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Sestinas and writer’s block

A sestina is a poetic form. It consists of six-line stanzas, with each stanza’s lines ending in the same six words, in a different order for each stanza. Then there is a final stanza, called the envoi, in which each line contains two of the six words.

You can see examples of sestinas here, or provide your own six words to see what form comes out.

It is incredibly hard to write a sestina that doesn’t sound forced, and hardly anybody ever manages it. A really good sestina, when read aloud, is not immediately identifiable as a sestina. It just sounds like there’s a rhythm in there, but you can’t quite place it until you read it that third or fourth time, and see it on a page.

Most sestinas, however, work for the first stanza, and possibly the second, but after that you feel that the author is just saying any old nonsense just to stay in the form.

Sestinas work best when they are about a repetitive topic. Examples might be a child’s game, or an addiction, or a daily event. So I thought that the latest topic on Inspire Me Thursday – Breath – would be ideal for it. Unfortunately, so far, it just sounds like, after the first stanza, I’m merely babbling to fit the form.

I’ve had a really hard time writing lately. Everything feels forced, both fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. I keep hoping that if I force it long enough, it’ll start to flow. But the pump refuses to be primed.

Code Poet

The longer I work in software, the more convinced I am that the term “computer science” is mostly hogwash, as it applies to software development. Writing software is a lot more like writing a story than it is like baking a cake or doing qualitative analysis of soil samples. Given the same task, 3 programmers will do it 5 different ways, and each will have its unique beauty, its unique ugliness, and its unique ways to solve the tricky problems that come up along the way.

I’m lucky enough to work with some folks who have very creative ways to solve problems, rather than cut-and-pasting someone else’s solution.

And it never ceases to amaze me how every industry, no matter how stodgy or boring of itself, provides opportunities for unique creative expression. And no matter how much experience I have, I keep encountering folks with far less experience, but far more creativity and talent. I firmly believe in the old adage that one should hire people smarter than oneself.

New Toys and Geocaching

While the Jeep was getting fixed, someone went into it and forced open the center console where I had, among other assorted junk, my ancient GPS receiver. I bought it in the early days, when GPS technology was first available to civilians. I paid an enormous amount of money for it, and, by today’s standards, it hardly did anything at all. But it kept me sane for a couple years, giving me something to do in those endless days and hours.

This weekend, we went up to spend some time with Skippy, and while there, I found a refurbished TomTom One for about half of what they’re going for new, and we snapped it up. I’m completely blown away by what a low-end device like this can do. It’s got street-level maps of the entire USA. It does turn-by-turn routing, and reroutes if you choose to ignore its advice. It tells you where the nearest restaurants are. And all sorts of other useful things.

So, today, after more than 3 years of not Geocaching at all, we went out and found four caches, and did maintenance on one of mine that’s been disabled for a while. It looks like we might get back into geocaching again, which would be cool. I’ve enjoyed it for a long time, just my schedule the last few years has made it very difficult to make time for it.

Skippy’s place

Yesterday I took off work a little early and we drove up to Columbus, OH, to have dinner in Skippy‘s back yard. Everyone else there was folks from the area – folks that he’s known for many, many years. Bob said he’d known him since he was three. Some of the other folks were friends from college.

I always love visiting Columbus. It is an enormous place with a small town feel – restaurants and stores within walking distance, friendly neighborhoods, and such great people.

Equestrian Games and Short-sightedness

Downtown Demolition

Lexington is host to the 2010 FEI World Equestrian Games. Exactly what this means, I’m not sure. Something like a horsey olympics. Folks around here seem to think it’s a big deal.

This has been the excuse for a wave of short-sightedness that is epic even for Lexington, where the City Council seems to be composed of people who can’t think past the end of the week unless someone draws pictures.

In preparation for these games, just 2 years away, they are spending a huge amount of money, and building a facility to host them. The assumption is that after the games, folks will flock from around the world to use our fabulous new facility. Of course, since Lexington doesn’t have an international airport, this seems wildly unlikely.

Additionally, and more sadly, they are building a ginormous hotel downtown to host the folks who will come for the games. So for a couple weeks, we’ll have a full hotel in Lexington, and then for the next 20 years it will be an empty eyesore. But, even sadder, they chose to tear down some of the oldest buildings in downtown lexington, and drive out some of the longest-established businesses in downtown, for this venture.

They had a city council meeting in which they asked for the people’s opinion on this. The people, unsurprisingly, were strongly opposed to it. However, the city council see this being a cash cow, and can’t think past the end of 2010. Tragic. So The Dame is no more. And the Mad Hatter is no more. And a number of other businesses that were here when my parents were in college. And for what? So that some ponies can prance about and some arab sheikhs can be comfortable for two weeks. Then what? Well, the current city council will no longer be in office, so what do they care?

Zoning and Driving

We Americans drive too much. We drive to the grocery store. We drive to the pub. We drive to the school bus stop.

A week or two ago, I made a connection between several things that had been bothering me a lot lately, and something clicked. Should have been obvious, I suppose.

All the locally-owned businesses in Lexington are gradually going out of business and being replaced by mega-stores and national chains. Why is this? Many factors are at work, of course, but a very significant one is the zoning laws. I have to drive to the grocery store, because it’s so far away. It’s so far away because where I live is zoned residential, and it’s a long way to the nearest place that’s zoned for grocery stores. And so, if I’m going to go all that way, I might as well do all my shopping in one place. So I favor the large mega-grocery store, rather than Fletcher’s Meat Market (which has gone out of business) or the produce wagon on the corner (which has moved to the corner of busier roads).

One of the things that I love so much about England, and much of Europe in general, is the tiny, privately owned stores, offering just a handful of products, and doing it really well. So I can go to the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker, and know that they take pride in their store. And since they’re just around the corner, I can walk to them and not feel like I have to drive to Walmart where I can buy everything, and it’s all from China.

Zoning laws could, possibly, be reformed, and, indeed, it may become necessary as fuel prices continue to rise. But it could take generations before there there are neighborhood stores again, because we’ve just gotten into a certain way of living.

Not so long ago, folks went down to the local diner or pub, and talked to their neighbors. I don’t know any of my neighbors, except, vaguely, those with kids the same age as our kids. And even then, I can’t say I’ve ever actually talked with any of them about anything but when the kid is coming over for dinner or a sleepover, and when they’ll be back home.

So, there you go. Now that I have something to blame it on, it’s all better. That’s what life is about – blame and recriminations. Particularly if I can blame it on the government.

Laugh, Baby


For the Weekend Wordsmith

Laugh, Baby
August 15, 2008

Laugh now, little one,
it’s all tears ahead –
a vale of tears
through which we mourn
and weep, on even the best
of days.

Laugh, and do not listen
to those who tell you your lot
is a harsh one.
I’ll let you in on a little secret,
just between us:
They say that only
because they forgot to laugh
when they had the chance –

thought laughter impious,
thought tears the path
of righteousness.

I’m glad John mentioned
that Jesus wept for his friends.
He’d have done well to note
how often he laughed with them.

So laugh, my angel,
while you’re yet a baby,
that when you are old
you will still be young.

Tidy and PHP

I saw Yoav’s blog entry on Tidy and for a brief moment, in the first paragraph, thought that there was actually a phptidy utility. Alas, it was not to be.

Perl has had perltidy for some time, and, as I understand, it’s a pretty hard thing to do. But I keep hoping that someone will do the same thing for PHP.

Meanwhile, fortunately, php syntax is enough like perl that I can use perltidy to reformat php code about half the time (I have a vim macro that runs perltidy on the selected block of text) – the other half, it complains about syntax errors and screws things up pretty well.