Friday 10 October will be the second anniversary of this blog. However, things will be rather busy around then (I’m having my floors replaced on the 8th, which means concentrating on the housework in the meantime, and there’s the Skeptics’ Convention to go to on the 11th and 12th) so it seems more sensible to write the anniversarial post now rather than try to do everything at once.
Let us, therefore, reminisce a while.
The other day a link in Neurophilosophy led me to a link in PsychCentral which led me to YouJustGetMe, which looked like a bit of fun. The idea is that people try to guess how you answered a bunch of questions about your personality, based on information you supply. My profile is here if you want to have a go.
I have some comments and criticisms about the site, some of them quite severe. I should first of all point out that once you’ve submitted your answers to the personality quiz, you can’t change them, or even view them. Question five on the FAQ gives a bit of a rationale. Now, we all know that every time one answers a personality quiz one does so a little differently, so you should realise that my answers reflect what I felt was true at the time, and may or may not reflect what I think is true now. (For example, I’m likely to change my mind frequently about whether I worry/panic a lot.)
There’s a post I’ve been planning to write for some time. I wrote about the fiction and non-fiction on my bookshelf earlier this year, and I’ve mentioned other books since then, so I’d been pondering how I might continue that theme. My idea was to write a post answering the question, “Out of all the fiction you have read, which work produced the strongest emotional reaction, of any kind, when you read it?“, and for the sake of research I re-read the book that is my answer to that question.
It is, however, a fantasy novel with a lot of sex in it, and in typing my thoughts I felt obliged to spend several paragraphs explaining my attitude towards writing about sexuality on this blog. This became cumbersome and too diverting from the topic that I wanted to write about, but I do feel that it’s important to say this.
The Australian Skeptics have recently announced the date of this year’s national convention, to be held here in Adelaide in October. I plan to attend, with the hope of meeting some interesting people.
I’m advertising the convention on this blog for two reasons - one, because people who read this blog might be interested in the convention, and two, because people attending the convention might be interested in this blog. Between now and then I intend to write more frequently than I otherwise would about topics of interest to sceptics, but two important points about this should be borne in mind.
Back in 2002, on alt.fan.pratchett, Diane L. composed limericks dedicated to various denizens of the newsgroup. I’ve reproduced mine below (with slight modifications for reasons of personal taste):
A dragon who’s partial to flesh
Will eat pedants as long as they’re fresh.
But if he’s well-fed
He can just keep his head
And be trusted in charge of a creche.
Rather good, don’t you think? I don’t care about the fact that “creche” doesn’t rhyme with “flesh”. It’s way too funny to lose.
Actually, people tell me that I’m quite good at interacting with children, and I’ve never eaten any of them. (Yet.)
This is a photograph of the street where I live.
My home is one of a block of units, rather than a house, but it’s the first non-shared accomodation I’ve ever had. I have no desire to move again in the foreseeable future, particularly because I so much enjoy planning renovations and living with the results.
As I’ve said previously, when I first moved to Adelaide I lived in the Bible College of South Australia. Later I moved to shared accomodation on Shepherd’s Hill Road, in order to be closer to Flinders University. I moved again (to my current accomodation) after a dispute with the person who, at that time, had taken over the role of in-house manager.
In this post, I will share some anecdotes concerning events on and around the day of my birth. I’ve already mentioned when and where I was born, and I’ve already mentioned Hadrian’s Havenue, but there are still some stories left to be told.
Website recommendations relevant to this post include Behind the Name (a comprehensive list of baby names) and Name Voyager (a graphical tool in Java showing the popularity of names over time).
I’ve already posted about places where I’ve lived, so I thought I’d follow up by summarising all the other places I’ve visited: holidays and so on. These won’t be in chronological order.
While this blog is still shiny, I think I should provide a few basic biographical facts, which I can refer back to in future posts. I’ll cover two themes today: places I’ve lived, and members of my family.
So, why did I choose Outer Hoard as a name for a blog?
Dragons have hoards, and I’ve been known as “flesh-eating dragon” (and variations on that, such as 8′FED) on Usenet since some time in the nineties.
This all started in an email conversation with Marian Rosenberg in which she asked me, “May I assume that you have one of those wonderful Strine accents?“, and I replied, “You have my permission to assume absolutely anything you like“.
Marian replied, “In that case, I’ll assume that you’re an eight foot tall flesh-eating dragon wearing brilliant orange sneakers and a purple and green striped cape (with silver lining)“. I liked the idea, and I’ve used it as an online persona ever since.
A “hoard” implies a collection of miscellaneous stuff, which fits a blog nicely, but why “outer”? The way I look at it, a dragon’s true hoard (the inner hoard) is the big, well-protected pile of treasures in a cave, but there will probably also be a few treasures scattered outside the cave to serve as a lure for any tasty human beings who might be passing by. This is the outer hoard, for which this blog is named.
I really like Anitra’s description of a dragon’s role in life, as a guardian of creativity.
