Gavnad Shorts

Putting eBooks on your iPod

2005-12-28T15:25:00.000-08:00

If you have an iPod, perhaps you know about the annoying fact that the notes feature only allows about 1,000 words per note. This is really inconvenient if you want to read long stories, etc.

A website is offering a fast, free service to create a lot of files all within the limit, from one large text file, therefore allowing you to have a complete book on your iPod. The stories are even linked together, although sometimes it doesn't work.

Click here to go to that website.

The Time Machine

2005-12-28T15:22:00.000-08:00

Check out this short story by H.G. Wells. I'm still in the process of reading it on my iPod, as an eBook, but I've been enjoying it so far.

It's very famous, so perhaps you have already read it!

October's Elegy

2005-10-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

A poem by Gavin -- This is a poem I wrote in about 24 hours (including breaks and sleeping). I was just so inspired by the way the leaves smelled.

Autumn leaves
smell like fresh green--
severed from thin branches
and fallen, to dry, in the
cold sun.

Autumn leaves
look like artists' canvasses--
once green, splashed with
bright red sunlight
and sharp cold air.

Autumn leaves
feel like thin hands--
with once-alive veins
now empty, and soft velvet
like dead fingers.

Autumn leaves
sound like whispering voices--
telling unknown secrets
of Fall's dying, and thinking mutely
of the peaceful end to come.

October

2005-10-08T14:16:00.000-07:00

Hey, this is a very festive little poem I, Nader, wrote.

Like writhing ghosts our breath escaped our frozen lips,
and the sky would burn from those crimson flames and crumble into black nothingness.
You long for the times we'd spent,
you wish we could embrace under the rotting naked trees again.

We can't; the darkness came to take me away,
away from you,
and your Octobers will never be the same again,
like pumpkins mangled and destroyed by children to make them grin.

Like a candle burned long, long ago,
like dead leaves decaying beneath our feet,
like people far beneath the dirt,
I will never be the same again.

How to Haiku

2005-10-04T12:11:00.000-07:00

A haiku by me -- need a way to remember how to write a haiku? Here's a neat way:

First five syllables,
Then on the next line seven,
Then five yet again.

Phonics

2005-10-03T16:56:00.000-07:00

A poem by my dad--this is an interesting little experiment to show how screwed up English phonics is. These five words are spelled with the same letters!

thought
it

through,
although
it was
rough,
sitting on the
bough.

Neica's Report On Spherical Blobs

2005-10-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

An essay

I saw the creatures eating them. They would go over the same routine: a red blob of flesh would vacate a cavern in the head and, pulsing, stroke a spherical globe on a conical mounting. In doing so, it would have a bit of it get inside the cavern. It would repeat this until the sphere was flattened.

Then they would start using hard white objects that were mounted just inside the opening of the cavern in the head to break off pieces of the conical mounting until it, too, was inside their body.

Meanwhile, they would be expressing feelings of joy and pleasure. Why, I know not. It seemed time-consuming, and perhaps annoying.

They called the substance ayies-kreim. I wonder what its purpose is.