MSPA Update Detector

The idea

Rather than check mspaintadventures.com several times a day, have a cron job check it and alert you to new updates.

How It Works

The site maintains a list of "Latest Pages," separated by <br> elements. The code screenscrapes this list and stores the first element in a database. Then, whenever the first element changes, it grabs all the new elements, opens them in your web browser, and then throws them all away, retaining only the newest update.

Installation & Setup

First run initialize_database.rb to create a SQLite DB with the appropriate schema, and populate it with the latest update from mspaintadventures.com. Then set up a cron job to run read_mspa.rb on some periodic interval. I recommend once a week, on Saturday, because it kind of gives you a Saturday morning cartoons from beyond the Mountains of Madness experience, but your mileage may vary, so season to taste.

RSS

OK, turns out MSPA has an RSS feed:

http://mspaintadventures.com/rss/rss.xml

I prefer my method, but to each his own.