origins of "kludge"

[David H. Barr]

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 22:31:25 +0100 (BST), Tony Duell
<ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > In Queensland it's pronounced to rhyme with judge,

> chip, of when I've manange to get 2 machines talking to each other by
> cutting an RS232 cable in half and joining the wires with a chocolate
> block [1], I've been known to paraody a line of Gilbert and Sulivan

> [1] One of those plastic screw terminal blocks. Don't laugh, I actually
> did this once when I had to get two machines communicating and all I had
> was a pair of pliers and a small screwdriver...

For testing a chip's output, (keyboard controller, I think), I cut and
soldered the strands of an IDE cable to each of the 25 pins, and then
fanned the other end out on a strip of duct tape.  I duct taped the
duct tape (odd thing to say) sticky side up to a bit of pasteboard,
sharpied in some labels, and had filled in a graph paper with all
printables in the ~150 combos pretty quickly.

Oh yeah, now I remember why.  Needed something to translate from 8-way
joystick to keyboard presses for an emulator.  Since this is now only
remotely on-topic; what would you consider to be your most "artless
hack?"  I mean, what klu(d)ge are you most proud of, and yet at the
same time a bit abashed (-fun- to say) to cop to?

-dhbarr.