone is of course free to
read the information, this is for me.
gopher://ascraeus.org/1/books
There are a few things which I'd like to change, though, mainly
related to the display of my current reading status. Perhaps I
could implement some sort of progress bar using ascii? Something
like: ########========= ?
So, how about you, reader? What little scripts or services have you
created which replicate the functionality of the surveillance
silos? Have you done that on the gopher- or plain-text 'net? I'd
love to see what people are creating.
