Wednesday, March 5, 2008

grPlthWt with Frost Warning

Does anyone else mentally pronounce the visual verification letters, or is it just me? You know, the ones that are a random string of letter that you type in when you're leaving a comment somewhere. I always say them, sometimes out loud.

Many (many!) years ago we found a stack of old computer punch cards somewhere in the hallways of MIT. Trolling for spoo (that's what we called it, I think) was a rather entertaining pastime there - you never knew what you would find. Anyway, each of these punch cards had a line or two of printing on them as well - I suppose it was a visual confirmation of the content of the card. I remember going through them at one point and pulling out the interesting ones and arranging them in a sort of poem. Alas, the poem (and cards) is long lost now, but I still love randomly generated phrases and they always make a sort of poem to me.

On a somewhat related note, a few weeks ago the cartoon "Frazz" had what I thought was an absolutely brilliant Sunday strip. Many thanks to John Hildebidle, my poetry professor in college, for making me able to appreciate this strip.
http://www.comics.com/comics/frazz/archive/frazz-20080210.html

3 comments:

Susan Z said...

I look at them and think about them...but all the ones I get seem to be low on vowels. I am a personal fan of looking at words/names that could be turned into "characters." I have to say that one of my favorite sources is the hymn book...both the composers and especially the names of the tunes.

Jill in MA said...

Great, now I'm doing it! And the last one I got was "ybfkt". Think about it....

Lisa C said...

Hah Jill I like that! Of course now I'm looking at them too =D yakomhur, that one could work... Hmm does this mean we're all geeks that we play with words?