LiveJournal never brought out that “find people based on common interests” search they were talking about, much to my disappointment. So I did a Google to see if anyone had taken matters into their own hands.
Looks like phyxeld wrote this Perl script that screen scrapes your interests and then runs queries for them. It’s an unreadable mushpile, but I was able to get it running on Windows with only one change.
I can see why LJ never made it a standard feature; a single search took five minutes. Anyway, here’s what I got…
User ‘doshichan’ has 16 common interests: azumanga+daioh, dance+dance+revolution, dreamcast, elf+princess+rane, hayao+m iyazaki, iron+chef, japanese, king+of+fighters, kodomo+no+omocha, mirandites, na usicaa, osaka, sake, samurai+shodown, serial+experiments+lain, snk
User ‘snazin’ has 15 common interests: anime, aphex+twin, atheism, coldplay, cowboy+bebop, dj+shadow, dreamcast, ele ctronica, fight+club, ghost+in+the+shell, java, south+park, trip+hop, video+game s, xbox
User ‘scuzzlebutt’ has 12 common interests: aphex+twin, artificial+intelligence, dreamcast, electronica, japan, japanese, movies, mp3s, quake, sex, the+simpsons, video+games
User ‘ru_idm’ has 12 common interests: amon+tobin, aphex+twin, arovane, artificial+intelligence, boards+of+canada, d owntempo, drum+and+bass, electronic+music, electronica, idm, orbital, warp
User ‘fragilemouse’ has 11 common interests: absurdism, animaniacs, aphex+twin, cowboy+bebop, darren+aronofsky, depeche+mo de, drum+and+bass, fight+club, hayao+miyazaki, monty+python, orbital
User ‘fightlikeagirl’ has 11 common interests: anime, cowboy+bebop, electronica, fight+club, kodomo+no+omocha, monty+python, movies, the+matrix, the+simpsons, video+games, writing
User ‘jzig’ has 11 common interests: anime, computer+science, iron+chef, java, monty+python, movies, mp3s, perl, s outh+park, the+simpsons, video+games
User ‘warpdude’ has 11 common interests: amon+tobin, boards+of+canada, dj+shadow, edward+norton, hayao+miyazaki, idm, nausicaa, quake, serial+experiments+lain, studio+ghibli, trip+hop
User ‘crashmog’ has 11 common interests: aphex+twin, bloom+county, coldplay, electronica, fight+club, mp3s, reservoir+ dogs, sex, south+park, video+games, writing
User ‘mcoletti’ has 11 common interests: anime, artificial+intelligence, atheism, cowboy+bebop, depeche+mode, electron ic+music, manga, monty+python, movies, mp3s, writing
doshichan probably tops the list because I copied most of my interests from his, and, well, because we have a lot of common interests. (That’s probably the only reason we’ve been able to stand each other this long. :) I don’t recognize anyone else on this list, though. Maybe it’s time to make some new contacts.
If any of you non-Perl users would like me to run it for your username, let me know.