Lately I’ve been fascinated with finding random photos. Lots and lots of random photos from random places. This being the internet and all, there’s a couple easy enablers for this bad habit:
- WebCollage - The grand-daddy of random images, this page is built from a random collections of images found all over the web. WARNING - this stuff is truly random. I once ran the same program as a screen-saver at work, and my officemate called me to let me know he thought my computer had been hacked. Apparently porn was randomly popping up on the screen. It wasn’t hacked, it was just WebCollage. Since a sizable percentage of images on the internet really is porn, well, that’s what webcollage shows sometimes.
- LiveJournal images - It’s relatively easy to get a list of all the most recent images posted to LiveJournal websites. I found a simply php script somewhere that allows you to watch all the random photos get uploaded. This one is probably the best; you can find some really funny stuff here.
- P2P - I use my favorite p2p client and randomly search for common prefixes to digital camera photos MVC, or IMG, or paths to common picture directories “My Pictures” and find some odd and surprising things. Usually too much work though; it’s be interesting to write a quick program to do this for you; similar to web-collage, but for p2p.
- Random Webcams - I’ve been known to watch ones on campus a fair amount, but new techniques of using google have opened up the floodgates.
Images.Google is always a good one, too
Left by TheMole on January 10th, 2005
As for the random webcams, it’s a shame slashdot have posted it as now all the sites are really slow and/or have idiots having zooming/panning wars with the cameras making it impossible to actually watch.
Still trying to figure out what some of them actually are.
Left by TheMole on January 10th, 2005
I clicked on the LiveJournal images link and got these two pictures first and near the top, so I am thinking that this random picture thing isn’t for me.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/carpetletsmove/91092.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/copperfeet/469877.html
Left by David on January 14th, 2005
Man, you hit the jackpot. Blech.
I happened to check those images out during a meeting I’m in right now; I think I got away with it.
Left by Jordan on January 14th, 2005