girbot

And I really don't care. So, another project grabbed me after playing with Jibot on Joi Ito's irc channel.

The original girbot (written by #include and found here,) was a demonstration of the Net::IRC module. It was a good first step, but it didn't have much in the way of implementation examples, it mainly listened on a channel and echoed to terminal.

My Girbot, named after Gir from Invader Zim is based on the Net::IRC module. I actually looked at the original girbot's script, but most of my stuff is coming from reading the module, as the original girbot doesn't do ops, kicking, actions, or really much at all.

I'll probably mark up some simple version of Girbot to show off what Net::IRC can do.

The most current version (If I can call iterations over a 26 hour period "versions"), greets people entering the room, remembers information, forgets information, gives information on a person when they enter the room, and can op or kick people when it has op.

I'm going to throw in a quotes and drinks command, allowing people to add their own, and ask for a random quote or drink, or the recipe for a specific drink. Also, learning is non-cumulative, which I should get around to playing with. I need to know more file manipulation in Perl so that the bot's long term memory is less crufty and more efficient.

I've been working on IP->geo location for about 45 minutes now and for some reason Geo::IP doesn't seem to want to work.

It requires a DB, which I have, and have placed in the right place, and a C program, GeoIP. I have installed both, but Geo::IP can't find GeoIP. It's a tiny bit frustrating, but I will either get it or I won't. Basically, I want to be able to ask Gir where someone is and get at least a country-level answer.

I might throw in blogging, as I already have the code for it in my sysblogd scripts. Also need to put in hostname recognition and an admin file, allowing for better authentication of commands. Right now, Gir responds when you give him a password and a command to op or kick. I think in the future that hostname checks (a'la eggdrop bot) would be a good thing.