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What if you could give Christmas gifts to yourself but actually be surprised when you open them up? That’s exactly what Darius Kazemi did when he wrote a bot that buys him random crap off of Amazon. And he never has any idea what he’s going to get.
He explains how it works on Random Shopper, a Tumblr where he chronicles his surprise shipments:
Every time I run it, I give it a set budget, say $50. It grabs a random word from the Wordnik API, then runs an Amazon search based on that word. It then looks for every paperback book, CD, and DVD in the results list, and buys the first thing that’s under budget. If it found a CD for $10, then the new budget is $40, and it does another random word search and starts all over, continuing until it runs out of money, or it searches a set number of times.
Among the two gifts he’s given to himself so far are Noam Chomsky’s Cartesian Linguistics and a CD from a random Swedish band. The whole thing seems a little frivolous, but it’s nice to have hobbies. And who doesn’t like presents? [Random Shopper]
No, You're Not Random
Shake This App For a Random GIF Background
The Bots That Run Wikipedia
Someone should make an app like this for iOS/Android. Wake up with a new random app each day.
[although as far as I know this wouldn't be possible on iOS or Android as installs require user interaction]
http://xkcd.com/576/
Argh, beat me to it!
A guy actually made that script as well a while ago:
http://www.urlesque.com/2010/11/09/xkcd-comic-script-to-buy-ebay/
haha never saw that one. Neat.
*seen.
I do something similar, but it involves ebay and alcohol. Finding a Paypal receipt in your inbox for a Biker Mice from Mars action figure? Now that’s living.
I did something similar a few years ago. I was on ebay so much that I started going on in my sleep. I received an email a few days later asking where this persons payment was.
I’d bought a Mumbles (in Swansea) tie clasp. That kip cost me £30.
Taxidermy squirrel with a shotgun. He now also has a moustache and santa hat.
Ohh +1 to you!! I had taxidermy superman squirrel in my watch list for months, but couldn’t at all afford it at the time! I yearned for it.
a blog with two posts, is that it?!!? i know random is ‘quirky’ or whatever, but i’d piss me off getting totally random stuff as it would pretty much mostly be stuff you don’t want. i think he should of stuck to surprise not random, although i guess random is what makes it so ‘kooky’.
google seems to know what i like by now, so i’d give them £30 a month to buy me something i’d like. hang on, no i wouldn’t. this is just lame.
I do this unintentionally – I see something I like on Amazon, order it and by the time it arrives 3-5 days later my lousy memory has forgotten I’d ordered it.
Awesome!