(Turns out, I have no idea when the Germanian war that started in 17 AD ended, but if you happen to know, feel free to reach out.[0])
Hello Hackers-
Thanks to GetGlue for hosting us! The pizza was great, the drinks, they were sugary, and stickers oh so gluey!
Puzzle? Psshht! Puzzles take time to write, to do, and did I mention someone has to grade them? Round 17 was too ad-hoc to put that together, and the crowd that came would have aced it anyway.
I will, however, give you the answer to last month's wrap-upzzle[1]:
(define (empty) (lambda (k) '()))
(define (assoc dict key value) (lambda (k) (if (eq? k key) value (dict k))))
(define (lookup dict key) (dict key))
scheme> (lookup (assoc (assoc (empty) 'hello "world") 'world "hello") 'hello) => "world"
Braindump is back![2] That's right, America's favorite Meetup (which shut down to free up more time for Hacker School) has turned into a wee-wittle segment at Hack and Tell--but hey, it's something! Want to do a Braindump? Send me 3 blood samples, $5 US and a self addressed stamped envelope. (Or, ask next time there's a call for speakers.)
This month, Malcolm was in town for Hack and Tell^W^W^Wa wedding, and braindump'd a bit about what he knows of phantom typing in OCaml.
The Refuge Project aims to provide a fully decentralized and open source data platform. What does that mean? Well, it means that you'll have easy access to any data you shove into it.
Like Grant, I have like 3 words, awesome tentacle physics!
Peter showed off his pure JS/CSS/HTML5 piano, which generates WAV files that are then data-URI encoded. In other words, only ASCII data is loaded from the web server, the rest, as they say is magic.
The visualizations were a little bit primitive, but hey, I guess that's what you get for studying Computer Science instead of cello at Julliard.
I mentioned during Round 17 that the reason Hack and Tell exists is due in part due to the Freehacker's Union, which Zed created when he lived in NYC. So having Zed stop by and see the community we've created was certainly a treat.
These days Zed spends lots of time teaching programming by writing books. They're freely available, but if you use them, and like them, send him a few bucks so he can write more!
Need to load hundreds of pictures in a web browser, but don't want to bog down the experience? Well, scrollstream attempts to solve this problem removing things from the DOM that aren't visible, and loading new items in when they should be visible. It's dynamism at its best!
Dan showed us dygraphs, an interactive, zoomable time series plotting library for the web. It's pretty cool, supports oodles of data points, has lots of tests and documentation. Really, it's like some holy grail of software projects, which means if you have a use for it, you should seriously consider it.
Harvey allows you to do conditional JS loading via CSS media queries. It has the concept of "Coins," which control how the JS is loaded/executed. Personally, I'm just glad someone put a Dent into this problem.
Aidan talked about his JSONP proxy, which allows you to do JSONP with any JSON API on the web. He could have saved himself some trouble though, since the Meetup API supports JSONP[3]. Nevertheless, it might be useful for someone else!
Have something you'd like to present? Have something to Braindump? Have a (free) space that can hold 80-100+ people and don't mind some guests? We're starting to plan Round 18, so let us know if you can help us out! Call for presenters coming soon!
HOPE is invading Hotel Pennsylvania yet again. This time, it takes place on July 13-15. For tickets or more information checkout hopenumbernine.net.
That's it! Hope to see you all at Round 18!
Happy hacking,
Andrew and James.
[0]: Wikipedia has been lest helpful. (but, I didn't really look all that much... Yeah, my fault. [1]: Have a more clever solution in a language that doesn't have closures? Share it! [2]: ... and this time it's personal. [3]: Callbacks