screaming.computer

Credit: This module is a direct adaptation of the New Age Bullshit Generator by Seb Pearce, using all his original text. His JavaScript code was ported to PHP by Mark Hazlewood, which I then refactored and largely rewrote.

As a module for the screaming.computer, I'm tentatively calling it the Philos-o-matic: Affirmational Platitude Generator.

Hogwash that looks compelling

Seb Pearce describes how the idea came while watching a particular pseudoscience-advocate involved in a philosophy debate:

The thing that really impressed me, though, was his command of the vocabulary of woo... This word is a blanket term for pseudoscience, New Age thinking, dubious alternative medicine and other things that reek of the heady fumes of snake oil.  ...

As I sat there listening to the debates, I thought to myself, “This all sounds like random sequences of buzzwords. I bet I could write code to generate it.” It seemed like not only a fun side project, but a great way to prove how easy it is to make hogwash that looks compelling. It might help show that it's the language games and emotions that lure people into this stuff.

The resulting script generates delightful pseudo-inspirational, pseudo-philosophical fragments of nonsense.

At a low level, the core code simply generates N sentences on a given topic from the available templates. My implementation follows a simple randomized structure:

1. Optional: 1 sentence on a random topic
2. Always: 3 sentences on a common topic
3. Optional: 1 or 2 sentences on separate topics

The sentences themselves are templated, with random words inserted according to type.

For example: "The goal of #fixedNP is to plant the seeds of #nMass rather than #nMassBad." can become “The goal of ultrasonic energy is to plant the seeds of self-actualization rather than dogma.”

This is all fairly straightforward random-text-generation stuff, but I have to give kudos to the high-quality templates written by Seb Pearce — the resulting text is highly readable and often charming.

Receipt printer word wrapping

On the receipt printer and screaming.computer side of things, I finally wrote a multibyte-safe word-wrapping function; important for blocks of text since the receipt printer is only 32 characters wide at FONT_A size.

(PHP has the wordwrap function, but it's no good for Unicode strings.)

My mb_wordwrap function inserts a Unicode soft break (U+2028) at all potential wrap points (surrounding all hard breaks, following runs of whitespace, following runs of dashes/hyphens). The string is then exploded at the soft breaks and each chunk is added to the current line if it will fit. When a line gets too long, a hard break is inserted, then we make a new line and carry on with the next chunk.

Compare the default hard-wrap at 32 characters with the intelligent word-wrap:

We are at a crossroads of life-f
orce and materialism. Bondage is
 born in the gap where passion h
as been excluded.

We are at a crossroads of life-
force and materialism. Bondage
is born in the gap where passion
has been excluded.

Again, this is all fairly trivial infrastructure code, but even ‘trivial’ code takes time to design and implement.

Unicode character mismapping

Some of the template strings contain curly-quotes, em-dashes, and other extended Unicode characters.

In the meantime I yield to the code and simply replace the problematic characters with their nearest ASCII-equivalent.

Words to change your life

This concludes the initial implementation of module #3 for the screaming.computer! At this time, I feel it's important to recall the ancient wisdom:

It can be difficult to know
where to begin. Entity, look
within and empower yourself. How
should you navigate this non-
local solar system?

By evolving, we believe.

Say it with me:  “By evolving, we believe!”