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I just took a fortnight off work with the intent of getting away from my laptop, but accidentally ended up making a listings site for London's independent / art

by Joeboy 1y ago

I just took a fortnight off work with the intent of getting away from my laptop, but accidentally ended up making a listings site for London's independent / arts cinemas. As far as I can tell no such thing currently exists, and I feel like it should. Obviously the main thing is getting the listings data, which as far as I know (mostly) isn't readily available any other way that scraping the cinemas' websites, for which I set this up as a separate-ish project[1] [0] https://filmhose.uk https://filmhose.uk [1] https://github.com/Joeboy/cinescrapers https://github.com/Joeboy/cinescrapers

luxurytent 1y ago
Love these tiny, locally focused ideas!
darajava 1y ago
Nice! No Garden Cinema? It's the best cinema in London! (And their website is great, I would imagine easy to scrape)
- Joeboy 1y ago
  It's on the quite long list[0] that I haven't got around to yet. I'll try to get it done today. [0] https://github.com/Joeboy/cinescrapers https://github.com/Joeboy/cinescrapers
  - darajava 1y ago
    I've added a PR for this - https://github.com/Joeboy/cinescrapers/pull/4 https://github.com/Joeboy/cinescrapers/pull/4 Hope you didn't start on it! (By the way, it wasn't too easy to scrape in the end…)
    - Joeboy 1y ago
      On the one hand that's awesome and it's really great to have a contribution! On the other hand, I unfortunately just added it myself. But it's there now, anyway :-) More PRs very welcome if you're in the mood!
      - darajava 1y ago
        Ah no/great! I would have let you know before I tried but wasn't sure how far I'd get. Glad it's there and thanks for adding it. I'll add the Peckhamplex now.
        Joeboy 1y ago
        Thank you so much! Just merged and deployed.
jll29 1y ago
You should do all kind of events by event type, not just movies. Concerts, workshops, open lectures... london.eventhose.com. Then you should find volunteers for other cities to do the same. Time Out should have long done that but instead they stopped their print edition.
- Joeboy 1y ago
  Just finishing the London indie cinemas is an ongoing challenge! But yeah it'd be great to branch out to other places, and cover other types of events.
alonsonic 1y ago
Hey I'm doing something similar for NYC! But focused on screenings with special appearances only. There's a lot going on here. Happy to share notes. [0] https://filmspotlight.org/ https://filmspotlight.org/
- Joeboy 1y ago
  Cool! Yours is much prettier than mine.
  - alonsonic 1y ago
    Pretty can get in the way sometimes. I like your site, it's easy to ingest the information quickly. I might simplify the design of mine to make it more usable. There's a reason why hackernews is still looking like this!
blipvert 1y ago
Neat. Just notice that the ICA has a Genesis P. Orridge bio through your site, so will likely go and see that. Thanks!

by Joeboy 1y ago

luxurytent 1y ago

Love these tiny, locally focused ideas!

darajava 1y ago

Nice! No Garden Cinema? It's the best cinema in London! (And their website is great, I would imagine easy to scrape)

Joeboy 1y ago
It's on the quite long list[0] that I haven't got around to yet. I'll try to get it done today. [0] https://github.com/Joeboy/cinescrapers https://github.com/Joeboy/cinescrapers
- darajava 1y ago
  I've added a PR for this - https://github.com/Joeboy/cinescrapers/pull/4 https://github.com/Joeboy/cinescrapers/pull/4 Hope you didn't start on it! (By the way, it wasn't too easy to scrape in the end…)
  - Joeboy 1y ago
    On the one hand that's awesome and it's really great to have a contribution! On the other hand, I unfortunately just added it myself. But it's there now, anyway :-) More PRs very welcome if you're in the mood!
    - darajava 1y ago
      Ah no/great! I would have let you know before I tried but wasn't sure how far I'd get. Glad it's there and thanks for adding it. I'll add the Peckhamplex now.
      - Joeboy 1y ago
        Thank you so much! Just merged and deployed.

jll29 1y ago

You should do all kind of events by event type, not just movies. Concerts, workshops, open lectures... london.eventhose.com. Then you should find volunteers for other cities to do the same. Time Out should have long done that but instead they stopped their print edition.

Joeboy 1y ago
Just finishing the London indie cinemas is an ongoing challenge! But yeah it'd be great to branch out to other places, and cover other types of events.

alonsonic 1y ago

Hey I'm doing something similar for NYC! But focused on screenings with special appearances only. There's a lot going on here. Happy to share notes. [0] https://filmspotlight.org/ https://filmspotlight.org/

Joeboy 1y ago
Cool! Yours is much prettier than mine.
- alonsonic 1y ago
  Pretty can get in the way sometimes. I like your site, it's easy to ingest the information quickly. I might simplify the design of mine to make it more usable. There's a reason why hackernews is still looking like this!

blipvert 1y ago

Neat. Just notice that the ICA has a Genesis P. Orridge bio through your site, so will likely go and see that. Thanks!