So I spent a few hours writing a script to print out all posts by a specific user from a TL thread lol... I want to turn it into an application where it will notify you immediately of new posts by certain users but at this point it seems kind of silly since there's only two more days of this contest :/ Also honestly refresh time does not seem to be the issue in most cases for getting into a game. But I think eventually it could become a command line TL client which people might find useful for browsing TL discreetly, as well as something that can turn a TL live report thread into a twitter feed.

So basically, darn you Antoine for making me waste a few hours of my life (but to be fair, this was much more interesting than my usual work, go figure).

Edit: I'm not serious of course, this has honestly been the most fun I've had on TL in a long time. Not sure if I can participate today and tomorrow though... I really shouldn't because I've basically not been getting any work done the past few days because I'm just thinking about Starcraft but gahhh.

CrateCat

Germany28 Posts

October 25 2012 23:29 GMT

#3769

On October 26 2012 08:04 i.of.the.storm wrote:
So I spent a few hours writing a script to print out all posts by a specific user from a TL thread lol... I want to turn it into an application where it will notify you immediately of new posts by certain users but at this point it seems kind of silly since there's only two more days of this contest :/ Also honestly refresh time does not seem to be the issue in most cases for getting into a game. But I think eventually it could become a command line TL client which people might find useful for browsing TL discreetly, as well as something that can turn a TL live report thread into a twitter feed.

So basically, darn you Antoine for making me waste a few hours of my life (but to be fair, this was much more interesting than my usual work, go figure).

Edit: I'm not serious of course, this has honestly been the most fun I've had on TL in a long time. Not sure if I can participate today and tomorrow though... I really shouldn't because I've basically not been getting any work done the past few days because I'm just thinking about Starcraft but gahhh.

Thats awesome. I kinda figured that maybe some people could/would be using third party programs for getting the answers faster.

i.of.the.storm

United States795 Posts

October 25 2012 23:44 GMT

#3770

On October 26 2012 08:29 CrateCat wrote:

Show nested quote +

Thats awesome. I kinda figured that maybe some people could/would be using third party programs for getting the answers faster.

I think it's unlikely to actually make a real difference. Like I posted elsewhere over two days I was able to join 5 game lobbies although I didn't win any of them

but I didn't know any of the answers, all were found via googling. I was honestly just very bored. I guess if I'd had it earlier I could have gotten in on Antoine's last game yesterday since it took forever for people to find all this posts and answer all of them lol.

I think the real use is going to be the live report -> twitter feed thing, which is something I've been wanting to do for a while, because twitter is generally faster than refreshing a LR thread. And maybe it would encourage people to do actual live reporting more and in smaller chunks if they could have their posts mirrored on Twitter (like actually describing what's going on in game). Maybe I can make a twitter account called "shit_hotbid_says" and have it post everything baller posts

. Lots of fun possibilities with twitter.

Random things I learned: TL's HTML is seriously terrible, it makes parsing it very annoying. It's literally tables all the way down and inline styles all over the place

. Also, TL does stop you from opening too many connections to the site which is good, otherwise I might have accidentally caused a bunch of traffic by loading 200 pages in parallel. Right now it takes quite a bit of time to parse all the pages using the library that I'm using (nokogiri), which I think might be faster if the HTML wasn't so convoluted. It took 3 minutes to parse all the HTML for every page on this thread lol.

Goggles Paisano

Canada29 Posts

October 25 2012 23:51 GMT

#3771

Bravo on the script! I think its a great idea for Twitter. I know I'd use it. For now though... auto refresh -_-. Sell it to them in exchange for a key if you don't win one!

RDaneelOlivaw

Vatican City State733 Posts

October 26 2012 00:21 GMT

#3772

New beta round went out my friends, check your emails

TheMango

United States1967 Posts

October 26 2012 00:23 GMT

#3773

I hope people are brushing up on their west wing trivia

EienShinwa

United States655 Posts

October 26 2012 00:28 GMT

#3774

On October 26 2012 09:23 TheMango wrote:
I hope people are brushing up on their west wing trivia

Good God, more of that stuff T_T

ImThat1Duee

United States10 Posts

October 26 2012 00:44 GMT

#3775

TT West Wing questions

MrClanker

United States6 Posts

October 26 2012 00:49 GMT

#3776

All the West Wing Wikipedias will be in different tabs. Thanks for the tip(s)!

Billinator

United States86 Posts

October 26 2012 00:51 GMT

#3777

new page

Billinator

United States86 Posts

October 26 2012 00:51 GMT

#3778

give some starcraft questions, its the only thing i know anything about :d

Hot_Bid

Braavos36399 Posts

October 26 2012 00:54 GMT

#3779

Tonight's questions will all be about NBA and NFL teams / players / stats for me. So get ready!

All games will be 4v4 monobattles winning team gets keys (4 keys per game, YESSIR)

EienShinwa

United States655 Posts

October 26 2012 00:54 GMT

#3780

On October 26 2012 09:54 Hot_Bid wrote:
Tonight's questions will all be about NBA and NFL teams / players / stats for me. So get ready!

All games will be 4v4 monobattles winning team gets keys (4 keys per game, YESSIR)

Well, I'm screwed.