It’s summer time and a 750-year-old tradition is that Merton college SCR (the senior common room) opens up its lunch sittings to the MCR members (middle common room). It’s quite a treat – the quality of the meal greatly surpasses what MCR members get in other times of the year.

There is a catch obviously: the number of seats available to the MCR members is limited. The seats become available some time between Fri-Monday each week. Nobody has the time to sit there and keep refreshing the page so why not use a simple python web-crawler, executed periodically from crontab to maximize your odds of getting a spot?

Source code is attached! Enjoy ;)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzI3NK6qw0lJU194UzJLQkRvREU/edit?usp=sharing

EDIT: Due to popular demand from college folks, the tool has been converted to web app. It’s called, HackAHall and it’s available (invite only) here ;)

http://ec2-54-77-167-25.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com/app.php/

Thanks,

Jan