Monday, October 20, 2008

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.

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