This fetches the front page, does a quick guess at which nodes are questions and produces a histogram of the dates and how many nodes there are from each. I use it to check when the page is getting old and people aren't front-paging enough.
It'd be nicer if someone else were to package this into a CGI (remember to use a cache) and give us all a link. Or better yet... have to auto /msg people or tell the CB or something.
use strict;
use warnings;
use LWP::Simple 'get';
use vars qw( $URL );
$URL = 'http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=131';
exit main( @ARGV );
sub main
{
my $continue = 1;
my $prev = ~0;
my %days;
$days{$_}++
for
grep {
$continue && $_ <= $prev
? do {
$prev = $_;
$continue }
: do { $continue = 0 } }
get( $URL ) =~
m(<!--\s+Begin\s+Post\s+-->
(?s:.+?) on \s+
[ADFJMNOS]\S+ \s+
(\d+)
[\d\s,]+\s+
at \s+[\d:]+)xigs;
print "Dates of nodes on the Monastery Gates\n"
. join '',
map sprintf( "% 02d: %s\n",
$_,
'*' x $days{$_} ),
sort { $b <=> $a }
keys %days;
}