I’ve been quite shocked and saddened by the online disappearance of why the lucky stiff last week. Heck, the blogging engine for this site is written to make use of his micro web framework – camping.

_why wrote (writes!! we await the second coming) some of the more interesting ruby code out there. And he also wasn’t afraid to write things that were quite out there – on the borderland between programming and art. One of his creations was called blimlimb (the code is still around, but I fear some of the blimlimb scripts and repository history is lost). Imagine this, you’re sitting in a peaceful IRC channel and all of a sudden a whole troupe of bot actors appear in channel. They start performing a play for you, complete with actions and appropriate dramatic pauses. And the weird part is that the bot puppetmaster can also add a bit of improvisational scripting to spook those in channel further.

Unsurprisingly (knowing the delicate nature of IRC in-tractions) blimlimb was poorly received! I don’t think it was a case of “the implementation lacketh much” but rather that the blimlimb works themselves were directed towards the wrong audience.

I wrote a blimlimb script too, but have always been too scared to present it. It was destined to have been run in #clug (the Cape Town Linux Users group channel on the Atrum network) and featured pseudonymous appearances by some of the denizens of that darkened pit. The intention was to advertise the appearance of a new version of irbie, my IRC bot, that was now able to do two new things – it could now parse python code and had an intelligence engine added so that irbie could interact as if it were an ELISA robot. My apologies to Mary Shelley and all those mentioned (and not mentioned), herewith is presented the lost blimlimb script of #clug:

[a] aizonli
(a) Cough. Announcement time. Will take about 5 mins.
[v] viatta
v: All names are changed to protect the *innocent*
[w] woozy
[m] MrKkkkkkkkkken
[y] MythRandy
[s] humblesteed
w: http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/
m: innocent? did someone mention my name?
a: Hmmm... everyone seems to be too much in character, lets go with the Frakenstein theme now
v=VictorFrankenstein
a=TheMonster
m: Oh all right, I'll be Igor...
m=Igor
m: Yess master
a: Well there once was a poor misunderstood bot, called...
m: Monster?
a: No, Irbie
[f] LordoftheFlies
(f) /kill irbie
a: too much in _character_ again :-(
(f) goes back to the bovines
-f
a: Who needed a makeover.
w: or a personality?
[i] influence
[c] cocochanel
[h] hodgepodge
[j] jermy
c: fp
j: Spinasie: choose Erlang or Ruby\ to go with my chunky bacon
(a) Cue lightning. Loud scary noises.
y: As a child, I thought I could live without pain,without sorrow
(w) straps Monster to the lab-bench
m: Looks like irbie, although noone really knows what he looks like
[p] pipecleaner
(p) threatens irbie with the leadpipe
p=irby
(p) starts speaking parseltongue
a: Or for the humans among you irbie now evals python
a: (Smoke and mirrors, of course)
a: and just like the python shell anything starting with >>> gets evaluated
v: Of course, the monster still can speak Japanese?
a: Yes, that's a double chevron >> , as before
w: What about personality?
a: Well, hopefully the lightning worked. How about addressing irbie directly?
v: Message delivered, can we go back to being ourselves?
a: kbye
-h
s: k...
-i
c: ...bye. Darn too late again.
-j
-a
-v
-w
-m
-y
-s

Of course, _why’s withdrawal from the world means that irbie is currently broken. It used to use _why’s “TryRuby” website to parse ruby code, so you won’t see it in channel at the moment.