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

@skribe Yes, it feels as if I can only hold so much in my head ... especially as I grow older 🙂So I can either let character play out in my head for a novel I'm writing or debug code ...

I keep promising myself that I'd set code aside and move back to writing but hasn't happeend in a few months. Poetry at least is easier... unless I suddenly have a desire to write an epic poem 😛

So I'm dipping my toes back in the writing pool by starting with poems.

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

@samir I'd be interested to participate and would be happy to provide feedback 🙂

I have 30+ years of experience but never do well in interviews, especially if it involves livecoding since that's just not something I'm comfortable with.

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.

@jefframes Ah 🙂 Silence isn't necessarily bad though ... but I do feel the same way as a developer. They might just think that they like it and there are no issues ...

If you want more feedback (and the app will solve a need for me too) I'd be happy to test and provide feedback 🙂

@jefframes Do you use the app yourself?

I had the opposite trajectory with an app that I'm working on at the moment. I created a very simple app that I didn't think had much appeal for most people just so that my nephew could have something which generates infinite puzzles.

But now that I'm working on it and using it, I see ways to improve things and to add more features. Not sure if I'll actually do it or not, but using it and testing it made me see new possibilities ...

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

@Rycaut Yeah, I've been on LinkedIn since the early 2000s (I think). I've never really found it to be useful, but I keep hoping 😛

(Plus there are a few people on there from various places I worked at, or from other social platforms that they are no longer on, that I want to keep in touch with.)

But probably time to give up on LinkedIn and look elsewhere 🙂

@AngelaPreston I get how you must feel. I sometimes withdraw completely from social media because of things like this, but I think your approach is better. Once you tell them how you feel, they'll either learn to be better because they understand how their behaviour affects others, or will (hopefully) go away and bother somebody else?

@Rycaut I hadn't been there in a while. Thought I'd drop by since I'm trying to find some work ... turns out that the only kind of work I can get is working for scam princes 😛

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…

@gaveen I agree with you both about the genie being out of the bottle and the whole don't-pay-attention-to-it-and-it'll-go-away mindset not being successful.

As you said, you do have to enage with it, know where it fails us, and then call it out. That's the only way to affect any meaningful change.

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

@rakontisto For me, the trouble is that I'm often accused of trying to emulate Adams when I'm actually trying to emulate Pratchett 🙂