TomFOGARTY - Blog

30 December, 2010

Behold! The Gary Glitter Twitter Bot

Filed under: Announcements, Computers, How To, Random — Tags: Gary Glitter, Gary Glitter Twitter Bot, Tom Fogarty, Twitter Agent, Twitter Bot — spiderwebdesign @ 13:22

It’s alive…

PLEASE NOTE – The Gary Glitter Twitter Bot was developed as a joke. I am NOT a nonse, I do NOT run paedofile rings.

Now, onto the post…

I was bored over the festive season, so I decided to do some php coding and make something useful. But then I made the Gary Glitter Twitter Bot instead. This all got started because I had a bout of insomnia last week, and tweeted “I am bored”. Half an hour later I noticed that I had been retweeted by some “Bored Bot”. This then got me thinking about what kind of Bot I would make if I had the chance?

I toyed with a few ideas first (No-Pants Bot, Skinhead Bot, Rasputin Bot, Clockwork Orange Bot etc.) – before it stuck me – Gary Glitter!

How it works is this:

Saved a twitter search for “Gary Glitter” and pulled the results into a php generated page on my server:

http://www.tomfogarty.com/glitterfeed.php

This URL is then used with Yahoo Pipes to create an RSS feed here:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=fd58a8756ab1250c1891fbfb0e82df74&_render=rss

I then used twitterfeed to post it through to the @garyglitterbot twitter account.

Then every half an hour it auto-searches for “Gary Glitter” tweets and copied them (5 at a time). It’s not working 100% properly yet as it doesn’t actually retweet the results – it just copies them and tweets (basically stealing) – although it does provide a link back the original source.

Still, it’s my contribution to the world and I’m very proud.

LATEST UPDATES – all bugs mentioned above are now fixed. The Gary Glitter Twitter Bot now retweets properly. “COME ON, COME ON…”

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4 April, 2010

Guide – How To Set Up a Windows 7 and Ubuntu Dual-Boot System

Filed under: Computers, How To — Tags: computer guide, dual boot, How To, Tom Fogarty, ubuntu, windows 7 — TomFOGARTY @ 19:48

This guide will show you how to set up your system with a Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux dual-boot configuration. Ideal for laptops with small hard drives.

This is not the only way of setting this up, nor is it the necessarily the best way – but it does work for me!

Pros: allows you try out 2 recent systems side-by-way. Very good development – you can set up a LAMP development area, with safe virus-free internet browsing. Photoshop work can be done in your Windows 7 area then shared with Ubuntu (no need to resort to Wine or VMware).

Step 1 – back up all your data to an external source (this method formats your hard drive – wiping everything for clean installs).

Step 2 – Insert your Windows 7 installation/boot disk and restart (should detect automatically and prompt you boot from CD).

Step 3 – Folllow onscreen prompts to delete/format partitions and install Windows 7 in the unallocated space

Step 4 – Once Windows 7 is loaded, launch Disk Management partition application from start menu. Right-click C: drive and choose shrink (shrink by the maximum value it will allow)

Step 5 – Right-click unallocated space – then format NTFS & name it storage/data or something (untick quick method is best). This will be for saving your files; these will be shared by both operating systems

Step 6 – Change default shave location (so that it saves by default to the data/storage drive you just created). To do this first your Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos etc. folders over to the new drive. Then click the libraries (i.e. Documents etc folders) in the left-hand navigation bar one by one. As you click each one it will display “Includes: 2 locations” near the top of the screen – click on this link and remove the two current locations and add the new location (on the new drive). Repeat this for each folder on the C: drive where your documents get saved.

Step 7 – Insert Ubuntu live CD and run it.

Step 8 – Click desktop option to install Ubuntu

Step 9 – Choose option to install side-by-side with Windows 7 (this installs it on the same partition

Step 10 – Now when you Boot your laptop up – you will have options to load Ubuntu or Windows 7

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