The Umratiser
Thrill, as you discover how many posts appear in your favourite newsgroup!
Amaze your friends in alt.i.cuss.you.bad with your knowledge and insight!
Win those moronic arguments about incinerating milk and magnetic lemons!
Download Umratiser.zip (172 kB)
A new revolution in posting stats...
About The Umratiser
The Umratiser was written due to my habit of counting how many posts are made to uk.media.radio.archers (umra) every day. If I go away for a week, that means an awful lot of posts to read through and note which day they were posted on. So I figured the world needed just such a piece of software. It will calculate how many posts are made from midnight - midnight on any one day, or use my preferred period of 11pm one day to 11pm the
next. This comes from my habit of downloading the last of the day's posts shortly before heading for the pub to catch Last Orders.
The program was written around the format of exported news posts from Turnpike. I've also seen it work with
Agent, and it should work OK with other newsreader programs, provided that:
1. They export the posts into a plain-text (*.txt) file, and
2. The format in which they show the date of each post is similar.
You can check this by looking at the header of a post (press Ctrl H). Look for the line that begins with "Date:"
or "NNTP-Posting-Date:". The format used by the Umratiser is (for instance):
Fri, 06 Apr 2001 or Thu, 12 Apr 2001
i.e. 3-letter abbreviation for the day - comma - 2-figure date - 3-letter abbreviation for month - 4-figure year.
You may be able to set your newsreader to use this format.
Download Umratiser.zip (172 kB)
A new revolution in posting stats...
How to use your Umratiser.
In your newsreader program, select the newsgroup, and Export it. This will vary from software to software, so
you'll probably need to fiddle about with a few buttons and menus, or consult the Help file. If you're using
Turnpike, open the news-stand, right-click on the newsgroup, and choose 'Export'. Save it on your Desktop. If
you haven't expired your old posts recently, this could take some time.... Start the Umratiser, click the 'Open
File' button, and select the news file you just exported. The name of the open file will be displayed in the top
box.
Enter the day's date you wish to calculate for in the first date box, and if you prefer my 11pm - 11pm method,
enter the previous day in the second date box. Take care to get the date format *exactly* as shown.
Just click the 00.00 - 00.00 or 23.00 - 23.00 button, to calculate how many posts there were. Feel the thrill of being Robin Somes...
The Umratiser is gloriously pointless in The Grand Scheme Of Things, but I enjoyed writing it. If you like it,
or you can think of other things you'd like it to do, then let me know:
robin@badminston.demon.co.uk
Cheers!
Last updated
March 1st 2004
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