Allen Ginsberg Bot Flock

ginsberg bot flock twitter list

The Allen Ginsberg Bot Flock is a flock of Twitter bots tweeting Allen Ginsberg poems in perpetuity.

bot/ contains the code for the bot flock.

pelican/ contains the Pelican files used to generate the project web page.

See the project web page for more information, or browse through the code.

List of Bot Accounts

Ginsberg Bot Flock members list

Required Software

This bot flock utilizes rainbow-mind-machine, the extensible bot flock framework authored by yours truly.

Required Twitter Setup

You will need to set up some Twitter accounts for your bots, obviously. Set up a new Gmail account, create a Google Voice number, and use that as a phone number if Twitter demands a phone number from you. (Twilio phone numbers will not work for Twitter registration. Don't blow $1.)

You will also need a bot-master account. This acount will be associated with your application. You can have one bot-master that runs all of your bot flocks under the same application, even if they are different flocks running on different machines.

You will need to create a Twitter app through the bot-master account. This step must be done prior to running the bot. This will give you a consumer token and a consumer secret token.

Captain Obvious sez: you should keep your consumer secret token a secret!

Consumer Token and Secret

This section assumes you now have your consumer token and consumer secret token.

Put these in the file bot/apikeys.json as two key-value pairs, like so:

{
    "cosumer_token": "AAAAAAAAAAAAA",
    "consumer_token_secret": "BBBBBBBBB"
}

Where Do I Put My Keys

Your keys should go in the same directory as the bot script and (optionally) any data or external files used to initialize each bot.

For example:

bot/
    GinsbergBotFlock.py
    apikeys.json
    data/
        account1.txt
        account2.txt
        account3.txt
        ...
    keys/
        account1.json
        account2.json
        account3.json
        ...

While you can put the keys anywhere you'd like, this is the recommended layout.

Where Do I Put My apikeys.json

The file apikey.json should go next to GinsbergBotFlock.py:

bot/
    GinsbergBotFlock.py
    apikeys.json
    data/
        ...
    keys/
        ...

Running The Bot Flock

(Note: take care of apikeys.json before you begin.)

Running the bot flock is a two-step process:

1. (One time) Authorize the program to tweet on behalf of your account (i.e., log in with each user account). This requires apikeys.json be present next to your bot flock program. This step generates key files (JSON format).

2. Run the bot flock. Tweet! Sleep! Repeat!

Either way, run it with Python:

$ cd bot/
$ python GinsbergBotFlock.py