Computer songs and poems
(Song and poem parodies with computer related subjects)
Based on the collection by Stefan Hänßgen
This site started life in 1994 (I think), when Homer spammed a small mailing list with Stefan's original Computer songs and poems text file. After a few hours of reading, I was so impressed with the collection that I contacted Stefan to seek his permission to put it on the web. Since then, I've been contacted by a lot of people with new filks, ideas, error corrections and snippets of information (band names which were previously unknown, etc.) -- thank you all!
This is the first major update of the site since 1997 (leaving university and becoming a tax-paying citizen really zaps any concept of free time); from now on the whole updating process should be a lot easier and happen more frequently as the maintenance of the site is now partly automated.
A question I'm frequently asked is "what does 'filk' mean?". It is a term which originates from the improvised folk music sung by convention-goers from the science fiction and fantasy communities. For this site's purposes, the term is being used in a more general way, simply meaning the parody of popular songs. For more information on filk, you can look at the filk FAQ or read the newsgroup rec.music.filk.
Many thanks are due for this site -- first of all to Stefan for his original collection of songs and poems (which is still available via anonymous FTP at ftp.ira.uka.de [129.13.10.90] in /pub/doc/computersongs-1.4.Z or as a gzipped text file), and for allowing me to base this site on it.
Thanks also to all of the filk authors, and to the following people for their help, ideas, error corrections and support:
Rob Beukers, Frank Borger, Richard Carlsson, Matt Covert, Pierre DuBois, Axel Eble, Elwing, Martin Emmerich, Ian Faulkingham, Uli Fraus, Clive Feather, Charlie Gibbs, Gregory Gietzen, Andreas Gustafsson, Thorbjoern Hansen, Rich Holmes, Ed Jordan, Romain Kang, Laura Kettner, Greg Lehey, Frank Lepore, Bob Mader, Sander van Malssen, Mark A. Mandel, Adrian Mariano, Colin McCormack, Zak McGregor, Keith Michaels, Dipesh Navsaria, Ove Ruben R Olsen, Reinier Post, Robert E. Seastroms, Kay Shapero, George Sicherman, Boas Simon, Ignatios Souvatzis, Ellen Spertus, Pete Toscano, Starship Trooper, The Unknown User, Andrew Wales (for help with my data structures), Paul Walker, Greg Weiss, Martin Welk, Alan Winston, snarler%maple.decnet@pine.circa.ufl.edu, dscatl!daysinns!alanf@gatech.edu (and anyone else who may have slipped off the list).
If you've written a computer related song or poem or if you know of one which isn't here, please don't keep it to yourself, I'd love to add it to this collection. You can either mail a copy to both Stefan and me (poppy), or you can use this form. Either way, please be sure to include as much detail as possible about yourself, the filk and the original song and artist.
For the techies among you, this site was created using the GIMP, VIM, and Perl, and is hosted by Oaktree Internet Solutions on NetBSD.
A quick word on Stefan's behalf... he collects postcards, so if you like this file and think he deserves a small favour, how about sending him a nice postcard? You can post one to: Stefan Hänßgen, Nuitsstr. 2c, D-76185 Karlsruhe, Germany.
Happy filking,
poppy.