Inspired by Peter Norvig, I have created a quick hack to generate haikus from Etsy listing titles. Check it out here.
Technical details for those who are interested:
- The listings are downloaded from the Etsy API by an offline process, and stuffed into a MongoDB database if their titles are either five or seven syllables.
- The CMU Pronunciation Dictionary handles the syllable wrangling.
- The frontend is a very simple Django application.
All in all, about three or four hours of effort. Note that Etsy has nothing to do with these haikus, and doesn’t endorse this app.