2003 Hacks
Here are the entries for the 2003 Hack Contest. Note that these are all written in three days or less, most take advantage of strange and undocumented methods of accessing your computer. In all likelihood, they won't run at all, and any that do run will, without a doubt, cause your computer to catch fire, will kick your dog, or do something else so hideously awful that you would be foolish to even look at the source code, much less install and run the things. If you ignore the above advice, at the very least back up all your data, keep a fire extinguisher handy, and don't let the dog into the room. You have been warned, and neither the individuals who wrote the entries nor the ADHOC volunteers nor Expotech will take any blame or liability for the terrible, terrible things that will happen to you when you do what you're about to do.
Jet Lag
by Diane Capewell
I fly across the Atlantic a lot, and I suffer from jet lag. (Most times, by the time I get where I'm going, I don't even know what day it is, let alone what time it is!) I've heard that the best way to avoid jet lag is by spending as much time as possible in the sun, so your body can get cues and get used to what time it "really" is; but I spend so much time indoors, I decided I'd better come up with some way to let my trusty iBook handle this for me. So I wrote JetLag, which is an AppleScript that shows you where the sun (or the moon!) is in the sky, depending on what time it is where you currently are. (Version 1.0 doesn't take into account the time of year - sunrise is assumed to be at 6AM and sunset at 6PM - 1.0 also assumes a full moon at all times.)
Haunter
by Dylan Matthews
Haunter is an Application Enhancer (APE) module for Safari that triggers a barrage of screams and dialogs when the user visits http://www.microsoft.com/mac/. Both the screams and the dialogs say, "Why did you kill me? Why!?!?!?!", a reference to Microsoft's recent canceling of Internet Explorer for Mac, citing Safari as the reason.
Sparkie
written by Mark Darling entirely @ MacHack 18
The short description: It makes a trail of Hulk-green sparks that follows the mouse pointer around the screen.
The long description: The hack is either the worlds lamest screen saver, or if you run something like DeskEffects, a cool trail of sparks that follow your mouse pointer around the screen. It is an homage to my hack on the BeBox ( circa 1996 ) that did something very similar to this.
Unstoppable Progress
Ben Gotow
Here it is! It's sorta hacked up and really quite useless. Our hack uses the ape patching framework to make progress bars unstoppable. When the progress bar reaches it's max, the haxie takes over and draws water spewing out of the end. The window fills up with sloshing water, and um... kills the application. We tried our best, but we're not really sure that this works in all apps. Try it, but save your stuff first. You may end up with some strange stuff. Ok. So that's about it! Have fun and never stop!
Desktop Control Panel Extension
Secret Life of the Apple Logo
Carol Goodell's Hack 2003 My "hack" is a GIF animation created in Photoshop 7 and ImageReady 7.
iTunes Control
by Mike Cohen
iTunes Control is a CGI script which lets you control iTunes from any web browser running on any platform.
MountXML
The Boot
A detector mat is connected to a power supply (an apple squished into a PCB with bare copper on one side and solder plate on the other side). The signal is wired to a meter with a serial output to the mac. Another serial output is sent to a programmable power supply to run a motor to remove a release pin to send a boot to the rear of the unsuspecting employee.
Size Doesn't Matter
by Rosyna Keller
This is an APE module that rotates windows. It's based off the Windows Longhorn demo. The presenter was so darn happy with how spectacular the new Windows graphics capabilities were that it made me extremely angry. I though to myself, "Where is my TiVo remote?" (because you cannot operate the TiVo without a remote). Then I thought that OS X should easily be able to do this and so I had my hack idea.
This thing just spins windows. You click Add Window, then click a window on the main screen (I'm not going to bother with dual monitors, it's just a hack), then click some button or slider. The table items jump around. But again, it's just a quick hack that was completed in three days time on the plane ride here and in the hotel the MacHack conference is held in.
Cocoa DocTour
by Adam Goldstein
Cocoa DocTour is a NSStatusItem that displays a list of all (public) Cocoa Foundation and AppKit classes. Clicking on an item will process the appropriate header documentation file and display a new emenu with the information in it. If the menu is option-clicked instead of normal-clicked, it will display the most recently viewed file (as opposed to the class list). If you option-click before selecting a class when the app starts, a sheet will appear that warns you (who knew a sheet could be attached to a menu item?) A similar sheet will appear when you try to quit.
Spinning Clock of Death
Ever waited for the Spinning Pizza of Death (SPoD)?
The aim of this hack is to allow you to at least find out how much time you are spending while waiting for your old friend SPoD.
The idea of the hack was to have an animated gif run in the background of the clock. Turns out, Clock doesnÕt run past the first frame. Unfortunately, source code wasnÕt available in time.
So, in the tradition of Mock Hacks that would make Apple proud, you have to actually launch the gif (Clock02.gif) in a separate program (e.g. Graphic Converter), and run the Spinning Clock of Death on top of the gif. (Make sure that the gif-running program is in the foreground, or the animation may slow down!).
iPod Adventure
by David Shayer
GLCheat
by Darrin Cardani
GLCheat switches any OpenGL application into wireframe mode. Even games!
It works by patching glBegin (), glDrawElements (), and CGLSwapBuffers ().
MagicLocalizer
by Josef W. Wankerl
MagicLocalizer grabs the preprocessed text, scans it for string literals, then replaces them with translated strings. The final output is written to the instrumented file and when the instrumenter quits, the compiler picks up the new code stream and processes it.
Script Adventure
by Stephen Swift and Brian J. Geiger.
This is a game creation engine written entire in Applescript. Run the application from within the Adventure folder, then try to walk around (go inside, go south, etc), also getting items and the like. You can add new locations by making folders starting with L*, add commands, descriptions, etc. One day, it may be documented.
QTJGrab
Chris Adamson
QTJGrab is a Java app that uses QuickTime for Java (specifically its QuickDraw legacy stuff) to do screen grabs. Unlike Apple's Grab.app, it's willing to do screen grabs while you're playing a DVD. Hence the Buckaroo Banzai icon.
Interface Unbuilder
Gorman Christian
This prefpane/imputmanager combo add's system wide functionality to cocoa controls. Just turn it on and launch a cocoa app then option-click any cocoa control and drag it wherever you please. You can also drag to other applications, in which case it trys it's hardest to still call back to the original program and execute the original action.
CyberCat
by Adam Atlas
CyberCat is a framework and runtime for creating internet client programs. They are in the form of plugins, written in Cocoa and compiled into Mac OS X Bundles, and all run from one central program which implements the runtime.
wait
David Steinbrunner
This project came about because the theme of MacHack this year, 2003, involved Apple's wait cursor other with known as the pinwheel and the and beachball. MacHack has a tradition of producing useless software and I figured a screensaver fit the bill.
WTA Death Watch
Gordon Worley
Motivate you `gently' to get back to work. People are busy dying.
X-MENu 2 Unexpected End of File
by Joshua Juran
Unexpected End of File provides Mac OS X compatibility (with respect to the placement of the 'Quit' menu item) to Mac OS. It has been tested with System 7.1 running on an emulated Mac Plus.
Warphack
Mark Johns
This is an APE module that does bizarre things to Carbon windows when you drag and close them. You must have APE installed.
ClickAndAHalf
David Underwood
Run the app in the build directory. Kill it on the terminal when done.
Click and a half in the Finder.
AirPong
AirPong Server by Paul Scandariato, written in REALbasic AirPong Client by Jon Johnson, written in Cocoa/Obj-C
AirPong plays pong over a network. We set up an ad hoc AirPort network to do this, since several controlled conditions are required.
GUI Kablooie
Andrew Pontious and Mac Murrett
Get some windows a' movin', and blow 'em up! Space bar to shoot, arrow keys for movement.
DADEL: Dynamic Data Localize
Greg Parker
Summary: DADEL dynamically localizes programs at runtime by translating the program text automatically. This prototype implementation contains two language plugin modules, Swedish Chef and L33t Speak.
EdgeWarp
Avi Drissman and Nicholas Riley
Control one Mac from another by moving the pointer off an edge of the screen. Drag and drop works too!
SetMonitor
Tom Saxton
The SETI Monitor project provides a way for SETI@Home users to run the SETI@Home app on multiple machines and monitor their progress through a simple server-client communication process. The monitor shows status on each client's current work unit as well as stats on the work units processed by that client. A quick glance at the display will let you know if any of the registered clients have stopped working and need attention.
Antiqualc
Pasha Roberts
An implementation of Genaille-Lucas Rulers, invented in 1890 or so, which were an elegant graphical optimization of Napier's Bones, invented in 1617. They are a painful way to multiply and divide, and it seemed that they needed to be computerized in order to be more useful.
FishEyeMenus
by Ben Chess
Fish eye menus were the latest craze to hit the Human Interface Research scene, oh, at least 3 years ago. Apparently no one considered it worthwhile to get an implementation on MacOS, especially X. This is that implementation.
In a nutshell, it takes large menus, menus long enough that they would normally need to scroll, and shrinks them down so that they fit on the screen. As you move through the options, the items around where you are magnify. Think Dock magnification brought to your menu bar.
DecryptErrorMessage
by Isaac Wankerl
underthedesktop
by Andy Furnas and Noah Spies
This is a really wonderful (read: horrid) hack to see what lies behind Finder.... It's really your job to decide what you'll find. Launch the application to enable the Finder to be minimized, click the cursor on the desktop to minimize it, and let what lies behind reveal itself.
alCrashda
by Keith Stattenfield
alCrashDa, while running, will continually monitor your active applications to see if any of them appear to have weapons if mass destruction. If any are detected, it will activate the anti-weapons-of-mass-destruction mechanisms, and give the application time to show that it does not possess said weapons of mass destruction. If it fails to demonstrate this, it will be terminated with extreme predjudice.
Warning: Some false positives may occur; use at your own risk.
spuds
Dick Furnas
spud + spot = spod
A mathematical implementaion of the SPOD
executed in Mathematica and rendered as web pages.
Packet the Magic Dragon
By: Will Pazner
Displays a fire-breathing dragon for every packet to or from your machine!
Packetplay
by K. Chris Kirby
Project that uses pcap library to sniff packets off of the net.
Takes the packet info and plays a note based on the packet checksum.
produces music similar to algolian ceremonial rhythms.
MoodRing
Authors: Ken Arnold, James Duncan Davidson, Daniel Steinberg
This is the client application for MoodRing, a Jini based Java powered collaborative mood analyzer. Simply run the application (yes, a MoodRing server needs to be running on the local network) and you'll be able to register your mood. Your mood will be averaged with everyone else's mood.
iAnalyseThis
Douglas Clarke, Tim Knox, Chris Hinricks, Gordon Warley, Annal Ziegler, Ben Stiglitz, Brian Lundgren, Leonard Rosenthol, Keith Stattenfield, David Underwood, Matt Woldenberg, Nigel Clarke, Lally Singh, and Chad Milios
Take a folder of code and anaylyse it for complexity.
Show Earlier Versions
by Lisa Lippincott and Marshall Clow.
"Show Earlier Versions", or SEV for short, is a system for saving all changes to your documents. It consists of two componets: an application saves copies of all your documents every time you change them, and a Contextual Menu plugin, which lets you navigate to these saved versions.
iTunes Location Launcher
Joshua Benjamin
I have a PowerBook. Linux PC's are cheap. I have a lot of storage space in my Linux box, but only 30GB on my PowerBook. I keep all my Mp3's on my Linux PC and only a few gigs of them on my PowerBook. This quick hack lets you more easily switch iTunes libraries so you're entire system doesn't become UNSTOPPABLE!
SPOD was here
Stinkin Badges
by John Vink
[/PastShows/MacHack18]
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Last updated 2006-03-29