October 30, 2001

11:59 AM

Who knew there were so many “magnetic poetry” sites? (these use java, flash or shockwave)
posted by transient (11 comments total)

And who would care?
posted by Qubit at 12:20 PM on October 30, 2001

I've had this idea for some time... sorta related to magnetic poetry.... I don't know how. But I've always thought it'd be neat to have some sort of wallpaper with "active components" that you can drag around and make different pictures. The way you can drag around your desktop icons, but unless you have a few hundred, you can't get very interesting pictures.... possibly have an add-in component where users can create they're own objects... Anyone know of something like this?
posted by TuxHeDoh at 1:03 PM on October 30, 2001

And who would care?

Very shallow people. Obviously.

Thanks for the link, transient. I've wasted time playing with free marmite poetry fridge magnets before now. Of course, the stock of words place a stricture on the outcome which is subtly different from the usual metre or rhyme restriction. Hence the number of sites ... lots of new flavours.

See also: online magnetic poetry competition. You have to sign up, but it's fairly busy.
posted by walrus at 1:29 PM on October 30, 2001

Sleepyme.net has magnetic poetry as well.
posted by jragon at 3:57 PM on October 30, 2001

I prefer the challenge round of fridge poetry that occurs when 90% the little word tiles have either slipped beneath the fridge or become so engulfed in cat hair as to be totally useless as magnets, leaving you with only three pronouns, one letter "s" and the words "alpaca" and "rosary".
posted by Kafkaesque at 4:08 PM on October 30, 2001

What?
you alpaca
my rosary?
s ...
posted by walrus at 4:13 PM on October 30, 2001

You rosary
my alpaca?



It tastes great!!
posted by Kafkaesque at 4:46 PM on October 30, 2001

And several done in under 5k (last one by our own dithered).
posted by sylloge at 4:47 PM on October 30, 2001

Back in 1997 Talk of the Nation (NPR) did a show (listen) on old fashioned Magnetic Poetry.
posted by Laurable at 9:10 PM on October 30, 2001

TuxHeDo: I've seen it done with Nautilus under Linux but not under Windows. You can see a screenshot of an older and less impressive version of the code here; the code has been a bit refined since then but I don't know of a new screenshot anywhere.
posted by louie at 10:34 PM on October 30, 2001

In the interest of making the index complete, there is another one at dhtmlguis.com.
posted by genapathy at 8:01 AM on October 31, 2001