A good URL is hard to find.  Seriously!  I know, I know, you’re no-doubt rolling your eyes but, in programming, the ability to suss out undocumented schemas and protocols turns out to be a big big thing.

Take my latest project.  I’ve been writing a Tumblr downloader.  For the most part, the entire thing has been very straightforward, given that the Tumblr folks have an excellent API and documentation.  Using their specs, it was short work to create the core functionality of my product (which I plan to release as shareware!)  I wasn’t keeping tight track of the time, but it certainly took less that three hours to create the core image and video crawler and downloader.  Can you say “outstanding!” Continue reading →