QR-to-QR: https://github.com/sradc/QR-to-QR
The app lets phones send messages to eachother via QR codes. The two phones have to be put face to face.
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zUBj8X5EWA
Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
271–280 of 422 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#272I think most of the stuff I make falls into this category...
My favourites are probably these two:
- a tool I made called gif-to-ansi (https://dom111.github.io/gif-to-ansi/) which converts an animated GIF to a stream of ANSI escapes in a shell script. I made this because I wanted to loop a GIF image in terminal when I mistyped a command to train me to do better typing.
- a 26 "language" polyglot (https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/209669/9365) where each starts with a different letter of the alphabet and prints out the alphabet less it's starting char (e.g. Bash prints out ACDEF...). This was just a puzzle that nerd sniped me, I really enjoyed it though and even got to learn a little APL for it, as well as brush up on shells. I highly recommend using sites like this if you want to explore a languages depths, I used it to learn Perl for a previous job and still play around in Perl today!
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#273Modular space station builder:
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#274I wrote a 64-bit clock that would just flip one bit on a 64-square grid every tenth of a second. I was kind of happy that at some point in maybe a few billion years, that clock would show a smiley face or something like that.
This is also how I got to read about Beckett-Gray codes. Needless to say I didn't find a 64-bit Beckett-Gray code, though I did try a little bit.
The thing ran in Flash, so, that's that.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#275I invented a programming language where you use Unicode box-drawing characters to draw a structure of boxes and lines: ╓───╖ ║ ! ║ ╙─┬─╜ ┌───╖ ╔═══╗ ┌─────┴─────┤ > ╟──╢ 2 ║ │ ╘═╤═╝ ╚═══╝ ╔════╗ ┌───╖ │ │ ║ −1 ╟──┤ + ╟─┴─┐ │ ╚════╝ ╘═╤═╝ │ │ ┌─┴─╖ │ ╔═══╗ │ │ ! ║ │ ║ 1 ║ │ ╘═╤═╝ │ ╚═╤═╝ │ │ ┌─┴─╖ ┌─┴─╖ │ │ │ × ╟──┤ ? ╟──┘ │ ╘═╤═╝ ╘═╤═╝ └─────┘ │ The language is called Funciton (pronounced: /ˈfʌŋkɪtɒn/) and the above…
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Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#276A Docker image in less than 1000 bytes:
https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/05/22/a-docker-image-in-less-t...
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#277In MS classic ASP I made a chart control that was a 1000x1000 table where each cell was 1 pixel wide. No padding or spacing. Then I would loop through each table cell in each row, determine if it was in the pie chart circle or not and then if it was in the circle use some trig to figure out which pie piece it was and set the bgcolor accordingly. It actually worked.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#278I like inserting art, like the header to https://simonsarris.com A village pops up. There is no point to it. You can click to make more houses. You can right-click to drag things around. When I touch it again I think I'll add a sun and moon that track the time of day for wherever the user is located. Actually the footer has art too, each page has a semi-randomly assigned illustration from public-domain (old) art that…
If the moon is rising when the sun sets, it will be a full moon. But your graphic shows a partial phase :)
On Earth, with a single Sun.
But apparently this planet has some very strong radiation protection, possibly synthetic, that blocks out the strong ultraviolet light from their second Sun. That ultraviolet is reflected back in the visible spectrum from the surface of their moon though - thus giving the appearance of a crescent during the entire cycle. The "dark side" is still lit, just lit less.
That was fun ))
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#279I like inserting art, like the header to https://simonsarris.com A village pops up. There is no point to it. You can click to make more houses. You can right-click to drag things around. When I touch it again I think I'll add a sun and moon that track the time of day for wherever the user is located. Actually the footer has art too, each page has a semi-randomly assigned illustration from public-domain (old) art that…
I love the page. I find it very inspiring :)
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#280[deleted]