Project live here: http://rasagy.in/what-if/

##Motivation

I always wanted to collect statements around "What if I had done blah blah", thinking of the possible timelines that we avoided (or wished were true). So I decided to search through twitter for tweets with a phrase above, and maybe compile it into a book of regrets for NaNoGenMo 2014. But without using code.

##Wait, what is this NaNoGenMo?

This is the second edition of National Novel Generation Month, that @dariusk started (organized?) last year. Read more about the NaNoGenMo here. Major updates (& hopefully feedback) on my project at NaNoGenMo 2014 issue #88.

##Collecting Data Using IFTTT to collect data. Created a recipe to search tweets & generate a json. Using a json instead of csv because I'm slightly unsure about extra commas in the tweet messing up the import.

Search query #1: ("what if I had" OR "What if you had" OR "What if she had" OR "What if he had") Search query #2: ("what if" had)

Saved as:

{"tweet": "{{Text}}", "created_at": "{{CreatedAt}}", "user": "{{UserName}}", "user_dp": "{{UserImageUrl}}", "link": "{{LinkToTweet}}"},

Current data dump (updated daily) on what-if-had-v2.txt

##Example data

Here are some (hand-picked) tweets from the first 12 hours:

• What if you had to do all that I do, unnoticed, and all alone? Would you still have the same attitude?
• What if I had it. Would I be the best?
• What if I had those answers you needed!
• What if she had no one to talk to or seek attention from? What would she do?
• What if I had one more night for goodbye

##ToDo

• Keep a check on SPAM. Keep updating query with possible keywords that you want to filter
• Take a shot at one piece of json and see how it imports in Excel
• Think about design & random elements
• Write follow up blog post on the process