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I am working on some end user docs for Firedrop that I hope will be useful to new users. I have found Firedrop (which I use to create this Blog and manage this web site) to be useful and fun. I have been using it since around Christmas and if I can learn to use it, then it can be a good tool for anyone, since I am generally clueless. I think Firedrop can be of great interest to Pythonistas who want a scriptable and extensible tool. But given the fine work that Hans Nowak has been doing in recent weeks, I am beginning to think that Firedrop can also be a most effective client side blog and content management system for non-Python folks.
The docs, which will first appear here as a rather extensive Blog post, will be addressed to both kinds of users. I do hope to get the first version up here within a week or so.
I'll only mention this once. Years ago, I had an original web site on geocities. I abandoned it long ago, and forgotten about it. To my surpise, I found it is still sort-of semi-functioning. There are dead links and missing pieces, but it is there and I don't know how much longer it will continue to exist in geocities' cyber graveyard.
It may be a source of passing amusement. Of the most interest, perhaps, are old user-submitted works of art, fiction and poetry that folks submitted and allowed me to post in the early days of the web's popularity. Some of these are found under "Notes from the Underground" and then under "Poetry and Prose".
The old website can be found at oldAwaretek
OK, in case it's of interest to any reader, I am a long time fan of Bob Dylan's music. His are the only concerts I have seen live since college days, and I've attended quite a few of his. If you are blue, or bored, or just looking for some new movement in your life, you could do worse than listen to a Dylan album or a few, or better yet some bootleg tapes of live performances.
One Dylan link to get you started might be BobDylan
My own poetry has been influenced by Dylan, along with English translations of old Chinese poetry, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Shakespeare's sonnets, and the King James translation of the Bible. I certainly do not mean this in any high brow way, nor am I an expert in any of this, nevertheless it is true that I have been moved and influenced by all of the above.
I went down to the ship
where my family was stripped
and I knew that the air was all wrong.
Sumer and Tyre
they hung like a wire
and at night the red star was full strong.
Gone halfway from home
from Egypt and Rome
and the ground was infirm where I stepped.
Looked back to the East
Where lay the dead beast
and I knew why my mother had wept.
The baby was nigh
but no shepherds on high
and no Place I could call all my own.
Deep down in the ice
we all tossed the dice
to see what our futures had shown.
My nerves they were shot
By her breath so damn hot
and down by the river it flowed
Wet black and ripe
it felt so damned right
but by blood was the baby enthroned.
The battle is waged
With sulfer and rage
in the place where the future is found.
The eagle does soar
The green grass grows o'er
The blood of my dad in the ground.
I've been there so long
In river and song
that I don't recognize my own ghost.
I've been up on high
and in valleys so nigh
that I don't understand why I'm chaste.
Red like the Nile
Dry with denial
like Jason I sailed in the night.
Spread sheepskin to fate
Two days I did wait
With stars it is useless to fight.
Was here I was born
and here I still mourn
Three days was the babe out of sight.
The brew I did sip
Cursed be the ship
Engulfed me in red black of night.
Posted by Ron Stephens @ 2004-01-24 08:29:13
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Categories:
poetry
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