For a long while I have wanted a bot to sit in irc channels spitting out updates on rss feeds. I Think I have finally found all the pieces I need to write a bot in the way I like.

I have written up a really simple IRC client on top of asyncio, but it needs much more testing than a day of dev. I want to have ssl running before I try and run the bot against anything.

The RSS code is much simplier:

import aiohttp
import asyncio
import async_timeout
import feedparser

import pprint

INTERVAL = 60

async def fetch(session, url):
    with async_timeout.timeout(10):
        async with session.get(url) as response:
            return await response.text()

async def fetchfeeds(loop, feedurls, ircsock):
    last_entry = None

    feeds = []

    for url in feedurls:
        feeds.append({'url':url, 'last':""})

    while True:
        for feed in feeds:
            async with aiohttp.ClientSession(loop=loop) as session:
                html = await fetch(session, feed['url'])
                rss = feedparser.parse(html)
                if feed['last']:
                    if feed['last']['title'] != rss['entries'][0]['title'] and feed['last']['link'] != rss['entries'][0]['link']:
                        print("new entry")
                        feed['last'] = rss['entries'][0]

                        print("MSG {}".format(feed['last']['title']))
                        print("MSG {}".format(feed['last']['link']))
                else:
                    feed['last'] = rss['entries'][0]

        await asyncio.sleep(INTERVAL)

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
loop.run_until_complete(fetchfeeds(loop, ['https://n-o-d-e.net/rss/rss.xml',
    "http://localhost:8000/rss.xml"], None))

This is really only a proof of concept, there needs to be much more error handling before I would expect this to run for long.

Reading: Nemesis Games

Checking the FOSDEM instance of the terrible pentabarf submission system I see that my second talk proposal to a devroom has been accepted. I think, they haven't timetabled the room yet so I can't link to a timetable slot for the talk.

I have three talks coming up:

1. 33C3 Lightning Talk
2. FOSDEM BSD devroom talk
3. FOSDEM Real Time Communications devroom Talk

All three of these talks are going to tell the same story, laid out in different ways: The Internet is Broken, Fixes are hard to deploy, Developers won't use new protocols, We have a solution.

The changes that are happening in the internet right now are really interesting, but it is really hard to get over the knowledge curve required for the solutions to make sense. It is really common to hear, "The Internet works fine, why are you trying to fix it", from people that really should know better.

If you want to find out the what and why that is internet transport evolution you should find one of these talks and watch it. Hopefully they will all be recorded and online after the events.

If you want to know more you can email or track me down in IRC.

Reading: Nemesis Games

pic.twitter.com/dkxJFVMZLR

— Archillect (@archillect) December 20, 2016

I played with the wifi camera last night, but I couldn't get my phone to connect to it when my laptop was in monitor mode. That was perplexing enough to hold up anything I was trying to do. I might try again tonight with something that isn't a mac, verifying I can intercept phone traffic is step 1 in this project.

This is my last day in the 'office' this year, apparently I am too late to wish folk a good new year as I am the only person in today.

Reading: Nemesis Games, All Tomorrows Parties

Okay, one CCC project done. The panel now accepts data via UDP , if you send enough it will reset the whole panel, to something. It doesn't do what I want, but what it does right now is much much cooler than what I planned to do.

If I get time during congress I will do something more I guess. Here is all of the code so you can make your own and play a long at home.

import machine, neopixel, time, socket

LEDCOUNT = 64
skull = [
0,0,1,1,1,1,1,0,
0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,
1,0,0,1,0,0,1,1,
1,0,0,1,0,0,1,1,
0,1,1,0,1,1,1,0,
0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,
0,0,0,1,0,1,0,0,
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,]

def chunks(l, n):
    n = max(1, n)
    return [l[i:i + n] for i in range(0, len(l), n)]

if __name__ == "__main__":
    addr = "0.0.0.0"
    port = 6969

    pin = machine.Pin(14, machine.Pin.OUT)
    np = neopixel.NeoPixel(pin, LEDCOUNT)

    print("receiving from {} {}".format(addr, port))

    sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
    sock.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, True)

    sock.settimeout(1.0)
    sock.bind((addr,port))

    while True:
        try: 
            pkt,addr = sock.recvfrom(1024) #blocks
            print("addr {}".format(addr))
        except OSError: 
            pkt = b""

        colours = chunks(pkt, 3)
        if len(pkt) == 3*LEDCOUNT:
            for x in range(LEDCOUNT):
                np[x] = colour
        else:
            colour = (0,0,0)
            if not len(colours) % 3:
                colour = uos.urandom(3)
            else:
                colour = colours[0]

            for x in range(len(skull)):
                if skull[x]:
                    np[x] = colour
        np.write()
        time.sleep(0.16)

SlowTV is going slowly(lol), the project is all set up. I need to figure out how to get the pi to output at the teeny resolution it supports.

Reading: Nemesis Games, All Tomorrows Parties

https://t.co/zaXVqEBQtQ pic.twitter.com/sKRhJoBvUU

— Archillect (@archillect) December 18, 2016

This weekend has to be considered a weekend off. I played with a wifi camera yesterday, but I only made a dent in the project. Today was a final(ish) run at Christmas shopping, in all I did almost nothing all weekend. It feels great.

Next week will be a hectic run to get work done, and projects ready for congress.

It is Sunday, so that makes seven days of writing .

Reading: Nemesis Games, All Tomorrows Parties