#netflixroulette

All Things That Can Happen Will Happen

   For years I have developed and pushed new ideas, software and code to hone my skills. I dove into new languages, expanded my knowledge of software design and tried to make my code as beautiful as a great book. I worked jobs simply to be able to experience a new environment and create great infrastructure for that specific product; even going as far as to work for free just to be a part of something great. But as time went by I found myself doing less than desirable things to keep finding my creativity, while I did partake in some interesting projects and adventures during that time (some would even say some of my best) I wasn't content with living that way. So I began to change for the better.

   I for one think I was lucky, I had a very supportive partner during that time and it allowed me to actually start getting a clear view of life, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a lot of ups and downs but overall it's important to remember I wouldn't be the person I am today if it wasn't from learning from the mistakes I made then. But as all things that can happen, will happen, my muse as I liked to think of her took their own path. At a time in my life when creativity is suppose to thrive and new ideas should be flowing like a raging river, I found that my river had run dry. With no more muse to inspire me I felt empty.

  I battled depression for a few months, angry at a lot of the choices I made and things I had said and done. Ironically my choice for dealing with this was to code, it was during this time I actually created some, while not original, but useful products. Things such as Borderless-Gaming where born during this time. When i'd do nothing but create all day as a distraction. Eventually I grew out of this unhealthy cycle and started focusing on positives and i slowly settled back into living life enjoyably. 

How It Came To Be

  All the credit for the idea has to go to my friend Geoff, one night as we spoke he jokingly brought up the idea of "something that just gives him a random movie off Netflix". At the time I didn't think much of it, but come a few weeks later when I couldn't for the life of me find anything to do to avoid sleep, I decided to create just that. 

   At first I searched the internet for reliable resources, I figured I'd just build it off the Netflix API at first; only to realize they no longer offered any form of public API, so that was out of the question. I then tried to see if anyone was doing any cataloging for the content on Netflix, only to again be disappointed with what I saw. So the only reasonable thing to do at that point was create my own Crawler. 

  This was by far the funnest part of the project, it was important to have speed and ensure complete and total accuracy when collecting all the relevant information, 50 different instances, 10 threads per instances, all reporting back to a single application. All instances sending back gigabytes of information per hour, all to keep a detailed list of what was currently on Netflix directly from Netflix. This was only possible due to a few security/design flaws I found while digging through the site. After hours of development time on the crawler I finally threw together the simplest part, the actual app. This didn't take anymore than an three hours to do, I could have done it faster but decided to write my own MYSQLI interpreter web module for python/apache as I wanted to reinvent the wheel to be unpopable (the internal module name was Shrinkwrap, hue).

  Once all the code was done it was out of my hands, I can't do graphical design/web development to save my life. So I approached my good friend Dana to do the front end design for me; she has done a lot of work for me in the past, and does an incredible job. 

original mock-up

   She eventually finished all the web design and it was ready to release. Initially nervous because version 1.0 was the bare minimum and was by far one of the simplest thing I ever created, I expected my reddit post to go unseen and no one to actually use it.

Full Speed Ahead

Boy was i wrong

   When I received my first 200 upvotes, I thought "That is it, I can't get anymore than that!" but then, 200 became 400, and 400 became 4000 and 4000 became 8000. The number kept growing and the site visitors kept coming. I had designed the software/web module to be able to deal with maybe a few thousand concurrent users. Reddit brought 17 thousand in the first hour.At one single time, eventually the site crashed under the pressure but people kept coming. I stayed around answering peoples questions, taking suggestion, and eventually called it a night.

   In less than 5 hours I had received an interview offer from Netflix, again thinking "this can't get any better". Waking up the next morning I was on the front page of reddit, #netflixroulette was trending on twitter, my email was flooded with all sorts of appreciation and positive feedback and news interview request. I was beyond jubilant. Of the course of the weekend I would see; The Huffington Post, Buisness Insider, Gizmod, IGN and many others write articles about it. Bringing it and me even more attention. Even in the last 24 hours (and this was released weeks ago) It's been on BoingBoing and Lifehacker, I mean when you end up on the Gawker network you're doing something right.

Closing Thoughts

  My life changed over night, with job offers flowing in (and I have already taken a few) and a lot of worries floating away. I can truly say that for a 3am distraction, it was truly a great success. It brings a big smile to my face when I see it still being tweeted about and it being blogged like crazy on tumblr and other various sites. Eventually I'd like to give back to all those who helped get it to where it is today and who helped bring me this success. But all will come together. 

   For now I must bring localization to the app for the rest of the world to expand its usefulness. Of course this will be reflected in the new API schema that I'll be pushing sooner or later. I'd like to thank all the developers who contributed their wrappers to the API, you've all been a big help to this project as well.

   Thank you everyone for taking the time to read this and for using my creations. It means the world to me, even if it wasn't the most advanced thing ever. It still makes me happy to know it brings fun to a lot of people. 

Request

I'm in desperate need for a new logo for Netflix Roulette, one that doesn't use their logos font or look anything like their logo to be exact. Something original would be nice, if you're interested in making one see my contact information or just send me a message on here.

Contact Info

Twitter: @CodeusaSoftware

Blog: andrew.codeusa.net