IronPython

Have I written my review of the book, "IronPython in Action"? I don't remember. Not that I want to, giving away all the secrets tucked away in the book that led my buddies to discover the truth, the hidden language, the 3D helix that governs the activities of this sector of the universe and leads to temporary vortices we call ourselves.

Rapid prototyping opened up a new set of careers for me when I turned 10. Before that age, I thought that all humans were pretty much concrete casings pounding the pavement, cartoon versions of the people they used to be. Then my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Cummins, told us about a concept called inventing, where you can make up anything you want that operates in simple or complicated motions, producing nothing, something or everything. My best friend invented an automated spoon feeder that carried food in the handle of the spoon and could feed babies, old people or whomever a hands-free device can deliver food to the mouth in 1972.

I don't call myself creative. I am a multisided glass object, some sides reflective, some sides refractive, some sides frosted and some sides opaque. What arrives at the surface is not always what goes out the other side or sides.

After 10 years of life, after four years of contemplating the universe and seeing that adults are mostly asleep, happy to repeat the same set of motions day-in and day-out, I decided to invent myself. I was no longer just me. I was no longer a sponge child, soaking in, far from saturated.

I asked my parents to get me a chemistry set, a microscope, a bicycle, a skateboard, a set of encyclopedias, a Coleman stove, a cleared-off area in the storage room in our basement, a Vertibird, a collection of Matchbox cars (that's a different story's material but I'll leave it here for past and future reference), a coil of two-pair phone wire, some old National Geographic magazines from the '30s, '40s and '50s and time to be by myself. Pretty much average, as you can see, the typical boy dreaming of building a spaceship or antigravity car in the backyard.

We rarely get what we set out to achieve. I wanted a device that floated on water to simulate the actions of the water strider, a giant bug that would scare the neighbourhood kids and let me travel the world.

Oddly enough, through a process I've tried to recreate, I ended up being a molten glob of silica and other oxide particles. Instead of setting out to see the world, the world sees itself through me.

Later I would develop locomotion and other features common to the species to which I was born. But it would take a scientific team in an east Tennessee laboratory, the members transported from another country in order to save them from a general population fearful of modern methods, to create the person I know and love today.

But I digress. I do not. IronPython programming has freed up much of the busy work I had assigned to another one of my twins. We needed to know if the researchers who had created the nursery game, "Duck, Duck, Goose," had in fact laid down clues that later led Alex Martelli to pen the phrase duck typing. Using regular Python had advanced our cause, giving us many short-term, high-profit projects to fund our basic research but something else was needed. I know that some of you are adamantly opposed to large corporations, seeing their IP as a threat to freedom. I don't. Instead, tools like .NET give my variants the structure they need to focus on their (or our, I suppose) goals.

Speed, speed, speed. I can't stress that word enough. You don't succeed by being the tortoise. You succeed by thinking like a tortoise strapped to a cheetah who has just fed on the hare. That's why one of our team members has trained to be expert in Windows system administration. Sure, we use Linux variants (what variant wouldn't?) but Windows is the dominant player on the market. I don't want to own 100% of 10% of the market. I want to create a completely new market that'll put potential competitors in my dust trail.

However, where we leapt off the page, we landed on the index. No, not the codex. Forget about those Brownian mumbo-jumbo piles of pulp. We built a database that randomly changes entries which build functions that rebuild entries that create databases that randomly change databases that change to functions which create more new entries. All of these fold in on themselves and are passed through my crystal structure.

And NO! You crystal healers have been given your restriction notices. You are not allowed to read this blog. If you want to go around with a piece of broken quartz around your neck carrying on about the healing powers of the stone while your body accumulates toxic substances which limit your lifespan and contribute to your lack of moneymaking skills, don't let me stop you. Keep drinking that lead paint we poured in your pewter goblet. We promise you'll reach a state of...what was it we called it?...oh yeah, you'd reach stasis with Isis on your right side and Styx running on your left.

I have no healing powers. I'm just this byproduct of an experiment that failed. But so is life. You think this planet grew up planning to put us here? Of course not. It was one of those pesky comets that had to come crashing into Earth's gravity field. Earth was going along just fine without organic substances, spewing out lava, cleaning its skin by burning off the top layer (you'd get crusty, too, if you faced the Sun all day without good UV protection). Then our ancestors landed. Well, ancestors is a stretch, even for me. Let's say it was a distant cousin, four or five removed, the ones you don't talk about out loud during family reunions, afraid that side of the family will come out in you.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the prototypical prototype. We want to thank Watson, Crick, My Cousin Vinny (hey, without positraction, this thing wouldn't work!), the ladies running my investment club, the guys chewing the fat at the pub and keeping our seats available, Gessika (Jessica with a G, my favorite, the one with an eye for when a patron's throat's getting dry), and of course, my main squeeze (my angel, my saint, my protector, the Godmother of her team). Amelia, Tina, I'm not forgetting you or your coworkers, either - we'll have to sort out later whether you wanted me to mention your name or not.

The stew's in the oven. The baby's in the microwave. The toaster's on rinse and repeat. We've got just one or two more tweaks to make and then we're ready to test the new routine on me. And my twins, eventually.

All this while Joey's still working on the purpose of the One. He's cautioned me that my prototype might actually be the key to release the final version of the One. He surmises that I and my siblings are encrypted. We're "zipped up," in computer jargon. He's running some test scripts against our prototype and some of the code fragments of the One to see if anything "lights up," as he said. To me, it's like saying that Rasputin and Confucius were collaborating together. What the hell? Valerie's willing to foot the bill so let Joey bill a few more hours chasing this rabbit foot into the chopper.

I'm ready. I'm tired of staring and dictating into this wrist computer. I tried the goggles but looked like a geek. "Yeah, baby, I can watch HD movies with these things on. What color are your eyes? Umm...how do I adjust these things?" Yeah, the women like that - a real attention-getter. It's one thing when you're riding a motorbike wearing them helmet mikes, both of you looking straight ahead. It's another when you're sitting under a tree on a picnic off the hiking trail, slobbering all over each other in the bug-filled heat. "Sorry, darling, what did you say? Hang on a sec'. Aaarn-old just said his classic line, 'Hasta la pizza.'"

I'm ready to embed this code and get the show on the road. I've got the script written in my brother's intestines sitting here ready to be typed in. Won't be long before we're communicating on a level that...take that back. We'll communicate on many levels at once, putting that old body language titillating tutorial crap in the can. Time for the new schooling to be in session.

And just in time for my rested liver and kidneys to pick up where that sparkling wine left off. Damn if I'm going to let my brother's reputation leave me behind on my drinking. A guy's got to have a vice. Else what's he got to grip onto?