The year of the robot

Feb 2011 1 minute read

As it seems I’m not the only one missing @robertbrook on twitter, this little chap might help bridge the gap. Not quite the same thing, but it looks like he’s going to have to do. For now.

Meet Robot

This is @robotbrook. He’s a much smaller and infinitely dafter version of @robertbrook who’s taking a year off. Unlike most of my recent software projects, he’s not going to be open sourced because people have started talking to him and it would spoil the fun.

What does he do?

He cheats mostly, picks up on things the real Robert posts to Pinboard and tweets about it, that style of thing.

But he talks to me!

You might think that, I couldn’t possibly comment.

In the beginning, that was mostly so that people wouldn’t think he was a Real Boy. Not everybody reads the bio page and some of the early @replies were really funny. No, not yours - yours was cool.

(Yes I have talked to it myself a few times by accident. Despite the fact that I wrote it. Shut up.)

So you’re not going to tell me how it works then?

No. Sorry. I can tell you that there’s probably some PHP involved somewhere along the line if that’s any help.

Nothing else to add?

*bzzzt … whirrr*