HashPix
Here’s why the blog has been silent all this while: I’ve been teaching myself software programming since last November and I’ve been pretty enthusiastic and rigorous about it all this while.
Nothing big, just a bit of web-development using Django & Python.
I jumped straight into the deep end of the pool and took a few courses at Coursera, Udemy, CodeAcademy and other such sites. By the end of January, I was already messing around with various APIs and even attempting to create one of my own! (</end brag>)
The first attempt worked out so-so. It was large, bulky and had no consideration for the amount of server resources I was wasting. But thankfully, the guys over at dotCloud didn’t complain much*. Meanwhile, I continued to hack away at code, even attempting to contribute to a public repo called geopy. Again, nothing fancy, just a feature I grokked by tweaking some already existing code. Nonetheless, I did get a fugly-looking Android App called r8** out of it. ;)
Fast-forward to a few weeks ago.
We were generally discussing tech ideas and stuff when Rohan came up with the possibility of being able to search pictures across various social networks. It sounded interesting and I asked him if he was okay with me attempting it as a project for myself. He said, he was and I got down to work.
A week later, HashPix was born.
So, what does HashPix do? Well, HashPix searches for images with the same hashtag across Twitter, Instagram and Twitpic. Eventually, I plan to add in support for Facebook albums as well.
The idea is to be able to collect all images pertaining to a particular hashtag and add them into one easily-accessible, publicly (or privately) share-able album. For example, when everyone uses the same hashtag on their uploads at an event, you can then collect these pictures into one single album using HashPix***! Over the last two-ish weeks, I have been trying to refine it visually and functionally. There are parts of the site that are still – how do I put this mildly – FUGLY to look at. There are a few parts of the code that seem like obscene hacks and would make any half-decent programmer cringe at they very sight of it. Large parts of the code need proper unit-tests written for them.
But hey, I’m still learning and I’m addressing these problems one at a time.
For now, I would like it if you’d give HashPix a spin and let me know what you think about it. Do note that you’ll need to sign up before you can save a collection into a personal album. But once created, you can share the album with anyone in the world! :)
YAY!
* Although they did discontinue their free sandbox service soon after. I wonder if my horrible code had anything to with it. :/
** r8 eventually went on to become dishoom.it – a project involving me, Hrishikesh, Sahil and Abhishek. It’ll soon be available on your smartphones and I’ll post here with details when it does.
*** Yeah, I know, I know. I’m getting excited over something rather silly. #DealWithIt :P