User:Tolkienfan

"I read the news today, oh boy

Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire

And though the holes were rather small

They had to count them all

Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall"

-Day in the Life by The Beatles

Want to talk to me? I now have a forum mailbox I'll be checking daily (or every hour or so on weekends). Unless you want to correct my college spiel, use that rather than the discussion page. Thanks.

I now have a user page on the CCRP IV wiki as well. I'll still be linking stuff to this wiki, but won't be checking talk pages anymore except for Operation Spider Crab.

IMPORTANT:

I've just started my first year at college (if you want the obligatory spiel on the differences between education systems in Australia and North America, that's what the discussions page is for) so I won't be able to spend as much time on this as I could during the summer holidays.

On the Wiki I primarily edit pages. I write stuff about my country, New Canciona, in CCRP II; I correct details about my previous country, the RCM, which has since changed ownership; I write on behalf of @Teppic and @Ptraci, previous owners of Inutilia before the split; and I correct grammar, spelling and punctuation on other people's pages, being pedantic about such things.

I suggest you don't talk to me here (unless you've been banned on Scratch and don't have an account you're pretending is someone else, of course). I'm open to discussion at my profile on Scratch by the same name; if I'm not active there, I'm probably not active here either.

Spooky knowledge
Confession: The cartographer, -Hannibal-Barca-, is my younger sibling, so I've seen bits of the map while he was working on it.

I saw Imo Mundi, and the original three continents (or four if you count Canciona). Because of this unfair advantage, I've taken an unofficial solemn oath NOT to colonise Imo Mundi; that's not fair on other players, who unlike me haven't even the haziest idea of what sorts of resources are there.

I have NOT seen the rest of the map; there could be hundreds of new continents for all I know.

Interests

 * The Lord Of The Rings and related Tolkien-themed topics, as should be obvious. Note that the link is to the literature TV Tropes page, not the film one.
 * Discworld/Pratchett
 * XKCD, XKCD Time and What If. For the latter, I recommend the following articles (warning: this is a significant chunk of everything currently in the What If index, so I've been forced to group them):
 * Everyone Dies:
 * Sunless Earth
 * Drain the Oceans parts I and II
 * Dropping a Mountain (exactly what it says on the tin)
 * Expanding Earth
 * Vanishing Water
 * Everyone Dies, Then The Planet Gets Destroyed:
 * Antimatter
 * Proton Earth, Electron Moon (what got my attention for this one was the first sentence: "This is, by far, the most destructive What-If scenario to date.")
 * Sunbeam (this one isn't much better than the Electron Moon one)
 * Niagara Straw (not quite what it says on the tin, but getting there)
 * Sun Bug
 * Not Everyone Dies, But You Probably Will If You Try This:
 * Interplanetary Cessna
 * Into the Sun
 * No-Rules NASCAR
 * Flagpole
 * Earth-Moon Fire Pole
 * Some/Most People Die But Not Everyone:
 * Robot Apocalypse
 * Everybody Jump
 * Cassini (to explain the slightly unhelpful title, it explains what happens if all the continents- relative to each other- were rotated by ninety degrees)
 * Hair Dryer (if the title sounds somewhat underwhelming, perhaps it will help to know in advance that it's indestructible)
 * Frozen Rivers
 * Nobody's Going To Die (Probably), But That Doesn't Mean These Aren't Really, Really Stupid Ideas:
 * Glass Half Empty
 * Machine Gun Jetpack
 * Steak Drop
 * Balloon Car
 * Physical Salary
 * Lake Tea
 * Black Hole Moon
 * Stop Jupiter
 * Trivia:
 * Cost of Pennies
 * Alien Astronomers
 * WWII Films
 * Alternate Universe What Ifs (some of these are horrifying)
 * Lunar Swimming
 * Monty Python, or the slightly cleaner bits thereof (the TV Tropes page unfortunately doesn't do such discriminations, which is why I've unaccountably failed to provide a link)
 * The Beatles (slightly- I have two siblings mildly obsessed with them)
 * The Princess Bride (one of the few films better than the book)
 * The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (or at least the first book)
 * Space, although I don't pretend to know much about it, because the last time I tried looking at up-to-date research I got sidetracked by star size comparison videos, like the ones hereand here.
 * Calvin and Hobbes
 * A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
 * Gallium Infiltration. Have a look at this, this and especially this if it sounds like a strange interest; for some reason I find these videos deeply satisfying.
 * Italian cuisine
 * CCRPII
 * TV Tropes, as anyone who's been actually following these links will have worked out by now. Here, here, here, here and here are some of my favourite tropes. Look through the folders at the end. Especially the Real Life one. And read the Fridge Pages, where present.
 * Songs by Tom Lehrer. If you choose to look at this stuff: my mum turned me onto it, and she won't let me see some of the videos, and there's a reason for this, so stick to the links I've provided. As a taster, here is the Pigeon Song- both the original Tom Lehrer version and Thomas Benjamin Wild's ukulele cover. If this is the sort of humour you appreciate, here are a few recommendations. I ought to point out that they are all deliberately being sarcastic.
 * 'The Irish Folk Ballad'. Name says it all. Definitely listen to the spoken intro. ("One of the more important aspects of public folk singing is audience participation, and this happens to be a good song for group singing, so if any of you feel like joining in with me on this song, I would appreciate it if you would leave right now." Warning: If you have an aversion to descriptions of carnage, you might want to rethink this one.
 * 'Nicholai Ivanovich Lobachevsky', which is about maths. And plagiarism.
 * And, best of all, 'National Brotherhood Week'. Yet another sarcastic one, this time directed at people who pretend to not be racist simply to be fashionable. Also the spoken intro includes this: 'I think we all agree that we ought to love one another, and I know that there are people in this world who do not love their fellow human beings, and I HATE people like that!"
 * And, of course, this.

LOTR Fans:
For LOTR fans, my mum recently turned me onto yet another way for me to waste my time on the internet, i.e. a blog written by a history teacher in which, among other things, he has written a series of posts about why Saruman made a lousy general. The link to the first one is here if you want it. He's also done a series on the Siege of Gondor, and a recent post on the war between Russia and Ukraine.

(This is even worse than turning people onto TV Tropes.)

Messing Around
I used AHypnoman's Make Your Text Stranger engine to translate the Day in the Life quote, line by line, on Level 20, into THIS:

Today I am reading the news, son

Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire

Even if the hole is small

You have to measure them all

Now they know how many holes Albert Hall has to fill

I used the same engine to enact the following translations (again, all on Level 20):

"Let me take you down 'cause I'm going to strawberry fields, nothing is real" somehow managed to become "You went to the Braszczyk area and ruined everything, you have nothing."

'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band' turned into 'Collection heart of salt pepper', which was interesting. I was hoping the 'sergeant' would stay as 'sage', but no.

'I am the egg man, I am the walrus' became 'I am the egg man, I am the walrus' into 'they are at home, they are meteorologists'.