a dumb script if you are bored and don't know who to follow on twitter

twitteggester.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

# Analyzes your twitter friends if they are following someone interesting
# akshully it just shows you, who has the most many followers
# usage: ./twitteggester.rb <username> <how many followers to research>
#
# works by reading your twitter page (the span class vcard)

require "rubygems"
require "open-uri"
require "hpricot"

####################################
# => extract whom is your friend following
# => adds all interesting people to an array
# => calculates the number of occurences
####################################
def process_friend(fol,interesting, ignore)
  data = fol.search('a.url').first
  ignore << data.attributes['href']
  url = "http://twitter.com#{data.attributes['href']}"
  #go to the users page
  begin
    doc = Hpricot.parse(open(url))
  rescue
    return
  end
  fol = doc.search('span.vcard')
  fol.each do |pos|
    info = pos.search('a.url').first
    ref = info.attributes['href']
    index = 0
    need_create = -1
    interesting.each_with_index do |elem,idx|
      if elem.key?(ref)
        interesting[idx] = {ref => elem[ref]+=1}
        need_create = 0
        break
      else
        need_create = 1
      end
    end
    if need_create == 1 && !ignore.include?(ref.gsub("/","")) && !ignore.include?(ref)
      interesting << {ref => 1}
      need_create=0
    end
  end
end

####################################
# => sorts the array by comparing the number of
# => occurences
####################################
def sortHash(hash)
  r = hash.sort {|a,b| b[b.keys[0]] <=> a[a.keys[0]] }
  return r
end

####################################
# => the main procedure
####################################
name = ARGV[0]
limit = ARGV[1]? ARGV[1].to_i : 0
print "searching for suggestions for %s (this may take a while...)\n" % [name]
begin
  doc = Hpricot.parse(open("http://twitter.com/#{name}"))
rescue
  puts "sry... i haz error"
  exit
end
following = doc.search('span.vcard')
interesting = [{"noone" => 0}]
ignorez = [name]
following.each_with_index do |fol,i|
  process_friend(fol,interesting,ignorez)
  if i == limit && limit != 0
    break
  end
end
puts "sorting..."
i = sortHash(interesting)
puts "="*24
(0..10).each do |idx|
  a = i[idx]
  v = a[a.keys[0]]
  print "%i: %s -- %i %s following\n" % [idx+1, (a.keys[0]).gsub("/",""), v, v > 1? "friends" : "friend"]
end

This is still a lot of crap