I think the NPE I'm getting is just within overtone as it decides what the settings are. I'm not sure they even need to talk to the sc server to fail. It's been mostly working fine for me in my recent playing (on linux) except for loading samples.
I was hoping to use overtone as some motivation to really learn clojure.
Hmm....I get frustrated by the client/server stuff in SuperCollider/Overtone and give up. Been trying it and quitting it for 10 years now. I became an intermediate clojurist (at least in my own mind) doing a lot of quil. Recommended if you like drawing.
Ah sorry this is already fixed @john649 on master. You can use tools-deps (the clojure cli) to run the latest master. I am slowly recommending clj over leiningen as the default dep tool, since its the official tool from Cognitect where all the beginner manuals are refering to it and not leiningen.
But I should surely do a release since this bug is so brutal and affects everyone using 0.10.3-0.10.6