Thursday 8 October 2009

The Twitter Louse – How am I driving?



Today is National Poetry Day. I knitted a square which I hope is now part of the Poetry Society knitted poem. It transpired the poem was Dylan Thomas', In My Craft and Sullen Art. However, as Twitter is currently having a bit of an odd day (about 2 hours behind in messages) it was Rabbie Burns who occupied my mind as I sat at the PC. I thought "Oh what great power has twitter gi us to see ourselves as others see us?" OK, maybe not twitter but those who write mashables and algorithms encouraging us to see ourselves as others see us. Here are just a few (puts heart on sleeve):
  • Twitter Grader – currently 94/100
  • Twanalyst - Personality: popular inquisitive cautious Style: garrulous coherent NETWORKER
  • Tweeteffect – People come, people go
  • HappyTweets – I'm pretty happy
  • TwitterCounter – A graph that grows as your count does
  • Twitalyzer – apparently I have an astonishingly high signal to noise ratio and am rated low in all other areas.
  • TweetStats – interesting stuff that shows hourly tweet density
  • TwitterFriends – a whole host of stats you never knew you needed including your follow cost
  • Twittersheep – Gives a cloud based on the Bios of your followers (see above)
  • Twitteranalyzer - A graph junkies heaven
  • TwitterFriendsnetworkbrowser – Wow – I find this strangely addictive; creates visual networks as you click on each picture that person's network is revealed.

    Just to mix my human parasites and poets a little remember: Big Fleas have lesser fleas upon their backs to bite em, and lesser fleas have smaller fleas and so ad infinitum.

    Please do add comments after the Poem to a Louse


    To A Louse
On Seeing One On A Lady's Bonnet, At Church
1786


Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho', faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her-
Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.

Swith! in some beggar's haffet squattle;
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;
Whaur horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle
Your thick plantations.

Now haud you there, ye're out o' sight,
Below the fatt'rels, snug and tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye'll no be right,
Till ye've got on it-
The verra tapmost, tow'rin height
O' Miss' bonnet.

My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
As plump an' grey as ony groset:
O for some rank, mercurial rozet,
Or fell, red smeddum,
I'd gie you sic a hearty dose o't,
Wad dress your droddum.

I wad na been surpris'd to spy
You on an auld wife's flainen toy;
Or aiblins some bit dubbie boy,
On's wyliecoat;
But Miss' fine Lunardi! fye!
How daur ye do't?

O Jeany, dinna toss your head,
An' set your beauties a' abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
The blastie's makin:
Thae winks an' finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for making me waste time this morning!! How addictive was this - couldn't copy the cloud to reproduce it tho' - how did you manage (I tried putting it into paint but faild!)

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  2. Glad you enjoyed it. My trick with the cloud was - Print Scr - paste to paint then open again in Photo gallery - use 'fix' to trim off as much extraneous nonsense as possible. Hey I out work around'd the Sparkle! Of course it would have been easier just to do it on the iphone take the screen image and import it - but why make life easy for myself :)

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