This is awesome! Great example app for the Zinc API.

Now you just need to integrate with those smart fridges so an order with Amazon Fresh is automatically placed when I run low on something.

Why does this even access a server (i.e. the hosted zinc api)? This could be done purely on the client side (= better privacy, security and performance), so I assume it's because zinc wants to add its affiliate id and earn a commission.

I'm one of the guys working on this.

We don't add an affiliate ID. A totally client-side solution would be really cool--we're thinking about making one but it does present a few more challenges. If it wasn't clear, this is more of a proof-of-concept than a practical solution.

If you have an idea that requires a fully client-side library, let us know and we can help!

Cute!

You can get a significantly higher resolution with Unicode Block Elements[1] and a half tone foreground-background algorithm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Elements

Ahh very cool. I'll have to add support for this to ihmage.com

Thanks for the credit. I've also got animated gif support somewhere in those gists (and a server for generating them written in Julia).

The install failed from PyPI using pip. Missing setup.py. Works fine from github though. https://github.com/wangjohn/zinc_cli/archive/master.tar.gz

Make sure to use pip 1.5.1 and it should work.

I don't mean to use HN like SO but I keep getting the error:

"IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/private/tmp/pip-build-root/zinc/setup.py'"

Any idea why this might be? Looks awesome and wish I could try it!

Which version of pip are you using? It should work if you upgrade to 1.5.1.

I was getting the same error on 1.0, looks like I need to upgrade.

Does this only support Python 2? I'm fully updated for pip, but I had to put it in a virtualenv and point it to python 2. You might want to mention that if it doesn't support 3.

I was hooked when I saw cheetos

It presumes one is using whatever pip is - its not in debian's repository .

Yes it is: http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/python-pip

Installing python libraries and programs through pip is pretty standard.