Crocosmia, or How the Web Works
Comments: 9
Crocosmia flattened by creek overflow
Next month sees my 10th anniversary of making pages for the world-wide web and I have to say that the way it works can still delight and surprise me.
Hiking on Sunday I photographed some flowers by a recently overflowed creek. I didn’t know what kind of flowers they were so there was the usual low-level irritation of not knowing the names of things, the constant underbuzz you learn to live with. Then last night I read Mark Pilgrim who points to Tim Bray who has the same flowers in his garden and he didn’t know what they were called either until Anita Rowland told him (they’re crocosmia).
This is great because I know Anita reads this site from time to time, so I can close a little circle here and thank her publicly for increasing my botanical vocabulary and thereby adding a thread (a beautiful orange one in this case) to the cloak that wraps me in the world.
If someone wanted to invent a serendipity machine, it might look a lot like the web.
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Posted to The Good • 2003.07.08 (Tue) • 11:13
Comments
Posted by Dave 2003.07.08, 11:36
That is a nice picture!!!! Now if mine were as good as yours. :-)
Posted by Mary Beth 2003.07.08, 13:17
Lovely flower and photo. Congrats on doing this web-stuff for so long. Makes me want to rummage through my old files to see what my oldest index.html file is!
I remember how hard-won those first pages were (having been written in code and me never having done anything like that before!) and how mysterious it all was trying to figure out how to get it from point A (computer HD) to point B (ISP’s server). Whoa. I set up pages for myself and for our then about-to-be first quilt show. Took several years before everyone on the committee knew what I was talking about - huh? web page? wha?
You’re making me all sentimental but you’re right- the web is full of serendipity, opportunity and learning. And meeting interesting folks in places you can’t be at the moment and learning about their take on things.
Posted by Tim Bray 2003.07.08, 16:08
Circle now thoroughly closed: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/07/Incoming
Posted by jh 2003.07.08, 21:54
Hoo, Tim! Welcome. Glad you saw this. Thoroughly closed indeed!
Posted by Klondike.kate 2003.07.09, 06:54
Great photo
Posted by Steve 2003.07.10, 14:38
I’ve only been HTMLing since Feb 95 (more than 8 years now), and still don’t have a clue what really makes the web tick.
Oh well. Nice photo :)
Posted by bp 2003.07.10, 15:10
Sorry to nitpick, but the word “cloak” has only one “c.” The way you spelled it reminded me of “cloaca” and I was quite confused trying to understand how a cloaca was wrapping you in the world.
Posted by Danny 2003.07.11, 09:38
The web is cool for coincidences too : I decided a couple of days ago my next big project would be a Serendipity Server. http://dannyayers.com/archives/001494.html
Very nice flowers.
There used to be great punk club in Sabinanigo, Spain called La Cloaca, btw. Pleasant to be wrapped in ;-)
Posted by jh 2003.07.11, 20:00
bp —-
Sorry to nitpick, but the word “cloak” has only one “c.”
I thought there was something wrong with it.
The way you spelled it reminded me of “cloaca”
Ha! I guess it was a cloaca that got me here and the cloak takes care of the rest.
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