Twits and giggles

May 19, 2009 9:23 AM

Tweet your movements.- The cycle is complete. [via]
posted by Burhanistan (51 comments total)

Here I sit, feeling cheated
Paid a dime and only tweeted
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:32 AM on May 19 [13 favorites has favorites]

Now all it needs is a webcam, and it would be perfect.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 9:33 AM on May 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

i'm a twitter shitter! [sfw]
posted by JohnFredra at 9:34 AM on May 19 [2 favorites has favorites]

TWITTER SHI... aw, missed it.
posted by cavalier at 9:36 AM on May 19

NO.
posted by mudpuppie at 9:36 AM on May 19

What mudpuppie said.
posted by tommasz at 9:38 AM on May 19

Or don't. Reconcile yourself to the idea that a private life is sometimes best enjoyed privately.
posted by MuffinMan at 9:40 AM on May 19

Brenda Watson will be all over this.
posted by Joe Beese at 9:41 AM on May 19

A tweeting toilet would actually be very interesting from a water usage monitoring point of view. Similar to tweet-a-watt.
posted by DU at 9:41 AM on May 19

I would like to use Twitter to continue the destruction of Second Life by creating celebrity avatars which will constantly jet off giant blocks of text consisting solely of their associated tweets while they amble about the landscape in a semi-random walk.

The textbook example should be Tweet Reznor, a monochrome gnome who will spurt out bits of stuff about the death of the RIAA. Maybe driving around in a Volvo of Despair.

Because I want both senses of "grief" to collide, damn your eyes!
posted by adipocere at 9:43 AM on May 19 [2 favorites has favorites]

Water go down the hole!
posted by steef at 9:49 AM on May 19

I'm thinking they might be on to something, but it only indicates the frequency of flushes... he'd need to do some sort of bioscan to indicate who actually flushed it... and I'm talking biometric scan here... not a biomass scan... otherwise my toilet would refer to me as Captain Corninstein...
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:52 AM on May 19

he'd need to do some sort of bioscan to indicate who actually flushed it

Yes, this is just a baby step on the road to INDEXING EVERYTHING.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:54 AM on May 19

It's the circle, the circle of poo.

Also I'm embarassed to admit I though Tom Jenning's 1994 toiletcam was real.
posted by Nelson at 9:56 AM on May 19

We are one step closer to the Borges Limit.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:01 AM on May 19

Here I sit all broken hearted
tried to shit but only farted.
posted by nola at 10:05 AM on May 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

DU, don't they already have a device call a water meter that performs this very function. Granted it monitors the entire house or apartment, but if you want to break it down how much water is used by the toilet then you just need to look on the toilet for the water usage per flush. All of that is just me being biased against twitter, my actual concern is what guests in my house will think of my robot toilet.
posted by Sargas at 10:05 AM on May 19

I can't even begin to imagine the Twitter market potential of this thing. All it needs is some buttons where people can set their mood and a webcam to OCR what bathroom material they're reading.
posted by crapmatic at 10:10 AM on May 19

crapmatic! ^
posted by Burhanistan at 10:11 AM on May 19

As you note, existing water meters don't track individual water using devices. They also aren't electronic, which makes the data gathering kinda hard.

If every electrical outlet (or better yet, device) reported to my Home Server continuously, I could easily identify why my bill is so high, where I could cut my energy use, if the company that sold it to me was lying about the greenness and when/if it started malfunctioning. If all my water using devices could do the same, I could do all the same stuff with my water usage.

HURF DURF THAT USES POWER TOO aside, I don't see what's wrong with bringing water and power usage under conscious control.
posted by DU at 10:12 AM on May 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Monday - Nothing
Tuesday - Nothing
Wednesday - Good one, some blood
posted by doctor_negative at 10:24 AM on May 19

I agree nothing wrong with monitoring it. What I would like to see ideally is a small wireless device that would in the case of monitoring water usage have a battery that is recharged by the movement of the water. I think something like that that would be cheap enough and relatively easy to install would a large enough market to be profitable while at the same time getting people to conserve water.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to the patent office.
posted by Sargas at 10:32 AM on May 19

Monday - Nothing
Tuesday - Nothing
Wednesday - Good one, some blood

doctor_negative, my ass.
posted by gman at 10:33 AM on May 19

This is when the Bristol Stool Scale would be particularly useful. You could abbreviate it to 2:x, where x = your poo type:

* Type 1: Separate hard lumps, like nuts (hard to pass)
* Type 2: Sausage-shaped, but lumpy
* Type 3: Like a sausage but with cracks on its surface
* Type 4: Like a sausage or snake, smooth and soft
* Type 5: Soft blobs with clear cut edges (passed easily)
* Type 6: Fluffy pieces with ragged edges, a mushy stool
* Type 7: Entirely liquid

posted by pracowity at 10:38 AM on May 19 [2 favorites has favorites]

Here I sit with pains unspoken
Tried to tweet, but the handle's broken
posted by koeselitz at 10:46 AM on May 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Favorited for the title.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 10:52 AM on May 19

The textbook example should be Tweet Reznor, a monochrome gnome who will spurt out bits of stuff about the death of the RIAA.

The "real" Mr. Reznor (it's probably him, but who knows for sure?) already does this on Twitter, with great alacrity.
posted by blucevalo at 10:53 AM on May 19

Shits and googles?
posted by MuffinMan at 10:53 AM on May 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

A tweeting toilet would actually be very interesting from a water usage monitoring point of view.

No it wouldn't. Frequency of toilet usage (and flushing) is inelastic. The only possible change in flushing is simply not flushing every use - and you don't need a tweeting toilet to come up with that solution. What needs to be managed is the amount of water used per flush.

I'm gonna sound old here (I've looked at twitter.com exactly once) but what in holy fuck is up with networked toilets. Jesus Christ. Seriously.
posted by jimmythefish at 10:58 AM on May 19

Here I sit, a stinking mess,
had to tweet, so I wiped less.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:01 AM on May 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Came to poop, not to chat
Tried to tweet, but mostly shat.
posted by kingbenny at 11:02 AM on May 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

And you all laughed when I invented Fwapper!
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:05 AM on May 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Cannot shake this pesky cling-on,
I shall tweet for help in Klingon.
posted by brain_drain at 11:08 AM on May 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Finally, a use for Twitter I can get behind!

no pun intended?
posted by jivadravya at 11:17 AM on May 19

Suffers from the same problem that besets every message sent to Twitter: sender assumes people actually want to read about this shit.
posted by killdevil at 11:24 AM on May 19

at least i'm not a lisp machine

heh
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:27 AM on May 19

This post is #1 ... or #2. I can't decide. Maybe both.
posted by not_on_display at 11:36 AM on May 19

This is when the Bristol Stool Scale would be particularly useful.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Wikipedia has a Feces category, but I'm still not exactly happy with the idea.
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:38 AM on May 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

+ WIZnet ethernet module

Snerk.

+ mercury switch

Riggs: You don't get it Rog, this is real pro stuff. I haven't seen anything like this since the war. The CIA used to hire mercs, they used the exact same setup: mercury switches, kaflooey! That's heavy shit.

Given the franchise's history with toilets, I'd have thought the inventor would avoid anything Lethal Weapon-related.
posted by total warfare frown at 11:45 AM on May 19

Frequency of toilet usage (and flushing) is inelastic.

Spoken like a guy without any toilet-training kids at his house.

The only possible change in flushing is simply not flushing every use - and you don't need a tweeting toilet to come up with that solution.

But how do you know if the toilet is even the thing to optimize unless you've measured things? Solutions are things you come up with in response to known problems. Without data, where are the known problems?

And what if the toilet is running every so often and therefore secretly wasting water? I've actually had this.
posted by DU at 11:58 AM on May 19

And what if the toilet is running every so often and therefore secretly wasting water?

Or, what if you have this outlier?
posted by Burhanistan at 12:06 PM on May 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Crap post.




Get it??
posted by Mister_A at 12:31 PM on May 19

Of course, that's what the seashells are for.
posted by acro at 1:19 PM on May 19

twits & googles
posted by grubi at 1:28 PM on May 19

that's what the seashells are for

referenced
posted by CynicalKnight at 1:31 PM on May 19

This is what is meant by "slippery slope."
posted by notashroom at 1:36 PM on May 19

I'm huge on twitter has a whole new meaning now.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:44 PM on May 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

I barely have enough time to scrub the damn thing!
posted by futureisunwritten at 1:50 PM on May 19

Frequency of toilet usage (and flushing) is inelastic.
Spoken like a guy without any toilet-training kids at his house.

Oh, so you're going to tell your kids not to use the toilet as much in order to conserve water? Is that it?

The only possible change in flushing is simply not flushing every use - and you don't need a tweeting toilet to come up with that solution.

But how do you know if the toilet is even the thing to optimize unless you've measured things? Solutions are things you come up with in response to known problems. Without data, where are the known problems?

And what if the toilet is running every so often and therefore secretly wasting water? I've actually had this.

It's easy to do a self-test, or to notice this if you're around every once in a while. Or, to call a plumber and get routine maintenance done. This is far less time-consuming and far more efficient than, oh, say, connecting it to a fucking social networking site.
posted by jimmythefish at 3:08 PM on May 19

Funny, but this kind of technology must have tons of applications.
posted by jstubblefield at 12:08 AM on May 20

Now all it needs is a webcam, and it would be perfect.

Especially if it automatically uploaded a copy of the product, accompanied by a picture of the producer, to ratemypoo.com
posted by PeterMcDermott at 2:01 AM on May 20