caffeinato, decapitato: the end of HammerFlicks

A few years ago, I created HammerFlicks [http://blog.humaneguitarist.org/tag/hammerflix/]. HammerFlicks was an application that queried the Netflix API so that I could have a simple application that would help me find what Hammer Films were available on Netflix as DVDs or as streaming. For months I suspect, the API calls have all failed due to the end in late 2014 of Netflix's public API. It's for the best. I kind of stopped reading the CRON job reports that showed up in my daily emails regarding running the HammerFlicks script. In large part, that was because I don't subscribe to Netflix streaming right now. I've far too many DVDs in my queue and I needed to focus on those instead of simply caving in to just whatever was streaming and just caught my interest. And, in the end, I created HammerFlicks as a tool for me, for fun. Looking back, I've learned a lot since then. If I were to build it again today, I'd do things differently. Namely, I'd put the data into a SQLite database and not flat files. But at the same time, the thing did what I needed. And while it's a topic for another day, people often spend inordinate amounts of time "optimizing" code that doesn't really need to be more efficient given how infrequently the code runs or what not. In other words, those people waste time and money in the name of optimization because they don't consider context and only consider their code as an isolated thing - as if it's a work of art. And those people will go the way of HammerFlicks itself. Oh, and as for the post title, I'm in Raleigh at the end of a mini vacation, visiting my friends - most of who are in the food and beverage industry. Currently, I'm at Café de los Muertos, which is underneath a former apartment complex I lived in. And before I get off on another tangent and a nostalgic one at that, I'm shutting it down. Not to mention, I think I'm about to get a parking ticket. ... Update, a couple hours later: I'm now questioning my use of the phrase "as if it's a work of art" in the sense of what I meant by a work of art being an "isolated thing". I know what I meant at the time of writing, so perhaps that can serve as fodder for a future post.