The Automatic Saints News Thread - DISCUSSION

Ever prescient, I was right!

In getting the RSS feed stuff to work, something went bang with the non-mainstream summary posting.

Working on it…

I’m mucking around with Tweets at the moment, so please ignore the sudden influx of tweets.

@crstig

Test. Please ignore.

@crstig I’m here for you mate even if bletch is being a twat. Not everyone listens to what he says even though he likes to think he’s captain Internet.

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Well Fatso, it’s like this…

No, do you know what…

I can find neither words, strategy nor energy to dumb down what I’m working on to a level that might allow you to be worthy enough to throw tiny stones at Optimus trousers’ shit!

@crstig is far from being ignored, I’ve attached wires, wires and more wires to the bolts in the neck of Optimus trousers, and am in the lab waiting for a lightning charge to strike the rickety tower on the roof. When it does, for it surely will, @crstig will be ignored no longer, he’ll be given a voice. A Voice. A VOICE!

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sounds like bullshit to me

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OK, so here’s an update on Optimus trousers.

tl;dr Optimus trousers now monitors, tweets, vines, instagrams, news articles, and RSS blog feeds. He also allows you to create a new discussion thread directly from the The Automatic Saints News Thread.

Discuss Button

His papship spends hours every day, painstakingly placing a wonderful Discuss button next to each and every posts that Optimus trousers makes.

Thanks pap, but why did you do that?

Well, if you click the Discuss button you will be taken to the Create New Discussion screen and the title and body fields will be populated with the details from the Optimus trousers post you want to discuss…

You may need to adjust the title to something more appropriate, and after doing so the Sotonians.com site will tell you if existing threads are found that are discussing that particular topic.

If so, you probably want to copy the body content and post it into the existing thread instead of creating a new one.

Instagram content

Optimus trousers is monitoring the Saints’ Instagram account, and will post any content that is shared. Like so:

New content is checked every 15 minutes.

Vine content

Optimus trousers will check for new content shared on the Southampton FC account on the Vine network, and will create a post if anything is found:

New Vine content is checked every 22 minutes.

RSS Feeds

Inspired by Redslo’s thread on Saints’ blogs, Optimus trousers now monitors a number of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. This allows him to see if new blog content has been posted, and If new content is found it is shared in a post, together with a list of older content from the same source.

Like so:

Optimus trousers’ ambition is to publicise the fact that Redslo has created a new blog entry before Redslo has had chance to tell the world!

Currently Optimus trousers knows about the following RSS feeds:

_Deftly Hallowed, The Ugly Inside, Saints Web, League One Minus 10 , Saints FC Official News , RedSLO Blog, Geoge Weah’s Cousin, Oh When the Saints, Go Marching In, Southampton Mad , Saints Corner , _Bearsy Investigates * , The Saints Hub

The ones in bold cannot be included at the moment due to some non-standard use of the RSS/ATOM feed spec.

RSS feeds are currently checked every 60 minutes.

* Yes, that’s right. If Bear writes something stupid about Optimus trousers in his ‘blog’ he can make Optimus trousers say something stupid. Can’t wait.

News articles

Optimus trousers will check for new news articles every 5 minutes. He makes a decision about when and what to show you. If the news items is from a mainstream media outlet…

DAILYECHO, SOUTHAMPTONFC, PREMIERLEAGUE, TALKSPORT, DAILYMAIL, SKYSPORTS, EVENINGSTANDARD, DAILYSTAR, IND, ITV, THEEXPRESSTRIBUNE, MIRR, BBC, ESPNFC, ELECTELEGRAPH, REUTERSUK, METROCOUK, STANDARDKE, SETANTASPORTS, TWITTER, INSTAGRAM, VINE, and DAILYEXPRESS

…then he will display the news article immediately, like so:

Article summary

If, however, the article is from a non-mainstream source then he will store each such article away for up to 60 minutes and then share a summary of all of the non-mainstream articles found since the last update.

Like so:

Tweets

At the moment, Optimus trousers searches for tweets that are popular (according to Twitter) and that contain the hashtag #saintsfc. When found, they are presented immediately.

Unfortunately, Optimus trousers has no control over when Twitter deems a tweet to be _popular_t. As a result, the tweets tend to be presented to Optimus trousers once they’ve already been around a while.

Like so:

Tweet Summary

Optimus trousers also monitors a number of twitter users that are known to tweet about Saints. This list currently includes:

SteveGrant1983, matthewlegod, alex_crook, gwcdotcom, crstig

The drawback of monitoring these accounts is that they have a life outside of Saints, and as such can tweet (or retweet) absolutely anything. Like so:

It would good to add to this list over time, and in future Optimus trousers will hopefully be able to ignore non-Saints-related content.

If you have recommendations for Saints-focussed Twitter users, please add them to this thread or PM me.

Cheers, Bletch.

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Genius, Bletch! Clever man. :slight_smile:

Originally posted by @Coxford_lou

Genius , Bletch! Clever man. :slight_smile:

I’ve given that a lot of thought, Lou.

And that is the only explanation I can come up with.

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I could have done all of that much quicker and better and without the fanfare.

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If only I could swallow my pride and ask you for help Fatso…instead I stumble blindly making small victories and blowing my own trumpet.

P.S. Did I ever tell you how great I think I am?

Added @simonpeach to the list of Saints’ Twitterati.

Usual caveats apply.

I think we need to give Fatso a job to do on here!

Optimus has been a most enjoyable read on my trip home this evening, Bletch. Thank you.

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" …aggravatedly prepared by Optimus trousers…beta v1.5"

Nice attention to detail, Bletch, I’m impressed.

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I have a job on here already. I’m here to snipe and be difficult. It’s the only way to keep the likes of Bletch on his toes.

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Ahh, Lou, you noticed!

Just something I was messing with last night. Next time I do an update that’ll be on all his posts - well they will feature a random description of the effort Optimus trousers went through to bring it to you.

To be honest, I needed to put the version number in there, and as Bear’s criticised Optimus trousers for being too sterile, I thought I’d add a more human (albeit a word bore) touch.

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Just answer the question.

Have I actually told you how great i think I am?

It’s important to me, because if not, then I’ve got something to tell you.

I’m concerned. It’s getting to the point where we should consider doing an empathy test.

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A quick update on Optimus trousers.

I’ve re-jigged his jiggerbug and realigned his line-ins so that everything is now running on one server. This is more efficient (and cheaper), BUT because all of the new gathering activities are now in one place, he’s less stable.

More likely to go over the edge. More likely to phone the 'bot-samaritans.

You’ve been warned.

While I had his bonnet up, I added a bunch of Instagram users that he monitors - OTTOMH…Steklenberg, Targett, Fonte, Yoshida, Soares, Wanyama, Mane, Pelle, Tadic…[Happy to take other suggestions]

At the moment, as is his wont, Optimus trousers is currently trawling through the historic instagrams until he gets up to date. You’ll see that the last several pages will be instagram posts until he gets up-to-date.

TRANSPARENCY

You should also know that I’ve changed all (read most) of the links to articles and stuff so that they go through a link shortener - namely bit.ly. So if you follow a link, it will go to a bit.ly link and then redirect to the real article.

I’ve done this because it means that I can get stats on which articles are most read. This means that I might be able to produce a two-posts-per-day summary of what is being read - which I think might be useful.

The conspiracy theorists should also know that bit.ly will know what saints links you click on (IMO no big deal really), and I should make it clear that I don’t get to see who clicks on what - I simply know that someone in a specific country clicked on a specific link.