Category Archives: 31-bot

John Mars

03 Mar 2015

My bot is named /u/travel_bot, and it lives all over reddit.

/u/travel_bot starts at an origin point (I picked /r/botwatch), and then goes on a journey through reddit by traveling to subreddits suggested by users.

There were a bunch of difficulties in making the app, first and foremost is reddit’s extremely strict rate-limiting for new users. The waits between the bot’s ability to post (in development and production) are frequently one hour, depending on how much the bot has been posting recently.

Second, reddit also requires CAPTCHAs for new users, especially when it thinks they might be bots. I got around this by using a service that crowd-sources CAPTCHA solutions — AntiGate. It costs about $1.00 per 1000 CAPTCHAs.

Third, the bot has two distinct modes: posting and listening, and it has to be able to keep going from where it left off, if and when it crashes. This is accomplished by using a series of smart loops and python Pickle objects.

It still has some bugs as of this writing that need fixing, and the next step is to create a passport for the bot that gets a stamp applied at every subreddit it visits.

As of this writing, it’s sitting in /r/botsrights, and has visited 6 subreddits so far, at least one of the subs being hardcore-NSFW. I’m actually kind of surprised people are helping it, that is hasn’t been banned, and that nobody has tried to break it yet.

I decided to use reddit instead of twitter because I spend much more time on it, because most of the rest of the class would be using twitter, and because I already have some experience in creating twitter bots.

GITHUB LINK

Zach Rispoli

03 Mar 2015

@everyhedgehog

A bot that will, in about sixty days, tweet every hedgehog.
(this was obv my secondary project)

i regret to say it but with @everyhedgehog we may have reached peak every

— Allison Parrish (@aparrish) March 3, 2015

Code for @everyhedgehog on GitHub

Matthew Kellogg – Dictated But Not Read

DicTayTiddBotNaTread (dictated but not read), is a bot that reads itself quotes from an online API from iheartquotes.com, and transcribes them to some words by using (poorly) the CMU pronouncing dictionary. This is my primary project for assignment 3.

Bio: I copy quotes read to me from iheartquotes.com (not affiliated). Also, I’m a bot, so I say rude things unintentionally. My creator is @mkellogg92

I got the idea from how smart phones transcribe text fairly well nowadays. Why not have a bot dictate its tweets? What could go wrong?

Essentially, what I hoped to achieve was to create permutations of words that had syllables in the same order as the original text. I feel I managed to do this well. I enjoy trying to read some of the results, as they don’t make sense unless you throw all the syllables together and speak them allowed. I don’t have any particular tweets that I enjoy, but I find some of the translations fun. For instance “circumstances” became “cirque ‘m stan says”, and “over reality” became “eaux ver ree ala t.”. I also had the realization that I could easily come across some of the ruder words and phrases. As I did not wish to take the time to filter these, I added a disclaimer.

I believe that my bot is a FEED type because it gives you reworded quotes. Though it may also be a MEAT type as it somewhat generates its own content based on a base text.

jackkoo

03 Mar 2015

A automated reenactment of the Best Flame War Ever. The bot will post the original posts in the same day/hour/min as the original posts. It will reset every 2 months. (they argued with each other for over a month).

bestFlameWarEver

http://jackkoo.com/fw.php

(this is my smaller assignment)

In the year of 2004, there was a fued between leegattenby, King of Bards and Squire Rexz

Leegattenby wanted to know how armor works: OK, not to sound like a total n00b, how exactly does AC work? I have only played for about a year, so there are some intricacies of the game that I havent worked out yet.

In which Squire Rex responds: Let’s see, leegattenby knows who Brael is but dunno what AC is nor how it works? Dude, do you know Bart Simpson?
So do you really know who’s Brael or you just BSing about who or what you know?

Anyways, this escalated into a a fued involving stories about their fearless time in the military, and how the have killed people and are not afraid of doing it. The last post involved an invitation to a grudge match:

“First, I need to know your location and probably an email or another point of contact. I do not want to bore anyone else about our endless banterings. I live in alaska, but I do frequent the lower 48 states. We would need to sign a mutual waiver of liability and set a place to fight. The best places are tough man contests or bars that do ring fights. We would have to contact them to set up a grudge match fight. I have did this before and it is no big deal. There are some boxing clubs that would host a grudge, but that depends on the area.”

In 2007, Eddo Stern creates a art tribute to the epic flame war titled “Best Flame War Ever” It was an audio performance of the whole Flame War.

In 2015, A student from CMU, Jack, decided that it is not enough to just have a recording of the conversations. The Flame War must live on in eternity!

Jack made a web page which reenacts the entire event starting every 4th of every even-numbered month. The website will automatically post the original posts with the exact same intervals with matching minutes and hours.

OOC: I tried getting feedback by posting this on two gaming forums as well as showing it to a lot of people whom I knew shared the fascination with this particular flame war. The professor from college who showed me the Eddo Stern piece replied “thats awesum!”, while a few of my friends liked it but questioned why I had time to make this.

The post was shut down in 1hr 30mins because an admin literally said

“I judge this thread unworthy !
Sorry dude, it is just not thaaat interesting ” ( I don’t think he knew how funny the flame war was)