I was recently compelled to write a verse of geek poetry in an archaic rhyme scheme.  I think it might be the first iambic quadrameter I’ve ever written, and it turned out flawlessly except that it’s indecipherable to non-geeks.  Enjoy if you can:

And after all the code was made,
compilers with their flags were silent,
linkers slept, their objects laid,
and weary hands and headaches vi’lent
statements to the shell conveyed
and started code meant for a client.
“Perhaps it’s done!” they all exult:
Behold! A segmentation fault.

My plan to post every other day has taken its first blow, but I think it’s fairly justifiable.  The last post was the day before I left for a few days in Vancouver, where I was reminded just how beautiful it is, why I didn’t want to leave and what I gave up when I did.  There’s nothing like a straight view into downtown and across to the mountains, framed by rows of blossoming cherry trees.  Or, for that matter, the similar view from Seasons in Queen Elizabeth Park, and that while eating a some excellent duck and drinking BC wine from one of those dozens of awesome vineyards that don’t get their products past the province’s borders.  Late night bus rides down Hastings.  Having pastries and cider in the sun in Grandview Park¹.

Back in Edmonton, spring hasn’t quite started yet.  It’s only mid-April, after all: yesterday was a blizzard.  The desert-carcass tan that’s dominated the ground since the snow melted is only just starting to hint at shifting towards the lime-and-urine green² that will replace it once plants start coming out and the dust is blown into our eyes and out of our lives.  I know it’s tired to bitch about the climate here, but seriously, the temperatures overnight are still dipping below freezing, and they’re going to continue to do it.  My forecasting widget says that even the day a week from now where we’ll hit a tropical 14°C will be -2 overnight.  The five months of non-winter here are usually beautiful, like an abusive partner you were about to leave suddenly being extra-nice to keep you around.  But this year, not so much.  The freezing nights and mornings are like catching that partner watching you with hatred and clenching their fists while you sleep.

Anyway, back on the blogwagon.  I’ll aim for something more interesting by Friday.

1) Hell, even realizing that the Sweet Cherubim bakery that I’d previously overlooked is more than half gluten-free was awesome.

2) I remember that for years I hated the way landscape paintings here always used pastel colours to depict grassy fields, or wheat fields, or patches of trees around fields, or old farm buildings collapsing in grassy fields or wheat fields.  I’d always assumed it was a really lame stylistic choice.  It turns out that when you’ve seen what colour looks like in other places, using pastels when painting landscapes here is more documentary honesty than style.

For the sake of the search engines, I’ve just started tagging entries.  I went back and retroactively added a tags and installed a plugin to help deal with them.  They’re a pain in the ass.

The idea is that when I write a post, I include a bunch of words or short phrases in the metadata that describe what I’m writing about.  The tags for this one are inevitably going to include “software quality” and “software,” and probably “geek,” maybe “blogging.”  I do this so search engines and blog tracking sites can do a better job of matching what I’m writing about with what people seem to want to read.  It also leads to things like tag clouds, which are great for roughly nothing¹.

The deep problem that we’re up against is that computers are really dumb.  If I talk about software and mention bugs, it will take a long time for a computer to figure out that I don’t mean bugs in general.  Despite the fact that I’m clearly saying the two are unrelated, the fact that I linked both of them in one article means they’ll get slightly closer in the search engines.  And when you add metaphors, satire, similes, etc, computers fall apart entirely.  A surprising number of humans can’t handle it either, but we’re talking about a level of fail never before seen.

This amounts to going over what I write, doing the first level conceptual digestion, and picking the largest lumps of crap that come out of it².  It feels like telling a joke and then explaining it in detail.  But if to get meaningful use out of things like Technorati, then, as they say in the parlance of the streets, those are the breaks.

1) If you’re an idiot and you’d like to know the buzzwords surrounding some new buzzword you’ve heard, they’re very effective.  I don’t endorse technology that helps buzzword-driven idiots fail to function more effectively.  They’re also useful for figuring out how other people are tagging similar articles.

2) And with that, software bugs get a bit closer to dung beetles and tapeworms.

As we all know, print media is dieing the hard death.  There’s this vicious cycle: dropping circulation means dropping revenues, dropping revenues means staff cuts, staff cuts mean less fresh material and more editorial slips, those mean less interest, which drops circulation, and so it continues.  This isn’t the only problem.  Competition from TV news has been eating away at circulation for decades, and now the internet is accelerating that, with its wonderfully wide distribution and rebranding of wire-service propaganda drivel and that pinko – libertarian statist capitalist commie godsend, the blogosphere.

But what came to mind earlier today—thanks to this lies.com link (courtesy of blunt object)—is that print media, even with most of it on the verge of collapse, is probably the last actual home of investigative journalism.

Think about it: in a newspaper, a story can be 300-500 words, easily.  If it’s a big deal, it could break 1000.  That’s room to present a few things in some reasonable detail.  Print magazines can go even further.  For example, Rolling Stone recently did a detailed article about AIG and the wall street collapse.  It’s a really good one, and it’s long.  Some research and digging went into this.  Matt Taibbi had more access to the relevant information than your standard blogosphere hack.  He was also paid to do his research, which is something else that most bloggers don’t have going for them.

On the other hand, TV news and the blogosphere both suffer from an alarming flood of populism, because they have tremendous flexibility in their structure and what they cover in response to what’s popular.  Newspapers would secretly love to be in the same boat, because it’s great for advertising revenue.  But it has a price.  Check out the face of the new media:

Top WordPress.com blogs today

1. CNN Political Ticker
2. FAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments
3. Celebrity Baby Blog – People.com
4. PEOPLE TV Watch

So we have a condensed version of a TV news network that uses almost exclusively wire-service material and sucks even more when it doesn’t, and then we have embarrassing pictures, babies and celebrities.

And hey, this publication already exists.

Tom sit down.  Back on tree.  Tree on hill.  Look at sky.  Sky blue.  Small clouds in.  Look at river.  River blue.  No clouds in.

Tom think about book.  Smart man talk in.  Say words not mean stuff.  Tom no get.

Tom look down.  See flower.  Pretty flower.  Yellow.  Tom pick flower.  Stare at.  Spin in fingers.

Tom think hard.  Make face.  Think what man say.  Dog not mean dog.  Dog mean not cat.  Dog mean not chair.  What mean cat?  Not dog.  Chair not dog too.  That mean cat is chair?  Tom no get.

Tom look at flower.  Dead now.  No make seeds.  Tom feel sad.  Flower not chair too.  Flower is dog?  No.  Flower mean not dog.  Dog no make seeds.  But dog not dead flower.

Tom think about words.  What is words?  Words name stuff.  Oh.  Sun hot.  Tom brain hurt.

Think.  Have word for thing.  World mean thing and not-thing.  Oh.  No not-thing mean no thing.  No not-dog mean no dog.  If world only dog, no dog.  Just dog parts.  What dog parts?  This wrong.  Tom no get.

Tom lean back.  Hit tree with head.  Hit not-Tom with head?  Tree is not-Tom.  Tom look at flower.  Dead yellow not-Tom.

Tom look at feets.  Feets on legs.  Legs with hairs.  Small hairs.  Legs is Tom.  Oh.  Legs is not-Tom?  Tom is not-legs?  Tom is not-tree!  Oh.  Tom get.

Tom look at river.  River has water.  Tom think.  Words like water?  Words move together?  No.  World is water.  Words chop water.  No splash.  Words chop world.  All same.

Tom head hurt.  Want sleep.  Then book.  Tom like smart man.