13 July 2006 – boulderhack or bust
Since Last Week:
Vinny -signed on to a mapping startup in Denver! He will be leaving us and moving onwards and upwards. 🙁
Graham -design prototype for collaborative chuck website.
This Week:
Vinny has recommended Prototype (docs quick guide api style doc) and Scriptaculous for basic AJAX-style js.
6 July 2006 – just me
Since Last Week:
Graham -tiger 10.4 installed on mac, not booting atm.
-reading a fun book on wavelets.
Alex -trying to improve at chess.
This Week:
Vinny -visiting a startup in Denver.
Graham -designing tables for ckalbum webapp, connecting to them in php.
Titus -writing an article about OpenLaszlo for PHP Architect.
(He suggests using it for the chuck collaboration site: tutorial)
-is interested in prosper.com, a P2P lending site.
29 June 2006 – colo + controversy
Since Last Week:
Vinny -startup work on a C++ performance coding problem.
-made a prototype for Inliner, his cross-platform outlining application.
Graham -putting together VirtualPC images for testing.
Luke -got an apartment!
-started working on a non-forking daemon to fix fork-bombed geh.
This Week:
Vinny -packaging Inliner.
-suggests Graham and Alex integrate SWIMM with Songbird.
Graham -installing phpdev article to work on collaboration site.
Luke -geh admin issues.
22 June 2006 – embroidery social night
Since Last Week:
Vinny -work for his 3rd startup.
Luke -shorted out his MythTV system, then fixed it.
Alex -teaching high school teachers to teach CS.
Martin -needs to work on ChucK networking!
Kate -passed her physics test!
Emily -she has a class schedule and a parking space.
This week:
Graham -basic pitch following synth in SC.
Peter and Mia came to visit!
Met Will Fisher, who does Psych-out show at WREK!
15 June 2006 – fluidtoons!
This week:
Mostly uncaffienated drinks with Alex, Graham, Kate.
Attended the ATL film fest showing of Brett’s fluidtoons + R. Thomas!
Plans were made for an upcoming accordion attack!
Since last week:
Graham + ChucK rocked the laptop battle (got into finals).
8 June 2006 – atlhack for the lonely
Since Last Week:
Luke- wrote a wiki parser in antlr.
Vinny- wrote a parser for set description grammer in Java using javacc.
Graham- preparing to do SWIMM user study.
This week:
Vinny- hacked Electropaint to accept OSC.
Luke- ate the sandwich cookie of oblivion.
Graham- worked on laptop battle music.
note carefully i mentioned nothing of this by name for obvious reasons. if you’re interested, drop me a line and i’ll indulge you.
i code in scheme. it’s not real scheme. it’s some guy’s idea of what scheme should be. he redefined the syntax. it gets interpreted through mzscheme embedded in a c program. well, it’s not a exactly a c program. it becomes a c program. the original software was written in a language he invented. more like a preprocessor for c. it was his idea of what c++ should be.
where i work now, we have a guy that calls himself the gatekeeper. that’s right, zuul. his job is not to guard gozer, but to basically preform the role of a piece of software you might have heard of somewhere called cvs (and its replacement, subversion). man is smarter than the machine, right? especially at merging different versions of scheme code. especially when you don’t know scheme. it makes you more careful because you don’t know what you’re doing – you do it right because you incorporate the changes just as they appear.
in fact, i lied. he’s not where i work. he’s in a different company. through some bizarre legalese, this company possesses the QA and the production server, and will not allow us to have write access into that machine.
why we don’t have write access to the source directories of the product that our company is using is beyond me. initially, this was because we both used the same product and the same source. now, they have their own version and we have ours. but they still control that server.
you would think we could buy a server and put our version on there. considering the cost of having a server versus the cost of fixing scheme code that somehow manages to get mauled everytime it goes by zuul, you would think this issue would have been cleared up quickly.
it’s been going on for four years.
guys, we’re just janitors. we know everything that goes on, what’s wrong in the world, but all we do is mop up shit after hours.
the life of a programmer. keep your head up and don’t smell.
1 June 2006 – the longest dance marathon lasted a half-year
Since Last Week:
Andrew- is going to be an RA at GHP.
went photographing in Atlantic Station, Midtown, Five Points.
Erik- interviewed for a job.
Graham- started reading dissertation on learning musical meaning.
Alex- got ready for CampICE. learning wxPython for paper organizer.
Vinny- was bludgeoned mercilessly by asdf-install.
blogged-nostalgic about his childhood.
Tonight-
Alex and Graham- SWIMM (ijcai or bust).
Vinny- getting clsql up and working for OpenMcl (asdf sucks).
Andrew- trying to come up with a "World Records" theme for his hall.
Erik- left.
25 May 2006 – hacker social
Luke- wrote an application to annotate sync points in DVD movies.
currently reading Valis – PKDs "pink light" theory.
Alex- learning wxPython so he can make his paper organizer.
Martin- working for a CMS company in Buckhead.
FileIO in ChucK is done, need to finish networking.
Vinny- published sql code for different airline codes.
Erik- finding a way to simplify dynamic queries for homefinders.
Andrew- here for the enlightened discourse.
Graham- SWIMM and checking out of Mac clients.
Generally the order goes "who, what, where, when, why", but I think that this one is the most important, so its right up here at the top. Why we do atlHack is a complicated topic, and it has its own page. Here’s the short version:
Computing isn’t a nerd sport anymore. You probably own an iPod, might check the news on your laptop at the local coffee shop, and own a car with more than twenty computer processors in it (the days of the gear-head are gone – today’s car tuner is part computer geek). Computing is a culture: a culture of artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, industrialists, consumers, scientists, and philosophers.
… and you need to feed that culture. If you dream of a startup, or art installations, breaking into industry, or just keeping on top of trends, you can’t do it alone. None of us want to lay down in front of anyone to further the cause, but as a group, we’re simply more powerful than we are alone.
You’re not going to get a job looking at Monster.com. GeorgiaTech career services can’t wait to hook you up with some mundane position that makes them look good (they love big business and name dropping). Your only hope is to stumble onto something good, and that’s what we’re here for. Maybe you know someone who is looking for startup-fodder, maybe I know someone who is looking for you. The only way you’re going to find out is by hanging out with the gang.
Man, this wasn’t short either… it gets longer every time I rewrite it.
If you are in the Atlanta area, atlHack is you!
Maybe you aren’t in the ATL, but your spirit is here with us. If so, atlHack is still you!
We are computer people, poet hackers of the cyber frontier.
We have a weekly get-together in a local coffee shop, where we code and talk about computers.
We live in Atlanta, GA (airport code ATL), but not everyone is from here – I’m from the New England area (a part of "the northeast"). Some of us have ties to GeorgiaTech, some of us don’t.
We currently meet at Octane coffee (www.octanecoffee.com), but its quickly becoming a very popular (meaning crowded) spot. We may need a new home soon.
atlHack.org was started in the Summer of 2005 (registered 6-Jul-2005 02:31:49 UTC)
We have meet-ups every Thursday at 7:30 (or so) at Octane Coffee.
every Tuesday at 9pm (or so) -graham
Not really sure what goes in "how"…
The atlHack website is hosted on a pithy linux box on my Speakeasy DSL. It uses Drupal for content management and Subversion for source control.
We’re all geeks with ties to GeorgiaTech.
Macs are nice computers. At least, I think so… don’t ask the other guys.