Google Reader backup script

The "subscriptions.xml" file can be obtained from Google TakeOut export. It is just an OPML file that might be imported into another RSS Reader.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os
import urllib
import re


def downloadData(feed):
 feed = urllib.quote_plus(feed)
 url = "http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/stream/contents/feed/"+feed+"?n=9999"
 urllib.urlretrieve(url, feed)

def parseFile():
 result = []
 f = open("subscriptions.xml", "r")
 xmlUrl = re.compile(r'.*xmlUrl="(.*?)"')
 for line in f.readlines():
  m = xmlUrl.match(line)
  if m!=None:
   result.append(m.group(1))
 return result
   
if __name__=="__main__":
 feeds = parseFile()
 for feed in feeds:
  downloadData(feed)

Importance

What is more important for our press?

The fact that the bimbo Alexandra Stan has been beaten by her manager?

Or

The death of father Justin Parvu, founder of the Petru Voda monastery - the only place dedicated to those who died in the communist prisons?

...

Raise and fail...

In the small IT community of Timisoara there are always some "shooting star" companies that attract the attention of the most talented people. It was the case for Dapredi, Caatoosee, Savatech, Masstech - just to name a few that I remember of. Now the spotlight is on "Three Pillar Global".

One of the most interesting quality of this one is the fact that they are very social and try to create a community around them - maybe in order to have a good recruiting pool.

Will it last the test of time or will it fail as many of the other ones?

The same question might also be asked for the old and established names as Alcatel-Lucent (that is losing talents at an alarming rate and its core business is challenged acutely), Continental or the good old Berg...

Friendship!

I for one would have never believed that I would enjoy a road movie with two "oessies" (Germans from DDR). The two dreamers from Berlin arrive in the early '90 in US and have the adventure of their life there trying to cross the country from New York to San Francisco.

An excellent movie - much in the tone of  "Good Bye, Lenin"

The death of an awesome product

Google announced that they will retire Google Reader.
It made me sad as it was the best RSS reader ever. I have tinkered with desktop solutions as Omea, Liferea, Thunderbird but none was as capable as Reader. It had the unique feature of caching the feeds so old information was retrievable. That is the way I kept information about closed blogs and stuff.
But, sadly, Google decided that they will close the this product as "the usage declined". What about G+? Why don't you shut it down also as it never had any usage. Sometimes Google makes strange moves creates a hype, launches a product and then, out of the blue, shuts it down.
Will it happen also to Blogspot or GAE?
Hopefully not.

In the meanwhile I have found a way to download the cached content of my Reader data.
1. Export the OPML with TakeOut
2. Parse OPML and create a JS map from xmlUrl attributes
3. Using jQuery create a page that displays the entries and then adds them to the following URL

 http://www.google.com/reader/atom/feed%2F<your link URL escaped>?r=n&n=5000

4. Then, using "Down them all" get the full cached content

This is not fully automated as I have no clue yet on how to authenticate Python to Google (some OAuth2 think I suppose) but I salvaged the data in less than 15 minutes.

Movies

A classic:  "Pi" by Darren Aronofsky. It is one of the best movies about mathematics and number theory. It sill has some exaggerated aspects on mathematics but all-in-all it makes a credible story. The techno soundtrack with long brown-noise pauses is fantastic.

 

The second one is "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" - a warm story about friendship, love and adolescence. The cast well chosen and the movie features an excellent soundtrack (it made me listen Brian Eno for a week).

Too much, Too late

Something good happened to me this week. But it was too late. Although it was a lifetime opportunity it would have made me an alien, a Romanian in Dublin.