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Justin and Mark voyage to a Detroit-area Holiday Inn to attend perhaps the most offbeat computer conference in existence: MacHack.
Justin and I just got back from MacHack 2000 and, as always, we wrote a hack for the infamous Hack Contest. This year, our hack was called Doggie-Style Windows and it won the Best Student Hack of the show. As a result, we were awarded all sorts of geeky goodies like a couple Lego Mindstorms programmable lego sets, copies of CodeWarrior, some adobe products, SoundJam MP, and amazingly cool 4-button USB laser mice with scrollwheels.
For those of you who haven't heard of MacHack, its basically a 72-hour programming festival centered around the Macintosh platform. Its attended by all the top-notch developers and there are numerous sessions on current programming techniques delivered by industry-proffessionals and Apple engineers... And when we say 72 hours, we mean it. The keynote starts at midnight of the first day and the conference is in swing for the ensuing three days--straight.
MacHack renowned for its tradition of giving out really cheap tacky awards for Hack entries-- usually purchased at Duke's Hardware, an ancient Dearborn area hardware shop. For our entry, we received a steel Duckbill Samson Dog Anchor Kit. What really honored us, however, is that we became the first students ever awarded the coveted Victor A. Trap mousetrap, a prize reserved for the Best Hack of the Show (the mousetrap ceremoniously given to us is a slightly smaller version of the traditional trap, meant for use in catching small mice rather than rats).
Update!
Our local newspaper recently ran a story about our MacHack antics, complete with a snazzy color photo of us. Snoogans! Click here to read it!
About the Hack
Doggie-Style Windows is an extension which patches several window manager calls to make all your background windows run around on the screen, trying to avoid the screen-space of the selected front window-- All while providing hilariously annoying barking noises. More info is provided in the included Readme if you feel inclined to try it out. Full Source Code is included.
 Click here to Download Doggie-Style Windows 1.0. (Requires PowerPC)
Picture Info: (left)Justin, Mark and William "Foobaz" MacKay in the MacHack Machine room. (middle) Its Mark and beloved mac columnist, Andy Ihnatko. (right) Mark, Apple Engineer Geoge Warner, and Justin stand in front of the machine room minutes after their presentation of the award winning hack, Doggie-Style Windows. |
