September 19th is one of my favorite days of the year for a number of reasons. First, it’s right about when the seasons begin to change here in Bellingham, and I’m quite fond of autumn. Secondly, it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and any excuse to act like a pirate in public is a good thing.

It also happens to be the birthday of a certain digestively-challenged friend of mine, but I don’t want her ego to get any larger by putting that on the list of reasons.

This year, it’s also the launch of Robot Rum, a webcomic/experiment that details the misadventures of a crew of malfunctioning robot pirates. The experiemental part is that the comic is ‘written’ (read that: randomly assembled) by a PHP-powered ‘robot’ called Pete-O-Tron that will slowly learn what it means to be funny through user-feedback, hopefully transitioning from awkwardly arbitrary to consistently chuckle-worthy.

As the first comic shows, he’s got a ways to go. An initial challenge will be finding a way to string the various pseudo-random text bits together in a way that generates gags or humorous non-sequiturs. At present Pete’s loaded with some Moby Dick, Treasure Island, Lolbot, and a very tiny thesaurus. As feedback is generated by visitors, he’ll be fine-tuned by yours truly to track a sort of ‘DNA’ of what is funny and what isn’t, ideally getting more and more spot on in simulating humor as his database of responses grows.

Sounds really cool when I say it like that.

It’s also a great way to generate a daily product when you’re as lazy as I am.

So get out there and capture a Spanish galleon, load up with doubloons, bury some treasure, drink some rum (highly optional), and check out Robot Rum. If you’re feeling really nice, use the feedback feature for poor Pete. He’s not too bright, and needs the guidance.

(And yes, I’m aware the site’s a mess in IE6. Apparently 1996 browsers and transparent PNGs don’t talk well. I’m currently deciding how mean to be to people that probably still think grunge is alive.)