gistfile1.sh

# apt-get install curl

read -p 'login: ' USER
read -s -p 'password: ' PASSWORD
curl --silent -b twitter-cookie.txt -c twitter-cookie.txt \
    --user-agent Mozilla/4.0 \
    -d username_or_email="$USER" \
    -d password="$PASSWORD" \
    -d 'commit=Sign In' \
    -o /dev/null \
    http://twitter.com/login
curl --silent -b twitter-cookie.txt -c twitter-cookie.txt \
    http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/$USER.xml?page=[1-32] \
| grep -E '^  <(created_at|text)>' \
| perl -pe 's/<[^>]+>//g' \
| while read date; read text; do echo "$date\t$text"; done \
> twitter-$USER.txt

# http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-statuses-user_timeline