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Zeusthecat

I Had A Random Thought...

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Hmm. I don't know much about the Wikipedia API, but it should be relatively simple to write a program that parses all the links on a page and traverses up to n levels deep until it finds the page you're looking for, or gives up.

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Hmm. I don't know much about the Wikipedia API, but it should be relatively simple to write a program that parses all the links on a page and traverses up to n levels deep until it finds the page you're looking for, or gives up.

 

Yeah, I thought it would be fairly straightforward. The main issue is to keep them from being linked by a two- or three-click jump through "crusades" or "Middle Ages" or a noble title, which I know so little about programming as to be useless to solve.

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Yeah, I thought it would be fairly straightforward. The main issue is to keep them from being linked by a two- or three-click jump through "crusades" or "Middle Ages" or a noble title, which I know so little about programming as to be useless to solve.

There's probably some kind of metadata identifying people or even nobility.

 

Actually, looking at the page structure, getting mother, father, and spouse(s) seems pretty accurate. The children listing seems to vary in formatting, but they usually appear to be in an unordered list, and you could always parse all links, and only process the ones that link back to the parent's page as a parent.

 

Not to taunt you with it's ease of implementation. I'm mostly surprised it doesn't exist already.

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The non-programmer way I would do it is have it report the path, then block various pages that come up until you get an accurate path. Keep doing this and eventually you'll have blocked all the main pages like "Crusades." Programming wise, maybe you could trim down the page you're searching strictly to the info box on the right?

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The non-programmer way I would do it is have it report the path, then block various pages that come up until you get an accurate path. Keep doing this and eventually you'll have blocked all the main pages like "Crusades." Programming wise, maybe you could trim down the page you're searching strictly to the info box on the right?

 

For most cases, yes, but for others, the section invariably near the bottom titled "issue" or "children" would probably be necessary to include.

 

Not to taunt you with it's ease of implementation. I'm mostly surprised it doesn't exist already.

 

Nah, I appreciate some help with the thought experiment. "Digital humanities" is a big buzzword right now in my field, but for some reason, it never involves using bad tools like Wikipedia to make better tools for research. 

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I read about some home remedies and apparently I can just spray vinegar all over their nest and it will melt them from the inside. I don't think TychoCelchuuu would approve.

:lol: Poor ants.

 

I should do that as well. There's a huge hill of fire ants under the double mailbox thingy my neighbor and I share and I guess I am annoyed by it but not annoyed enough to go buy ant killer. I step on it sometimes in spite, but it only seems to make them stronger.

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:lol: Poor ants.

 

I should do that as well. There's a huge hill of fire ants under the double mailbox thingy my neighbor and I share and I guess I am annoyed by it but not annoyed enough to go buy ant killer. I step on it sometimes in spite, but it only seems to make them stronger.

 

Dude, watch out. Those fuckers will soon be strong enough to pick you up and carry you off to their underground lair.

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I thought vinegar just messed up their pheromone trails. I didn't know about the guts melting. That's super metal.

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Dude, watch out. Those fuckers will soon be strong enough to pick you up and carry you off to their underground lair.

African%27t.jpg

You say that but there was a scene in the Toonces the Driving Cat VHS where a cop is eaten by ants after pulling a couple over. I swore it was real when I was young, I thought I could die any moment out there on the playground.

 

I can't find any clip of this anywhere on the internet by the way, so that screencap is the next best thing, but I'm sure the SNL skit was way hokier.

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My mother gets a bad ant infestation every summer, and every summer she calls her industrial strength, licensed professional only ant poison dealer, picks up some black market goods, and watches the ones that don't die on the way carry a poison gel back to their queen. She just sets up a chair in the kitchen and spends however long it takes watching ants die, cleaning up their corpses, and catching up with friends on the phone.

My mom is hardcore about her ant genocides. It's a little fucked up.

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Ants are the most asshole insects in the world.

Fortunately I don't get the biting kind... More of the invade the house and be everywhere kind.

I've had really good luck with this powder stuff the previous owners had left. It seems like serious business since says do not use on windy days and skin exposure requires 20 minutes of flushing, also after I put it out every spring ants disappear (which is a good indicator)

If interested I'll snap a photo next time phone in garage

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1. Apply diatomaceous earth throughout your yard, focusing on areas of high ant concentration, and pour it in the ants' nests. Wear a dust mask during application. Diatomaceous earth kills ants by working its way into their exoskeleton and spiracles, suffocating them and drying their body’s moisture.

2. Combine 1/2 teaspoon liquid dish soap, 1 1/2 tablespoons canola oil and 1 quart water in a mixing bowl using a whisk. Place a funnel in a spray bottle, add the solution and shake to incorporate. Spray areas with high concentrations of ants and pour the solution into their nests. The combination of soap suds and oil enters their exoskeleton, incapacitating them, and their spiracles, suffocating them.

3. Pour 1 quart of white distilled vinegar with a 5 percent concentration in the ants' nests. The acid in the vinegar kills the ants on contact, as their bodies cannot tolerate low-pH, acidic conditions.

4. Mix together 3 tablespoons cayenne pepper sauce, 1/2 teaspoon liquid dish soap and 1 quart of water using a whisk in a mixing bowl. Add the solution to a spray bottle and apply it to the ants and pour it into the nests. The soap and capsicum in the cayenne pepper sauce exterminates the ants by smothering and burning them.

 

Lot's of ways to naturally commit ant genocide. I thought I remembered reading somewhere else that the vinegar actually melts their insides but I can't seem to find it. My apologies if that was inaccurate.

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Has anyone tried Soylent? I'm trying to think of ways to save money on food, and I've heard about it enough that it popped into my head.

Also trying to be as insufferable as possible

I drank Ensure Plus for a while in addition to eating in a sad attempt to gain weight.

Don't drink Ensure...its not very good and it tend to make me nauseous.

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"Digital humanities" is a big buzzword right now in my field, but for some reason, it never involves using bad tools like Wikipedia to make better tools for research. 

 

Funny you should mention that, my girlfriend is doing some research assistant work for an oral history project of computing in the humanities.

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Nah, I appreciate some help with the thought experiment. "Digital humanities" is a big buzzword right now in my field, but for some reason, it never involves using bad tools like Wikipedia to make better tools for research. 

Well, I understand why you might want to avoid it now.

 

I've spent the last couple of days working on writing a Java program to do this in some downtime, partially because it sounded like an interesting programming task, and because I was kind of curious about the wikipedia API.

 

It's been rather a slog, although that's partially because I'm not too familiar with Java's XML parsing functionality, but there are still issues with Wikipedia as a data source. There are api calls for getting structured data out of a page (XML, JSON), but the data itself is still subject to the whims of various editors. There are weird variations on different pages. There are somewhat standard "infobox" elements for nobility (and, I just discovered, maybe a separate one for royalty?), but within those there's still wide variety. Some people will have "Issue" listed in their infobox, and some will just be a formatted text list in the article itself.

 

See: William I, where the editors just said "uh, I guess he had some kids?

Or: Stephen I, with the pointless "see above" in the children list instead of just linking.

Or, the great unit test of Henry VIII, who just has an entire separate page devoted to his marriages and children.

 

There aren't _that_ many variations, but the problem is that there are enough that I'm not confident I'd be able to get them all, which means the tool's coverage wouldn't be reliable. (My plan was to just use backlinks from other pages to this person, as "Father" and "Mother" appear universally available, and there is a simple backlink api call).

 

I haven't even gotten to building and searching the family tree, which I assume is a solved problem, but would require me a bit of work to put together (since family trees should track multiple parents for each person).

 

At the end of the day, it probably doesn't really make sense to rely on Wikipedia for this. As interested as royalty is in lineage, it seems like there'd be academic query-able databases of this stuff in a better structured format. I would assume that anything available in Wikipedia is available there more conveniently.

 

So, I don't know if I'll keep trying. I might, just to play with some different XML parsing libraries.

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Well, I understand why you might want to avoid it now.

 

I've spent the last couple of days working on writing a Java program to do this in some downtime, partially because it sounded like an interesting programming task, and because I was kind of curious about the wikipedia API.

 

It's been rather a slog, although that's partially because I'm not too familiar with Java's XML parsing functionality, but there are still issues with Wikipedia as a data source. There are api calls for getting structured data out of a page (XML, JSON), but the data itself is still subject to the whims of various editors. There are weird variations on different pages. There are somewhat standard "infobox" elements for nobility (and, I just discovered, maybe a separate one for royalty?), but within those there's still wide variety. Some people will have "Issue" listed in their infobox, and some will just be a formatted text list in the article itself.

 

See: William I, where the editors just said "uh, I guess he had some kids?

Or: Stephen I, with the pointless "see above" in the children list instead of just linking.

Or, the great unit test of Henry VIII, who just has an entire separate page devoted to his marriages and children.

 

There aren't _that_ many variations, but the problem is that there are enough that I'm not confident I'd be able to get them all, which means the tool's coverage wouldn't be reliable. (My plan was to just use backlinks from other pages to this person, as "Father" and "Mother" appear universally available, and there is a simple backlink api call).

 

I haven't even gotten to building and searching the family tree, which I assume is a solved problem, but would require me a bit of work to put together (since family trees should track multiple parents for each person).

 

At the end of the day, it probably doesn't really make sense to rely on Wikipedia for this. As interested as royalty is in lineage, it seems like there'd be academic query-able databases of this stuff in a better structured format. I would assume that anything available in Wikipedia is available there more conveniently.

 

So, I don't know if I'll keep trying. I might, just to play with some different XML parsing libraries.

 

Wow, this is awesome. I'm glad that my dissertation-fueled frustration gave you inspiration for a cool project, even an unsuccessful one. You're probably right that the Europäische Stammtafeln are probably a better basis for the hypothetical program, but they really only have standardization and completeness going for them, because they're almost as error-ridden and out-of-date as Wikipedia, not to mention not digitized (which is really baffling, considering how great Germany has been about digitizing almost all of its historical records).

 

If it makes you feel any better, Burgundy is about as bad as European nobility gets. It's a region that didn't experience stable political authority from the ninth century through the fifteenth, so the primary documentation is terrible, and that isn't part of any distinct ethnic group or nationality today, so the secondary documentation is terrible. You're not going to get worse than Burgundy when it comes to "I guess he had some kids, here are the ones we know" and "He got married to a woman who died sometime later, I don't know."

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I thought vinegar just messed up their pheromone trails. I didn't know about the guts melting. That's super metal.

 

 

You know what is insane? Ants and anthills.

 

 

 

You missed one of the most perfect setups the world has ever given us. "No, this is super metal." It's even a double meaning! I hope you're arrested by the joke police for criminal negligence.

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Wow, this is awesome. I'm glad that my dissertation-fueled frustration gave you inspiration for a cool project, even an unsuccessful one. You're probably right that the Europäische Stammtafeln are probably a better basis for the hypothetical program, but they really only have standardization and completeness going for them, because they're almost as error-ridden and out-of-date as Wikipedia, not to mention not digitized (which is really baffling, considering how great Germany has been about digitizing almost all of its historical records).

Blarf. As is always the case, there's a much cleaner data souce that I hadn't noticed since I don't know anything about wikipedia. WikiData provide just the structured data set. (e.g.: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q519641) That's fine for your purposes because it retains parent/child relationships, and that's all you're really interested in. There's also apparently an entire Java toolkit devoted to accessing the data.

 

That's what happens when you have no idea what you're doing. Well, it should be relatively straight forward now.

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I have no idea where new sofas come from. Everyone I know gets theirs cheap off craigslist, or other places in the sofa shadow market. Who's buying these new sofas? Is the sofa trade the new "import/export business?"

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As a student, sofas just tended to accumulate. I think there are spores that grow into sofas.

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What's the point of a speakeasy bar in the 21st century? Is it just so people can pretend they're part of some super secret club? Or so they can pretend that alcohol is still illegal and they want to feel like they are breaking the law? Or is it because going to a regular bar is too mainstream?

 

I just don't get it. I guess one possible appeal is the secret cocktails and secret food items they cook up and the fact that you supposedly only hear about it by word of mouth. The only problem with that is that the internet exists and pretty much every decent bar or restaurant will already have their own unique dishes and cocktails. So pretty much the whole pretend thing is the only real appeal right?

 

Assuming that's what the whole appeal is, then I want to invent a secret poker bar where you are only granted access if you act like a cigar chomping dog the entire time. You are only allowed to communicate through woofing, growling, whimpering, or panting and if you need to pee, you have to do it on one of many available fire hydrants while lifting one leg in the air. If you fuck any of these things up and break character, you are forever banned.

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