Oh what a tangled web we weave
Monday, February 10th, 2003 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerSometimes I go to great lengths to do silly things, only to find a prepackaged solution much later (anyone who's written anything in Perl will be familiar with this).
In this case, I'd decided that I wanted to get hold of some Buffy the Vampire Slayer scripts to help make learning English a little more fun for my wife. So I went round the web, and found a site with scripts. Of course they were in HTML, so I needed to reformat them to get a nice printout. I pasted the first two episodes into LyX, then found that loads of characters had come out as question marks, so spent an hour playing "Find and replace".
Today I go back to the site to get more episodes, only to find the scripts gone. Apparently Fox are cracking down on Buffy websites, which might have something to do with it. Some googling later, I find another site with scripts, except they weren't showing - just a black page. Try "View source" - just a bunch of javascript. Try "Open frame in new window" - bingo, I get a text file. Save to disk. Do this several times. Wise up and use "Save link target". Get half way through Season 2 and wonder if there is an easier way. Download httrack, which is a great command-line website mirrorer, but it doesn't find the frames. Save a few more episodes. Get bored and do some more googling. Find hot pictures of Faith. Remember what I'm supposed to be doing. Google some more. Find seasons one to four in PDF format. Groan.
In this case, I'd decided that I wanted to get hold of some Buffy the Vampire Slayer scripts to help make learning English a little more fun for my wife. So I went round the web, and found a site with scripts. Of course they were in HTML, so I needed to reformat them to get a nice printout. I pasted the first two episodes into LyX, then found that loads of characters had come out as question marks, so spent an hour playing "Find and replace".
Today I go back to the site to get more episodes, only to find the scripts gone. Apparently Fox are cracking down on Buffy websites, which might have something to do with it. Some googling later, I find another site with scripts, except they weren't showing - just a black page. Try "View source" - just a bunch of javascript. Try "Open frame in new window" - bingo, I get a text file. Save to disk. Do this several times. Wise up and use "Save link target". Get half way through Season 2 and wonder if there is an easier way. Download httrack, which is a great command-line website mirrorer, but it doesn't find the frames. Save a few more episodes. Get bored and do some more googling. Find hot pictures of Faith. Remember what I'm supposed to be doing. Google some more. Find seasons one to four in PDF format. Groan.
