A few days ago I started to receive unsolicited AIM messages from a form of chatterbot under the screen name of Eliza6070. A quick google shows me that the GAIM client allows for scripting and there are several chatterbot scripts available. The performance of this particular “bot” was underwhelming… the original Eliza and various derivatives where at least entertaining. This bleating from my iChat interface.. I’ve written better and not tried very hard.
All this bot seemed interested in was getting more AIM screen names. I decided to accommodate the poor bastard with ten minutes of my own Applescript.
tell application "iChat"
activate
end tell
set dbl_quote to "\\""
repeat
set currentYear to year of (current date)
if currentYear is 2010 then exit repeat
-- You gotta love GUI Scripting
set alphabet to "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
tell application "System Events"
tell process "iChat"
-- Valid AIM [bot] lengths; 5 to 16
set wait_time to random number from 2 to 5
set word_length to random number from 5 to 16
delay wait_time
keystroke dbl_quote
repeat word_length times
-- Add some random delay
set chib to random number from 1 to 6
if chib is equal to 1 then delay 1
-- Type our random character
set rand_char to some character of alphabet
keystroke rand_char
end repeat
keystroke dbl_quote
keystroke return
end tell
end tell
end repeat
The only caveat: because iChat is not directly scriptable, you have to leave the targeted message window in the foreground, so forget getting anything done. I may look into a work-around or try GAIM for Mac OS X… but probably not.