http://neugierig.org/drop
and get the friendrank tarballs: one of code and instructions, another of downloaded LJ friends data.
The default output is of a form usable by R: redirect it into a file, then data = read.table('myfile') .
(It'd be better to just get a full LJ dump rather than repeatedly hittin fdata.bml. But it's kinda large, I think...
I may write the code myself and send it to Brad, but I don't think I have a working LJ install hanging around anymore. And I probably don't have more than a weekend of time to play with this.)
I've been gaining a better appreciation of C++ from work and from a comment of Graydon's from a while back. There certainly are gross bits but the nice bits are pretty fun/useful.