Friday, March 23, 2007

Haiku

Haiku is a mode of Japanese poetry, the late 19th century revision by Masaoka Shiki of the older hokku, the opening verse of a linked verse form, haikai no renga.
Haiku usually combine two (or rarely, three) different phrases, with a distinct grammatical break (kireji). These elements of the older hokku are considered by many to be essential to haiku as well, although they are not always included by modern writers of Japanese "free-form haiku" and of non-Japanese haiku. Japanese haiku are typically written as a single line, while English language haiku are traditionally separated into three lines (source: Wikipedia).

The digital world is sometime called as being soulless -- a charge that is borne out by on-screen error messages like "abort/retry/fail?" and "404 -- file not found."

It's already been a few years ago that there was a modest attempt at change: an error message in the form of a haiku poem. Readers were invited to submit up to three error messages written as haiku poems. The haiku is a three-line poem in the 5/7/5 form (first line 5 syllables, second line 7, third line 5). One of my personal favorites is the next one, submitted by Peter Rothman:

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

Probably not a Microsoft fan;-)


More Haiku error messages? Click here: http://archive.salon.com/21st/chal/1998/02/10chal2.html

You want to see some pictures?



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