The Book Meme
Fri 21 Apr 2006Crazy idea doing the rounds at the moment.
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it to page 161.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of this sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.
What happens when I do this? Without leaving my chair, I reach out and grab Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit by Bill English & Microsoft SharePoint Teams. P 161, 5th sentence:
For example, documents that will remain on a file server will need to be crawled if those documents are to appear in the search result set.
It all makes perfect sense when you look at one sentence at a time!
Then I realise Hey, I just typed that sentence long-hand. This book comes with a CD. I have the complete book installed as a PDF on my notebook. I could have just cut and pasted it! This is a crazy idea.
Where did I catch this crazy idea from? David Drucker, a mate in Vancouver. David’s book was About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design by Alan Cooper, “the father of Visual Basic”. Just for a laugh (and to check whether he has the same old edition as I have) I reached around for my copy of About Face. It’s not there! One of the boys has nicked it! These are the same boys who shouted out when I was reading it back in the 90’s, “Hey look at this! Dad’s reading a book by Alice Cooper.”
Serendipitously, Andy has just come online with his instant messenger and he has confessed to having it. I should ask him what is the 5th sentence on p161, but it’s nearly midnight.
So where did David catch the meme? From his mate, Tinfoiling. And where did he catch it? From goddess spiral, and so on…
April 23rd, 2006 at 23:48
And if the nearest book is the Story of O? Nah, kidding. Mhh, nearest book would prob ably be in my bad - No Logo by Naomi Klein. Out of reach though.
April 27th, 2006 at 5:25
The closest book I could find was “Instant Wireless Java with J2ME” by Paul Tremblett. I never actually read the whole book, It was useful during some time in my life. The fifth sentenct (in my case the fifth line) reads:
form1.setCommandListener(this);
I guess this sentence doesn’t make any sense by itself!