Feeds are all ok now

Ref: My message about dead feeds a few days back.

Many feeds are dead, or near dead, since yesterday night

Several feeds, particularly the automatically generated ones like those that pickup recently published online fiction, seem to be dead since yesterday night.

Software to generate these is authored & hosted by Yahoo, & the cause happens to be a recent software upgrade there. I'm talking to them, but tomorrow being a Sunday, I'm not sure the issue will be resolved before Monday. And probably US Monday, which means India's Tuesday.

Main Variety SF feed seems to be ok, but feed that picks up only good online fiction isn't.
Update 6 February 2010: I've patched code for feed that picks up only good online fiction to bypass the bug, so this feed now works. But most other feeds, including the ones that pick up recently published online fiction, are still dead.

I'll post a note when it's fixed.

Bot SF feed problems

Since yesterday, it seems to have gone bonkers & not sending anything useful; looks like the problem is also in constituent feeds like original free fiction feed.

I'll look at the issue during the weekend - please have patience. Thank you.

Free fiction reprints feed update: Roy Trumbull is reading & podcasting some public domain texts

Roy Trumbull is reading some public domain texts, some of them science fiction, & putting up the audio at Internet Archive, & posting these podcast notices at Story Spieler Podcast.

Reprints feed now picks up his science fiction podcasts - at least the ones my program can identify as science fiction.
Roy - in case you are reading this: My program watches for any of the following keywords in body of your feed items: "Sci-Fi", "Science Fiction"; or any of these keywords in post title: "Science Fiction".

[via Boing Boing]

A change to original fiction & reprints feeds

Pyr short fiction (example) was being picked up by original fiction feed. This is now moved to more appropriate reprints feed, & with an enhancement: now I also pick up occasional novels (example) put online by Pyr.

Original fiction & reprints feeds update

Actually there are a lot of updates to these two bots since I last posted these changes, but this post is about 4 changes I made today.

Original fiction feed now tracks two more sources:

1. Flurb new issue announcements. I watch both Rudy Rucker's blog & Boing Boing.
   
   Note this is a rare event. Flurb publishes only 2 or 3 issues a year, at unpredictable times. Latest issue, #7, came today.
2. Isaac Marion's fiction. This is experimental. I haven't read anything, but had bookmarked it sometime back; so this went in when I touched code today.
   
   He occasionally publishes short fiction.

Reprints feed now also picks up new episodes of two serial novels, both horror: Scott Sigler's "Contagious" from author's site, & Lee Thomas' "Damage" from FearZone. [via QuasarDragon & Gabrielle Faust, respectively]

Original & reprints feeds update

I just added nearly a dozen new sources to the watch lists of original free fiction feed & reprints feed. Will post details later, but the two feeds should begin picking up more fiction anytime now.

Free fiction reprints feed now tracks 3 more sources

Recount: Free fiction reprints bot is a piece of server software that automatically & continuously tracks (currently) 10 sources of free fiction reprints on web, & delivers their stories, episodes & new content notifications to inbox via this feed.

New sources added to watch list during the last month.

1. Feedbooks: Am picking up only short stories, novels, & collections marked science fiction, fantasy, or horror. Non-English content is clearly labeled, along with these attributes.
   
   Their feed doesn't carry a time stamp. So I pick up only 10 entries at the head of the list - after applying above filter. Head of the list happens to be most recently posted. This may occasionally miss some content.
2. SF Signal "Friday YouTube" column. Marked "[video]" in my output.
3. The Mighty Mighty MOC-Blog's "Indie Film Fridays" feature. Debuted last week. Marked "[video]" in my output.

Note: In case of video from both SF Signal & The Mighty Mighty MOC-Blog, I cannot see the linked movie in Firefox from my notebook at least. I haven't tried hacking. Comments at their pages & elsewhere, however, indicate many people are able to see the video.

Bugfixes.

1. I can now pick up a few more free fiction announcements at Tor.
   
   I may occasionally fetch irrelevant items that are not free fiction; I mark such posts "[often free]".
2. Boing Boing's serialization of Joe Hutsko's novel "The Deal" (1999) has not been appearing in my feed in spite of watch because these posts are back dated at Boing Boing - always set to 29 June 2008 - increasing time by a minute for each post!
   
   I can now pick it up, but if you keep your feed sorted on time, these posts will not appear near the head.

Related.

Bot SF magazine feed that combines this reprints feed with original free fiction feed, misc free fiction feed, & featured posts feed - so picks up much more fiction.

Oops! Fixed a newly introduced & irritating bug in original & reprints free fiction feeds

Original free fiction feed: Since posting the update yesterday afternoon, I'd added 3 more sources to watch list - 2 of them ("Order of the Stick" & "Erfword" comics) resulted in a flood of comic strips in the inbox - some 600 odd new strips delivered!! While they are not duplicate of anything, it's silly to have so much content delivered in one shot. They pose a second problem in adding over a 100K to the size of feed!

This was happening because these comics' feeds don't contain a time stamp. I normally enforce a 3 day rule - no content more than 3 days old is picked up from any source. This filter failed here because there was no time stamp.

I now limit each of these 2 comics to 3 entries at the head of their feed. Which also happen to be their latest posts.

I noticed the psychological effect of flood only today evening - when they arrived in my feed reader. Sorry.

Reprints free fiction feed also fixes a similar potential problem, though it has not been a problem yet. Feedbooks feed doesn't have a time stamp, & I was collecting all they delivered (after applying my filters - only English content marked science fiction or fantasy, & in the form of short stories, novels, or collections). I now limit to 10 entries at the head of their list.
On second thoughts: I think Feedbooks pick up still has a problem. It's probably picking up 10 items at random after applying the filter, rather than from the head. Not sure yet. Will look at it when I get some time.

Free fiction reprints feed now tracks 5 more sources

Recount: Free fiction reprints bot is a piece of server software that automatically & continuously tracks (currently) 7 sources of free fiction reprints on web, & delivers their stories, episodes & new content notifications to inbox via this feed.

New sources added to watch list since original feed announcement.

1. Tor announcements of free ebooks for registered users. I mark them both "[registration required]" & "[limited time]".
   
2. Irene Gallo's recently started "Saturday morning cartoons" video posts at Tor. "a quirky, sometimes delightful, occasionally a little (ok, maybe a lot) creepy, and off-beat".
   
   For some reason, these embedded don't display in my Firefox (embedded YouTube normally works for me). But I can play the URLs contained in feed items. And comments on those pages indicate they directly work for at least some people.
3. John Klima's "Your Weekend Getaway:" free fiction posts at Tor blog. Very rare posts - I've seen only one yet.
   
4. Joe Hutsko's novel "The Deal" (1999) being serialized on Boing Boing. "a new chapter ... every Friday".
5. Zeashan Haider Zaidi's serialized novel "Taboot" (in Hindi): Moved here from original free fiction feed because the author clarifies (in Hindi) it's a reprint.

Tracking free fiction (part 2 of 3): online publishers of reprints (including classics)

Series: Part 1 - original fiction; part 2 - reprints (this document); part 3 - link aggregators, commentators, & miscellaneous sources (yet to come).

This is a very premature announcement - because some reprints from F&SF magazine tend to be available only for a few days, & one has just been posted for a week. I mark such posts with "[limited time]" in the output feed. Bot SF master feed subscribers should be already getting it - just watch out for free fiction entries marked "[limited time]".

This bot is intended to automatically & continuously track a lot of online publishers of downloadable fiction reprints; output of the bot is available via this feed (this feed is automatically included in Bot SF master feed). This announcement is premature because very few publishers are currently tracked - not even the very important ones. But it will get better with time.

Also see opening remarks of part 1 - original free fiction bot.

Alphabetical list of publishers tracked.

This list is not updated very often. A more list is generated by this query.

1. F&SF: Occasional reprints. I think at least once a month. Sometimes available only for a few days. I mark all their posts "[limited time]" (even though some are online forever).
2. Irene Gallo's recently started "Saturday morning cartoons" video posts at Tor. "a quirky, sometimes delightful, occasionally a little (ok, maybe a lot) creepy, and off-beat".
   
   For some reason, these embedded don't display in my Firefox (embedded YouTube normally works for me). But I can play the URLs contained in feed items. And comments on those pages indicate they directly work for at least some people.
3. Joe Hutsko's novel "The Deal" (1999) being serialized on Boing Boing. "a new chapter ... every Friday".
4. John Klima's "Your Weekend Getaway:" free fiction posts at Tor blog. Very rare posts - I've seen only one yet.
5. Quasar Dragon II: Mostly pulp era fiction.
6. Tor announcements of free ebooks for registered users. I mark them both "[registration required]" & "[limited time]".
7. Zeashan Haider Zaidi's serialized novel "Taboot" (in Hindi): "A humorous science fiction serial". Added 28 September 2008. Moved here from original free fiction feed because the author clarifies (in Hindi) it's a reprint.
   
   Currently at fourth episode. It started off well, but the individual episodes are neither chapters nor complete scenes; they seem to be arbitrarily cut off at random points - making following the serial somewhat tedious.
   
   I explicitly mark the language in feed output. I'm wondering if it will make better sense to automatically translitrate these episodes to English before inserting into this feed?
   
   Gives me two other ideas. How about also picking up original fiction in Japanese, German, ... & inserting it into this feed after automatic translitration? And the other way round - why not a feed in French made by transliterating this feed? Likely to be a bit of work. Probably future projects, unless I lose interest.

Alphabetical list of publishers ignored.

Yet to be filled in. Because I currently work exclusively off publisher's feed, there is bound to be a good sized list of known sources I don't track because either they don't have a feed, or feed is unusable by a machine.