Anyway, when you have recovered from the nice story, I will tell you about my campsite.
It is made of tents, written in a nasty concotion of C and Perl, and involves trees. The idea is a sort of place where you get 'tent space' for free, and then put stuff in your virtual tent to show the world. It's sort of a more permanent Blog, if you will, and it's current status is Very, Very broken. Yesterday I ran a debugger, and discovered that I had made some serious errors consistently, thourghout the code. The other major flaw in it is that you would have to download a little client, but this section is at least pretending to be working, eg. I can connect to myself with it. I may add a GUI soon, or maybe I wont.
Oh yes, and the trees automatically change colour through the seasons. They look sort of pretty.
Any way, the story is about a man, who decided one day that he would buy a present for his wife. He couldn't decide what to buy her, so after work one day he walked down to town to look around.
First he went to the jewellers, an looked at all the pretty gold rings and necklaces. But he decided that they were too expensive. And so he went to the florist, and the chocolate shop, but he decided that they were too tacky. So, he gave up.
But just as he was walking down to the bus stop, he noticed a funny little alleyway that he hadn't sen before. He decided to explore
He walked down the alley, in the hope of finding a present for his wife. The alley seemed to be empty, except for one shop in the corner. The shop was a very peculiar pet shop.
He seemed inexplicably drawn to this pet shop, and so he walked in.
Inside the pet shop, there were all the usual animals, gerbils, cats, dogs and the like. But his wife was scared of dogs, and the cats all looked a bit nasty, so he had a wander around.
Then, right in the back corner of the shop, between a chinchilla and a macaw, he saw the sweetest, cuddliest, happiest little birdie he had ever laid eyes on. He wanted to buy it for his wife, so he went to the pet shop keeper ( who was a small, timid, bespectacled man with brown coat) and asked to buy it.
'Oh... ummm... no' stammered the shop keeper 'i can't sell you that... it's dangerous!'
At this, our man burst out laughing. Remember, this was the sweetest, cuddliest little birdie he had ever seen. So he asked 'Whyever not?'
'That' came the reply 'Is an Outer Ammzonian Basin Vicious Attack Bird. It has been highly trained by the tribes of the rainforest for use in war. Uncontrolled, these birds can lay waste to miles of forest, killing all known forms of life. I use that one to clean my loo.'
The customer was stunned. He refused to beleive it. So the petshop owner said 'Allow me to demonstrate'
So the petshop owner took the cage down from the shelf, and placed it on the desk. He took a piece of paper and screwed it up in to a ball. He said 'The birds are quite easy to operate. You simply give the order "Vicious Attack Bird" follwed by the name of what you want it to attack.' He then threw the paper to the opposite end of the room.
'Vicious Attack Bird: That piece of paper over there'
THe bird perked up in it's cage. It focused i'ts little eyes on the paper, and squared it's shoulders. (Don't you DARE say that bird's don't have shoulders...) Then the bird launched itself across the cage. It wrenched apart the bars with i's wings, darted across the room and laid into the paper. The paper was ANNIHILATED, diced so fine that it fell around the room like snow, scattering the fragments far and wide.
The customer reeled back in shock, not sure what to think. And then, withou thinking he said 'Can I try?'
'Certainly' said the petshop owner. 'You know how to give the orders. fire away'
Now, the man had conceived of a cunning plan. in his pocket he had a very special pen. He had bought it in america, from a very high tech shop. It was an Indestructible Titanium Hyper-Pen, which never runs out of ink, and can withstand the simultaneous detonation of three kilos of semtex.
So he took this pen from his pocket, threw it across the room and gave the order:
'Vicious Attack Bird, That Pen'.
And once more the bird wrenched apart the bars of it's cage, flew across the room and landed on the pen. This time it stood there for a couple of seconds before, in a flurry of wings, it attacked the pen. Shards of Titanium whistled past the heads of the two men, who had taken cover under the desk. A shitsu was sucked into the quantum-warp hole created by the destruction of the inexhaustible ink supply, and then the little bird flapped back into it's cage and pulled the bars back into position.
The petshop owner, pondering how to retrieve Ernie the shitsu from the 27th dimension, was quit taken aback when he heard 'Can I buy it now then'. But not quite as suprised as the customer, who appeared to have lost conrol of his tongue.
The petshop owner, who was now keen to get rid of the bird, agreed, and after parting with a stupid amount of money, he left the shop with the Vicious Attack bird in a cage under his arm, whistling happily.
And so he walked down to the bus stop, and sat down it the bus shelter. After waiting a while, another man came and sat next to him
'That's a very pretty little bird you've got there mate' He said. 'Oh Yes' said our man, proud of his new purchase 'This is an Outer Amazonian Basin Vicious Attack Bird'
The man next to him grinned, amused that such a sweet bird would have a name like that 'Yeah right' he murmured "Vicious attack bird, my arse."
