This hack connects you to the Internet via a virtual modem

Legend tells of a programmer named Martin Kirkholt Melhus who worked at a client site where there was no Internet. Realizing most of his work involved cutting and pasting from StackOverflow, he needed a way to get online. And so he turned his speaker and microphone into a working (in theory) modem. “This was only ever intended as a gimmick and a proof of concept – not something that I would actually use at work,” he wrote. “Please keep this in mind before arguing why I should be fired over this in various online comment sections.”

The system works in HTML5 and converts text to modem tones. The speed is obviously a bit slow but it should be enough to steal an entire chunk of Python and drag it into Visual Editor.

Writes Melhus:

Lately, I’ve been working with a client where my development computer is not connected to the Internet. This is a huge inconvenience, as the unavailability of Google and Stack Overflow vastly impact my productivity. Only recently have I begun to grasp how much of my time is actually spent copy/pasting between Visual Studio and the browser.

My office also features an Internet connected laptop and my development computer expose 3,5 mm jack sockets for audio devices. And thus my problems can be solved! Here’s how I made a modem for closing the gap with Web Audio.

The bottom line? Doing fun and clever things all the time is a great way to go through life. You can grab the code here and try your hand at modeming here.

Modem connection

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