Atlhack

At Octane they’re playing hip-hop mashups with Sufjan Stevens backing tracks.

Matt Peters[e/o]n (new member)
– graduated from GT in May
– had a class with Rob
– likes biking and coding, writing video games
– explaining vertex separation of axis theorem for collision detection to Rob and Mark
Rob
– flixel, 2d collision detection
– going to perform two songs on Saturday
– going to start building games at his job tomorrow
Diana
– updating her website
– ate a zucchini muffin
– is busy this week, wants to clone herself
Mark
– compiling llvm on the atlhack server, then he can compile rust maybe?
– writing baby rust code, for triangle meshes
– [update] compiled a rust program!

People:
Joe, Rob, Enrique, Fokes, Mark

Topics:
BitCoin, Anarchism, Property, Holodecks, Replicators, WIPO, Lady Gaga + Zynga, Area/Code, Enrique’s Hair, FourSquare MMORPG, Ownership of Coffee + Donuts, Obscure Standup, Van Eck Phreaking, Videogum review of Thor, Intense OkCupid Introductory Messages (see post title)

Hacks:
Rooting Nooks, Secure SMTP on Joe’s Server, Logarithms of Affine Matrices, pow(1-pow(x,2),3), Anvil Video Annotation

Diana
– Photoshopping the GLG Grand out of a photo of the Atlanta skyline
– before/almost-after
– Mark’s dad built (i.e. was a carpenter on) this building in the early ’90s, but he’ll forgive the affront

Mark
– modified his Floyd-Steinberg dithering code to handle color images
– 8-color photo from New Year’s Day
– updating qualifier talk slides in preparation for Thursday
– on Sunday, biked with his dad from downtown, up Edgewood to the Krog tunnel
– recorded on a video camera with a rolling shutter, neat image distortions

Bruce
– n-body simulation, c++, stl vectors
– b-trees, parallel barnes-hut
– “there are a trillion trillion stars in the universe”
Joe
– writing JavaScript for randonized website layout
– not digging JS inheritance
– showing off There’s No Time to Explain
Mark
– trying to figure out the new Blender python API
Rob
– is now a game designer:
– in class, converted a video game into a hop-scotch game
– players held hands, had to jump to a greater number at each step
– classmates playtested it: CLASSMATES HELD HANDS!
– Rob wins

Bruce
– has been here for hours
– wrote a paper for Online Communities class
– had a job interview today, graduating in May
Joe
– upgraded his Debian system today and overcame hassles with grub failing to reinstall the bootloader
– made a transparent png in Photoshop
– showed off secret mosaic project
Fokes
– played angry birds, death worm, words with friends (on his iPad 1)
– avoided studying for optics test
– coveted Bill’s iPad 2
Mark
– had a paper accepted to SIGGRAPH
– writing some code for multi-objective optimization
Bill
– worked on chapter for upcoming Android book
– made some cool iOS music apps at work
Rob
– gathered feedback on “Access”, his artgame where you play as a wheelchair dude
– has been working on an augmented reality presentation tool for use with the Kinect
Eldon
– is here with his ladypartner
– has a new job at an ATDC spinoff company
Melissa
– is selling her house
– playtested Rob’s game
– played QWOP, laughed hysterically

Mark was at Octane to hack for the first time in many weeks.
Tejus arrived later and they chatted about Vertical Acuity, Pardot, SITA, Georgia Tech, etc.

Mark wrote some python, installed nltk, pyPdf, xpdf, plasTeX, and probably some other software too. He’s building something that makes visual art out of abstract math.

Things learned:
1) Many PDFs don’t contain word breaks, they just position the letters in the right spot on the page, gasp!
2) Installing pdftotext via MacPorts installs all sorts of stuff: OpenMotif, libxml2, xorg-libXdmcp, etc, etc, etc.
3) pdftolatex is pretty sweet
4) Apple’s Automator can convert PDFs into text, and by default outputs UTF-16, which scares tools like diff into thinking it is binary
5) arXiv.org hosts the LaTeX for papers, which maintains lots of extra contextual information, which is awesome
6) The world sure is full of things

Bruce:
Writing a suffix tree implementation in C++
Testing on text that looks like: “aaabbabaaaabbbbabbbbbb”
Useful for searching, compression, etc similares a viagra.

Mark:
Relearning git
Implementing a mass-spring system using shape-meshing code written this weekend
Both the Euler and Verlet integrators are unstable 🙁

Bruce:
– pattern matching homework
– (since last week) invented a heinous beverage: the fourlokomotive

Joe:
– fixing DNS setup for mental tarpit
– using mercurial to version his code

Mark:
– working on qualifier questions

A conversation, wherein the interrogatee avoids the question:
Mark: Did you vote? I hope you voted against Amendment 1.
Humza: I voted the right way.
Mark: Does that mean…
Humza: I voted for what was right.

The Atlhack tradition continues, though we’ve become less disciplined about documenting our adventures. This lack of discipline also means that we tend to hack less, and chat/homework more.

Can honor be restored to this land? Tune in next week to see our heros attempt to resurrect ancient and mythical side-projects…

Bruce
– homework time: matlab + least squares approx + economic research methods
Joe
– attended SIEGE
– building memory-tar-pit-organizer-game
Mark & Stuart
– chatting about startup possibilities
– chatting with Hamza & Dustin
Rob
– attended SIEGE
– writing article for the technique
Alsie
– online math homework

Rob
– Reviewed Machete evisceration

Mark
– Laplacian