I wrote another poem about some memorable artwork by @MichaelWhelan that resonated with me 🙂

The Fool Cage
by Fahim Farook

Beneath the fool cage I sat,
By the world in front of me enrapt.
The ribbon road stretched ahead of me,
Beckoning me to strange lands I would see.

Upon my crag I sat,
The land spread ’round me like a mat.
Here a homestead, there a field,
‘mongst fluffy clouds alien birds wheeled.

The fool cage hovered over me,
With frilly lace on top fluttering gay and free.
A bird wanting to snack on the lace,
Would fall through and be trapped in place.

I gave no thought to the trapped bird,
The call of adventure was all that I heard.
I wanted to be away, journeying the world wide,
Not be stuck at home by my folks’ side.

Little did I know back then,
There were things beyond my ken.
I thought I was master of all I saw,
The world was mine to take or explore.

But with the wisdom of ages now I see,
That things aren’t as I thought them to be.
I thought I was free, roaming far and wide,
Through the lands, I would freely glide.

The world had been my fool cage,
The open road the lace which did me engage.
Now I find myself trapped,
Just like the birds when the fool cage snapped.

The original artwork is here: https://www.michaelwhelan.com/galleries/destinys-road/

My blog post with surrounding information about the poem is here: https://write.farook.org/the-fool-cage/

#Writing #Poetry #Art

After I participated in the creative writing contest that @MichaelWhelan started, I thought of writing a series of poems based on Michael’s art.

Here’s the first one:

Gazing Beyond

by Fahim Farook

Gazing beyond the bounds of what I could see,

To dream of grasslands wider than a great blue sea.

This is what I’ve done all my life,

To see beyond life’s general strife.

I dreamt of starships piercing the black of space,

Of conversing in tongues with those of an alien race.

I dreamt of lands that human eyes had never seen,

Of being in places where man nor woman had ever been.

And now here I stand on this rickety scaffolding,

Not letting go of the breath that I’ve been holding.

Gazing again at what I’ve been barred from seeing,

Been here for hours, have to stop myself peeing.

I thought I’d see the next step in humanity’s journey,

To the stars, and not breathing its last on a gurney.

But all I saw beyond that tall imposing fence,

Was not something hidden by the Ministry of Defense.

I did not see rocket ships aimed at the stars,

Nor did I see voyagers going to Mars.

Instead I saw a sunset, all golds, oranges, and red,

As the sun headed tiredly for its rest in bed.

And that’s good enough for me right now,

A vision of a rocket can be beaten by a grazing cow.

Dreams of ships, and stars can wait for the ‘morrow,

I’m content with beauty that none can steal or borrow.

Some background about the poem, and the beautiful artwork which inspired it, can be found on my blog: https://write.farook.org/gazing-beyond/

Or you can find the artwork on Michael’s site: https://www.michaelwhelan.com/galleries/terminus/

#Writing #Art #Poetry

I haven't been writing much lately — too much coding 😛

But I'm looking at writing a bit more and it all started with this poem ...

https://write.farook.org/efflorescent/

#Writing #Poetry #Art

Hey friends, my partner has put together a course to help people with the mental side of landing a tech job. Confidence in interviews, finding stuff that aligns with your values, salary negotiation; that sort of thing.

She’s been a programmer for 15 years and a therapist and coach for a few years now.

She is looking for feedback on the course in exchange for some free coaching on the topic.

If you’re interested, let me know! And boost or forward if you like.

I know this is a long shot, but does anyone have an original cartridge or an original rom of the game "Harald Hardtand" aka "Harald Hardtooth" for the #Commodore #C64?
(Not looking for the csdb Easyflash version).
Please boost/share.
#RetroGaming

So, an interesting thing (for varying values of interesting 😛) happened today ...

There's a service request for a book editing job. The prospective client? The Minister of Finance for the UAE.

I was like, "Hmm ... why would he want a document edited on LinkedIn? He's probably got staff to do stuff like this."

I look at his profile (shown in image) and it seems to indicate that he has 4.5 million followers. Must be legit right?

But hang on! Lower down it shows his activity as having 2 followers. And his activity extends only to like 12 hours of responding to three different accounts.

Look further down and you notice that his experience listing is what shows up at the top making it look like he's got 4.5 million followers 😛

So obviously a fake/spam/scam account. But if you just look at the number at the top, you could be fooled. I've already reported them to LinkedIn. But just posting this in case they take in somebody else ....
Screenshot of fake LinkedIn acc…

I've always got a side-project going on that interests me in some way. But most of the time, I forget about the side-project after I get it working to my satisfaction 😛

This one's one such project.

My nephew kept sending me images of similar puzzles that he'd solved, trying to stump me. That's how I got interested.

I found the app/game that he was using and realized that the app had a curated list of puzzles that the developer had created. You could only play about 40 puzzles and you were done.

I wondered if it was possible to create unlimited puzzled by dynamically generating the puzzles on the go. I gave it a shot and it was possible ... and this app was the result.

But once the problem was solved, I forgot about that project and moved on to the next project 😛 I just remembered the project today and am wondering if perhaps I should package it up and put it up on an app store or two ...

I don't know, there's so many interesting projects to work on. So is it worthwhile spending the time on bundling and distributing an app which might go nowhere?

What do YOU think? 🙂
An image of a game screen showi…

Someone's kindness made me cry today.

My son's been attending a kids sewing class at a local fabric store.

The owner saw how much he loves it, and had offered to sell us a machine at a discount for him to use at home, but it was still out of reach for us financially. I told her we'd save up for it for Christmas.

Today she gave us that sewing machine free. She said she wanted him to be able to continue to sew at home.

Enabling his passion is such a priceless gift and I'm incredibly thankful.

MacWhisper has this new Parakeet model which transcribes audio at astonishing speeds. I created subtitles for a 30 minute video, which normally takes about 15 minutes, in under 1 minute!

#MacWhisper #Transcribing #Subtitles

"Tourist Family" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt34915705) is a movie that's well-worth watching — humours, heart-warming, and full of heart.

I started watching it due to the Sri Lanka connection and didn't expect much but it easily exceeded my expectations.

#Movies #Tamil

Watching "Jaat" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32223398) at the moment.

All the hallmarks of Indian movies these days — harkening to mythology, disregard for facts, Sri Lankans with Sinhala names with Tamil mothers and non-Sinhalese named brothers etc.

Some of the characters who are supposedly Tamil can barely speak Tamil. The lone Sinhalese-named guy apparently has no idea where he really comes from ... except from a place where they chew the scenery up 😛

His wife strips women and sneers at their plight as if she has no clue that she's a woman as well.

It's a movie with logic and emotional holes that jsut drips with useless patriotism. I do have to wonder if India is heading the same way as America ...

#Movies #Hindi #HodgePodge

I'm looking for a web or full stack developer to join my awesome team. This would be a part time (~20 hours a week) independent contractor position for a fully remote team working on a website primarily for the Jewish community.

We're using Django, htmx, and Tailwinds, along with other smatterings of technology, and so familiarity with some or all those platforms/frameworks would be a plus. Devops experience, or at least strong familiarity with container based deployments are a plus.

If you have any questions, feel free/encouraged to ask and I'll clarify or specify anything I can!

If you're interested, please DM me with some information about you and we'll go from there.

#GetFediHired

Hello mastodon. I could use some help. #fedihire

TL;DR: I was laid off a while ago, and the traditional "go scour job sites and apply" is currently broken. So - let's try social media. Please boost if you are willing, or pass this along if you know someone who needs what I can offer.

I'll be brief: I'm a very experienced System Reliability Engineer, with a track record of dependability and scalability. I take people's problems - stability, uptime, scale, cost, durability, speed, security and attack resistance - and fix them. I have the dubious honor of generally costing less to employ than I save my employer. If everything is perfect - you don't need me. But if you do, you may need me badly.

I'm available. Drop me a note.

I am located in Ventura, California, and strongly prefer remote work. I don't require visas or special accommodation to work in the US.

Here's a resume: https://www.bortels.us/TBortels_Resume_2025_public.pdf

I’m urgently looking for work 🚨
Engineering manager or staff programmer

20 years ruby/rails
30 years of web dev/design
5+ years of eng mgmt

I’m based in Portland, Oregon
Open to local or remote work

#GetFediHired

https://linkedin.com/in/veganstraightedge

Been busy getting ready to move, but we managed to get another video done about how to greet people in Sri Lanka in the local languages 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTrRY_n-7Uc

#SriLanka #YouTube #MultiLanguage #Travel

Whelp. Just got let go. They actually disabled my account while I was in the exit interview. Corporate IT is _cold_.

Anyway, I guess I'm looking for a new position maybe even be #FediHired ?

I have to live in Cove, AR with my disabled family, so it will probably need to be 100% remote.

I'd prefer to keep doing #Haskell or try out #PureScript in production, or even something more exotic like #Agda or #Idris

Ever wondered how you open up a coconut to get at the flesh inside for making coconut milk?

Wonder no more 🙂 We did a video explaining how we do it in #SriLanka:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clxnEHRxKGk

#YouTube #Coconuts #CoconutMilk

We're really missing Sri Lankan food. So, as one does, watching a lot of YouTube travel videos.

This led to us discovering some funny mistakes made by vloggers very often 😛

We started our own YouTube channel to (possibly) help prevent them:
https://www.youtube.com/@TravelTalesLF

If you have any questions about Sri Lanka, or travel in general, happy to answer them 🙂

#LKA #SriLanka

Well, my wife got laid off of work today.

She specializes in cryptanalysis and penetration testing. She's looking for remote jobs in Europe at the moment. #getfedihired

I've seen lots of posts about European countries offering jobs/positions in the physical sciences for Americans looking to leave, but nothing about the social sciences or humanities. Anything?

#getFediHired