Answers to some of your most pressing questions about this site:
How does this all work? Real simple. When you enter your
zip code and the other information needed in order to construct a
Movie Madness, the site queries third-party movie schedule sites, such
as movies.yahoo.com, and
extracts theater and movie time information from that page. From
there, a simple algorithm uses the information to generate all
possible Movie Madnesses. It's not rocket science, people.
Which movie schedule sites can I use? By default, this site
uses IMDB. However, it is possible to use other sites as
well, if you prefer. Click on the links below to try queries using
different sites:
But won't they get upset? Hmmm. Excellent question.
Hopefully, the extra traffic will go under the radar. In the case of
massive amounts of traffic, we limit our requests to any one of the
above sites and automatically reroute our traffic to underutilized
sites. Also, schedules for popular theaters are served from a cache,
avoiding contacting the external site altogether.
What is schedule efficiency, and why does it matter? By
default, Movie Madness schedules are sorted by schedule efficiency.
The inefficiency of a schedule is the sum of the number of minutes by
which two adjacent movies overlap or are separated, for all pairs of
adjacent movies in a schedule. Clearly, the lower this number the
better, since any overlapping minutes may cause you to miss some parts
of movies, and any minutes between two movies are wasted time during
which you must outwit wily ushers.
Why would I ever want to miss time at the beginning/end of a
movie? A maximally efficient Movie Madness schedule has you
watching neither the previews or the credits of a movie, in favor of
content of other movies. Unfortunately, the movie schedules posted by
theaters smash this valuable information altogether in one number.
As such, you must be liberal when constructing a schedule and allow some
overlap between movies.
How can I hone my Movie Madness skills? Movie Madness
takes patience, cunning, and an iron will. Your first lesson: read
through the tips from the experts.
Then, practice, practice, practice.
IMDB does not endorse this. Neither does the MPAA.
But I, Jeremy Stribling. do. Email me comments, suggestions, and
cool success stories. Copyright 2004-2014.