

Show HN: Weekend Project - Finding Random Imgur Links with JavaScript - symkat
http://image-roulette.com/

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btilly
I got a sneak preview, so I'll just say what I've already said.

There needs to be a way to save interesting ones for other people to look
through, vote on, and comment on. Here, for example, are some of the more
interesting ones that I saw (some are NSFW, very much so, others are just
nice, or funny, or weird):

<http://i.imgur.com/yxmdh.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/5XySW.jpg>
<http://i.imgur.com/g1ZA3.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/lxSBk.jpg>
<http://i.imgur.com/3xUME.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/4QrxH.jpg>
<http://i.imgur.com/FmOHk.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/5bGfT.jpg>
<http://i.imgur.com/PJZDZ.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/gy3c2.jpg>
<http://i.imgur.com/XUGRv.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/WFVny.jpg>
<http://i.imgur.com/1LKtd.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/kcuG9.jpg>
<http://i.imgur.com/NpJ1r.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/px1Wd.jpg>
<http://i.imgur.com/w3xsD.jpg> <http://i.imgur.com/2Kftd.jpg>
<http://i.imgur.com/XfkhI.jpg>

Also it is on 4chan at <http://boards.4chan.org/g/res/22241838> and you can
just see people crying out for a way to keep track of the interesting ones.

~~~
Garbage
Why would you post these links of NSFW images here?

~~~
btilly
I was just giving a sample of the kinds of images that people might like to
share and comment on.

Most weren't NSFW, the ones that were were not extreme, and I felt that the
disclaimer was enough.

~~~
brador
You should probably remove those NSFW ones. They don't add to the comment and
could get someone fired since the NSFW warning is not prominent, and the
images are not "girl in bikini" but full on nudes.

~~~
btilly
You are only able to edit a post for a limited time, and I'm long past the
point of being able to edit that post.

As for the images, I kept a little file of interesting ones, and didn't want
to go back and check them all to remember which were NSFW. So I simply put in
the disclaimer and pasted.

That said, I felt that they _did_ add to the comment. They give an idea of the
variety of different things that could show up in a discussion, and indicate
that you would need to separate them out by category.

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symkat
This was a fun little project that started from a co-worker wanting to see
random imgur files. I've just started playing with jQuery and JavaScript and
this is the result so far.

Imgur uses 5 chars alphanumerical ids as the image names, and doesn't care if
you use .jpg, .png, etc, etc. So I wrote a small backend that generates and
spits out an array of keys to check. The JavaScript hides the image tag, and
sets it, another function verifies that it's a real image (imgur sends 200s,
and an image that tells you an image doesn't exist, so I check that the height
and width match). If it does, then display the image, if not, try the next.
When the array is about to run out, I fill it again. I also keep a small cache
of the keys that it determined weren't valid (based on jQuery passing back to
me the list of failed keys) to try to up the odds of getting an image quicker.

An unmini'ed version of the JavaScript is at <http://image-
roulette.com/static/js/image-roulette.js>

Any feedback would be awesome =)

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mmahemoff
I did a similar experiment a couple of months back to find random pastebins
and jsfiddles, but both gave 404s whenever I tried, so I abandoned it.

If anyone's interested: <http://jsfiddle.net/C6M8h/1>
<http://jsfiddle.net/C6M8h/3>

~~~
brador
You could just scrape stackoverflow? ;)

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waffle_ss
The title of imgur posts are sometimes an important lead-in for the content,
so you might want to include those.

------
sbarre
Are you just composing random strings and checking if an image exists at the
URL?

~~~
btilly
The code composes random strings, and checks whether the returned image is the
size of imgur's 404. So real images of that exact shape and size will also be
skipped.

