I like to trick applications.

I've made MacOS Finder run Flappy Bird, Google Calendar run Brick Breaker (the meetings are the bricks; they're declined when the ball smashes them), the browser address bar run Wordle, a font that converts hex color codes to RGB, and more.

In this session I'll talk through my process, offer some advice, and answer questions like:

• How do I pick which applications to target?
• Why do this?
• How do these games actually work?

I'll do my absolute best to make this talk fun for everyone - but I'll also be going deep on how some of these hacks work. We'll cover how to implement double buffering inside Finder to push a game to 4 frames a second, recursive Google Sheets formulas that track the time that a cell changes, obscure browser specifications for custom website search engines, and the power hidden in advanced font features.

Which is to say: parts of this talk will be pretty technical. I think you'll get something out of it as long as you're interested in weird hacks, but some of it will be hard to follow if you're new to coding.

I'm expecting to spend somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes talking; we'll spend the remaining time brainstorming ideas for fun hacks. Feel free to stick around for the brainstorming session or just leave after the talk.

Also - it might be hard to picture some of the hacks that I'm describing. I write about everything I do on my site (eieio.games) - you can see videos of all of the applications I've mentioned there.