Zeke and Zack were sitting around Zeke's house one day without much of anything to do. They were searching for inspiration to help them think of an idea for their next video project. They wandered into Zeke's father's study and found a book on computer programming which was opened to a page which contained the description for something which in computer science was called a collection. They read the first three sentences under this topic heading out loud and together.
Collection
A collection is a set, list, sequence, vector,
stack, hash, tree, array, queue, map, etc. The elements
of a collection may be similar or they may be
unrelated. A collection does not impose order or
any restrictions on type of content or even on
duplication of content.
They stopped after the third sentence and looked at each other.
"That doesn't make any sense," said Zack.
"Yeah, it does. It just isn't the same thing as a baseball card collection, or a doll collection, or any kind of normal collection where all the things in the collection are the same kind of thing," countered Zeke.
"Well, then any group of things can be a collection," said Zack holding his hands out in reference to all the things in the room around them.
"Yeah, so? Things are things," said Zeke holding up each hand, palm up, in front of him.
"What good is a collection if all the things in it aren't the same?" asked Zack.
"That's not the point. A collection is just a group of things," said Zeke.
"So?" asked Zack.
"And they don't all have to be the same," said Zeke.
"So?" asked Zack.
"Like we could have a collection of little videos, but they don't all have to be about the same thing," said Zeke.
"Yeah, but they're still all little videos," said Zack.
"Yeah, but we don't have to put restrictions on what things go together in the collection of videos. Like they don't all have to be a certain kind of video," said Zeke.
"But they could be," said Zack.
"Yeah, they could be, but they don't have to be," said Zeke emphasizing the last half of his statement.
"So, what you're saying is that we should make a collection of our videos and make copies for people to see," said Zack.
"Yeah," said Zeke. Zeke hadn't actually meant to imply this idea, but he liked the idea and so he agreed with Zack anyways.
Zeke and Zack had been shooting videos for a few months at this point. They had amassed quit a collection, in fact. Most ten-year-olds would have lost interest in shooting videos by this point, but Zeke and Zack worked well together and the more they made videos, the more they wanted to make more videos. Zeke and Zack decided to spend a couple of hours looking at some of their old videos to determine which ones they should put in their video collection. They sat down at Zeke's computer and viewed each video and discussed which ones would be included in their collection.
The first video they both agreed should go into The Collection was called "An Invasion of Privacy." Zeke and Zack shot this video at an old mining camp about three miles away from the town they lived in. There were only two structures still standing at the camp. One was a small shack and the other was an outhouse. The outhouse was the setting for the entire video.
Item One: An Invasion of Privacy
The video begins with a view of the outhouse from about thirty feet away. The camera gets closer and closer to the outhouse until finally it is right in front of the door to the outhouse. The approach takes about ten seconds in the video. An arm reaches out and pulls the door open.
"Hey, I'm in here! You're invading my privacy!" says Zack looking up with an astonished look on his face.
Zack is sitting on the toilet in the outhouse. First just his head and shoulders are shown.
"Go away! Can't you see I'm using the bathroom?" says Zack continuing to protest.
The camera pans down and shows a magazine in Zack's lap which he has spread out to cover the middle of his body.
"Can't a guy use the outhouse without having his privacy invaded?" asks Zack spreading the magazine out even more across his lap.
The camera pans down further showing Zack's bare knees and shins. Finally it comes to rest on his pants and underwear which are pulled down and around his ankles.
"Hey! All mine were dirty and so I had to borrow a pair of my sisters!" protests Zack.
The underwear are pink and obviously made for females.
"What if people think it's inappropriate to show someone using the bathroom?" asked Zeke.
"It's not like I was nude," says Zack shrugging his shoulders.
"But it looks like you had your pants pulled down," said Zeke.
"But I really had shorts on," said Zack.
"I know, but what if people really think that you were using the restroom?" asked Zeke.
"That's their problem. I wasn't and so that's the end of that discussion," said Zack.
The boys reviewed several other videos and finally came across on called "Too Much To Eat" which they decided should be included in The Collection.
Item Two: Too Much To Eat
"Let's eat some donuts," says Zeke.
"Yeah, let's eat all of them!" says Zack.
The camera shows a close up of a box full of donuts. Next Zeke is shown eating a donut. Then Zack is shown eating a donut.
"Mmmm. That was good. What else can we eat?" asks Zeke.
"Let's have some pancakes!" suggests Zack.
"Yeah, that sounds delicious," says Zeke.
The boys are shown behind two plates containing stacks of pancakes. The boys are shown working their way through the pancakes.
"Hey, let's go to a barbeque," says Zack sitting in front of an empty plate.
"Yeah, I love barbeque!" says Zeke. The camera zooms in for a close up of Zeke's face. He licks his lips in anticipation of some delicious barbeque.
The boys are each shown carrying a large serving plate full of barbequed ribs. The plates are heaped full of enough ribs to feed several people with large appetites. Next the boys are shown sitting in front of the plates. Then they are shown eating some ribs.
"How about some pie?" asks Zack.
"What kind?" asks Zeke.
"Cherry!" says Zack.
"Yummy!" says Zeke.
The boys are each shown sitting behind a full pie. Then they are shown eating pie. Both wind up with cherry pie filling on their faces.
"I can't believe I ate all that food," moans Zeke sitting on a sofa.
"Me neither. I'm so full that I can barely move," groans Zack putting his hands on his belly.
Both boys have small pillows under their shirts to make their bellies appear to be large.
"I think I'm going to explode," says Zeke.
"I don't think I'm going to be able to eat anything for at least a week!" says Zack.
Both boys moan.
What made this video all the more captivating was that both Zack and Zeke were very skinny boys and so the idea of them eating huge amounts of food seemed somewhat outlandish and improbable. They actually shot this video over the course of two weekends in October when they attended a barbeque and a pancake breakfast. The donuts were just for a meeting that Zack's father was going to attend. The boys made sure that they wore the same clothes in each scene so that it seemed that one eating event occurred right after the other. The boys really didn't eat an unusual amount in reality, but they editted the video carefully to provide the illusion that they actually ate a ton of food. After the scenes were editted down each scene was pretty short. The donut scene lasted twenty seconds. The pancake scene had a duration twenty-two seconds. The barbeque scene came out to twenty seconds. The pie scene took all of eighteen seconds. Finally, the couch scene lasted twelve seconds. The title sequence was shown with footage taken in a donut shop and the end credits showed pancakes being cooked at a pancake breakfast. The entire video skit had an elapsed time of less than two minutes.
The boys found a few more videos to include in The Collection. Three of these videos were shot out in the desert and there were three others which were shot in or around the boys' homes. After a while Zeke and Zack went back to Zeke's father's study and read more about collections. Again they read in unison.
There are standard operations which are performed on collections. The operations go by names such as reverse, sort, shuffle, add, remove, and size. Specialized collections may require operations which satisfy the requirements of the collection's specifications. For instance, pop and push are operations used by stacks."I still say that this stuff doesn't make much sense," said Zack.
"It does to my dad, but he's a programmer," said Zeke.
"What's special about our collection?" asked Zack.
"Nothing except that all of them were made by us," said Zeke.
The boys went back to Zeke's room and viewed more of their videos on his computer. They found one called "A Need For Fire" that they decided to include in The Collection. Although they didn't realize it, this video had a plot which was very similar to the plot of a famous short story.
Item Nine: A Need For Fire
"If I don't make a fire I will die," says Zeke slightly hunched over as he walks through a boulder field. He shivers slightly and he has his hands in his pockets.
Zeke begins to gather twigs and branches from bushes growing in a wash. Short segments of Zeke gathering these items and putting them in a pile take up about twenty-five seconds.
Zeke rubs his arms to warm them up and says, "My fingers are going numb. I don't have much time!"
Zeke builds a ring of rocks and then a little teepee out of short pieces of wood. He puts dry leaves and twigs in the middle of the teepee.
"My life depends on this one match," says Zeke as he pulls out a match and lights it on a tooth. He shields the flame with his free hand and carefully places it against the dry leaves and twigs in the middle of the teepee. Gradually the flame spreads and the fire comes to life.
Zeke carefully places more twigs on the fire and once the fire is fully established he warms his hands with it. The video ends with a picture of Zeke sitting in front of the fire. The camera zooms away from Zeke so that his back is shown with smoke rising in front of him. Finally, Zeke says, "Maybe I'll live another day."
"Didn't we go through almost forty matches to make that video?" asked Zack.
"Or maybe more," said Zeke trying to remember the details of the day on which they shot that video.
The thing that the boys were most proud of in the "A Need For Fire" video was the sound track. They not only wrote background music, but they also spent a lot of time dubbing in sounds to make it sound more dramatic. For instance, the crackling sound of the fire didn't come out too well in the original video and so they experimented with sampling various sounds to enhance their video. The sound for the fire was actually made by popping plastic shipping materials and the sound of a running faucet. They distorted the sound samples slightly before dubbing it into their video.
Another video to make it on The Collection was called "The Haunted Outhouse." This video was shot at the same outhouse used in item one.
Item Ten: The Haunted Outhouse
"No way, I'm just going to go by a bush," says Zeke looking out into the desert for an attractive bush.
Zeke and Zack are sitting on the edge of a porch of a shack in the middle of the desert. The shack looks pretty rickety and the boys are dressed for warm weather.
"No, you've got to use the outhouse. It would be uncivilized to do otherwise," says Zack.
"But it's haunted," says Zeke whimpering slightly.
"So, you've got to be brave," says Zack.
"Well, alright, but if I die I'm coming back and haunting you," says Zeke.
Zeke gets up and walks toward the outhouse. The camera follows him and shows him open the door, cautiously enter the outhouse, and then close the door. Next Zeke is shown in the outhouse. His movements indicate that he pulls down his shorts although the camera only shows him from the chest up. As Zeke settles onto the toilet a quiet voice is heard.
"I am down here at the bottom of the pit," says the voice.
"What are you doing down there?" asks Zeke.
"I died here over one hundred years ago," says the voice.
"What were you doing?" asks Zeke.
"I was digging a mine shaft," says the voice.
"Did you find anything?" asks Zeke.
"Just a couple gold nuggets," says the voice.
"Well, I sent you a couple of more nuggets just now, but they ain't gold," says Zeke.
"That was creepy," says Zeke as he returns to the porch and sits down next to Zack.
"What did the miner do?" asks Zack.
"Nothing he just told me about some gold nuggets he found," says Zeke.
"Well, then you're lucky because last time I went he blasted the shaft deeper with a few sticks of dynamite," says Zack.
"Ouch, that would hurt," says Zeke.
"Tell me about it," says Zack rubbing his bottom.
The boys used a couple different little holes in the side of the outhouse to allow them to film Zeke inside of the outhouse. There wasn't enough room in the outhouse to film from inside it.
From time to time the boys had difficulty deciding on which video to add to The Collection next. After adding several more videos, they were unsure which of the remaining videos were worthy of being added to The Collection.
"Let's go consult the Oracle," said Zeke making fun of a movie he'd seen at some point in the last couple of years.
So the boys returned to Zeke's father's study and read more from the computer science book. Again they read in unison.
Other commonly used operations include toArray, clear, contains, equals, iterator, and retain. Although it is often tempting to simply use an array to deal with a group of items, the advantages of using a specialized collection should not be overlooked or underestimated."What in the heck is an iterator?" asked Zack.
"Beats me. I think our collection doesn't need all that stuff," said Zeke.
"It sounds way too complicated," said Zack.
"Yeah, I think I'll stick to making videos until I get smart enough to do more complicated stuff," said Zeke.
"Why do we bother reading this stuff, if it doesn't make sense?" asked Zack.
"If it made sense, we wouldn't have to read it since we'd already know it," said Zeke as if this answer were obvious.
After some discussion and reviewing of more videos, the boys settled on one which they called, "Sweet Desert Vice." In this video, Zeke and Zack pretended to be two cops breaking into a house with the intent to arrest some person who was wanted for breaking some law.
Item Seventeen: Sweet Desert Vice
The boys are shown approaching the shack in the desert. They are dressed in their best approximation of what they thought that plain clothed officers might look like. Zeke has a pistol and Zack has a rifle.
"You kick down the door," says Zeke.
"Okay, and you cover me," says Zack.
Zack stealthily approaches the door and kicks it down. His actions are shown from the outside. Then the camera perspective is changed to the inside. The closed door is shown from the inside and then the door flies open as Zack kicks it open. Zack and Zeke rush into the shack and point their weapons around. They run to the back window and look out.
"No sign of anyone," says Zeke.
"Looks like they got away again," says Zack.
"But this time they left something behind," says Zeke.
The boys walk over to a table in the middle of the one room shack and inspect a bag of powder left on it.
"Looks like sugar to me," says Zack.
"Not just sugar," says Zeke.
"No, it's pure Hawiaan," say the two boys in unison as they hold up the bag of sugar.
The camera zooms in on the label.
"Oh boy, now we can go home and make some cookies," says Zeke with delight.
"Yeah, I love cookies," says Zack.
"Especially if they're made with pure Hawaiin sugar!" says Zeke.
"Of course, they wouldn't be any good any other way!" says Zack.
The boys jump up and down in delight.
The boys designed the label for the bag of sugar themselves. Even though they were only ten years old, they were still aware that it was not advisable to use labels of real products in their videos. For this reason they were also careful not to wear shirts which showed a product name. They always looked around a location before shooting anything just to make sure that it was free of labels and that sort of thing.
In all, the boys wound up putting twenty videos into The Collection. The total running time of The Collection was just under one hour. The boys made three dozen copies of The Collection and sold them for five dollars for each copy. They eventually wound up selling all of them. They didn't make a lot of money, but they were able to purchase a few props for other projects they had in mind.