3 ms·

In the early 2000's, I remember in art school I did a project that involved driving around the country, leaving tiny sculptures wherever I went. To keep people

In the early 2000's, I remember in art school I did a project that involved driving around the country, leaving tiny sculptures wherever I went. To keep people updated where I was, I made a Perl script that accepted messages and photos sent to it that I authored on my fancy Sony Ericson picture phone. The script would update a website showing the photos and messages in reverse chronological order. Took maybe about 3 hours to get it up and running. I didn't realize I had invented Instagram. Shoulda spent a little more time on it.

somedude895 4y ago
Nowadays I'd know how to do this with an Arduino with a GSM module, how did you receive the pictures back then?
- vachina 4y ago
  Probably email attachment
  - justinator 4y ago
    Bingo. The phone could send a mixed text and image message as a multipart MIME message. I made an email forward that piped to a Perl script. That Perl script read the text and image data using something like MIME::Parser, and saved that stuff in a database. Another script read that data and returned some HTML using Template Toolkit and CGI.pm. Really just something I threw together the night before I left. I remember a few years later someone was showing me how you could text a message to a specific number, then it showed up on this "Twitter" site and that seemed quaint. Anyways Perl was so easy and fun some Painting and Drawing undergrad could throw something together that was that useful to his 5 friends and his completely confused professor (and pay for art school hacking on other stuff too).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Raed667 4y ago
  Around ~2005 I had a Sony Ericsson K300, and my main method was to send pictures to the computer via infrared (yes I had to buy an infrared USB dongle) and then posting them on skyblog.com The phone could even tether its GPRS connection via infrared! That always amazed me!
  - justinator 4y ago
    Yup looks similar to the one I had. I bought it at Car Toys because there weren't even T-Mobile stores yet. It took like 2 hours to transfer my number from another carrier (a new ability at the time!) and activate the account - what a process! I remember the keypad was kinda small for my giant hands, but it would connect via this thing called "Bluetooth" to my Mac. Every time you got a text, it would show up on my Mac's screen, and I could reply just using my keyboard instead of typing out something using T9 on the phone itself. Soooo much faster. Somehow the ability to do that was disabled or something, I dunno. I hadn't felt that sort of magical integration again until I realized you can copy and paste between a Mac and an iPhone you had on the same Apple ID (or however it works, I totally forget the details) so long as Bluetooth is enabled on both. Such magic and solved so many tiny little problems. I missed years of Airdropping as my last Macbook just couldn't work with Airdrop and I have no idea why not. Seeing Airdrop work instantly sold me on iPhones and I'll never go back to Android.
    - comboy 4y ago
      > I realized you can copy and paste between a Mac and an iPhone you had on the same Apple ID whoa Although I didn't realize that compromised phone can steal data from my laptop :|
      - justinator 4y ago
        Universal Clipboard is something you'll need to enable. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209460 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209460
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
owl57 4y ago
But note how you invented only the better half of Instagram. The other half is all the "social" shit: "Tell us your email to see more John's photos", "Have you seen recent posts from Kate, Mike and Cristiano Ronaldo", etc.
- EddieDemo 4y ago
  Bear in mind; we're all on HN looking for high-quality content from strangers, rather than from our own personal network(s). The trend across all social media is to feed us with more 'high-ranking' content from 'strangers' because it's typically what we want to see more of, based on the analytics. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook — all of them are pivoting to feed us more content from people outside of our personal networks as fast as possible.
- justinator 4y ago
  Oh that lack of features was incredibly deliberate. All kidding aside, I personally had a revelation on how much of my attention has been getting stolen away from me, tiny bit by tiny bit. I'm going to make an honest attempt to gain some of that back. More reading out of physical books, less doomscrolling. More taking people out to coffee, less overdosing on puppy videos.

somedude895 4y ago

Nowadays I'd know how to do this with an Arduino with a GSM module, how did you receive the pictures back then?

vachina 4y ago
Probably email attachment
- justinator 4y ago
  Bingo. The phone could send a mixed text and image message as a multipart MIME message. I made an email forward that piped to a Perl script. That Perl script read the text and image data using something like MIME::Parser, and saved that stuff in a database. Another script read that data and returned some HTML using Template Toolkit and CGI.pm. Really just something I threw together the night before I left. I remember a few years later someone was showing me how you could text a message to a specific number, then it showed up on this "Twitter" site and that seemed quaint. Anyways Perl was so easy and fun some Painting and Drawing undergrad could throw something together that was that useful to his 5 friends and his completely confused professor (and pay for art school hacking on other stuff too).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Raed667 4y ago
Around ~2005 I had a Sony Ericsson K300, and my main method was to send pictures to the computer via infrared (yes I had to buy an infrared USB dongle) and then posting them on skyblog.com The phone could even tether its GPRS connection via infrared! That always amazed me!
- justinator 4y ago
  Yup looks similar to the one I had. I bought it at Car Toys because there weren't even T-Mobile stores yet. It took like 2 hours to transfer my number from another carrier (a new ability at the time!) and activate the account - what a process! I remember the keypad was kinda small for my giant hands, but it would connect via this thing called "Bluetooth" to my Mac. Every time you got a text, it would show up on my Mac's screen, and I could reply just using my keyboard instead of typing out something using T9 on the phone itself. Soooo much faster. Somehow the ability to do that was disabled or something, I dunno. I hadn't felt that sort of magical integration again until I realized you can copy and paste between a Mac and an iPhone you had on the same Apple ID (or however it works, I totally forget the details) so long as Bluetooth is enabled on both. Such magic and solved so many tiny little problems. I missed years of Airdropping as my last Macbook just couldn't work with Airdrop and I have no idea why not. Seeing Airdrop work instantly sold me on iPhones and I'll never go back to Android.
  - comboy 4y ago
    > I realized you can copy and paste between a Mac and an iPhone you had on the same Apple ID whoa Although I didn't realize that compromised phone can steal data from my laptop :|
    - justinator 4y ago
      Universal Clipboard is something you'll need to enable. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209460 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209460

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

owl57 4y ago

But note how you invented only the better half of Instagram. The other half is all the "social" shit: "Tell us your email to see more John's photos", "Have you seen recent posts from Kate, Mike and Cristiano Ronaldo", etc.

EddieDemo 4y ago
Bear in mind; we're all on HN looking for high-quality content from strangers, rather than from our own personal network(s). The trend across all social media is to feed us with more 'high-ranking' content from 'strangers' because it's typically what we want to see more of, based on the analytics. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook — all of them are pivoting to feed us more content from people outside of our personal networks as fast as possible.
justinator 4y ago
Oh that lack of features was incredibly deliberate. All kidding aside, I personally had a revelation on how much of my attention has been getting stolen away from me, tiny bit by tiny bit. I'm going to make an honest attempt to gain some of that back. More reading out of physical books, less doomscrolling. More taking people out to coffee, less overdosing on puppy videos.