Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Emo Poetry, Geek Style

For all the lonely geeks out there who’ve been dumped, here’s some poetry that should speak to you:


sudo rm -rf ~/my_heart/* | sudo chown -R nobody ~/my_heart


Explanation for the non-geeks:

The ”sudo” means we are going to do the command as ”root” (AKA, the admin user).

The ”rm” delete (remove) command. Very powerful.

”-rf” tell the rm command to recursively march down the folder deleting everything in its path. That’s the -r part, the f forces the deletion, overriding any other set privileges on the files. Since we are ”root” whatever we say is *going* to happen.

”~/my_heart/*” says that we are emptying the entire contents of the ”my_heart” folder. Which is conveniently located within the current user’s “home” folder. The “~” character signifies that the folder lives in the current user’s home folder. i.e., where all the user’s files and goodies are. The ”*” is a wildcard character, telling the ”rm” that everything in the folder gets nuked.

The ”|” is the “pipe” character, which means “we are about to issue another command and here it comes!” Whee!

We again invoke ”sudo” so we can make sure we are ”root”.

”chown” is the command to change who “owns” the file or folder that we’ll specify in a sec. On a UNIX system, certain files can only be manipulated by certain users. In this case, since we have invoked the admin user privileges, we can do anything we damn well please.

”-R” says we are going to make the change to a folder and we want the chown command to apply recursively. In other words, start at the folder and march down the directory structure applying the ”chown” settings.

”nobody” is a special user on a UNIX box. In this case, we are just using it for comedic effect, setting the ownership of the ”my_heart” to user ”nobody”.

”~/my_heart” is the folder and its contents we are changing. Again, the ”my_heart” folder lives in the current user’s home directory.

So in Emo English, we’d have something like this:

I have turned out the the lights
I’m in the dark
I have emptied my soul
And my Heart belongs
to no one.

I think I might have to make t-shirts. UNIX on one side, English on the other.

1. ITYM UNIX on one side, Emo on the other.  I think it’s its own language :-)

   Posted by Jenna  on  04/18/07  at  12:29 PM

2. I am so glad I don’t speak that language.

   Additionally, my passcode for comment-thing is “Seems42”

   Posted by Carrie  on  04/18/07  at  02:19 PM

3. Wow...Mac DOS :-)

   I’ve actually learnt something from this post.  I have a iMac and have typed in some commands in Terminal for changing some of my internet settings.  Now I know what the sudo does.

   Posted by Sirdar  on  04/18/07  at  08:42 PM

4. Mike says he’s not as geeky as you.  I’m thinking of leaving him now.  (Actually, he said he’s an EE geek, not quite a God Emporer of Computers Geek.  Well, actually I may have embellished that last bit, but it’s close to what I think I remember him saying.  It was late last night when we read it.  I’m tired.)

   But, in retaliation, um, I mean in reciprocation - pour vous:

   The following poem first appeared in INFOCUS magazine. The original authors were Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese of Calvin College & Seminary of Grand Rapids, MI. A poll conducted among INFOCUS readers had established “waka” as the proper pronunciation for the angle-bracket characters < and >, though some readers held out resolutely for “norkie”.

   <> !*’’#
   ^"`$$-
   !*=@$_
   %*<> ~#4
   &[]../
   |{,,SYSTEM HALTED

   The poem can only be appreciated by reading it aloud, to wit:

   Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
   Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
   Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
   Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
   Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
   Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.

   Posted by elizabeth  on  04/19/07  at  12:29 PM

5. Dude.. that’s deep!!

   Posted by ALRO  on  04/20/07  at  08:52 AM

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Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

 

Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?

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