Pointless things online with Samosas, Andamanese People, and Tarnetar Festival
snk, osm-haiku, Donut, fancytalk, awesome-useless-websites
What are we discovering this week?
Hey there,
This is August, Independence month of India, where on 15 August, we celebrate our Independence Day, hoist a flag in our societies, sing the national anthem and get together for a plate of samosas and snacks, at least that’s what we do in mine.
There is still a lot of pointless rules that the society (not my housing society but society in general) has built for itself, honestly, it’s different for every person you meet.
And developers and designers have gone ahead and embraced that pointlessness and built things around it. I feel like I am adding 2 ends of a spectrum here in this newsletter, on one hand, it is Samosas and India and on the other some pointless projects.
I am sure you will have fun read about both because I am while writing this!!
snk by Platane
🟩⬜ Generates a snake game from a github user contributions graph and output a screen capture as animated svg or gif
Available as github action. Automatically generate a new image at the end of the day. Which makes for great github profile readme
💻: TypeScript
⭐ 364 👀 6 🍴 40 🚧 0
osm-haiku by satellitestudio
Generate pointless haikus about a place from OpenStreetMap data
Quite warm here
This lingering scent
That’s how it is in Ahmedabad District
💻: JavaScript
⭐ 25 👀 1 🍴 11 🚧 4
Donut by petercunha
🤖 A JavaScript implementation of the infamous "donut.c" program
How the hell...?
That's a good question. It's mostly trigonometry witchcraft and some Z-Buffering. For a deeper explanation of how it works, read this article by A1K0N.
💻: JavaScript
⭐ 10 👀 2 🍴 4 🚧 0
fancytalk by dschulman
A pointless bit of wordplay
Fancytalk is a pointless but sometimes amusing bit of wordplay. You can think of it as an English-to-English translator: given a sentence, it replaces every word with a synonym, choosing synonyms to optimize for criteria like word length or alliteration.
In its current state, fancytalk doesn't work exactly, but does manage to produce things like this:
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The straightaway dark-brown slyboots alternated over the faineant frankfurter.
💻: Java
⭐ 5 👀 1 🍴 0 🚧 0
awesome-useless-websites by @scriptexbg
Welcome to the most useless place on Github.
Here you will find an extensive list of useless (and funny) websites. I knew about some of them, some of them were told to me by friends. I decided that I want more so I started googling random stuff, and that’s how I got the rest. But, believe me, the internet is full of way more useless stuff than this.
Instant Rimshot - Badum tss...
Non-Stop Nyan Cat! - It's a non-stop Nyan Cat! You can even share how much time you spent watching it. Also, there are different flavors.
💻:
⭐ 7 👀 2 🍴 2 🚧 0
Do you have a pointless comment to give? Go ahead leave a comment!
A little about India, the food, the people and the culture
The Food
Samosa
A samosa is a fried or baked pastry with a savory filling, such as spiced potatoes, onions, peas, cheese, meat, or lentils. The Indian style, often accompanied by chutney, is probably the most widely known of a broad family of recipes from Africa to China.
Samosa originated in the Middle East and Central Asia. It then spread to Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and elsewhere. The term samosa and its variants cover a family of pastries and dumplings popular from north-eastern Africa to western China. The samosa spread to the Indian subcontinent, following the invasion of the Central Asian Turkic dynasties in the region.
The People
Great Andamanese Tribes
Back in 2010 when Boa (one of the speakers of two Great Andamanese languages, Khora and Bo) died, the world lost two languages. So before the extermination of these unique tribes, speaking Jeru and Sare, plan an ocean cruise to Andaman and explore the indigenous survival land. The Great Andamanese Tribe, which includes the Onge, Jarawa, Jangil, and Sentinelese, are said to be the first inhabitants of the islands. But today a significant number is on its way to extinction. Nonetheless, the leftover population of the Great Andamanese is largely dependent on the vigorous campaign by Survival and Indian organizations. What to experience? Well, it is hard to distinguish them by their appearance – complexion, and dress, still, you are another traveler who will end up capturing their lifestyle. The Great Andamanese are mostly spotted in Strait Island and parts of Rutland Island
The Culture
Tarnetar Fair
A spectacular August festival is Tarnetar fair, held near the temple of Triniteshwar Mahadev in Gujarat. The fair was originally organized as a searching place for a spouse for tribal communities. This is a typical rural fair, where one can see and experience brave stunts, magic shows, tribal dance and music, camel rides tattoo stalls, merry-go-rounds, and local food and handicrafts shops. If you wish to witness this buzzing and fascinating tribal feast, fret not! Gujarat Tourism offers comfortable tented accommodations and other facilities for all.
Where: Tarnetar Village, Surendranagar, Gujarat
What’s special: Performances of jodia pava (double flutes), rahado folk dance.
Dates for Tarnetar Fair 2021: 8th September – 10th September