This year I set out to learn how to make twitter bots, accounts that automatically interact with twitter in some way, whether through tweeting set content at regular intervals, watching for and responding to code words, or responding in a certain way when tweeted at. I learned the basics of Twitter API interaction at UW’s Community Data Science Workshop last November, and have since been inspired by other people doing cool stuff with bots.

Witness:

SNOON: The snoon is much smaller than an average oyster. It lives on the waste of the badger and lives by sour smelling abodes.

— Creature List (@CreatureList) January 22, 2015

wolf moon taste of hibiscus tea new year’s kiss — poem.exe (@poem_exe) January 21, 2015

⊹　　　　　‧　　　　　 　　　　　⊹　　　　　❆ ༚　　　❆　　　　　　　 　❆　　　　　‧　　　　 　　⋄　　　　　⊹　༚　 　　　　　　　　　✫　　 ☸　⊹　⊹　　　✦　　　 　　　*　　　　　☸　⋄ ⋄　✫　　　　　　　　　 ________☃___________

— ❄winter wonderland❄ (@winter_scapes) January 23, 2015

you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free. (She prays) O good God, take him! — Ulysses Reader (@UlyssesReader) January 22, 2015

For more great examples, check out 52bot project.

A few nights ago, as I was reading about the reunion of the women of Bletchley Park, I clicked through to the Honour Roll and found a database that looked like it might translate well into a twitterbot. Using a subset of data and some internet tutorials, a test bot took maybe an hour or two tops to set up (and I was so thrilled when it worked!). The time-consuming part has been 1) finding a way to reliably keep it tweeting; and 2) pulling and cleaning up the full dataset to fit twitter’s 140 character limit (in my test run, I just told twitter “print the first 140 characters and ignore the rest” but for the full deployment, I wanted to edit the longer bios to make them fit).

Ok, so without further ado, here’s the bot:

Barbara Abernethy (Eachus) Bletchley Park 1939 – 1945. Mansion, Naval Section. PA to Head of GCCS, Cdr Denniston from c 1941. .

— Women of Bletchley (@BletchleyRoll) January 23, 2015

And here’s how I made it!: Continue reading