Categories
Writing

Go Fly a Kite

The talk is of war and politics and the economy, in an endless cycle of news that drags one’s spirits down. I don’t want to talk about these things. Instead, I want to talk about kites.

Probably one thing that transcends cultural differences is kites. Kites are made, and flown, the world over. There’s few children that haven’t built a flimsy device out of paper and fragile wood and then promptly crashed it into something such as a tree, ala Charlie Brown.

For most of us, our first kites are little diamonds made of very fragile wood and paper, tied to a long, long string. We’d put them together, sometimes with the help of a parent or other adult, and take it out for a trial flight. I don’t know about you all, but I had my first lessons in flight, wind, and flight without wind, with a kite.

Someone had to hold the kite and run backwards very quickly, tossing the kite high into the air. If the wind was right, up the little diamond would fly. If the wind wasn’t right, whoever your flying partner was had a marvelous workout. “Run faster! Run faster!”, you’d scream. “I am running”, they’d scream back, face red, puffing like a blow fish. Half the fun of kite flying was watching the poor soul desperately trying to get the kite into the air so they could sneak off to collapse while you were distracted.

After quickly breaking these kites, or losing them into a tree, or having them removed because we “buzzed” the family cat, we either progressed on to sturdier models or, for most of us, we went on to other toys, other hobbies.

Unless we happen to become someone else’s flying partner some day (“Run faster. Run faster”) that’s the last experience many people have with kites.

However, for a lucky few, kites re-enter our lives. And this time, they stay.

Flying a kite.

Throwing a kite into the wind and hoping it catches; sending the kite dancing on transparent bands of air that originate here in this place and there in that country and high in on this mountain, and and low, skimming the ocean, until they reach you and your kite. And you soar! Can’t you just feel the tug of the string in your hand, head back, eyes on a bright spot high overhead?

Throwing a kite into the wind and the wind is fickle, maybe even a little mean, and it catches your kite only to throw it down to the ground at spar breaking speeds, out of control, spiraling. Ground breaking thud. Wince. You swear you hear ghostly evil laughter whip past you as it seems to pick your kite up off the ground only to send it thudding back again and again, until your kite is a tattered remnant of cloth and broken wood.

Standing alone on a beach and trying to get your kite to rise and no wind wants to play. You kite just sits there, and you have no one to grab it and run with it, hoping to tease one single puff of air into noticing your kite long enough to take it for at least the most gentle ride.

There is nothing more forlorn then a kite flyer on an empty beach with a kite and no wind. Still….

…there is that anticipation of the next flight, the next wind, the next moment of soaring that keeps you coming back again. And again. And again.

Categories
Burningbird

You pick the technology

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

In the interest of research, I thought I would publish each subsection of the forpoets.org with a different weblogging tool. Four subsections (weblogging, internet, linux, rdf), four tools. The first four essays in the weblogging.forpoets.org subsection will then be on each of these tools.

This is your chance to tell me what tool to use. Leave in comments your favorite weblog tool, why it’s your favorite, and where I can access it. Note that if there’s a cost for the tool, I won’t consider it unless the tool producer provides one free of charge for me to use. One that has full functionality, that is. Also note that the tool has to support pages on my server – I won’t go a hosted solution.

Some minimums:

The tool has to support comments, and my preference is to have a tool that supports trackbacks, but I won’t push this item as much. Also, the tool has to be ‘live’, which means that someone has to be actively supporting it.

Since I use Movable Type elsewhere, I’ll cover this in a fifth essay, but I’d like to use four new tools for the forpoets.org. I figured this will also drive out an essay or two on interoperability – from experience.

So, what should I use and why?

P.S. I can’t offer you any prize, like an iPod – but then, I don’t sell ads at my weblogs either. Ahem.

Categories
RDF Writing

It’s alive!

itsalive.jpg

Categories
Books

Cut the wires

I’ve spent too much time in technology recently, but after the work on the server today, I can take a break. Not too long a break because I have promised essays, for poets and other mad, bad, sad people.

Loren started a review of Catch 22, and I wonder whether to add my own thoughts as he moves along. It’s been years since I’ve read the book and I told myself at the time, “This is it. I’m glad I read it. I won’t read it again.” However, to effectively comment, I do need to read it again.

In his initial reading, Loren didn’t care for the book. Being in Vietnam at the time, his reaction is not surprising. Even now, after he’s learned to respect the work, he writes…it’s obviously not an easy novel to read.

It’s funny, or perhaps it’s not, but books that have a social conscious can either trip us up as we read past, laying us out face first in the stirred up dust at their feet; or their words can pad softly in on little kitten feet, like Carl Sagan’s fog. I found To Kill a Mockingbird to be one of the quiet ones, and can read it again and again.

Catch 22, though. It forces you, who sits in comfortable chair and lays in comfortable bed, to get into the mind and the world of hell created when paper generals shout out, “Bring ‘em on!”

Reading Catch 22 again. Hmm. Will I make it to the library tomorrow? And if so, will I find the book on the shelves? I couldn’t find Catcher in the Rye last time I looked. Maybe I’ll be lucky this time. Oh, No! Wait! That’s wrong!

Would you believe… I’ll be lucky this time?

Categories
Burningbird

For Poets web site

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I just finished an article for O’Reilly in support of the RDF book rollout. It’s a bit longish so I’m expecting edits.

In the meantime, I want to get my domain, forpoets.org, up and running. I’ll move my first entry, Internet for Poets: DNS – what’s in a name?, and the second Echo for Poets to the new site once it’s finished.

The site is going to be broken into the following categories:

internet.forpoets.org
rdf.forpoets.org
linux.forpoets.org
weblogging.forpoets.org

I owe at least the first of a set of articles on RDF For Poets, to Professor Duemer who started me thinking of a ‘…for poets’ line of articles and essays. Perhaps I’ll combine it with AKMA’s Impractical RDF, which truly awakened my evil twin. I could have fun with this.

Two other essays I’ve been working on are:

Linux for Poets: The Ten Commands of Unix
Internet for Poets: Permalink like you mean it

The first article covers 10 Unix facts/commands that every person hosted in a Unix environment should know. With these, they can effectively manage their own pages and directories. Yes, just these ten things.

The latter article on permalinks I started when I read Joi Ito’s discussion about the permalink issue when moving weblogs about in a hosted environment and between weblogging tools. Don Park also covered this as did Matt and Marc Cantor. There’s been discussion about using Purl.org as a way of working around this issue, which I think is about the worst idea I’ve heard yet. My apologies for my bluntness, but I have to call them as I see them.

Before the N/Echo geeks jump on this for the pure geek approach that this is, I need to get this article written to discuss why it’s a Bad Idea, and to provide alternative approaches. First, though, I need the web site.

I’m thinking of using a different weblogging tool for the site, perhaps a PHP-based one such as pMachine or bBlog. The technology I can work through but my problem is design – I can’t think of a good design for the site. Chances are I’ll put something quick together than then refine it over time – that’s the best way to do web site design. I’d rather get the site up and running and post my three inaugural essays, than delay their publication working on the pretty pretty.

One thing the new site won’t have is any connection in any way to the “For Dummies” books, which I’ve always thought was an appalling name for a series of books; and I’m not that fond of yellow and black, which reminds me of a big, fat bumblebee. Besides, even a hint of this association can cause trouble, as qB recently highlighted.

No, the For Poets essays assume that the readers are intelligent, creative people who want to learn more about technology, but don’t want to be overwhelmed by the minutiae, and don’t want to be bored. Not sure how successful I’ll be, but I’m having fun with it.

As for the site design, perhaps I should run a contest – an autographed copy of Practical RDF for anyone who can help me come up with a great design. I’ll even inscribe it with a poem. No, not one of my own – I want to attract help, not scare it away.