Mimsy's Box

A mental delicacy prepared in race fashion by none other than the Mad Hatter Jason.

She pierces him with eyes of fire,
Revs her engine and spins her tires,
In hot pursuit he chases her,
Finding her lines, each hidden curve,
He gently follows her snaking path,
Learning more at every pass.
All is fun and the race goes fast,
When suddenly his chase doth crash!

An earth-shaking tremor of doubt,
Second guesses run rampantly,
Guiding a guilt-based inner bout,
He worries about her safety,
But next thing he knows she starts to burn out.

Again he gives chase
To see her pretty face
But down the road discovers
This time’s not a race.
She flees the scene to keep him safe
And frees the man from awful fate
But thinks not how his heart might shake
‘Til face to face they meet beside a lake.

He reads the surface of her mind,
Proving out loud that it’s clear as day,
But when he wonders what he’ll find,
When digging deeper, and what she’ll say.
In the realm of sanity,
He starts to play,
With words like a hatter,
His madness on display.

Down the rabbit hole he lives,
Beckoning her further so he might give
Insight of healing and thoughts curative.
A young Alice, she wavers at the small door,
To a world that is meaningless and yet means so much more.
Unmoving she stands debating the vial,
Wondering how insanity will help her survival.

And thus the hatter speaks,
Explaining his world,
Describing what he sees,
The girl’s being unfurled.

"An angel stuffed in a box labeled 'DO NOT OPEN. EVIL' guarded by a selfish girl shrouded in a thin cloak of innocence imagining a dark cloud of guilt overhead."

He says, then details what he wants instead.
Why oh why, won’t you be nicer to yourself and me,
I can’t wait to see inside Mimsy.
Around the question the rabbit dances,
With no meaning given, a short reply she answers
Smiling she prances "Uhuh... we’ll see."
Seeing her fence, he lures her in
To break her defense of the question
He simply states rather exactly
I’m not sure you know what’s in the box, my dear mimsy.
In playful response she takes the poke,
Inside the box? Hmm… nope
Well milady Mimsy, what remains is called "Hope."

Not wanting to hurt, or be hurt in kind,
She ignores his advances time after time.
She says she needs easiness (so she can drive blind),
But he knows it’s a challenge that will make her sublime.
Discussing Pandora and history past,
He tells her of differences between the easy and right paths.
Alas, if only Mimsy were the Borogoves,
And the past would find its tears,
The hatter could hap happiness,
And destroy all her fears.

The psycho semantic and curious chef,
To the best of his skills with which he’s been blessed
He composes tenuously a meal of mental obscurity,
With such delicious components, an epicurean rarity
And simplistic appearance on which she can dine
Where the residual flavor improves over time.
Finally she opens her heart to his mind,
Even if only a piece at a time,
Alas his chance has finally arrived,
To be such a happy Mad Hatter that he composes this rhyme.

---

This is a poem I wrote not long ago. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out (the poem, not so much the rest of the story, lol) and have kept it quietly stashed amongst close friends, but I'm so very fond of this poem and have little reason to keep it locked up, so I thought I would share it with the world. There are many reason's I'm happy with this work, some which will not be perceived by anybody, some that only a select few will understand, but for the rest of you, I'm quite happy with two things primarily: First, I wrote this from beginning to end with no backtracking, proof reading or editing (Edit: I added the subtitle when I finished). Second, is my application of the term "mimsy," originally coined by the great author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll), whom I have a great deal of respect and admiration of. Mimsy, in this work, is a person to whom, at the time in my mind's eye, both Carroll's initial meaning of the word, as well as the additional meaning and context added over the years. At any rate, do enjoy. I'm interested in feedback too, though it's unlikely that I will edit the work at all, considering the circumstances.

TechVi: Zune Development with XNA

First and foremost, I want to thank the gents over at TechVi for inviting me to contribute to their program. It's always nice to work with a bunch of smart and driven folks. That said, as I just came on board today I was going through some of the previous shows to see what I was getting into. As I was taking a peak at the recent ZuneHD spot some comparison between the iPod Touch/iPhone caught my attention with the mention of application development on the Zune, which came across as a rather bleak outlook. I just wanted to point out some of the things Microsoft has been working on to that regard to give a little more clarity.

To be clear, I'm no expert with the Zune (my Touch Pro is a perfectly sufficient MP3 player for me), nor am I personally up to date with the development technologies I'll be pointing out. I have, however, been watching Microsoft's strategy for many years as they've moved forward and I have my own hypothesis to make about the future of development in this regard. Now, to the point:

Over the last few years Microsoft's .NET Framework has been gaining a lot of ground in the development industry. One of it's challenges early on was that, while well designed for desktop and web applications, it was not prepared for one of the most sought after markets in the technology industry: games. Those of us who were knee deep in trying to figure out ways to make good games while still leveraging the power of .NET during these early days may even remember Microsoft releasing an unsupported Managed wrapper for DirectX with the DirectX SDK. Not long after (but long enough for plenty of us to have started dabbling with it) they yanked the good stuff right out from under us. Turns out Microsoft was moving to a new platform altogether. Enter XNA (the clever buggers went and took the recursive acronym to a new level, XNA stands for "XNA is Not an Acronym"). It started a bit rough, but, as with any other Microsoft development technology, ultimately turned out to be generally viewed as really well planned with great tools and a lot of opportunity ahead.

Since it's mention in 2004, XNA Game Studio is up to version 3 and now offers 2D and 3D game development support and runs, in some capacity or another, on Desktop PCs, XBOX 360, and Zune. The platform is based on a modified version of the .NET Compact Framework which is a reasonably capable and very easy to use development platform that facilitates a powerful, easy to read/write, well organized environment. Using this technology it is possible to develop a game that will run on all three platforms with little to no change in the code. In order to leverage this to compete with Apple's App Store it may be necessary for Microsoft to rethink their distribution model (currently they offer a paid subscription only designed for XBOX 360), but as a development platform it is very clean, easy to use and powerful.

I don't know what Microsoft intends to do about distribution, but I can at least speculate on one more change that seems innevitable for the future. Early on the intention to support Windows Mobile devices with XNA alongside the XBOX and Desktop PC seemed obvious, though over time have faded from memory. Zune managed to get in the door first, but I still see the handheld OS now commonly found on phones in XNA's near future. I've been toying with Windows Mobile 6.5 and an unreleased version of the NetCF runtime (listed currently as version 3.7). One of the first things I noticed while playing with the new runtime is that it no longer includes the mobile Managed DirectX library. Some speculate that it's because OpenGLES is so dominant in the portable industry, but this feels rather reminiscent of the last time they wanted to make a move to XNA. The Windows Mobile platform will be much harder to target than XBOX and Zune were because of the great variety of hardware that it runs on and their varying capabilities (much like the desktop version), but since XNA is based on the Compact Framework it seems like an innevitable move, leaving the bulk of my assumption on the "when" side. I guess now all we can do is wait and see.