*(ssssssssleepy because pythons ssssssssss)

I’m up learning little bits of python and falling down rabbit holes of so many things to read. A great difficulty in DH as a field of study is the hypertextuality of it all. Whereas in more traditional humanities practices, a text might lead you to others, it seems like printed texts have at least a modicum of inertia (static or in motion). There is something about the buttons of text, direct conduits to the next idea, that make reading in a straight line near impossible (the achievement of a stronger will and of a faster reader than I). This impossibility of  (or at least my incapacity for) straightforward reading is hugely exhausting.

My twitterbot creation has been now four days of fits and starts.

Monday I read articles to see what sort of steps I might need and what sort of skills. I also began hatching schemes for bots I might make. I told my roommate I was making her a birthday bot.

Tuesday. More reading. Mark Sample’s stuff was cool, but I am my mother’s apolitical daughter, despite my father’s remarkable energy for activism and campaign. Bots about words appealed to me far more and I resolved to make my roommate a story plot idea generator. (She is a writer deep in her third draft of a middle grade fantasy novel).

Wednesday, I made my way to the GC to attempt to sit myself down to several tutorials of Python. Instead, I worked through some of the initial Twitter set-up through the resources listed on the Text Transformations group. I chose a handle: @StoryMakerBot and set up the Twitter dev business. I have a key and a secret. Either I’m making something on the internet, or I’m playing a song from my early piano lessons’ “Teaching Little Fingers to Play.”

Thursday. It’s now 1am and my eyes can’t distinguish a %s from a print string.upper()….

so bedtime for now.