Kylog

I’ve been using delicious more (sorry for the spelling — too much of a pain to chop it up into a domain name), and I’ve been frustrated by its inability to import bookmarks, so I thought I’d write a little script to import bookmarks. Aside: other social bookmarking sites allow import and it’s not much effort: why haven’t the deli folks stepped up?

You can find my script here — any feedback welcome! Make sure you have the pyxml package installed, rename it to .py (my stupid isp blocks .py), and read the usage line. I might gui-ify it next ….

I wrote this script because I wanted the functionality and I thought it would be fun to learn a little about using python for a web-based api and xml parsing, etc. But I have to say the delicious api needs some work. It feels like a bit of a quick hack on the side of delicious; not yet ready for primetime. Some complaints:

1) I know they’re worried about their servers (and should be with the outage last week), but the 1 second delay? That’s a huge amount of time. Meanwhile, I found that I could hit their servers fast and never get a 503. What I do get though (whether I put in the 1s delays or not) is that occasionally the server just doesn’t respond for 30 to 40 seconds. I sniffed with ethereal, but I need to do some more snooping to figure out quite what’s going on here.

2) Not all functionality is there: why can’t I delete a tag for example? I can do it via the website but not the api.

3) Inconsistent interface: for example, compare the response to tags/rename?:
<result>done</result>
with the response to: posts/add?
<result code="done" />

In an api with a grand total of 12 methods, it’s a little silly to have inconsistencies like this.

Anyway, I’m sure the delicious team is slammed and a victim of their own success at this point. I really do like the site and where they’re going. Hopefully, the infusion of yahoo $ will let them keep the site up and solid and turn this api into something beta quality.

Just finished reading Deadlier than the Male, by James Gunn, later turned into Born to Kill, a twisted 1947 film noir. The book was good, but the film might be better: the screenplay sticks to the essence of the book while excising some pseudo-psychoanalytic babble that seems less au courant today than it must have in 1947. What blows me away about all this stuff is how twisted popular culture was post-WWII, especially in start contrast to the Betty Crocker image of the era.

I mean, sure, we’re all good and jaded in post-modern 2005, but how many movies today have a criminal and a black widow as the leads, and an ending where the good people are just stupid chumps, and the darkest character of all walks? I guess that’s why the call it noir, eh!

For another example, take The Bride Wore Black, by Cornell Woolrich. This book is so f***-ed up that it wasn’t made into a proper movie until our good buddy Quentin Tarantino adapted it’s premise as Kill Bill. This one’s actually kind of an interesting comparison because both the novel and the movie, good as they are, suffer from the same flaw: they’re just episodic with only the premise threading them together. I guess you could argue that QT embraced this episodicity by making two movies out of it, but for my dime, both are notably bare of, well, a plot. But then, maybe that’s the essence of pulp: it’s all about ethos, it’s all about the author’s stance toward life (or pro-/antagonist’s stance toward life), which is of course unabashedly dark and jaded.

What’s interesting then, is the renaissance of pulp/noir in the 60s in the hands of one Jim Thompson. This guy is much beloved and acclaimed, and he probably has far more groupies than Woolrich, let alone James Gunn. But you know what: the emperor has no clothes. His stuff’s fun and dark, and if Woolrich gave Quentin Tarantion the premise for a couple movies, then Thompson gave him the attitude (and ultra-violence) for his whole career. But his schtick — amoral, hilariously evil, first person narrator — gets old pretty fast for this reader. Enjoyable yes, but stick to the ribs: nope.

So what does sticks to the ribs? I’ll tell you who I like the most, although I’ve only read two of his books (so far): David Goodis. The two I’ve read are The Blonde on the Street Corner and Shoot the Piano Player. The latter was originally titled Down There, but was strategically re-titled when Francois Truffaut nicely retitled, turning it into a New Wave defining movie (albeit one that’s a bit dated now, sadly a victim of its own success in reshaping moviemaking). But Goodis’ two books are terrific portrayals of noir grit, without the self-conscious smirk of Thompson/Tarantino, without the melodrama of Gunn. They have every bit of Woolrich’s complexly dark world-view, but with very real-world characterization and a compelling plot mixed in. A worthy successor to stand on the shoulders of Raymond Chandler. This is who I need to read more of!