A touch, I do confess it.
August 24, 2007 2:11 PM   Subscribe

Notes towards the complete works of Shakespeare [pdf] by Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan. (About the authors.) Documentation. "Making of" video. [previously discussed, but never actually linked]. From the same people: Carbon Life Form, a small Mac application that will die of starvation unless you feed it files.
posted by dersins (5 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.
Still am I call'd. Unhand me, damn dirty apes.
By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me!
I say, away! Go on; I'll follow thee.
posted by CynicalKnight at 2:21 PM on August 24, 2007


Previously, on Rain Shadow People...

> From: An Infinite Number of Monkeys
> Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2007 1:42 AM
> To: itsrainingmetaflo@hotmail.com
> Subject: SPAMlet Fellas
>
> Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee:
What the fuck are you doing?
You're hanging around my fuckin' neck
like a vulture, like impending death!

You think I'm funny? I'm funny to you?
I'm a clown to you? How the fuck am I funny?
What the fuck is so funny about me?
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
the top of my compass: and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot
you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am
easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
cannot play upon me.

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Today everything is different.
There's no action.
I have to wait around like everyone else.
I'm an average nobody.
I get to live the rest of my life
like a schnook.

The rest is silence.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:46 PM on August 24, 2007 [1 favorite]


Great links. Man, I love liberty and all, but people who say negative things about Shakespeare (Sallalahu Alaihi Wasallam) should be put into camps.
posted by Gnostic Novelist at 3:51 PM on August 24, 2007


Carbon Life Form reminds me of a little software toy idea I had back in college and never got around to properly implementing: a text-eating pet, with a genetic code that would determine what it could and couldn't eat. You'd have to give it some words now and then in order to keep it alive, but depending on its "DNA" there'd be things—at the level of letters and bigraphs and words and miscellaneous other constructs—that it'd be unable to digest, or which would even make it sick. The trick, then, would be to figure out what text to feed it to keep it healthy and happy.

The genetic code would have just been a string of, say, twentysix 2-bit values—[GATC]*26, essentially—and all of the genomic reactions to text would be parsed out of that. And while the DNA string itself would be visible, the genetic mapping wouldn't be made explicit: part of the game, as it were, would be trying to deduce what the larger genetic constructs were from feeding/reaction behavior. Examinging how it reacted to strings of text; checking its output ("feces"); matching overt negative reactions against input; etc. Might be worth trying to put together one of these days.

And, if it existed, we could see which ones these monkeys could keep alive.
posted by cortex at 4:01 PM on August 24, 2007 [2 favorites]


I think these monkeys are off to a good start. They just need a few million years of banging about on the keys and they'll turn out something stage-worthy.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 4:34 PM on August 24, 2007


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