When I was younger, I used to frequent DALnet using the mIRC client. I visited #IRCHelp, #Pokemon, and other chatrooms, and spent much of my youth becoming a faster and faster typist.
As a frequent IRC user, I made scripts using the mIRC Scripts Editor:
and that experience carried on into an interest (and later a career) in computers and technology. Today, I live in Kansas City and work with a team of organizers facilitating Startup Weekends, 52-hour events where teams pitch ideas for and build businesses with their peers. At the end of the weekend, judges vote on the best ideas and prizes are rewarded to the teams with the intent of facilitating their future success.
Right now, a team based at the Lean Lab is working to organize and promote SWEDU - Startup Weekend EDU, based on a theme of building startups to improve education. Another team in St. Louis is organizing their own SWEDU - St. Louis, and have offered a wager to Kansas Citians.
Whichever team has the most retweets, shares, and conversations about the event respective to the city hosting the event next Wednesday, January 14th will win:
- a sampling of the losing's city's best food (KC sends BBQ, St. Louis sends toasted ravioli, Gus's pretzels and Provel cheese),
- game tickets to that city's professional indoor soccer team (KC = Comets and St. Louis = Ambush), and
- bragging rights.
In doing my part for this competition, I created a Ruby script to retweet all tweets that @SWEDUKC puts out on their Twitter account next week. Release the kraken!
require 'twitter'
TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY = ''
TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET = ''
TWITTER_OAUTH_TOKEN = ''
TWITTER_OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET = ''
twitterClient = Twitter::REST::Client.new do |config|
config.consumer_key = TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY
config.consumer_secret = TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET
config.access_token = TWITTER_OAUTH_TOKEN
config.access_token_secret = TWITTER_OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET
end
tweeted_list = Array.new
while true do
timeline = twitterClient.user_timeline("swedukc")
sleep 900
timeline.each do |tweet|
if !tweeted_list.include? tweet
twitterClient.retweet(tweet.id)
tweeted_list << tweet
sleep 10
end
end
end
This is neither good nor evil - this is for victory.