A climate blog index


When Google Reader was discontinued, I experimented with my own RSS reader. I found that Feedly did most of what I wanted, so that lapsed. But it made sense to compile a running blog index for climate blogs (much less memory-heavy). I described it here.

I read the RSS files for a range of blogs every hour, and each post and comment has an entry in the table here.

I'll describe more details below, but for now, just a list of things you can do:
  • Click on any date to bring up, in a new tab or page, the comment or post.
  • Reorder using the buttons at the head of each column.
  • Restrict to subsets. You can select by any of the four boxes at top left. Click on the box to say what property (it turns pink), then choose a value. You can do this either by entering text in the search box (+ Enter) or by finding a line with that property (eg commenter) and clicking on the red stripe at that level. Either way, the full text will show on the Results line, and if you're happy, click submit. You can have different properties, and, except for date, multiple values. For date you can have start, or start and end.
  • Extend the data. By default, you get just two days. But you can ask for added months, or replace with another month (back to June 2013).
Update. I've reduced the initial data for speed, and added an address facility. Details below plot.


More on the table

Remember you have an iframe within an iframe. You mainly need the innermost scrollbar. If you can't see it, try zooming out. The columns let you reverse the ordering with a second click. The blogs have a _ appended to mark comments - full posts have a background color as well. Inclusion of blogs doesn't imply endorsement - I chose them for likely interest. Times shown are GMT.

More on subsets ("Environment")

You'll see four selection boxes top right. If they are empty, everything passes. Otherwise, for three of them, you can enter names, and only those will show. You can select commenters, blogs and threads. Time is different. You can select one or two times. If one, it will show only posts more recent. If two, it will show posts between those dates. On the right you'll see a selection panel. The steps are:
  1. Click on one of the selection boxes on left. It will turn pink to show it is active.
  2. Make a name appear in the Result section on right (see below for how)
  3. Click Enter. Your selection will be at the bottom of the list.
  4. You can click delete to remove the top item in the active list.
  5. New: You'll see just above the table a web address fragment. If you attach this to the url, and you have made selections, it will come up with those selections. This is handy if you want a url that will bring up your own recent comments. Data should remain valid indefinitely; if you have selected months, it counts the months back from present. So if you have asked for the last three months, that is what you should get in future (remember download time).
There are two ways to enter a result. The simplest is to find a line displayed that has the aspect you want. Then click at that level on the red bar that is to the right of the table. You may have to click twice. Your selection should appear. If it is what you want, press enter. The second way is to enter the first few letters in the text box, top right, and then click. If it gets something else, add more letters. Again, when it is right, press enter. To make your selection show, just click one of the four column buttons, depending on the ordering you want.

Time extension

By default you have two days of data. You can add months, by selecting and clicking Add, or if you select and click Set, you'll get only the selected month. When you add data, the original two days disappears, to avoid duplication.

Issues

Comment links only work if the thread itself is in the database - ie was seen on an RSS file. Comments on pre-June 2013 threads probably won't have a link.

The RSS is a transient stream, and if my computer is down, or whatever, data may be lost.

Some authors use different names (or case) on different blogs. That is not resolved.

Changes Nov 2014

I have had to reduce the amount of data downloaded. I eliminated comments from comments who have made only one comment in total (unless that comment was in the last month). And I download only details of threads active in the last two months. If a comment refers to a missing thread, there is a blank. If you click the "More topics" button, the full set of thread data is downloaded. If you ask for more than two months ago, this happens automatically.

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