jr conlin's ink stained banana

Whilst dropping of a couple of dozen home baked cookies to a co-worker (hey, i asked. She was the only one that said "yes"), i was probably a horrible influence on her family. In particular, her daughter. i kept encouraging her to cheat.

It wasn't for school, it was for her Underwater ROV group, which gave out projects she and her team had to compete on. Things like "Build a bot that can maneuver in any direction using this pile of parts." My suggestion was merely to add a few extra bits. Things like adding a ballast tank system so that she could free up two motors and add direction, or using a denser foam (like Great Stuff) instead of polystyrene so that she'd have better control over buoyancy.

Basically, the rules said that she had to use the parts she was provided, but didn't say anything about adding things. i was encouraging her to think outside of the limits. Basically, i was urging her toward hacking.

For me, hacking is cheating. It's using things in unexpected or possibly inappropriate ways to do something interesting. It's going outside of the rules while staying in the spirit. For me, that's the beauty of Hack events. It's why i encourage folks to work on projects outside of the n hour period of something like Hack Day, and one of the reasons i like to give out objectives rather than rules. i'd much rather see what sort of designs someone comes up with from "Make the fastest gravity powered racer" than "Here's a block of wood, make a car" or "Give folks a way to browse movies without a computer" rather than "Using the Netflix API and Java, create an iPhone application". Someone might create what you'd expect if you gave them a rule, or they may surprise the hell out of you. (i prefer the latter.)

Heck, if i'm in a contest with someone and another person bests my efforts in a creative way, i'll never whine and call that person a cheater for being more creative. i'll kick myself a bit for not having thought of it as well, but otherwise i'll respect that person a lot more. (Ok, granted, if i'm running a marathon and someone hails a cab, there's a bit of a difference because the ultimate goal 'Can you run this distance in the shortest period' wasn't achieved by that person. Then again, it depends on whether or not that goal was clearly specified.)

So, yes. i'm a cheater. And kinda proud of it from time to time. Likewise, i'm happy to help others cheat too, even if it means i may "lose" whatever contest. For me, the fun is the creativity, and the more folks that get that, the better.