Pretty things are pretty

I'm a blogger. I blog. I am the one who blogs.

Just reminding you all of that, in case you had forgotten.


That said, it has been a while, hasn't it, dear Internet? By my reckoning, the last time that we spoke at length like this (I'm not counting my coquettish little flirtations with you over Twitter. You and I both know those are simply dalliances, unworthy of the term "writing". They do not #grow my #personal #brand) was almost exactly a year and a week ago, and a lot's happened since then.

I've dabbled in the horrifying world of Internet dating, and found it almost as bleak and soulless as the tales foretold. I became, by resignation-effected default, the "most experienced" member of my team, with all the attendant responsibilities and expectations-of-competency that entails (yes yes, laugh away. I do too, if only to keep from weeping). And (continuing the meta-theme, which maybe only I can detect, of self-aggrandisement and carefully-constructing-a-fake-but-appealing-public-image) I took a few pretty major (and, in some cases, dramatic) steps in dealing with my long-standing issues of low self-esteem and continually deflecting all serious conversation with self-deprecating humour*.

But you don't care about that, do you Internet? No, you shallow hussy. You want to see shiny tech do cool stuff. Fine. Skip to the bottom of this page if you just want to see the pretties.

I've recently been stuck in a bit of rut, project-wise. I've started any number of cool things - my first serious Android app, a community sports-team website maintenance job which should net me a paltry-but-respectable sum (I thought those things only existed in our imaginations!), and (of course, because I'm me) a neat little tool to help find mutually-convenient places to drink, for two people engaged in meeting for the first time (I'm reminded, of course, of this) - but I haven't *shipped* anything. There's a real visceral thrill associated with taking something you've made, putting it out there, letting users get their grubby little mitts all over it, and tell you how bad you suck for not implementing *exactly* what they wanted.

"Ship early, ship often" is a mantra which has waxed and waned in popularity over the years, but not one that I've ever stuck to that well. It's not like I'm actually "shipping" anything that anyone would ever want to pay money for (God forbid I should use my time usefully!), but at least this way I can get a bit of feedback on ideas, implementation, and improvements. Moreover, deployments at work tend to be (understandably!) tested, specced, and supported to within an inch of their life, which rather removes the thrill somewhat. It's hard to be excited about watching the little needle move up off of zero if it's just Mr. Turnipseed behind the scenes pulling a piece of string.

So, that said, I present v0.1 of something that I've had brewing in the back of my mind for a few months now: the Pop Culture Graph. It combines two of my great loves - Graphs, and over-estimating the significance of Pop Culture.

Nodes represent either actors or franchises, depending on colour. Edges represent a character that that actor portrayed in that franchise. Data is currently based on a static database that I constructed by hand, but v1.0 will allow you to enter two nodes ("Will Arnett" and "Amy Poehler", for instance) and a maximum-degree-of-separation, and it will scrape the Internet to tell you what (if anything) they have in common.

...too soon? Not even a joke that anyone will get? Ah well.

I've got a couple of ideas for improvement, like
* Enable mouse-over actions for edges
* A search/highlight functionality
* Make it actually aesthetically, and not just intellectually "pretty" in a way that only a mother-geek could love

For now, nodes are draggable, and can be mouse-overed to display character names. There's a lot more data stored behind the scenes, but I did a bit of pruning to reduce the number of leaves (I swear, this is honestly how Graph Theorists talk. I'm not just seguing into discussing gardening without explaining myself).

One thing I did enjoy was noticing how much influence Joss Whedon exerted on this graph, without even being present. Parks & Rec, Arrested Development, and 30 Rock might as well have just been a single node, though it was nice to see how close West Wing was to all three of them. Of course, this is all limited by the data that I could be bothered to enter at the time, so there are almost certainly more links in there, but...but...

...dammit, I've just noticed that Will Arnett isn't linked to The Lego Movie. Oh well. I s'pose this was only my...
(•_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)
...first try.

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* Oh, and I also read "Infinite Jest" and watched "Breaking Bad", which I think count as major life events by anyone's metric!

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You just skipped all the way to the bottom 'cos you couldn't be arsed to read my bloviating ruminations, didn't you? Shame. Shame on you. Here's the pretty thing anyway.