To explain what this is all about, it's best to let Andre do it in his own words.
The following is from an email sent to the PKD mailing list... -Jerry Davis
I wanted to make you aqcuainted with my latest fancy; it's Dick-Surfing. The base for
such a topical search engine is a plain list of ALL DICK-URLs YOU CAN GET with *one*
massive onslaught of information tech. You won't query the big Public Search Engines' Web
interfaces: They give you
the matching URLs page for page, ranked after an obscure relevance criterion;- you'd
develop a really bad click-finger if you try to assemble only a couple of hundred decent
Web addresses this way.
I used Open Source wizardry instead, deploying the PERL module WWW::SEARCH for a more low
level access to Search Engines' Web index. You can ask for hundreds or thousands of URLs
at once which are delivered in a plain text listing. So I asked Lycos, Excite, HotBot,
Infoseek, Web-Crawler and AltaVista to give me *ALL* Dick-URLs (Web pages containing at
least the phrase/name "Philip K. Dick") they can afford to give (AltaVista never
delivers more than 200 even if you stand on your head, HotBot gives all).
I then merged the different result files and cleared that master file from duplicate
addresses (Ooops. The Loss, the Loss..). In a second step I feed this list to our team's
Web spider (yeah, we made one) and abuse three company Web servers to process a whole
night these thousands of URLs, checking them for actual availability (and download the
text content if available; No - don't ask for *this* file. I can't email double
digit megabyte files.. ;). Then I match the LOG file of failed Web page requests (dead or
outdated links) against the original list and thus finally get my refined listing of ALL
VALID (valis?) DICK-URLs YOU CAN GET - now!
Together with the text content of all valid URLs, I can now - via full text indexing and
local search engine creation - surf this "Philip K. Dick" - Webspace locally in
no time. I find gems like this weird URL:
http://www.proszynski.com.pl/ksiazki/1998/czerwiec/krotkiszczesliwyzywotbrazowegooxforada.htm
which points to a cover scan of a Polish edition of PKD's short stories. There is more.
I find things - spooky spooky - like the PKD chatroom at
http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/3265/pkdchat.html
where nobody is ever there:
>Trying TCP connection to parachat.webpage.com:7779 ...
>>> The remote machine has accepted the network request
> ... please wait.
>- (c) 1996, 1997 Paralogic Corporation [http://www.paralogic.com]
>- Paralogic ParaChat server 2.05.04
> Welcome to ParaChat Personal (main server)
>
>>> Chip has joined channel #The_PKD_Chatroom
>
>The topic is: (No topic set)
>
>Chip> Hey! Is there anybody out there? What am I doing here?
> Where is anybody?
>Chip> Hello?
>Chip> Is this place void and hollow?
>Chip> Fuck You!
>Disconnected: Chip
>you logged off
>
I'm not even sure this has anything to do with *our* PKD but the 'feel' certainly has ;-)
I find mucho more but am tired now. I log off too.
Cheers and Best!
from -- Andre
http://129.8.21.20/staff/briand/default.htm
http://131.251.42.1/User/C.M.Sully/films.html
http://138.47.18.128/tech/courses/english303/dmpage.htm
http://146.50.3.49/~mes/jargon/g/gubbish.html
http://153.1.1.18/~sl53433/zamibooks.html
http://153.1.6.18/~ah56846/cool.html
http://192.204.3.4/clp/Humanities/newhuauthor.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/adder.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/catalogs/pkd_list.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers/digital.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers/pursuit.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers/sfeye.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_albemuth.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_build.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_clans.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_crack.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_dark_haired.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_deus_irae.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_flow_tears.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_frolix.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_gather.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_glimmung.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_glimmung_HC.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_invasion.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_joint.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_letters.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_lottery.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_maze.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_omul.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_piper.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_pkds.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_puppets.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_solara.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_timpul.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_valis_book.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/covers_pkd_valisopera.html
http://193.73.242.99/ac/pkd.html
http://194.133.60.72/pages/critique/ABLAD.htm
http://194.20.201.132/press/vocioff/festivalonline/venezia95/strange.htm |