.bashrc

# $ tweet "your message"
#
# See: http://solutious.com/blog/2009/07/13/bash-twitter/
#
# Contributors
# * @defunkt for the initial version
# * @anildigital and @grundprinzip for curl-fu
# * @solutious for the SSL sexytime

# See: http://curl.netmirror.org/docs/caextract.html
CERTS_URI=http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem

# SHA1 digest for file: Thu Mar 26 21:23:06 2009 UTC
# NOTE: This needs to be updated when cacert.pem is updated
CERTS_DIGEST=331b7e928bd758146ef4a17fee59a63e6ad6b10a

# Path to local copy of CA extract 
CERTS_FILE=~/.cacerts.pem

function tweet {
  verifycerts || return 1
  if [ ! "$*" ]; then
    echo 'Nothing to tweet!'
    return 1
  fi
  curl --cacert $CERTS_FILE -n -d status="$*" https://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml > /dev/null 2>&1
  echo "tweet'd '$*'"
} 

# Download extract of CA certs from mozilla.org 
function updatecerts {
  curl $CERTS_URI > $CERTS_FILE 2> /dev/null
  verifycerts
  echo "Saved to $CERTS_FILE"
}

# Make sure the CA certs match the sha1 digest
function verifycerts {
  if [ ! -f $CERTS_FILE ]; then
    echo "$CERTS_FILE does not exist."
    echo "Try running: updatecerts"
    return 1
  fi

  openssl sha1 $CERTS_FILE | grep $CERTS_DIGEST > /dev/null
  if [ $? != 0 ]; then
    echo "Digest mismatch for $CERTS_FILE (maybe it was updated?)"
    return 1
  fi
  return 0
}

.netrc

# put this in ~/.netrc
machine twitter.com
login USERNAME
password PASSWORD