Some twat on Twitter put stupid emoticons in one of his Tweets.
Then some other Twitter twats retweeted the twattish tweet.
Then the twat that is typing this right now didn’t test his tweet code properly.
Result. Twitter 1 - 0 trousers.
In fact, I still haven’t fixed the code, but after three straight nights on the beer (as it’s birthday season chez Bletch) I have managed to patch the data to get around the problem.
As a result, Optimus trousers has spewed back into life.
Now that I know what caused it, I should be able to make the code more robust, but not until late tomorrow PM. So this Twitter twattery problem MIGHT happen again unless twats on twitter decide to drop the emoticons.
@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.
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!
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…
…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:
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.