I’m gearing up for the 1.2 release of Vimeo for Wordpress now. There’s a few features I’d like to add before I let it into the wild but this latest release adds comments to the videos ( so you can tell what the embed code actually does), It fixes the issue of the colour picker’s box being at the bottom of the page (though the CSS isn’t quite perfect yet) aswell as a few other things.
As usual I’ll put up a few examples of how it all goes plus some screenshots.
So Here’s the first one:
Using the new commenting system it’s easy to see what your videos are and it’s even easier to select them and delete the code
Here’s the second:
When you add a video in the manual entry box there’s no way of the plugin knowing what the video is so it just gives some default code
I’ve just finished coding my first plugin for Wordpress. I’m calling it Vimeo for Wordpress (original huh?).
The plugin is simple to set up, it uses your Vimeo user name to grab your videos and your friends videos but there’s still an option to enter the URL of the video (the plugin takes the http://www.vimeo.com/ part out of it).
Anyways you should go try it out!
So I finally finished coding Paedobot today. It’s come a long way from when I originally decided to make a paedophilic chat bot. Here’s a recap:
v.01 – I used a flash file Mark gave me to make a really simple flash chatbot v0.1
v0.2 – I tried converting the flash 6 file I had used to flash 8 but had no luck
v0.3 – I managed to find another flash file to use, this one was in flash 8 and used a XML file as the questions and answers databasev0.3
v0.4 – I managed to program some commands into the flash file so I could change parts of the user interface. As this version was web browser based I was going to play back pre-recorded content of random people on the other ‘webcam’ but have the chat bot talking like 13 year old
v0.5 – Nick talked to me about how having a browser based chat bot wasn’t the right way to go about it as people have to seek it out and it gives itself away easily. I decided to try and get Paedobot working on Facebook, that way I could make a profile for the personality and use the paedobot scripts to run the profiles interactions. So I did some research into Facebook platform development
v0.6 – This prototype unfortunately is only viewable by me because I never made it public, I managed to get some facebook code up and running which when viewed would give a list of friends names. For some reason the page is now throwing up a parse error, probably due to my rubbish PHP coding. here’s a shot of the developer’s bit though
v0.7 – I started to realise that maybe instead of a social networking bot maybe paedobot should be more of a direct bot i.e. IM, email this would allow paedobot to pull of it’s personality better because the people adding it wouldn’t be able to see a profile which would be empty. So I set about finding a way of making a chatbot to use over the MSN Instant Messaging service. I found out that I could use Python to do so but having no experience with Python things were a little rocky. Especially as Mac OSX is rubbish at handling Python so I had to switch to Ubuntu
v0.8 – I had gotten a little further I could now log onto msn and echo back what people had said to my bot, I could split the text they typed into seperate strings and use this to search my database. Whenever I got any feedback from the database it would either crash because it didn’t find a word or blurt out the XML it was using to find.I also started work on my emailbot though this wasn’t going too good as I originally started using POP3 for my reading, which was rubbish
v0.9 – I had made some progress now I worked out how to stop it crashing (strangely by deleting my if firstFound == None: statement and using if firstFound: instead. Gotta love simple languages ) I also got my emailbot converted to IMAP4 so it was easier for it read the emails.
v1.0 – After a long arsed struggle to learn Python I cracked it, my msnbot can search the XML file, pull up the words, give the last from the matches so to display the proper responce. My emailbot can read the email, get a responce from the XML file, write the email and delete the original (though it has some trouble writing subjects and displaying its name for some reason). I’m most pleased and you can download it from http://www.paedobot.net/releases/1.zip
So what is Paedobot? Paedobot is a collection of python scripts put together by Colin Wren (me) that when run allow a ‘persona’ driven by a single XML file to interact with people over MSN and email. The whole task is automated by a single script which executes the files at a set time during the day. I recommend you use Linux to run the scripts as Mac OS X has difficulty with the msnbot script for some reason. Feel free to contact me via my email colin at gimpneek dot com if you have any problems though you may know more about Python than I do
My FireWave came today, it’s pretty good though I’ve told to get the most out of it all I should have got a proper kit and used the optical out but meh, I just want to muck about with Logic once I can get it working. I’ve tested it with DVD Player and though the sounds not as loud as I’d have hoped it does do it’s job. The Subwoofer is amazing for music though, really hits the bass. makes my feet vibrate
I can’t say how I’ll program the 5.1 surround sound into my double project but I’m thinking of using openAL because it has a good programmer base already there for me to steal code off
I think it’s safe to say that jumping into a programming language you don’t know anything about isn’t a good idea. Especially when to use that language properly you have to install another OS. Yes OS X has finally fallen in one aspect, it’s not good for python. I’ve been writing trying to write a chatbot program (add gimpneek@hotmail.co.uk to your msn if you want to check it out) and I can’t get it to work. I can get it to read what people say but if the words they type in aren’t in my XML file then it throws a wobbly, even when it does decide to give output it just prints out everything in the first XML node, which isn’t what it should be doing.
I think the main problem is that I don’t understand python, and I definitely don’t understand the function my flash chatbot uses.
function findAnswer(the_str){
the_str = this.shaveChars(the_str);
var my_array = the_str.split(" ");
var firstFound = null;
my_array.push("text");
var pos = this.dataObj;
for(var i = 0; i < my_array.length; i++){
if(pos[my_array[i]] != undefined){
pos = pos[my_array[i]];
if(firstFound == null){
firstFound = my_array[i];
}
}
}
if(pos.length != undefined){
var text_array = pos.split("|");
for(var i = 0; i < text_array.length; i++){
var n = text_array[i].lastIndexOf(":");
if(n >= 0){
var x_str = text_array[i].substr(n+1);
this.execCallback(x_str);
}else{
this.output_txt.text += "PaedoBot says: " + text_array[i] + newline;
}
}
}else{
if(firstFound == null){
this.output_txt.text += "PaedoBot says: " + "Sorry, I don't understand. Please ask questions only." + newline;
}else{
this.output_txt.text += "PaedoBot says: " + "I don't know "+firstFound+" that is." + newline;
}
}
}
That’s the flash function that deals with searching for the terms. My Python version is a lot more uglier because I’ve just shoved it in the main chatHandler class. Oh well I’m sure I’ll get it at some point……
P.S. Why does Ubuntu deny me the simple pleasure of using the cmd key instead of the ctrl keep, it’s rather irritating that whenever my mind lapses and I go to paste some code using the cmd key that my window suddenly takes up the whole screen
As I type this I’m sitting in bed on my laptop, I’ve just finished the first ‘draft’ of my animation for CGA so it’s time to crack on with something else. Today I’m going to be making an auto-responder in python for PaedoBot. I do have an auto responder on the CPanel on my website but it’s not very good, it only has 3 functions and I don’t know how to edit the code so I’ve decided to make one myself. I chose Python because as I was searching for various pre-made examples in PHP there were a few tutorials on connecting to email via POP3 and SMTP. I have got these up and running, so it shouldn’t be too hard to read from a message, then work out what it says, find the responses for the message and send it back to the same email address. I’m considering making an app which would allow for a GUI to make things a little less complicated for the user, but this may not happen.
If I can get the auto responder working I’m pretty sure it will encounter loads of issues for instance:
Junk email’s which cannot be replied to
Grammatical errors due to the way the user types their emails
not being able to handle attachments such as images or HTML based emails
I’m pretty sure that I could work a way round these issues though, possibly through the use of a set layout for the output email and blacklisting junk emails.
…But work. I have had a chance to go to uni and had some nice times with Leanna during the precious 2 days she can stay over but the main portion of my awake time has been spent at work I’m so glad I’m leaving that place. Anyways it’s Sunday night now and I’ve just got home after an 11 hour shift (I was supposed to be doing a 9-3, which turned into a 9-8 :s) so it’s time to update my blog and think about what I want to achieve this week I have 2 things to hand in this week, my interim presentation for my Double Project and my draft essay for Design for Simulation. I’ll be doing the interim presentation stuff tonight but I think this week in general I’ll spend upgrading the site so it has a more personal feel.
Anyways off to work……
Gave my presentation today, Mark said that I had a great but very dangerous project in mind. I told him I had registered www.paedobot.net and he said I should get my WHOIS covered up incase I do get some angry people sending letters or emails. I talked to the people I registered with LCN and they told me that all .net addresses have to show WHOIS information. So I’m screwed, maybe I’ll have a ground breaking court case, who knows.
I got Little Big Planet yesterday and thus spent all night making my own levels, overslept and didn’t go to lessons. Bummer
But I did manage to get both my proposal and my keynote presentation sorted out. So now I can spend the rest of the week going over them and re-adjusting them until I’m happy. I also bought the domain name www.paedobot.net
One of my main worries with my Design for Simulation project is the name, I love it because it’s quirky and humourous but at the same time I can’t help but think I’m going to get a letter from the government asking me to take it down because I contains the word ‘paedo’ and people seem to have a blind hate for paedophiles (lest we forget the paediatrician incident). I’ve put a disclaimer up in the hope that people will understand that it’s nothing dodgy, but I’m sure they’ll misunderstand
Today was pretty good, had everyone in so was fun to debate peoples theories and stuff. Ordered 2 new books Tabloid Justice which is to help with my research on the way the media makes everything out of proportion and Language of New Media which Nick has been reading us through. My Bank Balance is going to be really low but hopefully I’ll get out of it.
Overall todays lesson was about immersion and the difference between representation (visual) and simulation (sensual). I began to think about how I could adapt this to my Peadobot and realised that instead of pretending it was a peadophile trying to be a child but overall coming across as pervy, it should be a peadophile acting as a child but more convincingly with only slight flaws giving it away. I think to do this, I should set up a ‘webcam’ so that I can get across the fact that you are talking to an old guy trying to lure children into a trap. This would mean I would have to get an ‘actor’ and take maybe 20 or so clips of them from a webcam so that it seems convincing but I don’t imagine that being too hard to generate.
After that we had the glorious Double-Project proposal in the common room, that went surprisingly well though everyone was either doing a game, or a video so yeah was quite funny.
) I also got my emailbot converted to IMAP4 so it was easier for it read the emails.
