Some experimental novels enjoy great success. But imagine an ambitious avant-garde novel that tried to combine experimental content (talking mushrooms as the only characters), and experimental form (printing the novel on playing cards to be shuffled in random order), and an experimental message (preaching the tenets of Scientology), and experimental distribution (advertising on television and inviting people to subscribe to the cards), and experimental language (clipped slang borrowed from the Southern working classes and organized into limericks), and an experimental audience (tailoring the message to recent immigrants).

From Graham Harman’s Prince of Networks, page 49.

sudo apt-get install curl xmlstarlet festival


After installing the command is:

curl -s -u twitterusername:twitterpassword 'http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.xml?count=5' | xmlstarlet sel -t -m '//status' -v 'user/screen_name' -o ': ' -v 'text' -n | festival --tts


You should hear a computerized voice reading your friends latest updates.

If you find this useful, it can be interesting to save the script and put it in the Linux crontab file to automatically do it every so often. Just run crontab -e and include the following:

* * * * * /home/robojamie/twittertalk.sh


That updates every minute, so you may want to adjust it. Just take look at the cron tab syntax.

Windows is known for hanging on to ancient icons. If you go looking in Windows Vista or even 7 you can find icons dating back to the 16-bit era. Mac OS X is not known for this sort of thing, but if you use the single window screenshot short cut, Command + Shift + 4 and then space, you’ll find an icon that dates back to Steve Jobs’ NeXT days. I’ve always liked the design of the NeXT icons even if they appear slightly dated.

The presence of this icon leads to the question: Is this an easter egg or an oversight?