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Own up HN: What are your craziest abandoned projects?

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Re: Own up HN: What are your craziest abandoned projects?

#51

Post by dkersten »

kidko wrote: post #48
apgwoz wrote: post #20

I have a whole directory on my personal laptop of abandoned projects, that I've worked on over the past few years. One that I still would love to see built on is the concept of a Fisheye Editor. I wrote a prototype in Python Tk: http://apgwoz.com/fisheye-edit/ Another idea I had, which I thought was good, was building a Twitter like site to track what you were eating, and marry the concept with Reddit style voting an…

This seems like it could go places, but I can't seem to grab a copy of the file. The server keeps running it!

Same for me. Pity, I really wanted to try this.

Re: Own up HN: What are your craziest abandoned projects?

#53

Post by mtrimpe »

brianlash wrote: post #36

http://FleeTheShame.com A "Post Secret" type of a blog that would allow people to anonymously own up to those times they broke the law and got away with it. Bad idea all around.

I actually kind of like it. I do hope you weren't planning on making any money off of it though ;)

Re: Own up HN: What are your craziest abandoned projects?

#54

Post by euccastro »

8plot wrote: post #45

A mechanical ant trap/killer to be the only "conventional weapon" for my war on ants. I attract a line of ants to eat the bait (in my case, cat food), then periodically suck (or blow) ants into an un-escapable garbage bag, but only a few at a time to keep the line of ants stable. (or until the entire colony is exhausted) Compared to the traditional poison method, it is much more satisfying for me to dispose of a garb…

Is it too inconvenient to keep your (including your cat's) food out of their reach, so they'll just go away?

Re: Own up HN: What are your craziest abandoned projects?

#55

Post by pizza »

tocomment wrote: post #16
rick2047 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mine was something similar to hoppy.What I basically tried to do was write a ruby script that generated newer ruby scripts.And what did all these ruby scripts do?they scaned the long long equation and then try to put in different values in it and solve them for one variable. All this was so random and vague that I had to abandon it after about 66 minutes into it.

I made a Python script that copied itself and launched the copies (It had the ability to mutate too though by randomly changing the copies). I thought eventually it would evolve into a sentient being. But it would just tie up all my resources and freeze the computer. One time something interesting happened though. I noticed the latest copies had commented out the mutation part of the code. They had "evolved" to not m…

I'd love to see that source-code.

Re: Own up HN: What are your craziest abandoned projects?

#56

Post by jbr »

elboheme wrote: post #21

This: http://mentorapp.org/ For me this was a potential solution to one of the fundamental problems with education: it is full of unchallenging, unrelated-to-life, contrived tasks. When any process (creative writing, math, coding) is harnessed to a fascinating, meaningful-to-students goal I believe you get motivation. And creativity. So this service would just help mentors and apprentices in all sorts of fields find…

Wow, I've been thinking of building something like this lately fairly seriously. Why did you stop?

I wasn't able to find anything at mentorapp.org; has the hosting expired?

I'd love to talk about possibly collaborating on this (although I think it would be tough to monetize, so I see it as more of a "pro-bono side project"). My contact info is in my profile.

Re: Own up HN: What are your craziest abandoned projects?

#57

Post by apgwoz »

kidko wrote: post #48
apgwoz wrote: post #20

I have a whole directory on my personal laptop of abandoned projects, that I've worked on over the past few years. One that I still would love to see built on is the concept of a Fisheye Editor. I wrote a prototype in Python Tk: http://apgwoz.com/fisheye-edit/ Another idea I had, which I thought was good, was building a Twitter like site to track what you were eating, and marry the concept with Reddit style voting an…

This seems like it could go places, but I can't seem to grab a copy of the file. The server keeps running it!

Sorry about that. Dreamhost moved me to a different server, and I haven't had a chance to get everything working again. In the mean time, I've copied it to: http://apgwoz.com/hacks/fisheyeedit.py

EDIT: The actual link is working again. which is actually much more up to date.

Re: Own up HN: What are your craziest abandoned projects?

#58

Post by apgwoz »

dkersten wrote: post #51
kidko wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like it could go places, but I can't seem to grab a copy of the file. The server keeps running it!

Same for me. Pity, I really wanted to try this.

Sorry. I explained in your sibling comment. I put it here: http://apgwoz.com/hacks/fisheyeedit.py

Re: Own up HN: What are your craziest abandoned projects?

#59

Post by suicidespam »

purely for artistic purposes and social commentary, do not take this too seriously ...

* welcome to the "anti-social" web

* http://www.suicidespam.com

* website caters to those who really hate the world, this life, and want to get out ...

* ... and to make the biggest splash they possibly can in the process

* website offers high-quality, expensive video/audio equipment, great high-power wireless/satellite IP services connectivity, and great battery life

* website customers purchase the equipement (they're about to kill themselves, they'll charge $15,000 to their credit card, no problem)

* they record their own suicide with the equipment

* beforehand they register 100, 200, 500 e-mail address of their dear friends, relatives, immediate family (intro, premier, and gold levels)

* the equipment transmits their suicide to central servers ...

* which then uploads HD video of their suicide to youtube.com ...

* ... and makes sure their 100, 200, or 500 contacts gets direct links to watch their suicide

* ... plus 500,000 additional random e-mail addresses

revenue potential is excellent ... suiciders don't care about debt, they'll pay anything!! this will be a viral product!! spread by word-of-death!!

i'd like to pitch this seriously at some VC conference. let me into y-combinator or tech-crunch or some other startup contest. i'm sure someone will take me up on the proposal!

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