See, there's this contest called
The 5K. The challenge is: What can you do with 5K worth of space? Text, graphics, HTML, Flash, Javascript, Java, anything goes -- as long as all your files collectively total less than 5K.
5K is 5120 bytes. Not a lot of space. To put it in perspective, the Bigger Bread logo above is 9545 bytes, more than twice the limit. So as you can imagine, frugality is key. Creativity under constraint.
People came up with amazing stuff. A da Vincian
timepiece,
verbal film noir, a surprisingly capable
chess program, a
psychedelic sunflower, markup language
prose poetry, an infinite
police lineup, even a miniature
porn site.
My entry was
The Adventures of Bartleby Snore, World's Biggest Bore, a 3-part puzzle adventure starring Bartleby Snore, the world's most boring human being.
More than mere entertainment,
Bartleby is an unflinching allegorical portrait of alienation, anomie, the complex interactions between men and women, and every human being's basic need for affirmation and affection. (It's also a lot of fun to play.)
Out of 277 entries, Bartleby got
Third Place in the
Concept & Originality category, and came in
7th Overall. Even cooler, it got
First Place in the public rankings.
Who won the contest? The
porn, of course.
January 23, 2002 Bartleby's going to be in a book! The DHTML Bible, due out early this year from
Hungry Minds / IDG Books, will have a big honkin' screenshot of you-know-who. More on this as it develops.
