The Quixotic Engineer

Photograph by Jake Ratner

A few years ago I started making Twitter bots as a weekend creative coding hobby, developing a dozen or so through 2015-2016. I’ve more recently developed a keen interest / anxiety around climate change, and have been reading various popular books on the subject. Last weekend, I combined those passions and created a new bot: @ClimateClockBot.

Recognizing the niche appeal of such an endeavour, I’d like to take a moment to expand on why I think bots are interesting and what I hoped to accomplish with this project.

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To start off 2016, I thought I’d take a moment to write about some of the new Twitter bots I assembled last year. In my last post on the subject, I indicated that I was reluctant to continue making bots because it was distracting me from larger projects. However, since lately I’ve been focusing hard on a big exciting endeavour, I’ve found that making bots has continued to be a relaxing creative outlet in my downtime.

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I was recently interviewed by Jason Johnson at Kill Screen about the intersection of two of my favourite topics: video games and Twitter bots. Specifically, he wanted to explore the possibilities of using Twitter as a platform for games, and I was happy to oblige! You can read the interview over on their site:

Kill Screen – Is Twitter the Next Playground for Gamers?

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Since making @HoroscopeBot and @EveryBookBot, I’ve been on what you might call a bot-making rampage. I’ve really enjoyed tinkering with tiny scope coding projects that can be finished over a weekend, as opposed to my game-making side projects that often take months. Here, briefly, are five new bots I’ve assembled over the last few weeks:

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Since I released @HoroscopeBot earlier this summer, I haven’t stopped thinking about Twitter bots as a creative medium. Corny “I could make a bot for that” ideas kept popping into my thoughts. After reading this appreciation of museum bots, I decided to try my hand at making something similar for a different catalogue.

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