Very Computer

by **Jonath** » Fri, 01 Nov 2002 02:01:53

Some of you will probably know the technosphere project on the
internet. ( http://www.technosphere.org.uk/ ). Over the years, an
impressive database of living and died creatures was built. Since we
dont get to see much statistical results of the project, I had this
idea to analyse the data myself. The only problem I have is to collect
the data from all those creatures.
Does anyone of you has any ideas on how to collect the data from
thousands of different url's? I fear that this is not a simple task
and I am not that good in programming. (I have little knowledge of
vbscript for applications with excel).
Please let me hear your feedback.

by **Barron Gillo** » Fri, 01 Nov 2002 16:41:21

It would be a simple matter to write a Unix shell script that grabs reports
for all the creatures and picks out relevant information. What do you want
to know?

Barron

by **Jonath** » Sat, 02 Nov 2002 22:37:42

On the creature information page :
ID
When the creature was born
When the creature died
Top speed
Size
Viciousness
Distance travelled
Total eaten
Food gauge
Children
Has killed

Carnivore or Herbivore
The different parts which compose the creature.
--> This means I need the filename of the picture on the infopage of
the creature as a result. This filename (.jpg) can be found in the
source code (line 23)

On the family tree page :
The ID's of parents and children of the creature

On the kill list page :
ID's that are on the creature's kill list

On the maps page :
The creature's position

With this information I will be able to give answers on for example
the following questions :
Which creature type is most succesful?
How did the demographic situation evolve over time?
Is there a correlation between the size of the total population and
the average age?
Basically finding out which parameters are correlated to each other.

Jonathan

Very Computer

technosphere data analysis

technosphere data analysis

technosphere data analysis

technosphere data analysis