Burningbird

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The purple dot lived in a land of yellow dots. Though rich of hue, it was mocked by the other dots, which caused the purple dot great sadness.

The purple dot tried to change. It sat outside in the sun for days on end, hoping to bleach itself; however, all that happened was a bad case of sunburn, so that the purple dot was blistered as well as being purple. The yellow dots laughed even harder at the poor purple dot.

One day, the Fairy Dot Mother appeared to the purple dot, saying “Purple dot, I’ve watched your sadness over the years. What can I do to help you?”

The purple dot was overcome with joy and jumped and spun about with glee. “Fairy Dot Mother”, it said. “Please, please take away my rich hue. Please make me as yellow as the other dots!”

The Fairy Dot Mother replied, “I’m sorry Purple, but your color is part of you, an inherent part of what makes you what you are. I cannot change that.”

Seeing the sadness that came over the purple dot’s face, Fairy Dot Mother hastened to add “I cannot change you…but I can give you what you wish – a home where you are surrounded by by dots the same color as you. I can send you to the Land of Purple Dots”.

“Oh, yes, please, Fairy Dot Mother!”, the purple dot shouted. “Please send me as soon as possible!”

And without a wink or a blink or the smallest tick-tock of the clock, the Fairy Dot Mother waved her wand and poof! the purple dot was in the Land of Purple Dots.

At first the purple dot was very happy, surrounded by others that were the same hue as it. No longer being laughed at. No longer standing out. No longer teased for being different, for being…

…unique.

Being unique.

Over time the purple dot found that it wasn’t so very happy being in the Land of Purple Dots as it originally thought it would be. Where before the purple dot stood out, noticeable and special – now it was just one of the crowd. And the crowd was of such a sameness. The purple dot found itself getting bored. It found that it missed the yellow dots. It missed them a lot.

At the same time, the yellow dots were finding that they missed the purple dot. Where before they thought that Purple Dot was disruptive, frightening in its difference, not pure sunny yellow like themselves; now, they realized that the purple dot added a dimension to their lives. A richness. A contrast. They regretted that they didn’t accept the purple dot for what it was and value it for it’s uniqueness.

One day, the Fairy Dot Mother appeared to the purple dot and asked “Little one, are you now happy?”

The purple dot replied, “No Fairy Dot Mother, I’m sorry, but I’m not.”

“Where before I was unique and special, now I find that I’m one of many that look and act no different then myself.” The purple dot hesitated, and then said “I miss the yellow dots.”

The Fairy Dot Mother, being wise in the way of dots, was not surprised at the purple dot’s discovery. “So Purple dot, does this mean you want to return to the yellow dots?”

The purple dot was at first surprised, and then overjoyed at the thought that it could return home. “Yes, Fairy Dot Mother!” It said. “Please return me to the yellow dots!”

And with a wink and a wiggle and a motion of a feather falling to the earth, the Fairy Dot Mother waved her wand, and the purple dot suddenly appeared amidst a sea of yellow dots, causing a great deal of shock and surprise to all involved.

When the yellow dots realized that the purple dot was back, they fell on it with joy and rolled over it with excitement. They told the purple dot they would never tease it again. And the purple dot was content.

Of course, not everything was always perfect for the purple dot within the land of yellow dots. But purple dot now knew that the best things in life are never very easy. Especially the best things that are different.

Lot’s of writing lately. Most of it has been focused on the books (RDF and Unix Power Tools, both for O’Reilly), but I have been making time to write new articles for the BurningBird Network (long overdue).

Some of the articles are technical; some are not. Of the non-technical articles, I’m writing about hiking trails in San Francisco (finally, content for NetJetter), going to Universal Studios in LaLa Land (“One Ticket, Please”), and one for the dog lovers in the crowd, “Walking Among the Dog People”. In this latter article, I’ll introduce you to Arial the Black Lab and the Shmoozing Red Dobie.

As for the technical articles, be forewarned: I am a technical anarchist. I believe, strongly, that chaos is an essential element of innovation. Yes, there are times when standards and global agreement are essential; however, there are also times when any form of organizational control inhibits rather than enhances growth. So RDF and RSS 1.0 and open source, yes; UDDI and RSS 0.93 and Passport, no. And there can be no controller within a cloud.

In the 1950’s, our reach exceeded our technical capabilities. Today, our technical capabilities are exceeding our reach; we put a half-egg with a screen attached to it on the cover of Time and call it innovation.

Blogicon item – Mike at Keep Trying mentions that we need a verb that will encompass both writing and reading blogs. We could extend to blog to mean both read and write a weblog. What think? Other suggestions?

<edit > I forgot to mention that the articles discussed above will go live January 25th. As a form of discipline (discipline, what’s that?), I’m going to a semi-monthly publishing schedule at Burning Bird Network – publishing new content (and there will be new content) on the second and fourth Friday of every month. This will, hopefully, keep the spider webs from forming over my content. </edit>

<edit> Jonathon caught my ba-a-a-d use of markup. To mark newly added content, use opening and closing <edit> </edit> tags; for removing content, replace it with the empty tag: <edit />
</edit>