{"id":721,"date":"2014-11-30T03:43:29","date_gmt":"2014-11-30T02:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exponentialdecay.co.uk\/blog\/?p=721"},"modified":"2026-03-30T10:35:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T10:35:23","slug":"not-quite-perfect-a-lil-automatic-twitter-thingy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exponentialdecay.co.uk\/blog\/not-quite-perfect-a-lil-automatic-twitter-thingy\/","title":{"rendered":"Dynamic avatars on Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

The visualization tells me that the first publication from my Twitter bot, created to dynamically update my avatars daily was 20 December 2012. My bot was a simple Python script<\/a> that generated images in binary to represent the day of the month.<\/p>\n

\"Visual
20 December 2020 via https:\/\/github.com\/exponential-decay\/binary-numbers\/blob\/334d417ad2fef1ac37e082e7d78f42412d176de3\/binary-numbers-original-images\/binary-numbers-original-images-all\/20-12-2012.png<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Well, doesn’t it get a little boring looking at the same thing every day?<\/p>\n

Lets look at the details below.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My script worked in concert with PythonAnywhere.com<\/a> which provided a free hosted Python environment and scheduled execution of Python tasks, e.g. 00:05UTC<\/code> every day. The script executes and an image is generated by selecting colors randomly from a simple palette painting them onto a canvas.<\/p>\n

The shape it paints is a five-bit binary number between one and 31 representing the days of the month. So, for example, if you take the number 29 in binary, you can represent it with five bits, 11101.<\/p>\n

Flip it on it’s side into a matrix and you can generate a pattern like follows:<\/p>\n

11111\r\n11111\r\n11111\r\n00000\u00a0\r\n11111<\/pre>\n
Turn the ones into colors and the zeros black and you can create some nice ever-varying images:<\/p>\n
\"Visualization<\/a>
29 November 2013 via <\/em>https:\/\/github.com\/exponential-decay\/binary-numbers\/blob\/334d417ad2fef1ac37e082e7d78f42412d176de3\/binary-numbers-original-images\/binary-numbers-original-images-all\/29-11-2013.png<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
These images are created from the original code that ran from 20 December 2012 to 29 November 2014.<\/p>\n
\"An<\/p>\n
Automation doesn’t always run perfectly<\/h2>\n
A single hope was that I’d generate a perfect set of 365 days of avatar images and probably leave it there as a completed project. I’m might want to create a GIF<\/a> but beyond that I had no real plans.<\/p>\n
The first tranche of images didn’t materialize. Sometime around April 2013 I noticed images were no longer being created on my host, and as such, my Twitter profile wasn’t being updated. I noticed it again in July that same year.<\/p>\n
The cause was infrastructure maintenance at pythonanywhere.com<\/a>, although I can’t remember if it was related to the Python Imaging Library, or \u00a0the Twitter API Library I was using. As the error wasn’t noticed soon enough the continuity in image generation was broken.<\/p>\n
Both times, before I could fix the issues myself the code started working again, presumably after the hosting provider finished its own maintenance.<\/p>\n
Breaking changes<\/h2>\n
Eventually the Twitter API Library<\/a> used by Python Anywhere introduced a small but subtle breaking change seen in this diff<\/a>. The code simply needed the addition of a parameter\u00a0_base64=True<\/code> to work again. The API had changed the assumption that image data would be encoded as base64<\/a> when supplied to the function, which would then be encoded into a URL for the call to the Twitter API. A subtle but ultimately breaking change.<\/p>\n
The distribution of the code made it difficult to debug and I had to go into the locally installed package files i.e. \/usr\/local\/lib\/python2.7\/dist-packages\/twitter\/api.py<\/code> where I was able to find the issue.<\/p>\n
All very hair pulling, but at least it works now. Also, the effort gave me pause, and so I decided to use some of the unintended momentum of the weekend debugging to create something new.<\/p>\n
Out of adversity…<\/strong><\/h2>\n
I decided it was time to re-engineer the code. With the fix complete I decided to add a little sophistication to its output.<\/p>\n
In June 2014 The National Library of New Zealand (NLNZ) released a blog on Heritage Colour Palettes<\/a>. Sets of color palettes inspired by heritage objects in the national library; primarily the colors we see on the pages of books or their bindings.<\/p>\n
\"First<\/a>
First New Zealand Christmases: Tasman 1642, Cook 1769, Marsden 1814, 1933 via http:\/\/natlib.govt.nz\/records\/21657409<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Finding color palettes was an issue I had when first creating the code. All the potential colors, all the potential configurations. I didn’t really know how to approach it and so I just chose primary colors.<\/p>\n
This first set of NLNZ palettes now gave me a number of more attractive options intersecting a few of my interests.<\/p>\n
Beyond palettes I wanted to change the design of the images. While I still wanted to create a binary representation of the day of the month I wanted to add more complexity to the stripes. Adding more stripes would create more variations in the images that would be created on any given day. The pattern may even start to look like wallpaper, in homage to Birgit Bachler’s<\/a> Big Data Wallpapers<\/em> in her Copy Wildly<\/a> series. Who knows, maybe my<\/em> binary numbers patterns could be enlarged and put on display in a domestic setting one day?!<\/p>\n
I stabilized the API library code on the server by uploading my own static copy and the routines I am using have been made a bit more flexible for other purposes in the future.<\/p>\n
The first two images have even already been published!<\/p>\n
\"November<\/a>
Binary number images for the 29th and 30th November 2014<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Let’s see the kinds of images we can create with color and lines this time around.<\/p>\n
Additional<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The code is available on GitHub:<\/p>\n