# Some details about WTFLevel #

## Data ##

WTFlevel is actually sitting on a basic Dreamhost server. Since you
can't have background processes there, I wrote a simple ruby script to
pull data from Twitter using the tweetstream gem, and set it up on an
EC2 micro instance, where it takes up almost no resources at all.
Every 10 seconds, it posts data to WTFlevel using a very simple API I
cobbled together.

## Website ##

I built the website using the very nice Foundation CSS framework. One
of the cooler things about it is basically mobile-ready -- the website
was working on my phone very nicely with just a few extra lines of
code. I will probably use it for other projects in the future.

I played around with a few libraries for displaying nice graphs, and
eventually settled on d3.js. Implementing the display required more
work than it would have with a few more straightforward systems out
there, but it allowed me a lot more control over the output, and once
I got the hang of things, I was really happy with it. 

## Twitter Updates ##

There's a really simple script to update the @wtflevel account. It
basically runs on the chatterbot script, and pings the WTFlevel API to
decide what to post.

## API ##

I wrote a very simple API, which is used by the app in a couple
different places. The basics of it are documented on the website. I
plan on opening it up a little more in the future.

## Widget ##

There's also a very simple js widget, which I mostly built as a joke,
although I'll probably keep working on it and refining it.