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Postings from April 2000
The 2000 Perl Haiku Contest =========================== Haiku are the Perls of the literary world: short, dense, and priceless. So it comes as no surprise that they're popular with Perl programmers. Nowhere was this more clear than at the '99 Open Source Conference. An ad hoc two-day haiku contest received more than 50 entries. The judges (Elaine, Damian, and MJD) chose two joint winners... Michael Schwern triumphed with a meta-haiku that's true Perl poetry: #Life ends with a crash require 'Coy.pm'; &laughter while $I, die; Kevin Hackman won too, for this chill augury against the Dark Side: fall leaves blanket ground redmond dreams darkly -- beware! winter brings penguins Not content to rest on our laureates, this year we're going global. Thus we unveil a haiku contest for the whole Perl community! And in the spirit of form following function, we've entitled it: Camelinguistic Heptadecasyllablic Ideogeny ...or "the CHI" for short. (Yes, the Sino-Grecian pun is deliberate.) The contest runs from now until the 2000 Open Source Conference. Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to send us a haiku. It must be in the orthodox 5-7-5 syllable format And it should be on a topic related to the Open Source world. Real Perl poetry's acceptable, provided it actually runs. But ordinary natural language verse is also most welcome. Each entry must be released to us under the GNU GPL. All entries will be judged on artistic merit and technical skill. The winners will be announced during the Second Open Source Conference. Apart from fame and glory, the victors will win fabulous prizes. The winner receives an O'Reilly voucher for 100 dollars. The runner-up wins a 50 dollar voucher; third place, 25. Note that you don't have to be at the conference to take part (or to win!) You can enter at: history.perl.org /CHI/