Atlhack

It has snowed on three separate occasions in Atlanta this winter, and today was one of those days.

Rob is making a Game Boy (Advance) game, Asteroid Doom. He’s writing C code, using GBA mode 3.

Mark is learning Scala because he (amusingly) signed up to talk at the Atlanta Scala Meetup without knowing the language. He’s using it to make visual stuff in Processing.

We are both quite focused, as Rob’s game is for class and due by midnight, and Mark needs to learn Scala in the next 45 hours or risk losing face.

This weekend we attended the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, listened to weird new instruments, watched talks by Gil, Jason, and Parag, chatted with Andrew Beck, Alex Rae, Nishant Mehta, and Karthik Raveendran. The highlights for me were the live-soldering performance and the suitcase full of solenoids. The magnetic resonator piano performance was also excellent, and we agreed, is the most likely to see wide-spread adoption.

It has been a few weeks since we’ve posted.

We had a little server down-time when upgrading to Karmic Koala. But we’re back. Last week Mark and Tejus talked about genetic algorithms, because Tejus’s new company does some of that and Mark has been pondering a project that involves them.

And this week:

Rob
– Learning how to write an Atari program
– Going to make a variant of pong based on jai-alai with a swinging motion of the joystick
– Wrote a program in the Chef language for making orange-flavored waffles, which prints out the monetary fine for pirating a song, hopefully he’ll post this somewhere, it’s awesome!

Mark
– Intended to write some geometric code, can’t concentrate
– Read about Atlanta Startup Weekend 3 instead

Richard is working on two songs for the Mediashare Benefit tomorrow at Smith’s Olde Bar

Emily is working on a sermon, by way of Facebook

Rob shows us his Processing project that includes video of Glenn Beck + Katie Couric, plus flickr images of “obama + racist”. Is going to Under the Couch to watch Stuart perform

Eldon is turning his phone into a SIP gateway via Bluetooth, having issues with RFCOMM socket

Alsie is reading “The Green Collar Economy” and looking at “Wild Things” forts on booooooom.com

Mark is wrangling Java security for his Processing server (named “Projecting”)

Rob:
Intended to work on Processing, instead wrote Japanese, including mysterious essay ending, talked with Mark about the technology of cinema. Wearing a threadless hoodie.
Mark:
Browsed papers from “Artifical Life” journal, hacked on his Processing server project, talked with Dustin about traditional animation tweening notation. Wearing a holey sweater.

Lots of old friends, a little bit of hacking.

Jason Ho is back in town from Taipei, will be moving to Silicon Valley in a few months.
Puyan Lotfi is back from Microsoft/Seattle, doing a Master’s Degree in CS at GT.
The Reverend Emily Case is hanging out and writing a sermon.
Sonali had eye surgery and Tejus will soon. Their company is having trouble.

Puyan also brought along fellow Master’s students, who are hacking on a Knowledge-Base AI detective problem.
And the usual suspects, Mark and Rob are hanging out and maybe writing some interactive fiction.

Rob
– hacking interactive fiction with Inform
– going to make a game where you fall asleep to go back in time

Mark
– writing some Processing code for school
– went to the Freeside meeting and got my keycard

Alex’s going-away-hack.

Rob
– doing CSS with Kelly
– going to karaoke
Kelly
– searching for jobs
– updating her online resume
– using Firebug!
Erik
– didn’t install Ruby 1.9.1
– playing WoW
Sonali
– fixing production issues for work
– survived layoffs
Tejus
– working on CSS refactoring
– survived layoffs
Emily
– learning HAML
– finding her way around a Sinatra session
Molly
– reading her RSS on Emily’s computer
– finished knitting her tank top
Alex
– working on passive-voice-detector with NLTK
– has it mostly working
Mark
– trying out new Mac software
– working on a processing sketch for Corkbird