Hey, thanks!

You, sir/madam, have been quoted. I'll throw that one up on the about page later tonight.

I wasn't sure which would be more fun. I decided to just post things as is and then evolve as people started giving me feedback. Speaking of which, thanks for your suggestion!

I'm really sorry to hear that :( I hope that this isn't too grand a gesture though I'd be very excited were it to become one! Computer hackery is how I've always "expressed" myself. I didn't really know else how to do something extra special for her than to code up something sweet and so I went with my gut. That stinks that things soured between you two :(

There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that I would ever do this whatsoever. That's so sleazy. I'm not looking to exploit people -- just to channel my cheesiness into something productive and possibly make my own crush (cupidco.de/a) smile :)

too true :P I'm working on a bit.ly-esque "your recent cupidco.des" list that'll help you keep track of your most recent (per-computer) codes. I'll also throw the name up on the monitoring page, too, for good measure.

I tried posting it to reddit (my leisure time goes to: YC, reddit, and embarassing projects like cupidco.de :), but they went into attack mode on me. I figured that was probably because the link was more of a YC sorta thing so I pretended reddit didn't happen and posted it here.

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/a2z0t/dear_reddi...

On a related note: in my experience, I've always found people of the reddit community to be very smart, but also very negative, and very insensitive, vs. people on news.yc being smart, pragmatic, and at some times...irrational. This is based on real life interactions with coworkers as well as online.

Funny thing... I've stopped hanging around Reddit for the last few weeks, and my outlook on life has noticeably improved... I used to be a very cynical, see the worst in everything sort of guy, but once I distanced myself from others like this, I've found that everything is suddenly... better.

YMMV, but I'm not going to go back to being a reddit regularly anytime soon :)

I think I prefer the latter :P. I was a little taken aback by the instant negativity I got there. Oh well.

You tried the programming subreddit? Maybe with a self post?

Haha, getting uber hate there:

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/a2zr1/dear_prog...

It's not you. People on reddit are stupid/jerks.

It seemed to me that the reddit comments were equally supportive, have the trollish ones been removed?

Awesome idea BTW. Sounds like a great girl.

I fell head over heals for a girl. I thought about her way too often, missed her way more than a normal person ought to, and was pretty much in a constant state of love-induced sugar shock. I didn't want to seem overzealous or desperate, so I tried to play it cool -- and yet, the impulse to post embarrassing, saccharine love quotes to Facebook was overwhelming (I am but only a dork, after all).

So I did what any self-respecting geek would do in my position: I computed a SHA-2 hash of her name and put it in that weird little box thingy on the left hand side of my Facebook profile. It provided just the right balance of self expression and social tact. I was happy.

I liked the idea so much that I decided I would wrap it in a small application and dedicate it to the object of my dorkitude. As I knew it would take a few weeks to flesh out and things were (shockingly) starting to work out between this lovely individual and myself, I thought that the final product might make for a cute little way of sharing my feelings. The idea of tiny "cupidcode" links spreading across facebook and the twitters -- each rooted in my nerdy affection for this particular young lady -- seemed like a terribly powerful way to say "I really think you're great". And because I suck at music and writing, it was pretty much my only option.

Fast forward a few weeks, and cupidco.de is done. It's probably not well suited for the sorts of folks that read YC so I hope you don't mind me sharing my link with you. My hope is that this post will kick-start the spread of a few cupidcodes 'cross the nets so that my crush (who I've been seeing now for about two weeks!) may casually stumble upon one while checking her facebook or reading a blog and discover just how special she is to me.

tl;dr -- fell in love with a chick, wanted to do something special for her, suck at everything else, so I built her a webapp.

Everything about this project was meta-interesting. I feel like someone could write a very entertaining NYT piece about this project. If this was not posted on HN, I would think the narrative was bogus. However, being posted on HN, I doubt you are feigning hopeless romanticism.

P.S. I am half-convinced XKCD started for a similar reason. http://xkcd.com/55/

I'm flattered that you think that! As embarrassing as it is, I'm really as dorky as described.

I once bought a girl I was semi-obsessed a six-volume set of a series about WWI published three years after WWI. She was a FP nut, so I thought it was cool. I did so even though I knew she was taking a plane the next day. I even wrote a good essay length inscription, informing her that she was awesome.

Sometimes, it's fun to say f*ck rationality. Good luck to you, sir.

Did it work? Was she touched?

Yet to be determined.

What is this series? Gotta love the Great War :) Best of luck to you too.

I found it in an antique bookstore near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. (where I live.) I forget the name.

You're probably talking about Second Story Books & Antiques at 20th & P St. http://www.secondstorybooks.com/

That's the one. Dupont is pretty fantastic for books and girls.

I know that place. It's a pretty good place to meet women, if I recall.

What's WWI? World War I?

I wouldn't be surprised. I started writing stories for fun when I broke up with a girl, and I'm still sticking with it. It's almost like these crushes supply a kind of necessary activation energy for some large projects.

This is adorable, and I hope things work out for you. I showed my girlfriend (who is a geek, but not a programmer or engineer or anything of the sort) and she commented: "Okay, that's the cutest f*ing thing EVER."

Some suggestions--What about alternate spellings? It would be unfortunate if someone typed in "Kat Smith" and came up as incorrect because the original poster typed "Kathryn Smith". Also, it would be nice if there were some kind of personalization that you could apply to the public page; you know, like "Guess John Smith's crush" instead of "Guess My Crush".

Thanks so much, especially for your ideas. I wanted to avoid any sort of sign up, so I don't actually collect the "crusher"'s name (just the "crushee"). The system will tolerate names within an edit-distance of 2, so many common spelling errors will be ignored (not to mention the added layer of plausible deniability). I also recently added a "really close"/"close"/"sorta close"/"way off" hinting system -- so when you guess, you'll see that the prompt reflects how similar your guess is to the actual crushee.

One thing I'm going to add is a little cookie-based cache of your recent cupidco.de tracking pages, as they start to get difficult to juggle after some time.

Hmmm. But, there is still a secret tracking page connected to the public page, right? Shouldn't it be possible to use the secret tracking page to enter your name, and have the changes be reflected on the public page?

Kudos for completely avoiding sign up, btw. If there's no way to do what I described above without adding sign up, then for God's sake, don't do it. You're a champ for breaking the sign up trend already.

The hinting system is such an awesome idea. I'll have to spread this around to a couple of my buddies so I can try it out!

Thanks! I wanted to keep the site as simple as possible; sign up is a pain in the butt and typically totally unnecessary.

It should be possible to let you recycle your cupidco.de (so as to switch out the crush name, etc). Is that what you mean? I'll look into that tonight.

Alternate spellings would be great, and guessing the first name would also be good. Maybe you could facilitate this:

1. What's your crush's full name?

2. What's your crush's first name?

3. What's your crush's screen name?

I got 3 guesses for her twitter handle, and 1 for her first name, and 2 for first and last name. I happen to know her middle name, and entered that, so it registered all of these as incorrect.

I agree, I entered the full name and people I sent it to are guessing mostly first names and getting it wrong even if they guess the right first name.

Added a number of words in name hint on the guessing page! Hope this works!

Definitely a great idea... I'll try to throw this in ASAP. Perhaps I'll have it update the prompt as you've described instead of increasing the flexibility of the comparison.

Thanks for your excellent idea. I added a number of words hint to the guess page -- let me know if you think this'll do it :D

Nope, not doing it.

The font is way too small. Is there any way to make it case-insensitive? Or perhaps tell someone how close they were, or if they matched any of hte parts of the name?

If she was a geek this would be a pretty good icebreaker. Or a really creepy one. Keep it smooth!

yeah -- that's definitely true. I would have silently swept the project under the rug/archive.org if things hadn't worked out, but we've really started to connect, especially about our respective geekitude-- so I'm pretty confident that she'll think this sweet and not weird.

Nah, I don't think it's creepy at all.

I once received a love-letter in obfuscated perl. I married the sender. Good luck :-)

That is absolutely amazing. Any chance that you might share, or was it (unsurprisingly) very personal?

Well, it is personal, it is also seriously obfuscated - it started off something like

  for(split(//,'*)))*1)11.41))9291:.3+*A11:1:3)/+,))9:'

and of course that was part of the fun - since I had received it in paper form, I had to type it all in to figure out what it said (no I couldn't parse it by sight), which heightened the effect.

Anyway, point is - once a geek always a geek, and the right person for you is somebody who appreciates it, not runs away from it.

Honestly though, she'll probably take it better if you tell her yourself. Otherwise it'll look like you were hiding this from her, and that'll start to bring up uncomfortable questions. :P

haha -- a veeeeeeeery valid point. we're both comfortable and open with one another right now, so I'm very confident that this would fall into the "sweet" category and not the "creepy" category. I'll tread veeeery carefully though :)