Comments on: MyNetflix2 http://amphichon.com amphichon: entirely superfluous since 2000 Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:10:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: herichon http://amphichon.com/wp-plugins/mynetflix2/#comment-41 herichon Thu, 05 Jan 2006 22:49:05 +0000 http://amphichon.com/blog/index.php/mynetflix-plugin/#comment-41 Oops - forgot to move the plugin files over, when I switched hosts. Sorry about that folks. Links should work better now. Oops – forgot to move the plugin files over, when I switched hosts. Sorry about that folks. Links should work better now.

]]> By: SonicChicken weblog » Blog Archive » MyNetflix20 (beta) how-to http://amphichon.com/wp-plugins/mynetflix2/#comment-33 SonicChicken weblog » Blog Archive » MyNetflix20 (beta) how-to Sat, 26 Nov 2005 00:56:45 +0000 http://amphichon.com/blog/index.php/mynetflix-plugin/#comment-33 [...] A few days ago my family signed up for Netflix. I had some spare time to play over the Thanksgiving weekend, so I installed and set up MyNetflix2 on my blog. Here’s how I did it. These instructions cover installation of MyNetflix2.0 beta on my web server (running FreeBSD 4.8). YMMV [...] [...] A few days ago my family signed up for Netflix. I had some spare time to play over the Thanksgiving weekend, so I installed and set up MyNetflix2 on my blog. Here’s how I did it. These instructions cover installation of MyNetflix2.0 beta on my web server (running FreeBSD 4.8). YMMV [...]

]]> By: SonicChicken weblog » Blog Archive » Who needs Blockbuster when Netflix is available? http://amphichon.com/wp-plugins/mynetflix2/#comment-32 SonicChicken weblog » Blog Archive » Who needs Blockbuster when Netflix is available? Fri, 18 Nov 2005 00:30:47 +0000 http://amphichon.com/blog/index.php/mynetflix-plugin/#comment-32 [...] Of course, this gives me another feature to hack/play with here on the blog: displaying our Netflix queue and/or recent activity. I was initially thinking of using Jimbo’s mynetflix 1.5 plugin, but he’s been pretty busy lately. It looks like development work has been taken over by Herichon, who recently released mynetflix2. I’ll be fiddling with this plugin and squeezing it into my page somewhere. Of course, this is going to be another customization that needs to be maintained for each theme, sigh. [...] [...] Of course, this gives me another feature to hack/play with here on the blog: displaying our Netflix queue and/or recent activity. I was initially thinking of using Jimbo’s mynetflix 1.5 plugin, but he’s been pretty busy lately. It looks like development work has been taken over by Herichon, who recently released mynetflix2. I’ll be fiddling with this plugin and squeezing it into my page somewhere. Of course, this is going to be another customization that needs to be maintained for each theme, sigh. [...]

]]> By: Jim Vanderveen http://amphichon.com/wp-plugins/mynetflix2/#comment-31 Jim Vanderveen Thu, 17 Nov 2005 22:58:39 +0000 http://amphichon.com/blog/index.php/mynetflix-plugin/#comment-31 Greetings Herichon! I just joined Netflix yesterday, so I stopped by looking for a WP plugin to show my queue. Looks like exactly what I need! Greetings Herichon!

I just joined Netflix yesterday, so I stopped by looking for a WP plugin to show my queue. Looks like exactly what I need!

]]> By: demonbane http://amphichon.com/wp-plugins/mynetflix2/#comment-30 demonbane Wed, 09 Nov 2005 21:26:24 +0000 http://amphichon.com/blog/index.php/mynetflix-plugin/#comment-30 You know, talking to yourself is usually a bad sign... :) You know, talking to yourself is usually a bad sign… :)

]]> By: admin http://amphichon.com/wp-plugins/mynetflix2/#comment-24 admin Fri, 09 Sep 2005 00:52:58 +0000 http://amphichon.com/blog/index.php/mynetflix-plugin/#comment-24 No one is paying much attention, but for the record, I've tweaked my sidebars today so that the MyNetflix2 plugin only appears in the sidebar for this page. (I'm adding some other items to the sidebar on the main page and it was getting a little cluttered.) Also I've updated the text above a little to demonstrate usage. No one is paying much attention, but for the record, I’ve tweaked my sidebars today so that the MyNetflix2 plugin only appears in the sidebar for this page. (I’m adding some other items to the sidebar on the main page and it was getting a little cluttered.) Also I’ve updated the text above a little to demonstrate usage.

]]> By: herichon http://amphichon.com/wp-plugins/mynetflix2/#comment-20 herichon Fri, 12 Aug 2005 22:31:52 +0000 http://amphichon.com/blog/index.php/mynetflix-plugin/#comment-20 Today we moved officially to MyNetflix2 with the 2.0 beta version. As noted above, this is the "Netflix-bandwidth-friendly" version - not only does it support both text titles and box cover images, but the default is now set to text instead of images. I think this will probably be the last of the work I do on this for the moment (besides squishing any bugs that pop up). It does everything I need it to do, and it should be flexible enough for most anyone else that wants to play with it. I'd still like to explore caching images locally, but now that the text options are in place, I'm not as concerned about bandwidth usage. I'll revisit this if anyone has requests or suggestions. Today we moved officially to MyNetflix2 with the 2.0 beta version. As noted above, this is the “Netflix-bandwidth-friendly” version – not only does it support both text titles and box cover images, but the default is now set to text instead of images.

I think this will probably be the last of the work I do on this for the moment (besides squishing any bugs that pop up). It does everything I need it to do, and it should be flexible enough for most anyone else that wants to play with it. I’d still like to explore caching images locally, but now that the text options are in place, I’m not as concerned about bandwidth usage. I’ll revisit this if anyone has requests or suggestions.

]]> By: herichon http://amphichon.com/wp-plugins/mynetflix2/#comment-18 herichon Wed, 10 Aug 2005 10:45:48 +0000 http://amphichon.com/blog/index.php/mynetflix-plugin/#comment-18 Okay - version 1.8 is complete, we'll still call it beta but I think it's pretty solid. Tarballed and stashed on the server, link above is updated. The good news - the plugin is pretty much completely rewritten from the ground up, is now less than half the size, fully documented and much prettier. Also some minor new functionality (distinguishing movies out from movies returned) is added. The bad news - even with all these changes, the original problem (queue not appearing) persisted. I was ready to beat my head against the wall until - on a whim - I replaced my rss-functions.php file with an updated version, the latest Magpie package. This one failed too but it dropped a useful warning - "Failed to parse RSS file. (not well-formed (invalid token)". Nah, it couldn't be the feed itself, could it? I fed my queue RSS into the "validator":http://feedvalidator.org/ and - sure enough - it choked. "Sorry - This feed does not validate. * Your feed appears to be encoded as "UTF-8", but your server is reporting "US-ASCII" * line 1444, column 236: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x96 in position 169654: unexpected code byte (maybe a high-bit character?) ... urns from a space mission, all is well ? well, almost. Depp?s sudden per ... The culprit turned out to be _The Astronaut's Wife_ (1999), starring Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron. Apparently some of the characters in the Netflix description are screwing with the RSS feed. I took the movie off my queue and - voila - everything worked fine. I guess I didn't really need to see that movie anyway. Okay – version 1.8 is complete, we’ll still call it beta but I think it’s pretty solid. Tarballed and stashed on the server, link above is updated.

The good news – the plugin is pretty much completely rewritten from the ground up, is now less than half the size, fully documented and much prettier. Also some minor new functionality (distinguishing movies out from movies returned) is added.

The bad news – even with all these changes, the original problem (queue not appearing) persisted. I was ready to beat my head against the wall until – on a whim – I replaced my rss-functions.php file with an updated version, the latest Magpie package. This one failed too but it dropped a useful warning – “Failed to parse RSS file. (not well-formed (invalid token)”. Nah, it couldn’t be the feed itself, could it? I fed my queue RSS into the validator and – sure enough – it choked.

“Sorry – This feed does not validate. * Your feed appears to be encoded as “UTF-8”, but your server is reporting “US-ASCII”
* line 1444, column 236: ‘utf8’ codec can’t decode byte 0×96 in position 169654: unexpected code byte (maybe a high-bit character?) ... urns from a space mission, all is well ? well, almost. Depp?s sudden per …

The culprit turned out to be The Astronaut’s Wife (1999), starring Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron. Apparently some of the characters in the Netflix description are screwing with the RSS feed. I took the movie off my queue and – voila – everything worked fine. I guess I didn’t really need to see that movie anyway.

]]> By: herichon http://amphichon.com/wp-plugins/mynetflix2/#comment-17 herichon Wed, 10 Aug 2005 09:52:05 +0000 http://amphichon.com/blog/index.php/mynetflix-plugin/#comment-17 Note to self - do not comment out global variables. Note to self – do not comment out global variables.

]]> By: herichon http://amphichon.com/wp-plugins/mynetflix2/#comment-16 herichon Wed, 10 Aug 2005 09:41:15 +0000 http://amphichon.com/blog/index.php/mynetflix-plugin/#comment-16 In case anyone should come across this while I'm working on it - I've pretty much rewritten the plugin from the ground up and currently I'm working out some bugs. You'll continue to see errors on the sidebar until I get the new version configured right, but the existing version (1.6) should be pretty stable. Will update again once the new version (1.8 beta) is a little less twitchy. In case anyone should come across this while I’m working on it – I’ve pretty much rewritten the plugin from the ground up and currently I’m working out some bugs. You’ll continue to see errors on the sidebar until I get the new version configured right, but the existing version (1.6) should be pretty stable. Will update again once the new version (1.8 beta) is a little less twitchy.

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