I imagine it would go down something like this…

Figuring out exactly who is who in that metaphor is an exercise left for the reader. :P

An update to the recommendations system on Heavy Ink has been a long time coming… and it’s almost here.

When I wrote the first system I knew very little about the machine learning field of collaborative filtering, but over the 6 months since then I’ve done quite a bit of research, implemented probably a dozen different algorithms, written and thrown away multiple frameworks, and spent more time reading other peoples’ PhD. theses then it would have taken to write my own.

The first version of the recommendations system was really rather simple. Compare each user’s ratings to each other… Find the correlations… And recommend things based only on those correlations. Simple… but also massively inefficient. When it first was put into production the whole thing took all of 5 minutes to run. 5 minutes isn’t bad. Today it takes almost 3 hours… for a single run, and it is increasing faster and faster. (It uses several exponential functions.)

So the goal of the new system is more accuracy and much much more speed. I’m happy to report that the new system (hopefully) blows those requirements out of the water. It should be far more accurate… will update more often… will be able to give you recommendations much more quickly after you first sign up… and will be open sourced to boot. (TJIC and PWK willing, that is.)

You’ll also notice at least one new feature associated with ratings and recommendations, and that is a “Not Interested” option when rating things.

Hopefully you’ll be seeing these things roll out next week. Hooray!

...is to always type haiku.
Even in my code.

So, please if you see
me use non poetic texts…
slap my face. Thank you.

I took a trip home this weekend.

I do enjoy seeing my friends, family, and my brother especially, however there is one thing that eclipses all that nonsense.

Yes. Thats right. Burritos.

(clicky for bigger burrito goodness)

Theres a place back home (Middle-of-nowhere, Pennsylvania) called “Neato Burrito”. They make California-Mission style burritos that are good enough to make a grown man cry. Pictured above is a chipotle chile tortilla, with bison, chili, bbq rice, salsa verde, and feta and jalapeno salsa.

Man, I miss home.

(And that look on my face… thats what 40 hours awake on 2 hours of sleep looks like.)

So… just because I can… I will…

Hah. Take that.

So, considering that at this point we have only told a handful of people about the site, the response has been amazing.  The number of reviews, especially, has been impressive.  This is due in no small part to Matt, Longba, and two private users that we'll just refer to as User 14 and User 15. 

Speaking of which, if you go to your profile page, and click on the "Privacy Settings" link over on the right side, you can make your profiles public... and then I won't have to refer to you by number. ;)


Regardless, thanks a lot, you guys!