3 Weird Python Scripts That Will Impress Your Colleagues

2. The Instant XKCD Comic Viewer

If you're in tech, you probably love XKCD. Randall Munroe's webcomic about "romance, sarcasm, math, and language" is a cultural touchstone. Why not build a script that fetches the latest comic for you? It's a fantastic, bite-sized introduction to web scraping.

This script uses requests to download the web page and BeautifulSoup to parse the HTML and find the comic image.

Installation

You'll need two libraries for this one:

pip install requests beautifulsoup4

The Code

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import webbrowser
import random

def get_latest_xkcd():
    """Fetches the URL of the latest XKCD comic."""
    try:
        response = requests.get("https://xkcd.com/")
        response.raise_for_status() # Raise an exception for bad status codes
        soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'html.parser')
        comic_element = soup.select_one("#comic img")
        if comic_element and comic_element['src']:
            return f"https:{comic_element['src']}"
    except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
        print(f"Error fetching XKCD page: {e}")
    return None

def open_comic_in_browser(url):
    """Opens a given URL in the default web browser."""
    if url:
        print(f"Opening comic: {url}")
        webbrowser.open(url)
    else:
        print("Could not find the comic URL.")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print("Fetching the latest XKCD comic...")
    latest_comic_url = get_latest_xkcd()
    open_comic_in_browser(latest_comic_url)

How It Works

• requests.get("https://xkcd.com/"): This line sends an HTTP GET request to the XKCD homepage and downloads its HTML content.
• BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'html.parser'): We create a `BeautifulSoup` object, which turns the raw HTML text into a structured, searchable object.
• soup.select_one("#comic img"): This is the web scraping magic. We use a CSS selector to find the `` tag that is inside the `
  ` with the ID `comic`. This is where the comic image is consistently located on the site.
• webbrowser.open(url): Finally, this standard library function opens the image URL in your default web browser for instant viewing.

Run this script, and in seconds, you'll have the latest comic open and ready to read. Your colleagues will be impressed by how you've automated your procrastination!

3. The Real-Time ASCII Art Video Player

This is the showstopper. The grand finale. We're going to use Python to capture your webcam feed and render it as live ASCII art directly in your terminal. It’s visually stunning, delightfully nerdy, and a brilliant demonstration of real-time video processing.

We'll be using opencv-python, a powerful library for computer vision tasks.

Installation

OpenCV is a heavy-duty library, but installation is straightforward with pip:

pip install opencv-python numpy

The Code

import cv2
import os
import numpy as np

# A string of characters from dark to light
ASCII_CHARS = "@%#*+=-:. "

def resize_frame(frame, new_width=100):
    """Resize a frame to a new width while maintaining aspect ratio."""
    (old_height, old_width) = frame.shape
    aspect_ratio = old_height / float(old_width)
    new_height = int(aspect_ratio * new_width * 0.55) # 0.55 is a correction factor for char aspect ratio
    return cv2.resize(frame, (new_width, new_height))

def frame_to_ascii(frame):
    """Convert a grayscale frame to an ASCII string."""
    frame = (frame / 255.0 * (len(ASCII_CHARS) - 1)).astype(np.uint8)
    ascii_str = ""
    for row in frame:
        for pixel_value in row:
            ascii_str += ASCII_CHARS[pixel_value]
        ascii_str += "\n"
    return ascii_str

def main():
    cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0) # 0 is the default webcam
    if not cap.isOpened():
        print("Error: Could not open video stream.")
        return

    try:
        while True:
            ret, frame = cap.read()
            if not ret:
                break

            gray_frame = cv2.cvtColor(frame, cv.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
            resized_frame = resize_frame(gray_frame, new_width=120)
            ascii_art = frame_to_ascii(resized_frame)

            os.system('cls' if os.name == 'nt' else 'clear')
            print(ascii_art)

            # A way to exit the loop. OpenCV waitKey is a good option.
            # This part is tricky in a pure terminal script, so we'll let Ctrl-C handle it.
            time.sleep(0.03) # Frame rate control

    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        print("Stream stopped.")
    finally:
        cap.release()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

How It Works

• cv2.VideoCapture(0): This initializes a video capture object for your primary webcam.
• The Main Loop: The script continuously reads frames from the webcam.
• cv2.cvtColor(...): Each frame (which is a color image) is converted to grayscale, as brightness is all we need for ASCII conversion.
• resize_frame(...): This is crucial. A full HD frame has millions of pixels. We resize it to a width that fits the terminal (e.g., 120 characters) to make processing fast and the output viewable.
• frame_to_ascii(...): This is the core logic. It maps the brightness of each pixel (0-255) to a character in our `ASCII_CHARS` string. Dark pixels get a dense character like '@', while light pixels get a sparse one like '.'.
• os.system('cls' or 'clear'): This command clears the terminal screen before printing the next frame, creating the illusion of a smooth animation.

Run this script, and your terminal will spring to life with a retro, cyberpunk version of your face. Your colleagues won't know what hit them.

4. Why Bother With Weird Scripts?

While a mouse jiggler or an ASCII video converter might not be part of your next production release, they serve a vital purpose. They keep programming fun. They encourage creative problem-solving and provide a low-stakes environment to experiment with powerful libraries like pyautogui, BeautifulSoup, and OpenCV.

These "weird" projects are the perfect answer to the question, "What should I build to practice my Python skills?" They are tangible, rewarding, and, most importantly, impressive. So go ahead, give them a try, and see what other wonderfully weird ideas you can bring to life with a few lines of Python.

What's the weirdest script you've ever written? Share it in the comments below!