2016

Programming Projects

Next Thing CHiP as a Twitter Bot

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twitter-logoThere was a post that came across on Medium recently, How to Make a Twitter Bot in Under an Hour.  It’s pretty straight forward, though it seems to be pretty geared towards non “techie” types, mostly because it’s geared towards people making the bot on a Mac and it uses something called Heroku to run the bot.  Heroku seems alright, except that this sort of feels like an abuse of their free tier, and it’s not free for any real projects.

I already have a bunch of IOT stuff floating around that’s ideal for running periodic services.  I also have a VPS is I really wanted something dedicated.  So I adapted the article for use in a standard Linux environment.  I used one of my CHiPs but this should work on a Raspberry Pi, an Ubuntu box, a VPS, or pretty much anything running Linux.

The first part of the article is needed, set up a new Twitter account, or use one you already have if you have extras.  Go to apps.twitter.com, create an app and keys, keep it handy.

Install git and python and python’s twitter extension.

sudo apt-get install git

sudo apt-get install python-twitter

This should set up everything we’ll need later.  Once it’s done, close the repository.

git clone https://github.com/tommeagher/heroku_ebooks.git

This should download the repository and it’s files.  Next it’s time to set up the configuration files.

cd heroku_ebooks

cp local_settings_example.py local_settings.py

pico local_settings.py

This should open up an editor with the settings file open.  It’s pretty straight forwards, you’ll need to copy and paste the keys from Twitter into the file, there are 4 of them total, make sure you don’t leave any extra spaces inside the single quotes.  You’ll also need to add one or more accounts for the bot to model itself after.  You’ll also need to change DEBUG = TRUE to DEBUG = FALSE as well as adding your bot’s username to the TWEET_ACCOUNT=” entry at the bottom.

Once that is all done do a Control+O to write out the file and Control+X to exit.  Now it’s time to test out the bot with the following…

python ebooks.py

It may pause for a second while it does it’s magic.  If you get the message ” No, sorry, not this time.” it means the bot decided not to tweet, just run the command again until it tweets, since we’re testing it at the moment.  If it worked, it should print a tweet to the command line and the tweet should show up in the bot’s timeline.  If you get some errors, you may need to do some searching and troubleshooting, and double check the settings file.

Next we need to automate the Twitter Bot Tweets.  This is done using Linux’s built in cron.  But first we need to make our script executable.

 chmod 755 ebooks.py

Next, enter the following….

sudo crontab -e

Then select the default option, which should be nano.  This will open the cron scheduler file.  You’ll want to schedule the bot to run according to whatever schedule you want.  Follow the columns above as a guide.  For example:

# m h  dom mon dow   command

*/15 * * * * python /home/chip/heroku_ebooks/ebooks.py

m = minutes = */15 = every 15 minutes of an hour (0, 15, 30, 45)

h = hour = * (every hour)

dom = day of month = * = every day and so on.  The command to run, in this case, is “python /home/chip/heroku_ebooks/ebooks.py”.  If you’re running this on a Raspberry Pi, or your own server, you will need to change “chip” to be the username who’s directory has the files.  Or, if you want to put the files elsewhere, it just needs to b e the path to the files.  For example, on a Raspberry Pi, it would be “python /home/pi/heroku_ebooks/ebooks.py”.

If everything works out, the bot should tweet on schedule as long as the CHIP is powered on and connected.  Remember, by default the bot only tweets 1/8th of the time when the script is run (this can be adjusted in the settings file), so you may not see it tweet immediately.

This is also a pretty low overhead operation, you could conceivably run several Twitter Bots on one small IOT device, with a staggered schedule even.  Simply copy the heruko_ebooks directory to a new directory, change the keys and account names and set up a new cron job pointing to the new directory.

Opinion/Editorial/Life

Cleaning up My Password Security

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encryption-imageIt seems like there is an increasing amount of hacks and leaks lately.  These also seem to be larger and higher profile targets more and more.  Recently I’ve been seeing stories about Last.fm and Dropbox accounts apparently being compromised as well as a vulnerability in vBulleten, a popular Message Board hosting tool.  For the most part, a lot of these hacks are going to be harmless, for now.  Any website that actually matters is probably (they better be) using salted passwords, making a password dump mostly useless.  Though in Last.fm’s case, apparently 96% of the passwords were decrypted because their encryption algorithm was shoddy.  Still, it seemed like a good time to check over my Password Security.

Beware, those music scrobbles you see might actually be the music taste of some Russian or Chinese hacker!  Seriously though, I don’t really see the point with hacking Last.fm, I’m not entirely sure they even have any sort of financial data.  I imagine the email list is sort of useful for spam accounts.  I suppose there is also the issue of people using the same passwords everywhere.

The good side of these hacks, the lists get put on-line, on hacker sites or TOR sites, and there are several places that take these lists of leaked accounts, dump them in a database and allow you to search to see if your account shows up in a list and for which site, if available.  With all of these recent lists I went through and checked my primary email addresses and found about 20 entries between the two of them that had been compromised.  Most of those were vBulleten Boards that I had signed up for 10 years ago, never posted to, and had forgotten even existed.

I mentioned the problem of using the same password repeatedly.  I’ve got several “layers” I use for how much complexity I put into my passwords.  Financial sites, large buying sites (eBay, Amazon, etc), all get unique passwords.  I just remember those.  The next level, things like Facebook and Twitter, also get unique passwords, but I have some basic algorithms I use to generate them, mentally, so I can remember those as well while keeping them unique.  Sites like the ones that were compromised, tiny one off bulletin boards with little risk to me if they get hacked, I admit, I use the same few passwords on a lot of those.  Especially older ones from ten years ago, before I got serious about my online security.

Ironically, these sites are now possibly my most secure passwords.  Because I used Lastpass to generate the passwords.  Lastpass is a plug in for pretty much every browser.  It remembers your passwords, and syncs them across your Lastpass account.  I’ve used it for years to store and sync passwords, but I never really bothered with the generated passwords feature.  The best practice at the moment, for passwords, are long strings of random characters, lastpass can create these, and then remember them, so you don’t have to.  I don’t know what my new password is for the PPCGeeks message board, but I don’t need to, because when I visit, Lastpass will enter it and log me in.  It’s long and complex.  I mostly avoided this feature before because it pretty much meant I would never be able to log in via mobile since I would have to manually type the password in.  Lastpass now has a mobile solution, but I also just sort of accepted that, I’m never going to visit many of these sites on mobile anyway.

The even better solution, when available, is to use 2 Factor Authorization.  Something you know, a password, something you have, an Authenticator.  Every mobile platform has an authenticator App.  If you happen to be one of the 1% using Windows Phone like me, the Microsoft Authenticator works just like the Google Authenticator when setting it up.  When I want to log into say, Dropbox, I enter my username and password, like normal, and then I am prompted to enter the generated code from my Authenticator.  It doesn’t matter if someone else has my password, because they don’t have the Authenticator, which is randomly generated and can’t be duplicated.  I use this for any site that has it, which is almost all of the “big ones”, Microsoft, Google, Dropbox, etc.  I actually get frustrated when it’s not available, like when my Rockstar Games account got stolen 6 months ago or with Playstation Network, which has had like 3 or 4 hacks now.

Windows

Skype Preview, now with Skype Bots!

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As part of the recent Windows 10 Anniversary update, Skype was updated to Skype Preview.  Part of the preview is the new Skype Bots system.  Bots are the new Apps, which are the new Websites, or something…  Everyone is doing Bots these days.  These early bots are about what you might expect, simple interactions that may or may not be useful.  I did some testing with some of the bots.

There is also an If This Then That Bot, which I’m not going into detail on here.  I think it would be better served with it’s own separate write up.

Big News Bot

Bing News BotSimple enough, enter a topic, it returns 3 news stories related to the topic.  It seems to be pretty good about returning newer stories as well, though in some cases a bit repetitive.  I did a test search for the following…

Halt and Catch Fire, because I’ve been watching the show.  I got 3 results, all behind the scenes write ups, but all different angles on it.  They clearly invited people by to build up buzz for Season 3

Gene Wilder, because he passed away today.  It’s possibly the biggest story of the day.   I got 3 stories returned, all about his passing.

Pana, IL, because it’s where I live.  We don’t get a lot of news around here relating to the town, but it did return a story that was in the news recently.  As well as a couple of others that were more just “area news”.

Taylor Swift, because she’s in the gossipy news a lot.  I received three stories about her reporting for Jury Duty.  This topic and the Gene Wilder results kind of give an idea of the sameness problem.  I don’t really need the same story three times.  There isn’t any obvious sources listed wither so it’s not as if you can choose your preferred source.  Clicking a headline is a blind shot for where you’re going.

Honestly, I’m not sure how useful this really is.  Chances are you’re looking for news on a topic because you already know what the news is, ala Gene Wilder dying.  Otherwise, you’ve probably seen it already on some social media.

Bing Image Bot

Similar to the News Bot except it returns 3 images.  I did a test search for Cats.  It doesn’t even return the images, just links to the images.  You’d be way better off just going to images.bing.com and getting all the results, in a nice visual grid.

Trivia Master

Trivia MasterMoving on to some of the game bots.  Trivia Master is just as it sounds.  You tell it to start, it asks ten trivia questions on a topic, then gives a score.  The answers are multiple choice, so you don’t have to worry about spelling or exact wording.

It’s alright, but kind of a one trick horse that’s old as the hills.  The individual scoring flies by too fast as well, meaning you’ll have to keep scrolling back up to see if you were correct or not.  This problem is compounded by all of the wasted space in each of the message boxes.  It would make for a better party game or maybe some sort of back and forth with another Skype friend.

Candy Escape

Candy Escape 02Probably the most complex bot that I tried out was Candy Escape, a game that is reminiscent of the old Interactive Fiction games (ie ZORK).  You must solve puzzles and escape the candy prison.  You are the Walking Meat imprisoned by Candy.  It’s mostly pre-definined choices based, though not entirely.  For example, I was asked “What is the password”, which was just typed out with no choices offered.

It’s not without it’s quirky bugs though.  Early on I retrieved a rope from a skeleton after examining it.  Later, upon a second examination, the rope was gone from the image shown, but there was still an option to take it.  I also seemed to get stuck in a loop and the game’s hint wasn’t helpful at all.  I needed to escape from two guards, but my only option was to tell them to leave, which they refused to do, or to remove the crown, which just gave me the option to put the crown back on during my next choice, which brought me back where I started.

PC Hardware

On My New Acer Aspire E15

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Acer Aspire E15 So, right up front I want to say, I’m not trying to sell this as the most amazing machine ever or anything.  I mostly just want to give some thoughts and sort of initial impressions.  I’ve been previously using an HP 311 Netbook as my laptop.  I would argue, at the time, that it definitely was “The best Netbook”.  It’s like 5-6 years old now, it runs like complete crap despite my best efforts.  I’ve replaced the battery and power cord on it 3-4 times, it has all sort of flakey issues with the trackpad and keyboard that start to crop up after it runs for a bit, it’s just, definitely showing its age.  I’ve updated it recently with an Acer Aspire E15.

I’ve been trying and working towards a replacement laptop for a few years now.  I’m awful about saving up large chunks of money given my other hobbies and saving for a laptop is quite a chunk of change.  It also doesn’t help that I keep within my own personal spending budget, and a lot of any “extra income” over the years went to household needs and outfitting everyone else in the family with laptops.

My other problem was trying to decide just what I wanted.  Ideally I wanted something nicer, say, closer to $1000 or so than $500, but saving to that point is kind of a huge hurdle.  I wanted something capable of running games all right, I don’t need or want “highest settings perfect framerate” but I wanted something that would run smoothly for the games I like to play.  These sort of requirements presented a few issues.  Most of the more expensive laptops push form over function, so they would probably work all right for my needs but the higher price mostly means I’m paying for “fancy” looking.  Anything that’s a “Gaming” laptop in that price range is probably overkill for what I want and would be a 40 lb slab of computer.

I also have lost track of “what makes a computer good” several years ago.  Mostly because computing power really plateaued for general use a few years ago.  There’s not a huge difference in computers now than 3-4 years ago aside from power consumption, which is kind of minimal.  In the old days it was simple, more mhz, more ghz means it’s better.  The only real “requirement” I had for processor power was i5 or i7, no i3.  I wanted a decent chunk of RAM, say 8GB+ and some sort of discrete GPU.   Just having some sort of GPU vs “Intel Integrated Graphics” would meet my gaming needs.

Acer Aspire E15I also decided that at some point I needed to stop waffling on what I wanted and just pick something.  I did some searching around on Amazon, filtering specs and such to get less and less selection.  I had kind of been hoping to find a Lenovo Thinkpad but none of them in my price range meet my Graphical desires and they are all brickish.  The brick part wasn’t such a turn off as the integrated graphics.

I eventually settled on the Acer Aspire E15.  It’s a relatively new release (seems to be 2016), it met my desire on specs, it looked fairly nice design wise, it has a ten-key pad.  It was also within my current budget at around $550 dollars.  I did some checking online for reviews and chatter on Reddit and it seemed to be a pretty well liked machine.

I ended up finding it for a $100 less on NewEgg as well, with a 1TB 5200 drive instead of a 256GB SSD.  Now I had a choice to make, way more storage, at a much slower speed, or keep the nice quick SSD.  I even considered ordering the 1TB version and buying an SSD to put in it, essentially giving me a free 1TB drive to use for, whatever.  In the end, I opted for the SSD, for more money.  Having the extra 1TB drive is actually less useful to me than it sounds, I have something like 8-10 TB easily already going in the house across several machines, and I wanted the performance boost of the 256GB SSD.  Also, the hassle of figuring out the best way to install the OS onto the SSD, while not hard, was more trouble than I cared to bother with.  The whole point of upgrading is performance boost over my old laptop.  The most frustrating part of my desktop is I’m still using shitty 5200 RPM drives in it, and it’s the main bottleneck for sure.

Acer Aspire E5-575G-53VG Specs

  • Screen Size: 15.6 inches
  • Screen Resolution: 1920 x 1080 pixels
  • Processor: 2.3 GHz Core i5 6200U
  • RAM: 8 GB DDR4-SDRAM
  • Hard Drive: 256 GB flash_memory_solid_state
  • Graphics Coprocessor: NVIDIA GeForce 940MX (2GB)
  • Operating System: Windows 10
  • Item Weigh: 5.3 pounds

Acer Aspire E15So, onto the actual laptop on some initial impressions.  I’ve been using it for a few weeks now.  It is definitely a nice improvement over my old netbook.  I like having Windows again, though I still like Linux, I like the keyboard with its chicklet keys, I’m satisfied with the size and ports.  It’s even got a USB-C port, which I didn’t notice before buying it.

The 256GB drive is a little tight.  I mostly just need to keep myself more limited to things I’m actually going to use but I’ve installed World of Warcraft, Skyrim, Minecraft, Wildstar, Photoshop, Diablo 3, Office 2010, and a handful of developer apps and I’m already down below 100GB free.  It’s a bit too close for my comfort but I’ll learn to deal with it.  Also, everything runs nicely as expected, though the machine does start to get pretty hot after running Wildstar and Skyrim for a while.

It’s not a touch screen either.  Back when Windows 8 was the hot thing, I would have been all over a touch screen, Windows 10 took us back to a more traditional interface and so the touchscreen is less necessary.  It’s still something that’s kind of neat if it’s there, but it’s less required.

In general, it does seem like a pretty good all-around machine for the price point.  That said, you could probably drop down a bit in price if you don’t want something with a discrete GPU.

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