2020-03-29 - Tracking my Reading -------------------------------- 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.