Sunday, September 12, 2010

I took One Photo Every Minute

... using this app I made.  Entitled "One Photo Every Minute."  (get it from the Android market! ... unpublished, read on.)

I used a duct-tape-and-goggles thing to attach my phone to my forehead, then took a walk to the wonderful Viet Wah Asian grocery store.  Some things I learned:

- there's more work to be done on the app if I want to be able to take daylight photos.  I only want them to be recognizable, not museum-quality, but most of the ones outside are super overexposed.  Even if I Feel them Lucky on Picasa, they're white-outs.
--- Unfortunately, I won't be doing this work on the app. The fun part is done, and this was an experiment, not an app I want to maintain. More info on this other post (especially the comment string)

- inside photos are pretty good.  Especially after you Feel Lucky.  (props to Google for popularizing this phrase, and props to Picasa for naming their "insta-fix" feature after it.  I wish this were in more google properties.  Analytics: Feel Lucky and it gives you a random cool fact about your site's traffic.  Chrome: Feel Lucky and it takes you to a random page on the internet.  Google Maps: does this.)
- the app crashes all the time.  If you just want the end product of something, and you don't enjoy the process of making it, let someone else do it.  I'm sure people have done this better than me.  (and maybe without goggles, duct tape, and a phone on their forehead.)
- nobody- nobody!- looks at you weird if you have goggles, duct tape, and a phone that goes "click" every minute on your forehead.  This was probably the most surprising thing I learned.
- the photos (the ones that are visible) are really interesting to look at.  It gives you a very real sense of time.  The walk felt like it took longer than the grocery shopping, but they were about the same amount of time; the photos prove it.

Anyway: the photos!  In two parts because I paused it for a few minutes in between.
Part One
Part Two

Hope you find these as marginally interesting as I did!