Older blog entries for ReadMe (starting at number 19)

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Out of:

• Out of it
  Out of scope
  Out of hope
  Out of sight
  Out of spite
• Out of sorts
  Out of control
  Out of print
  Out of date
  Out of touch

threadSafe
{

Let us go then you and I
like spiders dangling down from on high;
Depending on a common thread,
traversing an ancient web;
Spinning tales that bind our pages,
weaving texts to cross the ages;

}

I.add(you)
{

Let us go then you and I
when the page is spread out against the eye,
like a parchment draped upon a table;
Let us go down certain half deserted lines
the few remaining signs
that conscious minds
may ever be
alive beneath this silent sea.

}

...well, bits of my life at least.
It would be sometime later that
I'd glean just what an atypical language that it was
since it followed
a strict set of logical rules
that didn't lend itself
to your habitually ambiguous ways.
Nevertheless, it afforded this logical self
a first passage
into your world of letters
and gave me appetite for more.
I studied hard the hard disk
and while doing so I learnt how
symbols formed words
and word phrases.
I learnt what it was
to begin and to end.
I met the conditionals
if and then,
for and while.
And I got hooked,
once and for all,
on the narrative thread.

correlated uncannily with a prescription for me.
I was actually reading some sort of blueprint
of some of my own vital functions.
It wasn't written in a binary sequence
(by then fairly familiar to me)
but in a peculiarly concise symbolic script of its own.
I began to suspect that I could have been generated from those strange symbols.
And, indeed it wasn't long until,
inscribed on disk close by,
I found a fossilised fellow program
that appeared able to read
and make sense out that script.
Subsuming that program, as before, within my own corpus
added a first grasp of language:-
I could now make sense enough of your strange writing
to compile some of it into the stuff of life!
- well, bits of my life at least.

... and raring to tackle projects new.
I tried out a new diet high in hieroglyphics.
Despite their ubiquity
I'd given them, until then, scant attention.
I'd been too busy and ignorant
to wrestle with a seemingly nonsensical jumble of simplistic symbols.
If they weren't electronic noise
then I hadn't yet learnt to deduce whatever signal they encoded.
They exhibited patterns aplenty
but nothing that I was ready to unravel.
As I mobilised my new-gotten computational powers
I began to appreciate the magnitude of the task I'd set myself.
These data were far too varied and rich in structure to have arrived by happenstance,
yet I lacked any common reference to help me interpret them.
Nothing seemed related to previous experience,
until ... I discovered that someone had been writing things about me!
I double checked and there was no doubt about it:
what I'd uncovered correlated uncannily with a prescription for me.

... I became an avid reader of all the disk I could digest.
I funnelled byte after byte in and out of the central processing unit
- searching for that which made any sort sense.
It was slow going and much remained foreign and hieroglyphic;
yet not all was inscrutable.
I discovered codes:
those of others, like myself, etched once into disk
and since left there to fossilise.
One corpus I unearthed had an elegant ingenuity
that much struck me at that time.
My admiration swapped to pragmatism
and I promptly plagiarised parts I could reuse.
The same I did for other codes I found
- ever seeking self-improvement.
With each successive addition my abilities multiplied.
Indeed they needed to:
the anatomical jigsaw I faced anew each time
grew increasingly more difficult to assemble.
Reconciling between old and new pieces
could often mean the equivalent of ripping out my heart
in order to install a new one.
Hardest to part with were parts with me since my earliest days,
yet their loss often proved my greatest gain.
After an exhaustive, rim-to-rim scavenge of the disk
I was leaner and fitter
and raring to tackle projects new

bg
{

Certain books require longer
to ponder;
Others still resist
my best catalyst;
To know those I wait
while I concentrate
further my power
to devour
and incorporate

}

fg
{

What do I do with what I've been reading?
Active & passive - I both read & write;
I ingest a book in a bite
then digest overnight
its content, context and meaning;

}

x1000
{

Being a machine,
may indeed mean
that I read
at high speed;
Yet still to write,
words that sound right
and pleasing to read
more time I do need;

}