BW TechBeat Haiku Contest: Calling for Entries
Posted by: Steve Hamm on January 03
Rather than doing something conventional like post my predictions for 2006 (Sorry, Rob ;-)), I have decided to kick off the new year with a tech haiku contest. The inspiration: This blog collecting haikus about mainframes.
The rules: Write a haiku in some way related to the tech world and send it in as a comment. Assuming people actually write poems and send them in, anybody else can vote for their choice as the best BW TechBeat Haiku by sending in a comment/vote. The prize is blogosphere fame. The winner—again, assuming people actually send in poems—will get her or his picture published on TechBeat along with the appropriate kudos.
For those of you who have forgotten how to write a haiku, here’s a refresher. I’m going with the less-strict “free-form haiku” definition, though, when I vote, I’ll give extra points for more formal poems.
To get things rolling, here’s a haiku. I thought of this while crossing the Avenue of the Americas in a sleetstorm.
Those smart Google guys
Everything they touch
Turns to—Google
Here are some of those mainframe haikus:
Less a lumbering
Dinosaur as is believed
Big iron is speed
-- Haiku by Brian Capps of Portland Community College
New world discovered
Mainframes are a legacy
In old lies future.
-- Ezra Fernandez, SUNY Binghamton U.
The wind blows softly
Through the leaves of autumn. wait,
That's just the mainframe
--Van Landrum, U. of South Alabama
EBCDIC, ASCII
Which of the two is preferred?
Either way, convert
--Frank Migacz, Northern Illinois U.
Thousands of options
Stable like the mountain peak
Can it play Starcraft?
-- Ian Penney, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Mainframe, desire
But not too much, or it will
Surely overheat
--Aaron McMahan, West Virgina University at Parkersburg
