Hack 19 – October 2021

A spooktacular day, we saw themes both old and new! A return to the hacks of yesteryear, as well as some innovative new directions. Although we still have not returned to our erstwhile prolific podcasting, maybe we’ll just save it up for an end-of-the-year mega-cast…

Things People Did

• Dan updated his IOT hackings to now use websockets from a phone, and do all sorts of fancy controlling of a light. The light wasn’t immediately available for comment, but by all accounts it was deemed a very bright idea.

• Max did something with a “hacky pygame-based UI for defunct hardware”, and dropped a pic in the general channel, so presumably it all went smashingly.

• Ruth was the most productive member of the group, finishing a tech talk, drinking some exquisite bubble tea, and sewing a skirt…oh yes, and she also went for a run.

• Ryan got jealous of the bubble tea, then switched his hack from ruby to python and everything “just worked” (:tm:).

• Rowan joined the crew, and immediately launched a pitched battle with the Twitter API. After authenticating, the rest was cake, and everything ended up with a nice bot that gives people nice wishes.

• Adam was on call for a bunch of services the previous night, so only managed to close a bar down at 3AM with harlem shaking in a Mandalorian helmet…though it did technically happen on the hackday.