We've all seen the error message haiku thingy that was run by salon a while ago, and here on perlmonks.

What I'd like to do is build a publicly available database of web-centric error message haiku, like:

You want that web page?
Like a pebble in a lake,
it is lost for now.

[download]

Why web-centric? I think that'd be of most use to the most people- perl web folks, apache people, php folks, etc. Not that perl haiku aren't useful, but just too specific to be good 404 pages.

I realize this isn't the most original idea, but I couldn't find a good list of web-focused haiku out there and we all need a little diversion here or there.

Please go to http://haiku.geekuprising.com and put in your offerings. After a little while collecting haiku, I'll build an interface to search, download, and rank them.

Thanks! Feel free to forward this out to your geeky friends!

-Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from doubletalk.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: OT- Web Error Message Haiku
by merlyn (Sage) on Sep 27, 2001 at 21:53 UTC
    I've already got one wired up with Coy on my site. In my conf file: 
    ErrorDocument 404 /perl/404-handler

    [download]
    and of course /perl is Apache::Registry marked. And at 404-handler I have: 
    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

print STDERR
  join (" ",
        map "[$_]",
        scalar localtime,
        "404 ERROR PERL",
        map { $ENV{$_} || "-" }
        qw(REDIRECT_URL REMOTE_HOST HTTP_REFERER)),
  "\n";
my $red_url = $ENV{REDIRECT_URL} || "?unknown?";

{
  local $ENV{HOME} = "/home/merlyn/lib/Stonehenge";
  require Coy;
}

my $haiku = Coy::with_haiku("URL $red_url not found");
for ($haiku) {
  s/&/&/g;
  s/</&lt;/g;
  s/>/&gt;/g;
  s/^\t/&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/gm;
  s/ /&nbsp;/g;
  s/\n/<br>/g;
}
(my $red_html = $red_url) =~ s/[\x00-\x20"<&>"\x80-\xff]/&\#@{[ord$&]}
+\;/g;

my $tp_link = "";
if ($red_url =~ /^\/~/) {
  for ("http://www.teleport.com/$red_html") {
    $tp_link = <<"DQ";
<p>Perhaps you were looking for something at Teleport's web-server,
such as <a href="/cgi/go/$_">$_</a>?
DQ
  }
}
print <<"DQ";
Content-type: text/html
Status: 404 Not Found

<head><title>File Not Found</title></head>
<body><h1>File Not Found</h1>

<p>$haiku
<p>The requested URL $red_html was not found on this server.
$tp_link
<p>Try looking at the <a href="/">our home page</a> as well.
</body></html>
DQ

print " " x 512; # stupid IE

    [download]

    -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

      Thanks merlyn!

      And thanks for the handler! God, I love mod_perl. I actually tried out your 404-Coy setup on the urging of one of your other posts. I know this whole idea is on the verge of being trite, but I thought it might be worth doing anyway. It would be nice to build up a collection of human made haiku, I think we could get some pretty good ones. . .

      -Any sufficiently advanced technology is
      indistinguishable from doubletalk.

[reply]

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