Hello Hackers.
Thank you to The Ladders for hosting Round 30, and providing pizza and alcohol. Not unlike any other company in NYC, they're hiring, and because they were so nice to us, we repeat that here. They've hired a few Hacker Schoolers, none of which run away, which says something good about their culture. Reach out to John Connolly if you're interested: jeconnol@gmail.com
Go-yo is a free (as in freedom, but also in beer), self-hosted yo-yo for email. It allows you to automatically bounce emails back into your inbox at future dates, as reminders, but without having to give up access to your email to a third party (like Boomerang, Streak, LinkedIn, etc. all do).
Regex Blaster is an arcade-style game to practice regular expressions, with an ncurses interface. You are attacked by "attack strings" and must defeat them by matching them with a regular expression. You must also avoid matching "bystander" strings with the same expression. [If you're looking for a game to write, please turn this into Regex Munchers clone! -- Ed]
Shok is a command-line shell that keeps a "real" programming language available but syntactically separate from the command-line (so it doesn't get in the way of running programs).
Daniel presented a LIFX multicolor LED controller which takes advantage of the Leap Motion gesture sensor. It allows you to explore the HSL color space, physically, rather than in 2 dimensions. [I'm fairly certain that performance artists would flock to an expansion of this idea, if any of you can help make it happen -- Ed]
Wipes pipes stdin to your browser via WebSockets. [Don't use this in production, kids! -- apg]
There are plenty of online resources to learn the popular dynamic programming languages such as Ruby, Python and Javascript. Poor old SQL, despite its omnipresence, gets no love. No more! Missql Command seeks to provide, and does an excellent job so far, at providing a Try Ruby-esque tutorial for SQL.
Myrddin is a new programming language aiming to live somewhere between C and ML. It supports type inference, unsafe pointers, and has loads of potential!
Stew, like Hack and Tell's own James Dennis, is a huge Rubik's Cube fan. He took this fandom, some CSS 3D transforms, and some black hair, turned it into an amazing tool for exploring the cube, gray hair, a logo, and part of an exhibition currently on display that the Liberty Science Center. Oh, and it was blessed by Mr. Ernő Rubik himself. [Despite all the accomplishments, we'd still be unwilling to trade gray hair for them -- Ed]
The cube is not on Stew's site yet, but will be open sourced and explorable soon.
Musicpack takes an MP3, and optionally it's lyrics, and creates a music video out of it. It searches the gif sharing site Giphy, stitches them together and provides 2-5 minutes of pure entertainment at a time.
Wanna host the next Hack And Tell? We'd love to hear from you! We don't go anywhere that can't hold at least 100 of us, btw.
You may have missed it, but there has been a lot of talk about sexism and racism in the media, the tech press and on the mailing list recently. Some of this relates to the NBA banning the L.A. Clippers owner for his recent actions, but other things are much more close to home. We've seen, in the past, sexism at Hack and Tell, and GitHub is now famous for events that have occurred there recently.
As a community, we must ensure that each and everyone of us feels welcome, and isn't threatened by comments or actions of their peers. Since Hack and Tell isn't a multi-million dollar company, has no capital, and therefore no HR department, we want to encourage all of you to become the Police--but don't be fascists. It's important to both James and Andrew that everyone knows it's fine to piss all over jerks and defend the honor of those who need a righteous hand. We're anti-racist, anti-sexist to the core, and want to encourage everyone else to be as well. But, we can only encourage that behavior, or else we'd be no better than a sexist, racist, homophobe.
The point of this can be summed up so much better by the Gorilla Biscuits, so sit around at home, grab a box of gorilla biscuits and watch "Things We Say," performed at This is Hardcore, 2012 in Philadelphia, PA.
Lyrics:
Humor's got a place like all things. Be
Aware of the pain it can sometimes bring.
A joke to you might not be so funny, so
Take the time and think it out before you
Open up your mouth.
I can't believe the things we say. A
Cutting word can ruin days. I can't
Believe the things we say. Now I wish I
Hadn't spoke. Can't you learn to take a
Fucking joke.
But no ones laughing. I wish I could
Crack a smile, but I can't. I know he's
Such a fucking jerk. But jerks hurt too,
And I'm not that cool that I can laugh. I
See because it's happened to me and I
Think I was an asshole when I said what I
Said. It's just a sick sense of humor rolls
Around in my head. Cause we've had our
Fun at your expense and that's wrong.
And we know it. You said we were
Friends. For friendship's sake, let's give
It a break.
Adios, hackers.
Andrew & James