HN Explorer

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sp332
This page is great and I've used it for years. One thing to note is the underlying data (from gocomics) is not always accurate, and sometimes you will end up on a comic that does not match the search. Sometimes you can find the one you're looking for by browsing about a week out in either direction. If you email Yingling about it with the correct date or URL, he'll update the database.
gk1
> Your search returned no results.Remember that it searches for the EXACT phrase you typed! (And dates must be of the format MM/DD/YYYY)

Requiring an exact search is fairly prohibitive. For example I searched for "feeling frustrated" and got the above error, despite 100% certainty there are strips about feeling frustrated. You (or someone) could update this to search by semantics and not by keyword, using a combination of SBERT (or similar model) + a vector database: https://www.pinecone.io/docs/examples/semantic-text-search/

marginalia_nu
I think this is serious overkill, like you can get a way with simple stemming.
leobg
Or lemmatization and BM25. Often better than SBERT in my experience when using it out of the box.
snapdeus
I believe there is built in stemming in this search.

I searched the key word "commit" and some results were returned with the word "committed"

My guess is this guy just set up a simple DB query on the search form and left it at that.

That's what I've done in the past for simple text search.

I know that at least mongodb comes with built in full text search and stemming.

What he really should do is set up elastic search but that's a big pita to learn all that

dakial1
Felt the same way. Some off the shelf algorithms would do wonders here. More sophisticated ML to tag (image and themes) would be awesomely overkill.
bombcar
Or allow people to tag strips, etc.
dylan604
shudders at the thought of what "people" would contribute
fzliu
I remember this from a while back - good to bring back memories. This may be a bit excessive, but using CLIP (https://towhee.io/image-text-embedding/clip) or some other multimodal learning model in conjunction with Milvus (https://milvus.io) could make for a search engine that takes the graphics into consideration as well. Not sure how well it would work for comics, but it could make for a pretty unique weekend hack.
ComputerCat
This is so cute! I have all the collections and absolutely love Calvin & Hobbes. Definitely brings back some memories!
acheron
I use this all the time to pull up C&H references.

Here’s a favorite one I found by searching for “townsfolk” (in fact one of two strips that has that word): https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/10/06

jkingsman
If anyone else is looking for the dataset, it appears here: http://www.s-anand.net/comic.calvin.jsz
irrational
I don't think this is correct. For instance, if I search for Susie, it finds Susie comics even when she isn't mentioned by name.

For instance, the first comic with her has this information

Script Here comes that new girl. Hey Susie Derkins, is that your face, or is a 'possum stuck in your collar? I hope you suffer a debilitating brain aneurysm, you freak! She's cute, isn't she?? Go away. Description Calvin sees the new girl coming and yells a question asking if that's Susie Derkins' face or if a possum is stuck in her collar. He then yells that she should have a debilitating brain aneurysm. Hobbes says she's cute, to which Calvin wants Hobbes to go away.

None of which is in the dataset you listed.

0xbadcafebee
Looked up "munch", seems like script doesn't match comic for a couple of 'em
sharps_xp
i’ve been thinking of doing something similar but for anime and with semantic search (ie., “rudeous getting punched”) but i have concerns about DMCA notices. I also know that search engines have a different set of rules for copyright liability but i couldn’t make sense of them since IANAL.

I might just make it for myself and call it a day.

irrational
Outstanding. I wish it could display the actual strips, but I understand why it cannot. I can't even imagine how much work it must have taken to compile the metadata for this.
forrestbrazeal
I immediately searched "Weltanschauung", and was not disappointed.
unfunco
I searched for "Somehow, it's always right now until it's later." and it found nothing, I checked on http://www.s-anand.net/comic.calvin.jsz and it's "Somehone, it's always right now until it's later." – it's not very forgiving.