Progress: Layout Tweaks

So I'm doing a bit of tweaking to the layout., setting up the search box and results to take up the full width of the page.  Should have a stable layout by the end of the day.

Progress: Autocompletions

My first Autocompletion file has been processed by Google and its effect is showing in the search results.  Now this was a very small file, so there's not a huge amount to see, but now if you search for Michael Moorcock you'll see a small list of his story titles appear in the dropdown.

It did take quite a while for Google to process the autocompletion file, so I'm going to do a few large updates rather than many small ones.

Thanks Reddit

A couple of Reddit users have given some good suggestions for content to include in the search engine.  So thank you Document2, ChurchHatesTucker, Sto_Avalon and of course roamingwidgeteer (who is rocking our baby at me).

Progress: Autocompletions

A bit technical this.  I've written a little script that takes some info from a spreadsheet and turns it into an autocompletion xml file.

That's nice Dear.  What does it mean?

Well, it means that the search box should start being a bit more helpful, so when you start typing in part of an authors name, or part of a title, you'll see the author and title appear in the dropdown list.  And that should happen regardless of whether you're typing in the story title first, or the surname or the forenames.

Should is the operative word here.  I've just done my first test with a small amount of information.  It takes a while for Google to process the file and update their servers.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Taking Stock

It's been a fun couple of days putting in the story links, setting up and scripting. I'm happy with the progress so far. There are roughly a thousand stories in the index covering three genres and five podcasts. The integration between Blogger and the custom search engine is working well and I'm finding lots of old stories to re-listen to.

I'm switching the focus now to work on quality rather than quantity. I'll be working with the Autocompletions feature of Google's Custom Search Engine to improve the terms you see in the dropdown list when you're typing in a search. You can see a limited demonstration of this now by typing "Pet" into the search box, which should bring up "peter watts" and "peter watts the second coming" as completed search phrases.

I want to extend the data used for autocompletion to include, for every author and every story, the following pattern:

• StoryTitle by Forenames Surname
• Forenames Surname StoryTitle
• Surname Forenames StoryTitle
• Initials Surname StoryTitle
• Surname Initials StoryTitle

This is gilding the lilly somewhat, but it feels nicely complete to autocomplete with all of an author's stories in the index regardless of how you format the author's name.

Progress: A Tiny Change

I've made a very small change to the way the search links behave. Previously if you clicked a link in a post near the bottom of a long page the search would refresh but you wouldn't know anything had happened as all the refreshing was taking place off screen. So I've added a bit of jQuery to the template to scroll to the top of the page.

Like I said - very, very small.

It's the little things ...

Progress: Drabblecast Links Complete

Drabblecast links are in, but I'll admit to having taken a short cut. Drabblecast's urls follow a very regular pattern, so I was able to feed that pattern to the search engine instead of adding the story pages individually. There is a disadvantage to this. I've only been able to apply a label to Drabblecast as a whole, rather than to the individual stories. I've used fantasy for the moment as Norm's production is fantastic on many levels. This isn't ideal as stories like "Teddy Bears and Tea Parties" definitely belong in the horror category. When I have some more time I'll go back over these and reclassify.

Sorry Norm.

I will try harder!

Progress: Dead Trees and Pixels

The focus of this search engine is audio; good stories read by good narrators. But I don't want to leave you with the impression that I never pickup a book myself. So if you scroll down to the bottom of the page you'll see a new section "Dead Trees and Pixels" in which I've put a selection of books that I've read and enjoyed. OK, so some of them weren't actual physical books, but my iPod is so convenient for reading in the dark in the wee small hours of the morning without waking the wife and bairn.

I've added comments for each of the recommended books. Hope you find them useful.

I've also put a nice big link at the bottom of the page for Starship Sofa Volume 2. Thanks Tony for keeping us entertained the past couple of years.

Progress: Pseudopod Links Complete

I've finished putting in the links to Pseudopod and unsurprisingly a search for Eugie Foster now shows results from all four of the podcasts I've indexed so far. Eugie's stories are great for testing as they also cover the three genres I've included as refinements in the search engine. This means that once you've searched on Eugie's name you can refine the search by clicking tabs to only show stories from the science fiction, fantasy or horror genres.

Progress: PodCastle Links Complete

I've finished adding links to PodCastle stories. Searching for Eugie Foster now shows results from all three podcasts which demonstrates not only that the system works, but also that Eugie is a wonderfully broad writer.

Next: Pseudopod.

Progress: Click to Search

I've done a little fiddling with templates and javascript to make searching a little easier. I can now put search links in the body of a post which, when clicked, will fire off a search for the highlighted term without all of that tedious mucking about with copy and paste. You can try it now with "Union Dues" or "Amy H. Sturgis".

Progress: Escape Pod Links Complete

I've finished adding Escape Pod links to the search engine.  So you can now search for authors like "Peter Watts" and "Eugie Foster" and see links to their stories in both Starship Sofa and Escape Pod.

Next: Podcastle.

Recommended: The Clockwork Atom Bomb

I'm 56 records into adding Escape Pod links and I've found an old favorite The Clockwork Atom Bomb by Dominic Green. This lives permanently on my iPod. If ever there was a story that deserves to be made into a really good film it's this one. Neill Blomkamp I hope you're listening.

Progress: Federation

I'm part of the way through putting in Escape Pod links and I'm already seeing some decent results for federated searches. E.g. searching for Eugie Foster gives me her stories from StarShipSofa and Escape Pod. Unsurprising, but nice to see working.

Progress: Starship Sofa Links Complete

I've finished putting links to every StarShipSofa story into the search engine.  So you can now easily find:

• every episode with Peter Watts stories
• that story about Bigfoot you liked so much
• London Bone by that guy whose name you forgot

amongst other things. I'll be revisiting StarShipSofa later to add the meta data that's needed to get autocomplete working properly.

For now I'm going to move on to putting in the Escape Pod links.

Blame the Purple Poodle

When I was about seven years old, and quite bothersome to adults, I was given free reign of my grandmother's house and told to entertain myself.  Tucked away in my aunt's former bedroom I found a synthetic purple poodle with a radio embedded in its belly.  I turned the knob, tuned in to Radio 4, and fell in love with voice radio.

News, drama, comedy, even Woman's Hour (where incidentally I first heard of personal computers); I couldn't get enough of them. Best of all were the stories. Fifteen minute segments of pure joy that drifted through the schedules from decade to decade.

These days I'm in a different time zone and listening on a different device. The view from my window has changed from a Welsh hillside to a Canadian lake; the Purple Poodle has become a shiny iPod; but my love of well narrated stories is undiminished.  I'm hooked on Starship Sofa, the Escape Artist Podcasts, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed and the deliciously weird Drabblecast among many others.

I work from home so I get a lot of time to listen when I'm writing (simple) code, tending fields or rocking our newborn gently to sleep. The stories form a comforting background, or an absorbing treat.  I have my favorites; "The Clockwork Atom Bomb", "The Island", "Teddy Bears and Tea Parties"; but as I get older I find it harder to remember which tale I heard where read by whom.  So I decided to build a custom search engine and call it Zombie Robot Unicorn to represent the three genres that I'm interested in.

You can see the search engine embedded on the left of this blog.  At the moment it's pretty bare.  I've added a few early episodes from Starship Sofa to get things going and plan to add entries for each episode of all my favorites over the winter.  Once I'm up to date I'll keep adding new episodes and expand the range of sources to include PodioBooks, Librivox and others that I've not heard of, or that may not even exist yet.

I'm going to try to keep the index clean and focused, taking you straight to the single page containing the audio we're looking for whilst ignoring lists, categories and forum posts.  The focus is on the simple task of finding a story to listen to now.

I'm going to do what I can to put some helpful meta-data into the system.  Once you've done a search you can narrow the results by genre.  I'm also going to tailor the autocompletion function to be very helpful when you can't quite remember an author's name or the spelling of an exotic title.

As I update the search engine I'll make fresh posts to this blog so you can see how well I'm keeping things up to date.

Enjoy listening.

- Phil