Tag: AB Banjo Patterson

There was movement at workstations, for the word had passed around
the data from Old Insurance had got away
And had joined the dark web forces – it was worth a billion pounds,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted hackers from workstations near and far
Had mustered on the notice board o’ernight
For the hackers love hard hunting where the wild web data hides
And the server sniffs the darkweb with delight.

There was Harrison who made his pile when his Exploit saved the bank,
The old man with his screen white as snow,
But few could hack beside him even when his screen was fairly blank,
He would go where’er man and keyboard could go.
And clancy@stackoverflow came down to join the team
No better coder ever struck a key;
For no hacker could throw him while bandwidth would stand,
He learnt his hacks while coding web3.

And one was there a teenage girl, small and fairly thin,
She was something like a hacker undersized
With a touch of Marvel hero – three billion box office at least –
And such are by web geeks quite prized.
She was quiet, alert and wiry – just the sort to surprise –
There was courage in her quick impatient flair
and she bore the badge of smarts in her angular pocket size
And the bright blue colour of her hair.

But still so slight and weedy, one would doubt her power to stay,
And the old man said, ‘That chick will never do
For a long and tiring white hat hack – girl you’d best stay away,
These hunts are far too rough for such as you.’
So she waited sad and wistful – only Clancy stood his friend –
‘I think we need her on the team’ he cried;
‘I warrant she’ll have keys when wanted at the end,
For her charms and her hair ain’t easily denied.

‘She calls herself Snowy Rivers, she’s tattooed up her hide,
she’s waited bars twice as hard and twice as rough,
Where patrons smash glasses on the walls on either side,
To discuss which crypto is strong enough.
And This Snowy Rivers on the dark web makes her home,
Where run Russians and the cartels in between
I have seen full many hackers since I first commence to roam
But nowhere yet such a hacker have I seen’

So she went – they found the data on the web marketplace
They raced away towards the servers there
And the old man gave the orders, ‘Boys lock it in cyberspace,
No use to try for fancy coding now.
And, Clancy, you must locate them, try and pin their site.
Code boldly, lad, and never fear the clock
For never yet was coder that could keep data in sight
If the crims gain shelter of the Eastern bloc .

So Clancy code to pin them – he was hunting on the sly
Where the best and meanest hackers hide their loot
And he raced his CPU faster, and he made his fans cry,
And he shouted, as he found them through their boot.
The data halted for a moment, while he tried to tie it down,
But it saw lawless Crimea across an API
And it charged beneath his blocking leaving Clancy all the clown
As off into the Eastern bloc it did fly.

And Eastward, ever Eastward, the wild data held its way,
To where borscht reddens and oligarchs grow rich;
And the old man muttered fiercely, “We may bid the mob good day,
No man can stop the canny tovarish”
When they saw the last packet leave, even Clancy took a pull,
It well might make the boldest hold their breath,
The Eastern Bloc used Cyrillic, and the hidden ground was full
Of spies and mobsters, and any slip was death.

But the Girl called Snowy Rivers left her headset red,
And she swung her ponytail round and gave a cheer,
And she launch Russian expletives like a torrent down its bed,
While the others stood and watched in very fear.
She was right among the mobsters when they threatened with a kill,
And the hackers on the speakers all stood mute,
Saw her ply the cruel quip fiercely, she was right among them still,

As she raced across Crimea in pursuit.
Then they lost her for a moment, when language changed again
Somewhere beyond the Urals, but a final wink exposes
a distant server of stolen data and hard men,
While the Girl Called Snowy River calmly poses.
She social engineered them till her mouth was flecked with foam.
She followed like the FSB on the track,
Till the mobster decided better, offered to swap the data home,
For a photo of the tattoos on her back.

And down by Surry Hills, where the coffee culture thrives
and coders collect their options at par,
Where the code is clear as crystal, and the CEOs come alive
At midnight in the cold and dingy bars,
And where by The Overflow the Ubers beep and stay
where t-shirts, and the shredded jeans are black,
The Girl called Snowy Rivers is a household word today,
And the coders tell the story of her hack.

With apologies to AB ‘Banjo’ Patterson

I had written him a email which I had for want of detail
Sent to where I’d met him down co-working years ago;
He was coding when I knew him, so I sent the email to him
Just as spam, addressed as follows to clancy@stackoverflow.
And the answer came directed in language unexpected.
(And I think the same was written by a bot gone too far.)
A MIME server wrote it and verbatim I will quote it :
‘Clancy’s gone web3 coding. This email ain’t where he are’

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-coding ‘down the crypto’ where the cowboy coders go;
As the market slowly crashes, Clancy types smiling at the slashes,
For the coder’s life has pleasures that the HODLers never know.

His socials have friends to meet him and their trolling greets him
In the murmur of the feeds and memes, both new and old,
And he sees the vision splendid of a backlog e’er extended,
At night the wonderous glory of coding fingers growing cold.

I am sitting in my open office where a coffee cart low whistle
struggles feebly over all the open necked shirts and chino pants,
pingpong games rebounded between the standing desks surrounded
by a whiteboard, spreading strategy nobody ever understands.

In place of a dark mode screen, I see the sticky notes’ sheen,
full of plain words, yet still a muddle to any huddle spectator,
I see ideas slowly dying and hustling staff inside-crying,
in the workshops with the muffins and the agile facilitator.

All the hurrying people daunt me, and their masked faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in the busy queue to eat,
With their eager eyes and greedy and stunted plans so weedy,
For bizfolk have no time to code, they have only time to meet.

And I sometimes briefly fancy I’d like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at coding, where the riches come and go,
While he faced the matrixed gloom of the Teams and the Zoom
but no doubt he’d scam the office, clancy@stackoverflow

With humblest apologies to AB ‘Banjo’ Patterson