tomnomnom · November 23, 2024 23:31 · Nov 23, 2024 · Nov 23, 2024 · Nov 23, 2024 · Nov 23, 2024
diff --git a/intstructions.md → tweet-plot-intstructions.md b/intstructions.md → tweet-plot-intstructions.md
diff --git a/intstructions.md b/intstructions.md
@@ -58,4 +58,4 @@ gnuplot tweets.gnuplot
 
 That should produce `tweet-times.png`
 
-You'll probably want to adjust the title etc so it doesn't say "Tweets by TomNomNOm", and the date range (`set xrange ["2008-01-01":"2025-01-01"]`) to match your own data.
+You'll probably want to adjust the title etc so it doesn't say "Tweets by TomNomNom", and the date range (`set xrange ["2008-01-01":"2025-01-01"]`) to match your own data.
diff --git a/intstructions.md b/intstructions.md
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 # Plotting tweets with gnuplot
 
+Guide to producing [a chart like this one](https://bsky.app/profile/tomnomnom.com/post/3lblghzb6qc2u).
+
 This is a bit of a hack job, natch.
 
 Grab your Twitter archive and extract it. You need to find `data/tweet-headers.js` and make a copy of it:

diff --git a/intstructions.md b/intstructions.md
@@ -56,4 +56,4 @@ gnuplot tweets.gnuplot
 
 That should produce `tweet-times.png`
 
-You'll probably want to adjust the title etc so it doesn't say "Tweets by TomNomNOm"
+You'll probably want to adjust the title etc so it doesn't say "Tweets by TomNomNOm", and the date range (`set xrange ["2008-01-01":"2025-01-01"]`) to match your own data.
diff --git a/intstructions.md b/intstructions.md
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+# Plotting tweets with gnuplot
+
+This is a bit of a hack job, natch.
+
+Grab your Twitter archive and extract it. You need to find `data/tweet-headers.js` and make a copy of it:
+
+```
+cp data/tweet-headers.js tweets.json
+```
+
+The data itself is valid JSON so you need to remove the variable name and equals at the top of the file in `tweets.json`:
+
+```javascript
+window.YTD.tweet_headers.part0 = [
+  {
+    "tweet" : {
+      "tweet_id" : "1858951780102443094",
+      "user_id" : "17440273",
+      "created_at" : "Tue Nov 19 19:13:36 +0000 2024"
+    }
+  },
+  // ...
+```
+
+Make it look like this:
+
+```json
+[
+  {
+    "tweet" : {
+      "tweet_id" : "1858951780102443094",
+      "user_id" : "17440273",
+      "created_at" : "Tue Nov 19 19:13:36 +0000 2024"
+    }
+  },
+```
+
+We want to parse that `created_at` field and get just the year-month-day and time of day into a file for `gnuplot` to read.
+I've written a little python script to do that (`tz-adjust.py`) , for which you may need to `pip3 install pytz`.
+
+Sorry, I don't really know python so I might have done something silly in this bit, but it seemed like a good choice at the time. You might want to change the timezone in the script to match your own.
+
+You'll need `jq` too for this next bit:
+
+```
+jq -r '.[].tweet.created_at' < tweets.json | python3 tz-adjust.py > tweet-times.txt
+```
+
+This is using `jq` to extract the created time, the python script to parse the time and adjust the timezone, and write the results to `tweet-times.txt`
+
+Now we can run the `gnuplot` script (you'll need to install `gnuplot`, obv):
+
+```
+gnuplot tweets.gnuplot
+```
+
+That should produce `tweet-times.png`
+
+You'll probably want to adjust the title etc so it doesn't say "Tweets by TomNomNOm"
diff --git a/tweets.gnuplot b/tweets.gnuplot
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+set datafile separator " "
+
+set terminal pngcairo size 1200,800
+set output "tweet-times.png"
+
+set title "Tweets by TomNomNom"
+set xlabel "Year"
+set ylabel "Time of day (GMT)"
+
+set xdata time
+set timefmt "%Y-%m-%d"
+set format x "%Y"
+set xrange ["2008-01-01":"2025-01-01"]
+
+set ydata time
+set timefmt "%H:%M"
+set format y "%H:%M"
+set yrange ["00:00":"23:59"]
+
+set grid
+
+set style data points
+set pointsize 0.5
+set key off
+
+plot 'tweet-times.txt' using (timecolumn(1,"%Y-%m-%d")):2
diff --git a/tz-adjust.py b/tz-adjust.py
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+import sys
+import pytz
+from datetime import datetime
+
+output_tz = pytz.timezone('Europe/London')
+
+for line in sys.stdin:
+    dt = datetime.strptime(line.rstrip(), '%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %z %Y')
+    local = dt.astimezone(output_tz)
+    print(local.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M'))