I’m a big fan of Netflix’s recommendation algorithm, and have often used it for deciding on movies on TV as well. For years I have always clicked screen by screen on my DVR and entered the movie titles in to Netflix’s search box on my computer and used it’s predicted rating to help plan out my recordings. I’ve long wished there was some mash-up application that could make it easier, but was never really up on JSON and things like that to dig at Netflix’s site. Oh and something about it being against the Terms of Service. But I needed a change of gears the last few days and went to town.
This is just a proof of concept and certainly not the final UI. I was envisioning something Muine style with box art and such as well, but went for a quick and dirty Gtk.TreeView UI to test it out. The yellow stars are movies I’ve already rated, and the red stars represent Netflix’s predicted rating, or average rating of everyone’s vote if a prediction is not available. The heart denotes if it is a recommendation, and the arrows correlate to the predicted rating being higher or lower than the average rating. I’m also collecting if the movie is available on Netflix’s Watch Instantly service but I couldn’t find an icon I was happy with to throw it in the UI.
Behind the scenes I’m using Banshee’s excellent (in development) Hyena.Data assembly for managing an SQLite database. I was really impressed with how reusable it was, and it saved me a lot of time. I intend to dig into Hyena.Gui at some point as well. There is some cool stuff there, but it may be overkill for Heartflix.
I started with HDNet Movies since that was what I am most interested in, but I’ve tried to make the core classes generic enough that it will be easy to add other data sources. Right now I am comparing by title, year, and MPAA rating to ensure an exact match. Nice and simple. I looked at HBO’s site and unfortunately they do not appear to provide a year in their listings, but they do provide a director entry. So it looks like I may have to make it easy to match actors and directors as well.
Okay, that might be premature since I haven’t even bothered checking out the other networks. But tonight was the series premiere of Chuck and the season 2 premiere of Heroes. Heroes was fantastic, but I think I enjoyed Chuck even more. And it’s not just because of lovely Julia Ling, who didn’t get much screen time in the pilot, unfortunately.
The Wikipedia link above summarizes the show better than I can, but the gist of it is that Chuck, in a sort of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes moment (but without the lightning) absorbs a stream of photos and videos containing government secrets. World saving ensues! It’s a fun cast, including Adam Baldwin. This show is definitely on my must watch list.
Last night’s premiere of High School Musical 2 appears to have broken all kinds of ratings records. The most interesting of which is that it was watched by 17.2 million folks nationwide according to overnights. That would make it the highest rated basic cable showing ever. That still doesn’t even begin to compare to the series finale of Cheers or M*A*S*H and such on broadcast networks but still pretty darn impressive considering the number of options viewers have these days.
As to the content, I was rather disappointed. The setting doesn’t work at all. The songs, while fantastic, seemed overly optimized for radio play/soundtrack sales and worked into the story. The original was much more charming. You’ll no doubt get plenty of chances to see an encore over the coming months if you really do want to see it, but in hindsight I would have rather picked up the soundtrack and come up with my own setting/plot in my head.
Seriously, guys. James Worley was not banned from the Magic Kingdom or told to “hit the road”. A guest complained that Worley, wearing a shirt and jeans, was being playful with children and telling them he was Santa. People were lining up to take pictures like they would Mickey Mouse. Park managers took Mr Worley aside and explained the situation and asked him to stop telling kids he was Santa. He complied and left the park on his own later in the day.
There are one of two things you should be annoyed about if you really must. The first would be the guest who complained in the first place. Maybe the guest was just concerned about Worley being playful with the children, I don’t know. But what really bakes my noodle is how this became worldwide news in the first place. The stories over the past 3 days have just become more and more obtuse, and they can all be traced back to WTVT-13, the FOX affiliate in Tampa, FL (Worley lives in Spring Hill, FL). They interviewed Worley and ran a fairly innocent story on Friday about the incident. It’s titled Santa lookalike gets grief on Disney visit and covers the same facts in my first paragraph. How Worley and WTVT came together I won’t speculate here; I like to think it was a friend-of-a-friend and not Worley grabbing for attention. The next day, Fox News picked up the affiliate’s story and ran a national story.
Here is where it got interesting. Hannah Sentenac has some real talent, as she managed to turn an interesting chuckle piece into a ominous evil corporation piece. Out of nowhere we have juicy bits intended to entice like “Lookalike Told to Hit the Road” and “They told us that Santa was considered a Disney character”. I’ll grant that perhaps this was from the filmed interview that didn’t make it to the WTVT aired piece, though it was certainly Worley poorly paraphrasing being told that the park has a meet & greet Santa already. I could even expand that to say we are very strict about having the same character in two places at once (there is a very cool software program Entertainment uses that coordinates this, but I digress). The WTVT piece ended with “He still loves Disney” and the Fox News piece ended with “I’m still angry with Disney, I’m still hurt.”
Of course, once that national story hit the feeds, local news agencies everywhere were latching onto the tale. CNN even ran the original WTVT piece with the title Disney kicks out Santa?!. Something that wasn’t implied in the piece at all. Most people seem to be linking the BBC story linked above, which actually borrows some info from the original piece, but mostly goes for the ominous angle of the Fox News piece.
Sigh. It just really makes me sad to see irrational knee-jerk reactions like this when people don’t realize what’s actually happened. Some have even attributed this to the “War on Christmas”, marking it ironic. Seriously? It should be noted that Disney Parks have been telling the nativity story as part of the Candlelight Processional since 1958.
The Convention and Visitors Bureau has announced what their new national advertising slogan will be: Orlando: Built for families. Made for memories. WESH ran a story about the slogan, along with some drama about how much money it cost (apparently they think the $68 million raised for advertising in the 1 cent hotel stay tax increase all went to pay some Soho creative agency to come up with the slogan). What really caught my attention in the piece was this photo used in the ad:
Yes, that is the awful pink birthday cake Cinderella Castle from Walt Disney World Resort’s 25th birthday celebration. Is this really a memory we want to be proud of?
The fact that Kirk’s Starfleet pin in the new DirecTV commercial is not straight drives me batty. Unless its supposed to be an homage to Star Trek VI I’m missing. The uniforms look rather cheaply done but they could at least get the pin straight!. Maybe Shatner did it on purpose just to get a rise out of people like me…
