Lucene: Boosting, Multi-Field Searches, and Multi-Index Searches.

3 Completely Obvious Lucene Tricks

Look out below! Here comes another braindump, and it's all about Lucene. There are three tricks to using Lucene that I am going to illustrate here. I don't think they really qualify as tricks since there is nothing tricky about them, but if you are just getting started with Lucene it is nice to know they are there.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Russian squirrel pack 'kills dog'

Squirrel death squad strikes in Russian village.
It has recently been reported by the BBC that a "Russian squirrel pack" has killed a dog. Don't believe it! This bit of sensationalism by the international press is just a well orchestrated smear campaign by some squirrel extremist groups. The main evidence for the entire story is in the eyewitness accounts of several "villagers". More likely these villagers were crusaders for the ASPS (Albino Squirrel Preservation Society) or Red Alert (A group of red squirrel loyalists) posing as villagers from the Russian town of Lazo. These kind of smear tactics are not uncommon by squirrel extremist groups. They use fear and intimidation to bully local media into running a story with some outrageous claim in the hopes that the publicity damages the reputation of other squirrel groups.

Imapfilter. Finding your 1%

Email, your inalienable digital right, and spam, the other digital right. They are like ying and yang.

Email has been the killer-app of networked computers for 40 years. It is a method of communication that everyone from the multinational corporation down to the lonely long haul trucker is using. These days, when anybody can have as many free gigabyte mailboxes as they want, email is as close as a netizen can get to an inalienable digital right. But grant someone a right, and it won't be long before they discover ways to exploit it for their own benefit and infringe upon the rights of others. And just like that, spam was born. Everyone gets it, so I guess it is just another inalienable digital right (or is it a wrong? Sigh.) The noise from all these unwanted emails has grown from an annoying buzz to a deafening scream relentlessly jangling the wires of the net. This noise is why people like Lefteris Chatzibarbas have created software like Imapfilter, to bring order to your email account.

Wanted: vintage, pre 1994 mullet.

Do you have proof of a pre '94 mullet? The OED wants YOU!
The OED is looking for the first mullet, but they need documented proof the mullet is really of pre 1994 vintage! Take it easy Rooster, this contest can't be won with that picture of your coiffure at the New Year's Eve Tractor pull ca. 1993. This is for the OED (Oxford English Dictionary). That means you have to have a published example of the earliest usage of the word mullet. You see, the work of a dictionary publisher is never done. Old words take on new meanings, and new words are constantly being created. So you can imagine that the researchers at the OED have their work cut out for them. The OED has long relied on volunteers to help find examples of first usage for words, and they have just put out a new call for action. They have a specific list of words they are looking for. Among them: mullet, cyborg, porky, full monty, to bonk (sexual intercourse). If you can provide documented examples of earlier usage for these words or any of the words on this list, you can go down in history as one of the illustrious contributors to the greatest dictionary in the English language, or any language for that matter.

Lucene, please don't do me no wrong.

Get your baby back with Lucene
Lucene is an open source search and index API. It is by all accounts the gold standard of search and index APIs. A fire tested and proven technology, Lucene powers search functionality on many high traffic websites. To me the most impressive example is Wikipedia. As of this writing Wikipedia spans over 2,656,739 pages and their daily pageviews are spilling beyond the lofty borders of 1,000,000,000. If it is good enough for Wikipedia, it is good enough for anyone. All this and it is a freely available, well documented part of the Apache Software Foundation. Strangely though the history of Lucene is rather vauge. Most sources have little to say about the project other than it was written by Doug Cutting, and released on SourceForge in March 2000. I have done some "serious" research and uncovered a bit more information about the project. So stop the presses because I have the scoop on how Lucene got its name.

101111 Days Until Christmas

Put Tiletoy in your stocking
This toy was linked off BoingBoing. They're electronic. They're programmable. They're open-source, and with their white on black blocky design, they look like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. What else could the geek on your Christmas list want? The best part about giving this gift of geekiness is that you don't have to spend anything, just put this url into their stocking "http://tiletoy.blogspot.com/" and you will fill their heart with joy. Actually that url won't help much just yet because the open hardware specifications have not yet been released. This article claims that both the software and hardware will be available under a GPL license. The hardware spec. is scheduled to be released in late November.

How to Arg a Perl Script

Arg, that is a good script!
Perl is often associated with camels. It has been that way ever since O'Reilly's book Programming Perl came out with a camel on the cover. Beyond the even-toed ungulate mascot, I don't have much good to say about Perl. I'll take Python or Ruby over it any day of the week. (I apologize profusely to Perl afficianadoes for my poor Perl skills. I just have no interest in being good at it. I was raised on Java and OO. I know, I know, Perl does OO too, but looking at OO Perl is like watching an 80 year old man popping his booty to the Black Eyed Peas. It is just plain wrong.)