You can choose to expand on the source code and/or leave comments so that I can update it and let everyone else also enjoy a better client.

#!/usr/bin/env python
#
#           twitpie
#
#           Twitter Command Line Client
#
#           A simplistic client useful to get a auto-refreshed feed of your
#           + friends timeline and to post tweets.
#
#
# Author:   Harshad Sharma
#           http://www.twitter.com/hiway
#           harshad (dot) sharma @ gmail (dot) com
#
#
# Usage:    Edit this file --> put in username and password
#           Start program "python twit.py" - it will automatically start showing
#           the latest tweets. To update or quit, press Ctrl+C
#           Type in a tweet and press enter to post the update.
#           simply type 'q' to quit.
#
# Dependency:
#           http://pypi.python.org/pypi/python-twitter/
#
# License:
#           This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
#           it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
#           the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
#           (at your option) any later version.
#
#           This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#           but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#           MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#           GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#           You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
#           along with this program.  If not, see .

import twitter
import time

# Add your username and password here…
api = twitter.Api(username=’twitterusername’, password=’twitterpassword’)     # <--- EDIT HERE

version = 0.1
finished = False

# Loop till finished is changed to True
while finished == False:
    try:
        # Create an empty list.
        tweets = []

        # iterate throgh the friends timeline and gather data.
        for i in api.GetFriendsTimeline():

            #-------- Choose your fave formatting: --------
            # keep only one line uncommented at a time.

            #tweets.append( "%s (%s) \n%s\n" %(i.user.name, i.relative_created_at, i.text))
            #tweets.append( "%s | %s (%s)\n" %(i.user.name, i.text, i.relative_created_at))
            #tweets.append( "(%s) %s" %(i.user.name, i.text))
            #tweets.append( "%s: %s" %(i.user.name, i.text))
            tweets.append( "%s\n%s\n" %(i.user.name, i.text))

        # Since we want the latest tweets to appear near the prompt instead of
        # scrolling up... (if you want it the other way round, comment the line)
        tweets.reverse()

        # Iterate over the list and print
        for tweet in tweets:
            print tweet

        # Wait for some time...
        time.sleep(3*60) # 3*60 = 3 minutes

    except KeyboardInterrupt: # If user presses Ctrl-C, do the following:

        # Get imput - either tweet or command to exit.
        tweet = raw_input("\n\nWhat are you doing (q=quit | r=refresh): ")

        if tweet.lower() == 'q':
            # Exit loop by setting the flag
            finished = True
        if tweet.lower() == 'r':
            pass
        else:
            # User wants to post a tweet... do it :-)
            api.PostUpdate(tweet)

Have you tried imified? And any suggestions as to what else can I use it for?

कधी ऐकदा पगार होतोय;
वाट बघतायेत सारेच.
वेळ झाली बिलं भरायची;
वाट बघतायेत सारेच!

वाट लागलीये खिशाची;
वाट बघतायेत सारेच.
पाकिट चार चौघात उघडलं तर…
आत बघतायेत सारेच!

मोकळं-मोकळं, हलकं-हलकं
ऊठाय-बसायला सोप्पं!
डाएट म्हणा किंवा म्हणा उपास…
तंगी भोगतायेत सारेच.

बांकेचा अजुन मेसेज नाही अाला
फोन तपासतायेत सारेच.
कधी ऐकदा पगार होतोय;
वाट बघतायेत सारेच…

- हर्षद शर्मा
१० जून २००८

(डिस्लेमर: माझा पगार झालेला आहे!)

An idea took root - I was already creating small chat-bots, software which imitates human conversations, after learning a few tricks from ALICE. My addition to the trick was simple - instead of complex parsing mechanisms was using simple SQL statements to emulate the basic functioning of an AI chat-bot.

I wanted to go a step further and add emotion to my software; however artificial it may be. My attempts either failed or I gave up a bit too soon. This idea was a skeleton in my closet that just wouldn’t keep quiet. It was feeling sad that I had neglected it. Machines could be much more interesting if they had some emotions… I always wondered how it would feel to make a machine happy, angry or sad… and live with the consequences!

Fortunately inspiration came again when a bunch of Indian techies decided to gather up in an IRC channel to discuss things. We wanted a ‘bot’ to manage user permissions and to log parts of the conversation. That was fulfilled pretty soon, but I was getting the itch to write a bot that listened to people’s conversations and would chip in with helpful hints if someone asked a question that was frequently answered.

I made the software and was testing it… but I wasn’t happy… wanted to do something else with it. I realized that my old project was taking over me again. I decided to give in and challenged myself to start and create the first prototype of the software within 32 hours. Technically I failed again - When I was about 8 hours into the project, another project that I had worked on needed some urgent modifications. That resulted in 24 hours lost. Continued after that and managed to finish the project within next 24 hours.

Finally after almost five years of thinking about an idea, I had it in my hands! I was searching for a name fo rthe software, soemthing to identify it with. After going through baby-names lists, and checking username availability and trying to find the easiest name to spell and type, I finally settled for “Hema”, its an Indian name which means “golden”.

Now, Hema can understand when you are praising her, or when you call her stupid… and her mood changes accordingly. She even stops saying the cheerful “Hey!” if you say “Hi!” when she’s in a bad mood. Its fun to cheer her up and get her talking again.

I’m working on some documentation and introduction/demo that I can present to all of you. I currently have a lot of commitments that demand priority treatement. Like always, the pet project must wait a bit more.

Updates about Hema will be posted on this blog and on my twitter account, so if you are interested, watch these spaces.

Catch ya’ll soon…

If you know it already, no fun, but since I had not checked it recently, it came as quite a surprise! Here’s my Twitter page… all tweets translated by google.

Isn’t it fun?

I’m happy that a lot more people from my country will be able to browse the Internet and understand the content in their own language. Go Google!

Link: http://translate.google.com/translate

Amit, my cousin, loves to play the guitar. I love to listen and I can also pretend to play quite well! Yes, though my skills are generally lacking in the music department, I love to hear some good music.

Download mp3

So today Amit was playing this nice tune and I *had* to know where he learnt it. Apparently, he got it from a friend who had learnt if from a friend, ad infinitum, or something like that. Now the problem is, nobody really knows the origin of this music. We believe it’s the lead of some song… but so far we have not come across any song that has this piece.

Finally we decided to harness the power of multitude - hence this post, requesting you to listen to a 10 second piece of music and leave a comment if you know the source of the song. Any clue will be appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Cheers!
The Music Guesser on the Runaway Train.

Later, using twitter from the web became more common instead of costly messages… still no sign!

Then finally, after almost a year, there was a surge in Indian twitter users, and the place became chatty, twittery even! With the number of people rising, I too got involved in conversations… and before I knew it, I was looking forward to waking up early in the morning to catch up with all the tweets of the office-going tweeters on my list!! This was a drastic change in habit that *nothing* had been able to induce till date.

Peer pressure - no, nobody asked me to wake up. Eagerness to keep up with interesting people - absolutely yes!

Thank you Twitter for making me a early to bed early to rise geek! :-P Now I can enjoy the day and enjoy company of geeks at the same time!

P.S. You can follow my updates here: http://twitter.com/hiway

It seems updates to the Thoughts on Rails have stopped after April/August 2007… after being running for over 5 years. It was just changes in priorities for me that sparked a minor negligence, which led to further procrastination… and “since it was not oupdated in months anyway… why bother?” thoughts instead of the usual “this is cool, lemme share it with everybody!” enthusiasm.

I had also shifted attention to my photography-related blog, hence all the updates went there from August 2007 onwards. Now I have decided to bring this blog back, get it up and running and make it better than ever.

Hence the new domain name, thoughtsonrails.com - which to my surprise was available! - idea behind it - if I’m shelling out money for something, I’d better make good use of it ;-)

This is just the first phase - to get things started, now I have to set up a good workflow for blogging whether at home or on the move.

Cheers!

Yours Truly,
The Thinker on the Runaway Train.

Out shooting in Pathardi and Paithan on 26 and 27 Aug :-)

Working on the stills for a documentary… with a great team, which translates to only one thing - FUN!

Cya!

If you have not driven in India - more so in Maharashtra State, you probably have no idea of what I’m talking about.

People honk horns even if they can see there is another vehicle in front of you and you have nowhere to go. They don’t honk once, its a continuous riot till you get irritated and slam on the brakes to tell the guy behind you to shut up.

Many drivers won’t give you way - in a 4 lane highway, each direction of the traffic gets 2 lanes… among them one is for overtaking and fast vehicles and other is for slower traffic. They will drive their beat-down trashcans on the fast lane at half the usual speed and won’t budge. If you try to inform them with a short horn, they wave their hand at you to tell you to ‘go overtake from the slow lane if you want. I’m not moving’. Insulting others is normal here.

On the 2 lane highway, where oncoming traffic shares the road with you, people overtake larger/slower vehicles even if there is oncoming traffic. You have to get down on to the shoulders even if you were driving in your own lane because some SOB decided that he wanted to go immediately and he didn’t care if he swerved into your lane to do so.

These experiences are not once in a while… not once in a day… every minute that my tires are on the road, people piss me off.

I love driving, I totally enjoy driving. I’d love to drive all my life. I like to travel to different places. The journey means a lot more to me than the destination. The road is one of my best friends! I dream about traveling all the time. I save up money not for fancy clothes, but for fuel.

Yet, every time I drive, there are many people who are having a bad day and who make sure that they pass on their bad mood to every driver they meet.

I like the company of trucks when I’m on my bike - because they don’t try to kill me every time they see me.  The smaller vehicles though have no sense at all. When I drive a car, I give enough space to motorcyclists. I keep dipper/low beam light when there is oncoming traffic. I consider other driver’s situation before I take a quick turn or overtake. I don’t honk unnecessarily. I let faster vehicles pass even before they ask for side. I wait when pedestrians are crossing the road. I don’t get irritated if someone is learning how to drive and makes mistakes. I smile and wave at other drivers when the traffic is slow.

What do I get in return? Constant insult in the way of being snubbed by other drivers with bigger vehicles… I’ve recently started using same tactics on the other drivers. As soon as I see that they are going to overtake even when they can see me - I move my vehicle right in the middle of the road, flash lights and wave my fist at them, works every time. Guess, I should see if the Government allows me to keep rubber-bullet loaded guns too! Those will certainly be handy!

Heh, I can almost see myself becoming a lawless roadie some day. Its a tough job keeping my sanity and not giving in to scaring others shitless. Its not difficult to attack others… it is easy actually. I’ve found this out with experience. Most people will get on their knees if you raise your fist. Many will bow, if you make them.

That is not power. That is not respect. It is sheer intimidation. But it works like a charm on the highways - to keep yourself safe. But I don’t like it. I like to make friends… not enemies! What do I do?

I tried this for a full 100 kilometers - give the overtaking driver some space and move a bit towards the edge of the road. Each of the 30+ times in the nearly two hours of drive, the oncoming vehicle made me get down from the road, into the rubble and stop - because the bike would go out of control in  rubble. While coming back on the same stretch, I tried my flash-the-lights and wave-your-fist technique… none… yes NONE of the vehicles caused me any trouble.

Well, only one jeep-driver had the guts to still drive on, but since I stayed in my place, he had to swerve even more and go past the edge of my lane. I sure hope his passengers gave him some points to ponder. Three more cars had followed him and were already in my lane when this happened, they saw what happened and almost instantly got back in their lane.

I’m having a difficult time being good. It seems that the only way to stay alive on the highway is to scare the living daylight out of others. Can’t we Indians be sensible? Are we freaking animals that we have to attack others for the right of way? I’m not going to stop driving just because others have no sense nor responsibility of driving. I will not be scared into sitting at home or traveling in bus like many other people. Most importantly, I will not die on the highway.

I like to follow the rules. Please don’t make me lawless! Somebody help me!