Most hackathons are about coming up with innovative new ideas and making plausible startup prototypes. TerribleHack is different. This one is about having fun and programming for the sake of programming, even if it means reinventing a less efficient wheel.

TerribleHack has become a beloved tradition in Waterloo, more people attend it with every iteration and it keeps getting progressively worse (better). This term we were tasked with running the largest TerribleHack yet with 100+ hackers attending. We were absolutely amazed at the quality of submissions and the quality of work that our hackers were able to create in just 12 hours.

Peoples Choice: ADWEAR

Monetize all the content!

Did you ever wish you could monetize your terminal? We didn’t. But now you can! With ADWEAR your terminal now has ads, sidebars and popups allowing you to discover new brands and content while you are trying to focus on important tasks. The end goal is to be acquired by Google Adwords and have ADWEAR become part of the advertising portfolio.

View the project on github: https://github.com/Uberi/Adwear

Technically Stupidest: Gravity Launcher

Stationary is so boring!

It’s so boring when all of your app icons are stationary on your homescreen. It would be so much better that they all moved in accordance with gravity anytime you tilted your phone. Each app on your home screen is free to move based on the tilt of your android device.

View the project on github: https://github.com/bentekkie/Gravitylauncher

Bad Data: Dayder

Live correlations generated via rust web server

Dayder is a modern fast reactive site for finding spurious correlations in lots of time series data sets. Starting with the data set of various causes of death over time, because it was the funniest in a morbid sort of way.

View Github: https://github.com/trishume/dayder

Best Meme: Pepe! Wink

Our hacker engaging in a wink

Pepe Wink (Best Meme) is a VR project using the oculus where you wink at a Pepe (here is what a Pepe looks like) and it disappears and another one appears. This is because Pepes are naturally shy and if you wink at them, they die (according to the hackers who created the project).

Honourable Mention: Grammer Ungooder

Who needs grammer?

Replaces correctly spelled words with a commonly misspelled version. The team compiled a list of common grammatical errors (and other annoying things), and each time the extension sees one of these it swaps it to the other one (with about a 30% chance, so as to keep some subtlety).

Devpost Link: http://devpost.com/software/grammer-ungooder

Running Terrible Hacks:

I will never eat pancakes again. I’m not exactly sure why we assumed that cooking pancakes for all our 100+ hackers was a good idea, but we still did it. This did not come without a myriad of problems including having to transport two grills and a blender to a lecture hall and then subsequently triggering all the circuit breakers because we used too much energy. In the end, we had to move all our equipment all around the building until it worked. We also probably violated around 20 fire regulations, but that is beside the point!

Some photos from the event:

$8.99 for 250 pancakes. Bless you Costco.

The live pancake making process.

Hard at work or hardly working?

Way too much pizza!

Thinking about the important things.

Hacking away.

Thanks for reading!

Special thanks to BlueCat Networks, Shopify and Robert Gawdzik for helping cover food costs.