douchebag's recent activity

  1. Comment on Write alternative text as if you’re describing the image to a friend in ~comp

    douchebag
    Link
    I honestly was under the impression that most websites just used alt text for... well... no reason at all. Often the alt text seems like it was filled in because whatever website builder was used...

    I honestly was under the impression that most websites just used alt text for... well... no reason at all. Often the alt text seems like it was filled in because whatever website builder was used provided the option for alt text, so whoever uploaded the image wrote whatever came to mind.

    And the rest of alt texts: they seem like they were written for SEO. Not sure if they actually help for SEO, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did. Does anyone experienced know?

    Funnily enough, I don't recall coming across an alt text in the style described by the article.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on How Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Movie Critic’ fell apart in ~movies

    douchebag
    Link
    I'm quite glad that Tarantino decided to drop this movie. The plot honestly doesn't sound nearly as exciting as many of his "instant classics". Tarantino is my favorite movie director of all time,...

    I'm quite glad that Tarantino decided to drop this movie. The plot honestly doesn't sound nearly as exciting as many of his "instant classics".

    Tarantino originally confirmed his intention to make The Movie Critic last year, saying it was “based on a guy who really lived but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag.” While that character-study description hardly sounded as grabby as the ideas behind some of his fan-favorite titles such as the Kill Bill films and Pulp Fiction, few doubted the result would be anything less than an event picture.

    Tarantino is my favorite movie director of all time, but I feel like his "Once Upon a Time" fell flat, and that his envisioned "The Movie Critic" project would have experienced the same fate. Out of all his movies there's perhaps only 2-3 that have no rewatch value to me, and they are all ones with a plot and characters that are "artsy" but not captivating enough.

    Highly ranking on my personal list are for sure the Kill Bill movies, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight and Inglourious Basterds. Pulp Fiction is one of those borderline movies to me that is great, but contains segments that feel a bit too weird. Reservoir Dogs has a captivating plot but probably wouldn't quite fly anymore with today's audience, despite being a classic and career boost to Tarantino.

    If Tarantino really wants to go out with a bang, he'll have to deliver something as memorable as the movies I listed among Kill Bill above. I think he should take his time to get it right, and I'm glad to hear he's doing that. Better to wait a while longer than rush it. My respect for Tarantino only increased following this decision, and I can't wait to see what he'll come up with.

    11 votes

  3. Comment on Chrome/Firefox Plugin to locally scrape data from multiple URLs in ~tech

    douchebag
    Link Parent
    That's a smart suggestion! I'll look into this. After a quick test it seems quite promising!

    webscraper.io
    To do multiple URLs I create a spreadsheet on Google Sheets with multiple URLs and publish it and use it as a source to feed the scraper.

    That's a smart suggestion! I'll look into this. After a quick test it seems quite promising!

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Why Gen Z is quietly giving up in ~life

    douchebag
    Link Parent
    Had a similar thought like you recently. Pretty much everyone I know has been complaining about their job, pay, work environment and everything else related to their profession for several years...

    Had a similar thought like you recently. Pretty much everyone I know has been complaining about their job, pay, work environment and everything else related to their profession for several years now. Even the ones who are well off and objectively have nothing to complain about.

    It feels to me that this has led to unhappiness at the workplace being normalized for no other reason than people constantly talk about it (in some cases, not all).

    At this point I've even caught myself saying "I think people just need to get over the fact life at the workplace suck and it won't ever change, or they should seek help from a professional". I couldn't quite believe I came up with that statement... So your comment kind of rings true to me.

    3 votes

  5. Comment on Chrome/Firefox Plugin to locally scrape data from multiple URLs in ~tech

    douchebag
    Link Parent
    This is a helpful input, thank you for taking the time to test it out and sharing your results. I was guessing the extra loading of pages may be a core issue, but I wasn't aware it was caused by...

    This is a helpful input, thank you for taking the time to test it out and sharing your results.

    I was guessing the extra loading of pages may be a core issue, but I wasn't aware it was caused by the HTML format.

    1 vote

  6. Comment on Chrome/Firefox Plugin to locally scrape data from multiple URLs in ~tech

    douchebag
    Link Parent
    Cheers for this reply. I think I'll put in the effort to try and figure things out using scrappy and/or another python based solution. I was rather just hoping there might be someone who had come...

    Cheers for this reply. I think I'll put in the effort to try and figure things out using scrappy and/or another python based solution. I was rather just hoping there might be someone who had come across a tool that may already suit the need.

    As for you other question(s): I usually delete my comments and/or posts several times per week and only leave them there if they are related to some sort of technical solution or advice that may help someone down the road.

    As for the scraping: I am putting together an overview of # of businesses in a certain sector and found that the online phone book would give a good indictor of this. However this only works by searching for specific keywords and later cleansing the data for duplicates, false entries, irrelevant entries etc. There's also other sources out there that I'll use for my statistic, but they are partially quite imprecise in other ways (industry reports, association reports etc.)

    Hope that answers the questions :)

    4 votes

  7. Chrome/Firefox Plugin to locally scrape data from multiple URLs

    ~tech Ask (recommendations)
    As the title suggests, I am looking for a free chrome or firefox plugin that can locally scrape data from multiple URLs. To be a bit more precise, what I mean by it: A free chrome or firefox...

    As the title suggests, I am looking for a free chrome or firefox plugin that can locally scrape data from multiple URLs. To be a bit more precise, what I mean by it:

    • A free chrome or firefox plugin
    • Local scraping: it runs in the browser itself. No cloud computing or "credits" required to run
    • Scrape data: Collects predefined data from certain data fields within a website such as https://www.dastelefonbuch.de/Suche/Test
    • Infinite scroll: to load data that only loads once the browser scrolls down (kind of like in the page I linked above)

    I am not looking into programming my own scraper using python or anything similar. I have found plugins that "kind of" do what I am describing above, and about two weeks ago I found one that pretty much perfectly does what is described ("DataGrab"), but it starts asking to buy credits after running it a few times.

    My own list:

    • DataGrab: Excellent, apart from asking to buy credits after a while
    • SimpleScraper: Excellent, but asks to buy credits pretty much immediately
    • Easy Scraper: Works well for single pages, but no possibility to feed in multiple URLs to crawl
    • Instant Data Scraper: Works well for single pages and infinite scroll pages, but no possibility to feed in multiple URLs to crawl
    • "Data Scraper - Easy Web Scraping" / dataminer.io: Doesn't work well
    • Scrapy.org: Too much programming, but looks quite neat and well documented

    Any suggestions are highly welcome!

    Edit: A locally run executable or cmd-line based program would be fine too, as long as it just needs to be configured (e.g., creating a list of URLs stored in a .txt or .csv file) instead of coded (e.g., coding an infinite scroll function from scratch).

    8 votes