Question

FME Challenge: FME-Created Poetry!

mark2atsafe
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Userlevel 4
Badge +25

Hi folks,

If you lurk around FME accounts on Twitter, you may have seen a recent exchange of poetry between a few of us. I've posted them at the foot of this message.

Anyway, it made me think that a good challenge for us would be to create FME-generated poetry. So here we are! I don't really think there are many rules except you must use mostly FME (I can allow a bit of Python etc, but not connecting directly to an API that generates the poem for you).

In case it sounds a bit complex, here are some suggestions:

  • Read random messages from Twitter and merge them together
  • Have a dataset of poems and select random lines from each
  • Have a dataset of words and try to construct sentences from them
  • Use an API that (for example) helps determine if words rhyme
  • Take an existing poem and replace words with random attribute values
  • If you don't think your FME skills are up to it, just write us a nice poem about FME!

And you will definitely get bonus points for:

  • A workspace that generates a different poem each time it is run
  • Your poem being about FME
  • Your poem somehow being a representation of spatial data!
  • Your poem being a known structure (limerick, Haiku, "roses are red")
  • Turning your poem into a voice recording (preferably computer-generated)
  • Turning your poem into a map (or embedding it into a map somehow)

Anyway, let's have some fun. Post your poems and/or workspaces here. Once we get a decent number of entries we can have a poetry reading and pick our favourites.

Cheers

Mark

There is a software called FME.
Its powers are vast and invoke glee.
My data's a mess!
I'm feeling the stress!!
Open workbench, relax, drink some tea.

I agree FME is just prime,
It can save you a bundle of time,
And our heart's all a flitter,
When we log on to Twitter,
And see cool endorsements in rhyme.

Roses are red... 
violets are blue... 
@donatsafe loves XML... 
but I’m not sure I do

12 replies

danilo_fme
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Userlevel 4
Badge +30

Hi @Mark2AtSafe

This Challenge is interesting and challenger :)

erik_jan
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Userlevel 2
Badge +16

Something like this?

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Without using FME,

I would not have known you!

jdh
Rank
Badge +22

The scansion is slightly off. but how about:

 

 

There once was a man from Safe  Who challenges often would place.  Without his input  We'd all be caput.  And quiet would be the k-base.
mark2atsafe
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +25

My first FME-generated poem:

They just submit the job for processing
Your email address will not be published
I have eight engines available
At most it would tie up just one engine

Gonna work on it over the weekend!

mark2atsafe
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +25

My first FME-generated poem:

They just submit the job for processing
Your email address will not be published
I have eight engines available
At most it would tie up just one engine

Gonna work on it over the weekend!

Oooh. Got a good Haiku out of it:

 


Ideas exchange
An email is required
About Safe Software

 

mark2atsafe
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +25

The scansion is slightly off. but how about:

 

 

There once was a man from Safe  Who challenges often would place.  Without his input  We'd all be caput.  And quiet would be the k-base.
Fantastic. Love it.

 

 

mark2atsafe
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +25

Something like this?

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Without using FME,

I would not have known you!

That's a good one, and certainly true!

 

 

mark2atsafe
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +25

Thought I'd post my workspace and see if anyone wants to take it further. It scans the content of a chosen web site, counting the number of syllables in each sentence. It uses those sentences to construct poems (of fairly dubious quality).

I can generate a Haiku (5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables) quite easily because I don't have to rhyme, although I don't think Takashi will be impressed.

But what I really want is to create a poem in what I think is called Iambic Pentameter. Basically sentences with 10 syllables that rhyme at the end. I can extract 10 syllable sentences, but I'm stuck on how to pick ones that have final words that rhyme.

Any ideas? Soundex? I'm not sure how that works.

Or feel free to just run a web site of your own through the workspace and see what you get.

fmepoetrygenerator.fmw

mark2atsafe
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +25

Thought I'd post my workspace and see if anyone wants to take it further. It scans the content of a chosen web site, counting the number of syllables in each sentence. It uses those sentences to construct poems (of fairly dubious quality).

I can generate a Haiku (5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables) quite easily because I don't have to rhyme, although I don't think Takashi will be impressed.

But what I really want is to create a poem in what I think is called Iambic Pentameter. Basically sentences with 10 syllables that rhyme at the end. I can extract 10 syllable sentences, but I'm stuck on how to pick ones that have final words that rhyme.

Any ideas? Soundex? I'm not sure how that works.

Or feel free to just run a web site of your own through the workspace and see what you get.

fmepoetrygenerator.fmw

Oh, or limericks too; 8 syllables, 8, 5, 5, 8 where all the 8's rhyme and all the 5's rhyme.

 

 

jdh
Rank
Badge +22
Oh, or limericks too; 8 syllables, 8, 5, 5, 8 where all the 8's rhyme and all the 5's rhyme.

 

 

I see you're already using the datamuse API.

 

 

Could you pick a seed sentence, get the last word, query the api for rhyming words and then check for matches with your other potential sentences?

 

 

That said Iambic pentameter is a bit more specific than 10 syllables, it's 5 pairs of alternating stresses and unstressed syllables. Good luck with that.

 

 

danilo_fme
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +30

Hello @Mark2AtSafe,

This is my first FME generated poem :) :

Before you use FMEYour problems seemed infiniteNow , You can do validationCSV to JSONNow relax and have a glass of wine

I used too the datamused API, and i loved this game.

0684Q00000ArJqyQAF.png

Attached my Workspace. - workspace-poetry-danilo-solutial.fmw

Thanks,

Danilo

fmeta
Badge

First of all thanks for the Home Edition License guys! I decided to put it to good use right away.

Here is my take on the poetry challenge. Acrostic.

Basically what happens is this:

The workspace takes an input string and the HTTPCaller reads the corresponding page on Wikipedia. There is some simple extraction going on using css and regex. The first three words of every “interesting” sentence on the Wikipedia page are joined with the corresponding letters from the input word. After that I pretty much just use a VertexCreator to display the acrostic.

Letters missing a sentence are sort of handled but I’m sure there are more elegant solutions (I thought about replacing those with lines from real poetry but ran out of time).

The hardest part was splitting the input string into single letters. Eventually I caved in and used a few lines of python.

The workspace isn't pretty and the "poetry" is pretty horrible but I had a lot of fun with this one :)

Edit. I've cleaned up and expanded the workspace. The HTMLExtractor now does the work of the previous HTTPCaller and it's now 100% pythonfree (using regex in a StringSearcher and a ListExploder). A FeatureReader adds "poetic" lines for missing letters, in theory meaning you could make horrible poetry even for words totally missing in Wikipedia.

 

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