upd8 ninja - Homestuck^2 upd8 checker
by tjb0607
upd8 ninja is a super simple, free Homestuck upd8 notifier to keep open in your browser. Rather than hammering Homestuck's site by having each user refresh the site once every minute or so, this has one central server checking for everyone. This not only reduces the load on Homestuck's servers compared to RSS-based notifiers and spamming F5, but also allows for a faster refresh rate.
This is done by a backend script checking the adventure log and storing the latest upd8 info at latestupd8.json, formatted like this:
{"parturl": "story/1", "title": "Somewhere, in the distant reaches of space...", "pages": 32}
If the file changes while this page is open, it will notify you, linking to the specified URL on beyondcanon.com.