Because information like my level and XP are public, shouldn't there be a way to retrieve the information through the ticker without signing in?

Is there any reason why you need to use the XML ticker? Sure it's convenient, but if you don't want to go through the hassle of automating logins there's no reason you can't use HTML::Parser and friends to rip the info out of non-ticker nodes, and this way you can add other monks to your ticker, too. ;^)

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use HTML::TableExtract;
use LWP::Simple qw/ get /;

my $monk = shift or die "$0 [monkname]\n";

my $url  = "http://perlmonks.org/index.pl?node=${monk}";

my $html = HTML::TableExtract->new;

$html->parse( get $url );

foreach my $table ( $html->table_states ) 
{
  foreach my $row ( $table->rows($table) ) 
  {
    if ( $row->[0] eq 'Experience:' ) 
    {
      print "$monk has $row->[1] XP.         \n",
        "Give 'em \$1 and they might be able \n",
        "to buy a cup of coffee, too.        \n";
      exit;
    }
  }
}

print "No XP found ... perhaps ${monk} doesn't exist?\n";
[download]

    --k.