It's a Denby
August 20, 2014 7:22 AM Subscribe
How do I get a static IP address for my teapot? The story of the teapot: HTCPCP (Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol) and the mentioned Wikipedia link.
I recall the coffee pot web cam from the Trojan Room in 1991! Back then, it was rare to see any kind of graphics...much less a web cam!
Yep, I'd fire up my Atari 800 and 300 baud modem and in four or five minutes, you'd have a streaky 400x400 or so cam shot of the coffee pot! It was a miracle of technology!
It was so random and bizarre, I think that's about the time I fell in love with teh Intarwebz....
posted by CrowGoat at 7:54 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
Yep, I'd fire up my Atari 800 and 300 baud modem and in four or five minutes, you'd have a streaky 400x400 or so cam shot of the coffee pot! It was a miracle of technology!
It was so random and bizarre, I think that's about the time I fell in love with teh Intarwebz....
posted by CrowGoat at 7:54 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I remember showing that to people. There was also a Coke machine you could "finger" from the command line to find out if it had your flavor of soda.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:28 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by cjorgensen at 9:28 AM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
And after that, CU-SeeMe. I remember finding that and gradually starting up more and more sessions with more and more sources, until I had something like twenty windows open on my 486 PC. How wonderful! Never thought I'd see anything like it...
Frame rate was, shall we say, iffy, and after a bit, nothing much seemed to be happening. So, I closed everything down and carried on. About half an hour later, the phone rang - it was someone I'd never talked to before, from our IT department in Boston. I had, he told me, brought down the company network worldwide, and would I very much mind not doing that again?
Happy days.
posted by Devonian at 10:07 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
Frame rate was, shall we say, iffy, and after a bit, nothing much seemed to be happening. So, I closed everything down and carried on. About half an hour later, the phone rang - it was someone I'd never talked to before, from our IT department in Boston. I had, he told me, brought down the company network worldwide, and would I very much mind not doing that again?
Happy days.
posted by Devonian at 10:07 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
Needs 418 tag.
posted by ardgedee at 10:40 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by ardgedee at 10:40 AM on August 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
In 1990, John Romkey and Simon Hackett put an snmp-controlled toaster on the internet.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:57 PM on August 20, 2014
posted by rmd1023 at 6:57 PM on August 20, 2014
Also, I wasn't aware of this teapot. I am quite pleased that there is an implementation, if not a reference implementation, of the 418 case for HTCPCP. As a fan of tea in general and of the delights of a very strong-brewed assam in particular, it's nice to see tea getting its fair share of internet fame.
Securing the teapot to the laptop computer does remind me a bit of an "rs-232 to brick" adapter a friend of mine came across, though. (it was an rs-232 connector. epoxied to a brick. as one does, apparently.)
posted by rmd1023 at 7:11 PM on August 20, 2014
Securing the teapot to the laptop computer does remind me a bit of an "rs-232 to brick" adapter a friend of mine came across, though. (it was an rs-232 connector. epoxied to a brick. as one does, apparently.)
posted by rmd1023 at 7:11 PM on August 20, 2014
Just this year, a new RFC describing an extension to the HTCPCP protocol was announced...is this teapot still standards-compliant?
posted by rlio at 10:00 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by rlio at 10:00 PM on August 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
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Of course it does.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:30 AM on August 20, 2014 [5 favorites]