Yes, I know you've missed me...dry your eyes, I'm here now. And look, I brought you something!
Is it me you're looking for?
Right, on to the actual meat of this post...
So, those of you who know me at all will know that I read quite a few webcomics - and those who've made the mistake of expressing anything but utter contempt and disgust for the artform will probably have had me link them one (or more...) strips. Which will have inevitably been hilarious. Of course.
One of my favourites is a strip called Dinosaur Comics, by Ryan North, which uses (with a few exceptions) the same six-panel graphic of three dinosaurs (and occasional off-screen cameos by God, the Devil, Shakespeare, Batman, and Mr. Tusks the pygmy elephant, the mayor of Tiny Towne), with differing dialogue, throughout its entire back catalog (over 2000 strips, so far).
In a recent strip, T-Rex tries to get the hang of Twitter:
If you're not a regular Dinosaur Comics reader (and why not!?), you probably don't know that every comic has two hidden extra jokes (or "Easter Eggs") hidden on each page (plus an extra one if you subscribe to the RSS feed) - one if you hover your mouse over the picture, and one if you hover over (or click) the "contact" link. Go right ahead and check those out now (you'll have to click the picture here to link to the actual site). If you're on a mobile device, I'll help you out: the hovertext reads "a twitter account that's just random song lyrics followed by an all-caps "PLEASE RT": file that under Things I Would Follow".
If you're anything like me, you see those words and mentally said "Challenge: accepted!". Unfortunately, having read the comic on the way to work, I was prevented from working on it for a good chunk of time - by which point, of COURSE, www.twitter.com/lyricspleasert had already launched because, come on, Ryan has the power of the internet. Still, I thought it would be a fun project!
Unfortunately, because I'm writing this instead of working on it, it still hasn't quite gotten off the ground :) but major progress <<salutes>> has been made! I've authorised my app, written a test post to my own account, and am just about to make a test post to www.twitter.com/trexlyrics - hopefully, by the time you read this, it will be live!
Future plans will have the bot able to reply to tweets. With unpredictably hilarious consequences. Yep.
There will be people who will ask why I'm bothering to do this, when a) there is no benefit, in money or respect, to be earned from it, and b) it's already been done. To those people I say a) shut up, and b) George Mallory was a hacker. That is to say, his famous response to "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?" ("Because it's there") is one of the fundamental driving forces of the hacker mindset.
If you read the word "hacker" and think "evil person who breaks into computer systems, messes things up, steals files and money, and causes strife", then you have been sadly misinformed. For a truly enlightening read, browse through the absolutely wonderful Jargon File at http://catb.org/jargon/html/index.html, especially the appendices. I am in danger of veering onto a rant that will mean that I never get this project finished, though, so I will sum it up by saying that, to a certain mindset, an interesting problem is almost utterly irresistible, both for its own satisfaction and for the knowledge and skills that solving it will give. And, with that, I leave you.
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