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sunspeck

96 karma · joined July 21, 2011

I am an ecological designer in Santa Cruz, California. http://twitter.com/andym http://sunspeck.com
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sunspeck··on Show HN: PolyGen App, turn gradients and photos into pretty low poly patterns
Haven't tried it out yet, but looks nice.

Surprised to see that this wasn't authored by Mario Klingemann, creator of the very clever LowpolyBot:

http://lowpolybot.tumblr.com/

sunspeck··on Classic arcade game TRON on a cloth modelling grid
The TRON/Lightcycle genre is at its very best as a PvP(xN) game. Haven't logged in for years, but there used to be dozens of very active servers running Armagetron Advanced, and it looks like it's still going:

http://armagetronad.org/index.php

A very fun, fast paced, social, arcade-like gaming environment for someone not invested enough in gaming to delve into the likes of WoW or similar.

sunspeck··on NYC Rat Map
Have you considered a chloropleth[1]? Similar effect to a heat map but likely much easier to implement.

Just shade each of your already defined regions by [sightings/area].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choropleth_map

sunspeck··on There is no 'healthy' microbiome
I take this article to be an argument against snake-oil panaceas, just broadly overstated in its phrasing. Not a generally useful piece, but a healthy rebuttal to the woo reductionists.
sunspeck··on New clue to Voynich manuscript mystery
I am also interested to see what comes of this, but it's been pointed out that is paper is somewhat suspect with seemingly little input from Nahuatl language experts or prior literature on the Voynich manuscript.

Here is a refutation by one of the leading "hoax" proponents: http://hydeandrugg.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/hoaxing-the-voyn...

In it, he explains the prevalence of half-baked origin theories as a function of several psychological and probabilistic phenomena:

* Pareidolia * Confirmation bias * The birthday problem

This is an interesting discussion, as it provides a generalized and broadly applicable framework for why we often see things where they don't indeed exist.

sunspeck··on RapGenius Growth Hack Exposed
Far cleverer RapGenius growth hack exposed:

RG has seemingly generated a unique URL w/<title> for each line of each of each song listing. Google slurps these up and gives them prominent SERP rankings, though the links are all just doorways redirecting to the main song page. (Albeit, redirecting to an anchor at the lyric queried, with highlighting effect and annotation popup to boot. Pretty friendly UX.)

Eg. http://rapgenius.com/9208/Ice-cube-it-was-a-good-day/Today-i...

Thus one song with a remix or two might become 469 search results: https://www.google.com/search?q=And+if+I+hit+the+switch%2C+I...

sunspeck··on Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?
Thanks. It was an exhausting and inspiring day, and your support builds the inspiration. I've slapped together a blog with some photos for now, and more info to come. http://growquad.tumblr.com/

I'll be documenting this project such that this sorta endeavor is more easily replicable at other secondary schools. Spreading the word would be awesome.

If you're able willing to donate, it would be well appreciated. We are totally unfunded at this point: minor expenses thus far have been covered out of pocket by the organizers (schoolteachers and gardeners). But we will need need flora, irrigation equipment, and building materials in the near future... I've put a WePay link on the blog.

You can find my email through my profile if you have any questions.

sunspeck··on Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?
Like the whiz-bang Lawton stuff? Any other good ones? Nice idea. I'm not much of a videographer, but I'm trying to document this project with some footage as well.
sunspeck··on Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?
If you're referring to physical/material kits, that'd be difficult, as the elements of life don't package well.

If you're talking about packaging informational materials, that's an interesting idea, as I've been developing much of the design and theory on a voluntary basis. I don't see this as a commercial project, but Kickstarter funding might be appropriate.

Interested to hear what you think such a kit would include?

Regardless, I'll be documenting the project at http://growquad.tumblr.com/

sunspeck··on Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?
I just slapped together http://growquad.tumblr.com/ with some photos from today's first work day. Will be posting more updates about design, implementation, and progress.
sunspeck··on Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?
A biodiverse, edible forest garden in the center of an public high school. We are breaking ground with a team of students in about an hour.

This is (very) cool because it will expose adolescents to a variety of concepts, perspectives, and phenomena that are severely lacking from most urbanized places.

sunspeck··on What tweaks do you use in your Macintosh?
f.lux http://justgetflux.com/

As much a brain hack as a Mac hack. #1 recommendation.

sunspeck··on Old Dog in a 2.0 World
This guy basically brought the internet to our little seaside town decades ago.

Looks like he's now trying to foster a startup culture here just over the mountains from the Valley.

sunspeck··on Those Who Care Not For Trees
Treeshruggers
sunspeck··on Coffee Linked to Vision Loss
This not being a causal study, I wonder if higher coffee consumption is linked to other factors that may or may not cause glaucoma... say, computer work.
sunspeck··on Ask HN: Math,how many unique melodies can be created?
You may be interested in David Cope's work with his program Emily Howell. It can create quite convincing (and beautiful) new works in the style of any composer, given a sufficient input database.
sunspeck··on Getting Your Product Into the Habit Zone
45 minutes, zero comments, and the site is down. Overdose?
sunspeck··on The Obvious Corp's preview of Medium
Another walled garden?

What is the advantage of posting to this service? Increased readership? Huge font?

I don't see IP terms posted anywhere... Or any reason to be excited about this.

sunspeck··on Ask HN: Is there a good analytics tool for single page web apps?
Google Analytics might meet your needs if you script Events into your app.

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...

sunspeck··on ScreenB.in, short URLs for screenshots
Very nice, useful.

I find the scroll overflow on the screenshot display to be clunky and uncomfortable, though. I think I'd prefer a shrink-to-fit/click-to-expand situation.

Also, I tried pasting a ~1mb JPG photo, and the spinner has been going for a few minutes now. Might wanna throw an error or something in weird edge cases.

sunspeck··on Ask HN: What's the business model for a Tumblelog?
An intriguing idea... can you extrapolate on the possible value of deriving histograms or feature data from pop art?
sunspeck··on Opportunity - A Better Way to Consume Facebook?
I expect it likely that Facebook would gladly break any software that alters how users interact with their datastore.
sunspeck··on I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.
This is awesome. Although I find the upside-down-and-backwards guitar chord diagrams rather jarring.
sunspeck··on Census to launch API for demographic, economic app builders next month
Or right now, if you're impatient:

http://www.census.gov/developers/ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4076253

sunspeck··on Urban trees reveal income inequality
I've actually been working on this a couple days since first seeing the PerSquareMile post...

I guess the cat's out of the bag now, here's my proof of concept:

http://sunspeck.com/urban-forest-computer-vision/

There is a bit of extant literature on this, also, you'll see the link in there. Pretty interesting.

sunspeck··on Ask HN: Is Android profitable?
See also: http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/20/how-android-developers-can-...
sunspeck··on I've just finished the world's most gratuitous Flickr photo browser
The splotchy background is equally gratuitous :)
sunspeck··on Show HN: Super simple social poll app
The radio buttons don't act properly... You can light up multiple buttons. The whole two-click-to-vote thing is probably unnecessary. Otherwise, nice, simple.
sunspeck··on Ask HN: What HTML5 features have you found most useful?
<canvas> doesn't make my life easier, but it makes it more interesting.
sunspeck··on Show HN: SureDone
> it syncs with eBay, allows you to upload hundreds of images in bulk, and lets you ship multiple orders with Fedex, UPS, and more.

It should say this on your website?

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