Ilium Software Blog

You know, I found that trying to write a double dactyl was really difficult. I’m glad to see that for many of you, it was the opposite, and that gave us a lot of great entries to read this morning.

The first prize of a $121 Amazon gift card, plus a complete package of our software and swag, goes to Bob. If you’ve scrolled through the comments this weekend, you probably know Bob wrote quite a few, and it was hard to pick just one. We especially enjoyed the ones about Freud, the racecar, and – well, like I said, they we all really good!

The runners-up, who each receive a complete package of our software as well as some cool swag, are Will Lane and Laura. We also thought the double dactyls from daverage and Charley were top-notch, but since they are friends/family of some of us here, we can’t offer any prizes for those entries. Matt and Marc churned out several great double dactyls here at the office while we were preparing for the contest; I was impressed, because as I said, I felt like my brain was going to explode when I tried to make even one. If you haven’t read the comments yet, go check them out!

To all the winners – I’ll be sending out an email to each of you with details on how to get your prizes, so keep an eye on your Inbox and Spam folders too!

Now, as you know, this was our final contest. All good things must come to an end, and so too for our anniversary party. But I do want to thank everyone for helping us celebrate our 11th birthday – we had a blast reading all the contest entries, and I hope you had fun playing along and reading the results as well. Stay tuned to our blog, because even though the next anniversary is a long way off, we’ll be running contests again in the meantime, as well as keeping you informed on everything else that goes on around here. Thanks again!

Today’s contest is a little harder than the others have been. But – that means you’ll have less competition for the prizes! We’re asking you to write, and send us, a double dactyl.

What’s a double dactyl? Here’s the definition, plus a few examples. To be clear, we’re asking for the 8-line poem, not just two dactyls in a row. Here are a few more examples, though I’d take issue with the third one. There are many others online too, you don’t have to look hard to find them.

They don’t have to be about handhelds, mobile, or any kind of tech – we’re adding no restrictions to the ones imposed by the form. Just write a double dactyl following the rules (8 lines in the correct meter, 2 rhyming verses, one proper name, one single-word line).

It’s not really as hard as it sounds, once you get started. I gave people here a few days to work on theirs, and at least some of us had a hard time stopping.

We’ll judge and announce winners on Monday, so you can have all weekend to work on them.

Good luck!

This is the last contest in our week-long 11 year anniversary celebration. We’ll give away one $121 Amazon gift certificates for the best and funniest entry, and runner-up prizes of a complete package of our software and swag to many others. Enter as many times as you like, by sending your entry as a reply to this post. Employees and friends of Ilium Software aren’t eligible to win the prizes, but are welcome (and encouraged) to participate anyway. Today’s contest closes at 9:00 a.m. eastern time Monday morning.

…we’re all geeks! I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised. But 47 comments – wow! First of all, it’s great to see everyone so willing to share their geekiness with the world. Thanks for showing up and not being afraid to admit that you’re a geek. But second of all – 47 comments! Come on, do you know how hard it is to sit here and try to choose a few winners out of all of these? However, we’ve done our best.

The first prize of a $121 Amazon gift card, plus a complete package of our software and swag, goes to: Scott for the comment “You know you’re a geek when you speak in ‘IM Lingo’ to real people, and make it sound like a real word.” Scott, you are not alone, I have done that too. And I’m sure we can’t be the only ones.

The runners-up, who each receive a complete package of our software as well as some cool swag, are: Marla, Chris Le, daverage, Ken, and Barbara. The final runner-up for the day will receive a $44 Amazon gift card, as he already won an early contest: Matthew Miller.

I’ll be adding the winning geek-samples to the comments below, so everyone can find out exactly which geeky thing the winners did to earn them a prize.

To all the winners – I’ll be sending out an email to each of you with details on how to get your prizes, so keep an eye on your Inbox and Spam folders too!

Thanks to everyone for taking part in the contest – there were a lot of clever responses. Our final contest is running right now, and you’ll have all weekend to work on this one – good luck!

You know you’re a Geek when you think you get jokes like this. Just from the headline. Or when you think LOLCode is just as funny as LOLCats. Or when you do something dumb and your left hand tries to <ctrl>-Z.

Today’s contest is: leave a comment below with an original example of how you know you’re a geek. Enter as many comments as you’d like – just as long as you don’t mind admitting how extra-geeky you are if your comments start piling up.

This is the fourth contest in our week-long 11 year anniversary celebration. We’ll give away one $121 Amazon gift certificates for the best and funniest entry, and runner-up prizes of a complete package of our software and swag to many others. Enter as many times as you like, by sending your entry as a reply to this post. Employees and friends of Ilium Software aren’t eligible to win the prizes, but are welcome (and encouraged) to participate anyway. Today’s contest closes at 9:00 a.m. eastern time tomorrow morning.

Yesterday’s contest was all about making lists, and this morning at the office, we had to make a list of our own to decide the winners. I have to say, looking at some of the lists you guys have found, you sure do get in close proximity to some famous people! You should consider selling those lists on eBay.

Okay, seriously, on to the winners. The first prize of a $121 Amazon gift card, plus a complete package of our software and swag, goes to: Stefan (spmwinkel) for the LOLCats ten commandents. Anything in LOLSpeak just cracks us up, so there was no way we could resist!

The runners-up, who each receive a complete package of our software as well as some cool swag, are: David Bevan (for the secret agent list), Angela Blades (for God’s list #42), and Jefe (for MacGyver’s list).

There are two more winners for today, and because they’ve already won the runner-up prize listed above, we created a new prize for the occasion. Melvyn (for the Windows 7 development list) and bamhm182 (for Dr. Evil’s list) will each receive a $44 Amazon gift card.

I’m not going to paste all the lists here, but if you haven’t checked them out yet, go have a laugh and read them all here.

To all the winners – I’ll be sending out an email to each of you with details on how to get your prizes, so keep an eye on your Inbox and Spam folders too!

Thanks to everyone for taking part in the contest – there were a lot of clever responses. We’ve got a new contest running right now, so keep your creative thinking caps on and try your luck again!

Imagine that you’ve found a handheld of a famous person, alive or dead, real or fictional, and that the owner was a ListPro user. What would be on their lists – packing, shopping, to-do, or others? Send as many items from a single list (that is, one list per entry) as you can think of. Again, send your entries as replies to this post, and enter as many times as you like.

We’ve started you off with a few examples, below.

This is the third contest in our week-long 11 year anniversary celebration. We’ll give away one $121 Amazon gift certificates for the best and funniest entry, and runner-up prizes of a complete package of our software and swag to many others. Enter as many times as you like, by sending your entry as a reply to this post. Employees and friends of Ilium Software aren’t eligible to win the prizes, but are welcome (and encouraged) to participate anyway. Today’s contest closes at 9:00 a.m. eastern time tomorrow morning.

Update: We were having some problems earlier today with comments not working. We think we’ve got the issue fixed now, but if you have any trouble submitting a comment, please let us know. Thanks!