Small Streams

A Hacker Ethos

There's nothing like getting your hands on something to understand it. Think of the Wright brothers mucking about with bicycles and kites. This link talks about the predicament of young coders not getting the chance to muck about in programming.

The Words of a Wise Ass

I just had an idea for a book pop into my head. The book would follow a young boy, eight or nine years old, who is a companion of an old man, maybe about seventy or so. They go to docks and city streets. They watch a farmer till the field. All the time the old man says absurd and fantastic things about the work being performed and the lives being lived, sort of a real time Ecclesiastes. Finally, the young boy who had been full of wonder for this old man, finally tires of all the walking and the talking and asks the old man, "What is it that you do?" And the old man answers, "I'm doing it."

I'm not real sure about the ending, but the walking and watching and the being philosophical can make for some good combinations of graphics and text. Maybe I'm posting the idea here with the hopes that someone else will run with it, lazy web style. Or maybe I'm making a vague promise that I'll get to the idea.

I'm not sure a publisher would publish something with "Wise Ass" in the title. Maybe if instead of an old man, the guide would be a donkey, it would work.

If you want to read about more literary things, go to mobylives.

Now Things Get Messy

I posted a short item on blog pilgrim about Steven Berlin Johnson's idea for a magazine called Clutter. Now that I think of it, I feel I should comment on it here.

Every single "shelter" magazine on the market, as far as I've seen, shows pictures of homes that have been completely stripped of clutter: stacks of old bills, newspapers, strollers, magazines, Amazon boxes you've haven't opened yet, vases that are too big for the cabinets, infant car seats, and so on.

I think a few other people had problems with the unopened Amazon boxes, like I did. But Johnson is pretty much on the mark. How about a magazine for the way we really live, and not some ideal? The main sticking point is that (I believe) designs for a successful life mean buying less stuff not more, and that's not good for attracting advertisers.

Bad Song, Worse Movie

B3TA is having a photoshop contest. Create a poster for a movie based on a bad song. This is after the news came out that a movie might be based on Avril Lavigne's "Sk8ter Boi" song. I think if Elvis Presley wasn't dead it would be the kind of movie he starred in.

Pardon me for ragging, I'm not real sure why I feel as bitter and depressed about the concept of Avril Lavigne as I do. I think I read an interview with a manager or someone who said that AL could do any kind of album but came up with the punk concept on her own, which, if you read it the way I read it, made her sound highly mercenary: "Lessee, Britney's got the Lolita thing, Christina has got the slutty thing, I guess I'll take the punker thing."

I shouldn't be so concerned, punk has always been about look and posture, and about simplicity. The skater boy song is about as simple as songs come, seemingly plucked from a "True Romance" comic book, or a tale about Betty and Veronica, even.

But enough about that particular bad song. I must have gone through more than 300 entries in the "Bad Song, Worse Movie" contest. I kept looking for a certain entry, the kind that would almost appeal to Hollywood, except that it might get caught at the last minute by someone who points out how lame and farcical the idea is, and that might not even happen. I swear I think they already made some of the bogus movies. Didn't they already make a movie based on Kenny Rodgers' "Coward of the County?" To me, the entry had to also actually be a bad song. I love the song "Video Killed the Radio Star," but I also can understand it as a bad song, and I can see how it would make an even worse movie.

With over 300 entries you know some didn't have a clue as to what to do, but some had a good understanding of what the contest was about: