Twitter #hashtag to scroll pHAT

this allows for the while loop to be jumped out of and the tweets now cycle...try this..

  while status_length >= 0:
        scrollphat.scroll()
        time.sleep(0.1)
        status_length -= 1
        #print status_length

for some reason the status_length var doesnt get updated with a new value upon gathering a new tweet.. and just resets to the previous value set?