Bringing back SwampLot?

[MikeRichardson]

I vaguely remember SwampLot had a post that said something like, "If we could get new editors/writers we could keep the site going". The site subsequently "closed" but has been kind enough to stay online, with someone paying the bills. It showed up in a Google search I just did for Timber Cop Condos.

I certainly couldn't write every day but I could host the site and provide technical support, and an occasional writeup. (Swamplot has published my photos and even analysis before). I have a server in a Houston area datacenter that would be perfect.

We would need an official editor though and some writer(s) I guess? Would anyone be up for doing that? There's not really listed "authors" for the stories on Swamplot so I have no idea if it was really one person or several people. I know a lot of it was submissions and then the site would add a little write up to it. Then there was the weekly stuff and the demolition reports.

I'm a programmer so I bet the demolition reports could actually be automated to some degree, by scraping the relevant Houston city site. A post could be created and queued up, and someone could add pithy commentary if desired before it was published at some standard time.

I don't think anything ever really replaced Swamplot. It used to be one of those sites I'd check almost daily.

If there's any interest in someone acting as the editor or a writer or something make a post. Or maybe this idea is stupid because someone else already replaced Swamplot, or no one cares anymore.

[Ross]

Scraping the CoH permits site for demos is probably harder than you think. Going to the site, it looks the same as it has for at least the last 10 or 15 years. You fill out the parameters, click on the run button, and a WebFocus report is generated from whatever the source of the data is.

Here's the site http://www.cohtora.houstontx.gov/approot/soldpermits/online_permit.htm

[MikeRichardson]

On 7/27/2022 at 9:28 AM, Ross said:

Scraping the CoH permits site for demos is probably harder than you think. Going to the site, it looks the same as it has for at least the last 10 or 15 years. You fill out the parameters, click on the run button, and a WebFocus report is generated from whatever the source of the data is.

Here's the site http://www.cohtora.houstontx.gov/approot/soldpermits/online_permit.htm

I am fairly skilled at web scraping. My friend wanted to buy a PS5, so I wrote a script that would scrape walmart.com for a PS5 every minute (ignoring the scammy marketplace sellers). I would use my server's 5 IP addresses in rotating order, so that any one IP would not be blocked. The script would send me and my friend a text (using @vtext.com and the one for AT&T) when it found them for sale. My script did eventually find Walmart PS5's for sale, but we weren't able to log on fast enough to buy it. Every month or so Walmart would change their site slightly, requiring a corresponding change to my script. Eventually my friend got one from Sony directly, so I stopped updating the script. (I have a PS4 and it looks fine, so I could care less really.)

Anyway, the permit site looks fairly easy to submit a search and scrape. Worst case scenario, you can actually run a type of virtual Firefox browser, and then "type" or pick from selection menus, "submit" the form and then scrape the data presented.

Demo permits would only need to be scraped once a day, so IPs shouldn't be a problem.

I would just need to decipher the "PROJECT_DESC" column. I think what I want are "DEMO RES/SEWER DISC" and "DEMO BLD/ SEWER DISC".  The data does seem to have crappy inconsistencies for some reason. Sometimes it says "DEMO BLDG/SEWER DISC" or "DEMO RES / SEWER DISC". If I delete all the spaces, then I can check for fewer matches, just "RES" or "BLD" or "BLDG". 

RES is obviously Residential. I am not sure if BLD and BLDG always/sometimes mean Commercial.

Maybe if I got a scraper working, I could just start "posting" those to the existing Swamplot, and then see how much that increases traffic, which might then attract a new editor and stuff.

[Ross]

Good luck with that!