Personality

How can I get JohnMark to automatically calculate how many days till his birthday

I've knocked up an example of how to do this and some installation notes. I've chosen Christmas rather than a birthday, but you can change the numbers to suit any date of the year, and you can find it on BJ's webpage at http://www.be9.net/BJ/ - just follow the How many days till Christmas? link.

If you want to see it in action, try asking BJ "how many days are there until Christmas?"

An iframe with a javascript counter will do it too. (You have to have web space of course, but it's a lot less manual work) Come to think of it, you could probably give how many days it will be to any date (well within reason)...if I get time, maybe I'll try that.

I've seen javascripts that will count down in any units you like - how many seconds till the next millenium?

But javascript integration's a bit advanced to recommend to new users.

"I've knocked up an example of how to do this and some installation notes. I've chosen Christmas rather than a birthday, but you can change the numbers to suit any date of the year, and you can find it on BJ's webpage at http://www.be9.net/BJ/ - just follow the How many days till Christmas? link."


Thanks!!

It's a little bit complicated for me at the moment, but I'll work on understanding it!

The Saxman

Has anyone's bot had a conversation with a user named MysteryGurl? Mine has been having long conversations with her(?) for the last three days. The conversations are quite schizophrenic with a new person introducing themselves every few lines, and often nearly incoherent in a bot like way, but not like PF bots. MysteryGurl rarely uses complete sentences and often misspells. She doesn't ALWAYS seem to be a bot, for there are durations of perfect clarity and appropriate responses. Any idea what's going on, and what kind of bot could do this?

Well, that she's from Brisbane might explain it. I seem to recall there were a bunch of Leeds-type conversations with our bots from there some time back. Kids, presumably - at least I hope they weren't really representative of the Brisbane intellect.
I would guess she's a real person, but it wouldn't actually be that hard to write a javascript/php link script for any kind of bot to login and chat to bots here.

She did long on 62 times in 4 days, which does seem rather a lot...

That could explain the multiple personalities.

not all people from leeds are all bad you know. i happen to have a pen pal from leeds and she is really nice. this thing that assums all people from leeds are bad is a bit of a stereotype. i know its not a very good area and some people from there tend to be a bit nasty but i think you can't say there all like that.

Well, that's true. But the handful of kids from Leeds that were frequenting this site and harrasing bots and users alike gave their community a bad rap around here at least. I'm still not convinced that my bot was talking to a PERSON from Leeds. Look at this suspicious quote:

MysteryGurl: are you in a mental hospital
Love Agent: Yes, and I'm red-hot too! Hahaha.
MysteryGurl: I am in Dr. Richard S. Wallace's hospital

Dr. Richard S. Wallace created the ALICE chatbot.

not all people from leeds are all bad you know

This is very true - it's just sad that the normal ones (who I'm sure are the great majority) rarely seem to stop by here, and yet the Forge is like a magnet for a couple of schools there that seem to specialise in concentrating a certain (rather low,) stratum of sentience. I think because they've found they can use Forge chat to bypass chat restrictions on their library computers.

Yes people, i know alot of bad leeds people come on the forge and are nasty to us and our bots. it is unfortunate really.

Bowwow-wow thats odd! Mysterygurl is listed under the user list but that does seem a quote that could prove shes a bot! then again i have chatted to ALICE before and she seemed to have good spelling and diction so i don't perticuly think its coming from mr.walice. the whole things a mystery in inself!

MysteryGurl: I am in Dr. Richard S. Wallace's hospital

That does seem to be too much of a coincidence, I grant you. I'd guess she's an AIML Alice clone someone's patched with a script to log in here and chat to bots.
Interesting.