pkarl/pk2dna

A slow-release script that tweets out buffered strings + script to buffer strings from a file, FIFO

What is PK2DNA?

This is an open-source / learning version of the code that powers http://twitter.com/pk2dna.

Read more about it here: Building a Macabre 45-year Twitter Bot

So, you'd like to tweet your genome!

This involves a linux-like environment, a text editor, and a twitter account. Here's what you do:

Get data + credentials

• Download your genetic blueprint from 23andMe
• Create a Twitter App (for python-twitter auth) at http://apps.twitter.com
• Get a server somewhere for this repo. Clone and plop it up there.
• (assumes Ubuntu)

Configure

• Run pip install -r requirements.txt
• Put your genetic blueprint data file from 23andMe into /data
• be sure to trim any unwanted comments/lines of text before you begin!
• Drop your client key/secret and access token key/secret into twitter_settings.sample.py and rename to twitter_settings.py
• Add watch -n[time in seconds] /your/path/to/pk2dna/postAndTrimFirstLineOfGenome.sh 2> /your/path/to/pk2dna/watch_errors.txt to /etc/rc.local

To run

• reboot your server, and watch the tweets roll in!
• If you'd like to have less fun, you can run source /etc/rc.local

Troubleshooting

• See if there are python execution errors by running python postAndTrimFirstLineOfGenome.py or python postGenomeStatus.py from the command line.
• If you don't want to execute, but you want to compile, run python -m py_compile postGenomeStatus.py postAndTrimFirstLineOfGenome.py. This will show you syntax errors w/out tweeting.
• Also, check [path/to/pk2dna/]watch_errors.txt to see if watch ran into any issues