User talk:AgProv

Brat-Halla: the Kindergarden of the Gods

You must read this. This cartoon isn't Discworld, but in its scope and conception comes as close to Discworld as anything I've seen. It goes deep, it's incredibly well researched, it draws shamelessly on a lot of fantasy/humour referents, and while it does go off the rails once in an ill-advised science fiction spin-off, it's very, very, deeply, laugh-out-loud funny.

[1]

And David Reddick's take on fantasy heroes, Legend of Bill, is also most subversively funny:-

[2]

I think that's kindergarten. --Old Dickens 06:11, 1 May 2011 (CEST)

Happy Accident ref. Wiki entry on Good Omens

(diff) (hist) . . m Blue Öyster Cult‎; 11:26 . . (+666) . . AgProv (Talk | contribs | block) (new song lyric referenced)

I never planned this, but how very appropriate....--AgProv 13:59, 11 February 2008 (CET)

hi there agprov. either what you've just said on the om page is sheer genius or sheer smartarse. either way, mucho credito!

Hiya. Please can you appraise the pic I've put on Topless Harry to see if you think it's appropriate? Cheers. --Knmatt 12:57, 18 July 2007 (CEST)

I really appreciate all the work you're putting in the wiki - it's expanding rapidly. Here's a handy hint for editing: the great uses of a | (pipe). For example, if the article title is singular (as is usual), but you have a referring word in plural, you can use the | in the wikilink, like this: [[Drop bear|drop-bears]] will show drop-bears which looks better than Drop bears

The part after the | is used as the link text. In that way, you can link to other articles without being restricted to the exact article title.

On another note: do be carefull about what is relevant to add and what isn't. I've removed the Supreme Grand Master article because that's a bit over the top. There isn't much to tell about that function that doesn't either fit in the Lupine Wonse article or about the secret society. Especially since it's a one-of.

--Sanity 17:19, 8 May 2007 (CEST)

Another thing: Talk pages are not for annotations, but for discussing the page's content. Annotations are to be placed in the appropriate annotations section or page.

Secondly, do check your links, as I've found a few odd links that you could have spotted (like [[Book:The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents], which ends up wrong because it's combining two methods of linking, ie the normal way and the easy template). If you have any questions about editing, do ask them, but at least check whether your edit shows up as it should. --Sanity 15:08, 9 May 2007 (CEST)

Again, many thanks for the encouragement and constructive criticism! All ponts taken on board and hopefully there'll be far less of this sort of blooper. I do have to say that this site is making being off work for health reasons far less of a drag than it might otherwise be!--AgProv 15:43, 9 May 2007 (CEST)

If you want to avoid bloopers, do ask (on my talk page, or by e-mail) if you're not sure about something. I've fixed the template page you made - a template is a kind of shortcut for text and markup that is repeated often, not an actual content page for example. If unsure, use "Show preview" and/or don't make the edit. There's always the Sandbox to try out stuff. --Sanity 19:08, 11 May 2007 (CEST)

Thanks. That worried me as I wasn't sure what had gone wrong. --AgProv 19:21, 11 May 2007 (CEST)

Stubs

As Old Dickens once said to me, Note the available stub template. It will display the note as well as add the article to the Stubs category. It looks like this:

This article is a stub. One can help Discworld & Pratchett Wiki by expanding it.

...----Knmatt 22:38, 23 May 2007 (CEST)

Thanks! Earlier today I weas doing some of the boring stuff at work that requires less than half a brain, and I kept an Internet screen up so I could "detox" every so often with a surf throufgh the Wiki. Should have remembered the "stub" template, but this is what comes of trying to do three things at once, I guess! --AgProv 00:26, 24 May 2007 (CEST)

Sysop

Due to your many good contributions I've made you a sysop. --Sanity 13:13, 26 September 2007 (CEST)

On edits

Hi AgProv,

Please note that you can make easy links to Wikipedia by using [[wikipedia:Article|]] (which becomes Article).

Also, I find it a bit ugly to just throw in links to books. Either link to them in a context, or make a category for a book. Just mentioning a link looks weird. --Sanity 00:21, 1 December 2007 (CET)

Good point, I'm looking back for previous examples of this and rewriting them. --AgProv 00:52, 1 December 2007 (CET)

Another point: if the description of an article is right, but the name isn't, you can save yourself the hassle of copying/pasting, and use the "move" option. This has the additional advantage of keeping all previous revisions. --Sanity 15:40, 21 December 2007 (CET)

Hello, Agprov. I have been reading your user page and this user talk, and you are just the man I'm looking for! Despite having been a contributor for quite some time, I still have a lot to learn about this wiki. Could you help me out? Also, I would be delighted if you could take the time to give me links to your various works. You have no idea how long I'm been searching for Discworld spin-off publications. (And yes, I realize that I used italics four times in this blurb.) --Clurinzler 20:20, 23 August 2011

Ghost in the Machine?

Brother Smith seemed to have an attack of this auto-reversion the other day, too. It hasn't happened to me yet (I don't think) but I wonder what's happening. ..--Old Dickens 22:07, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Fingers

"No man but a blogger ever wrote, except for money." Johnson
Where do you get the time and energy? --Old Dickens 00:05, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Writing is a compulsion - you find the time and the energy follows....

Well, it's like this... I first came accross Terry Pratchett when I was stranded in a very small village on the Norfolk coast, having joined the human flotsam living and working at a hotel that served the summer tourist trade. As the two main recreations among my working colleagures were sex and drinking (I'm not unaverse to either, in moderation) after a while I started getting bored and looking for other sources of stimulation, when I wasn't cooking for tourists. So on a day off, I discovered a copy of this interesting-looking book called Wyrd Sisters, by a hitherto unknown author to me called Terry Pratchett...(the local tourist tat emporium had a rack of paperbacks and Pratchett was on it).

That was it. Hooked. Funniest man I'd ever read. In the eighteen years since, I've read so much TP that it's overflowing out of my brain in newer and interesting recombinations and puddling on the paper. Especially since I've been writing here and contemplating - deeply - how it all fits together. Reading and contributing to Wiki articles on the timeline, on what has been revealed re. the backstories of the characters, on what (little)is known about the time-period seperating Night Watch from the "present day" , and on what can be reasonably inferred and logically deduced... well, this is where it all spilled over and created something new. Without, I hope, deviating from known fact.

Although I did take a liberty with the "Gentleman Ranker" - then again, the justification for this particular person slumming it with the Pheasant Pluckers was, I hope, sound on all counts. In fact, on page 324 of Night Watch, the new Patrician Snapcase is reflecting on his predecessor - the word "predecessor" should be taken very literally - and expressly asks if there are files on up-and-coming young men in the Guild of Assassins. Having just issued orders for the unfortunate death of John Keel, it's easy to see where his mind is going: the Assassin who was responsible for killing one Patrician might well get a taste for it, and if he was able to evade Palace security so easily once, he might well be asked to repeat the performance. Better get my retaliation in first. So it seems very likely that young Vetinari had to get out of town in a hurry and hide somewhere - I suggested a mechanism for this.

The notion of Maisie Nobbs having been the local beauty in her youth also struck me as neatly ironic - Nobby evidently getting his unique good looks from his father's side of the family! Apart from one piece of dialogue being lifted from a James Herriot novel (Herriot had to escort the local wife-beating ne'er-do-well to the doctors and hold his hand while he blubbered in fear) the work is as far as I can make it, original. The Herriot scene was just too good - and instant karmic - not to re-use in this context. The fabric and the ingredients are Terry Pratchett's: the way I've assembled the "lego bricks" is mine.

Hope you enjoyed, as the STRONG compulsion to write is still there and at least two more Discworld stories are in the offing (Victor Tugelbend - and Theda Withel - return in a a sort of "sequel" to Moving Pictures) and there's one set in the Good Omens world, where Crowley acts as patron to a struggling young artist in turn-of-the-century Austria. (While Aziraphile hurriedly consults his Nostradamus to work out what the Hell is happening). --AgProv 09:39, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Moving Pictures part II.

The Dungeon Dimensions are back. And they're MAD"

Just to say Discoworld Fanfic has gone live (15th August 2008) on an as-yet-uncompleted three-part novelette involving Victor Tugelbend and Theda Withel coming back to Ankh-Morpork. --AgProv 12:55, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Read and enjoy.

. I just twigged to a basic problem for "fanfic" or original publishing on the `net. The computer monitor doesn't support serious reading of more than 3-4 pages and the content doesn't matter much. I tire of reading even TP's Sea and Little Fishes or classics from Gutenberg on the screen. Younger people might not have the habits of reading physical books, but one-paragraph or one-page `net articles/commentary seem to dominate the market anyway.
What it needs is available book-sized paper to print it out! A5 size is listed in the computer, but I don't see it for sale. ...hmm, 6"x9" pre-punched for reusable 3-ring binders...) . --Old Dickens 20:25, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm... I ran into related problems whilst proof-reading and discussing my writings with the delightful and ever-patient Esmi.

I set the stories up in Microsoft Word, and added more visual tricks, font-changes,little twiddles, et c, than the translation into L-space terminology was able to sustain. One ongoing problem is that wherever I put a dash in the original, the L-space font has substituted a question mark.

Also, a lot of the divisors between bits of the story - for example, a fade-out on one set of characters and a fade-into the next - haven't carried over, which might make the tale a bit confusing in parts. (I didn't intend Vetinari to be physically present at Victor Tugelbend's job interview, for instance: he and Drumknott would have been elsewhere, after the event, perhaps reading a transcript, or commentating on Vimes' report of the interview)

Until we sort the proof-reading out, could I say that I'm happy to email the originals over to anyone who might want to read them, subject to the usual courtesies?

PLC1723@yahoo.co.uk.

Cheers! --AgProv 11:54, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

André's Badge

It's not really part of the story, but I think you misconstrue Margolotta. Isn't she generally regarded as the source of the entire modernisation and liberalisation movement across the continent, founder of the Temperance League and mentor of Havelock Vetinari? Far from plotting Vampire takeovers, she's been working at eliminating the counter-productive tribalism of Vampires, Werewolves, Dwarves and Humans. In any case, she might ignore the Pledge and bite your neck for associating her with the dreadful déclassé Magpyrs. --Old Dickens 15:55, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Just a thought I had when plotting the story... sitting the three books next to each other, Carpe Jugulum, The Fifth Elephant and Maskerade so that I could be absolutely sure of their sequence, I had the strong feeling that events in Carpe Jugulum and The Fifth Elephant were happening in pretty much the same time scale. The weather in Lancre is late autumnal, even early wintery: further along in Überwald, cold wintery rain in Lancre would have turned into snow. Having the sort of mind I've got, I found myself wondering if Vimes' werewolf drama in Überwald, and the vampires' attack into Lancre, had happened at exactly the same time.

Therefore, driving "west" towards Lancre, Vimes and Lady Sybil would have seen something pretty dreadful had happened in Escrow. (Escrow isn't marked on the Mapp, btw - I'm only assuming it stands in the River Smale region roughly midway between Lsancre and Überwald)

Once this thought had lodged, the Inner Policeman started wondering - were they connected? and started to consider motives and reasons. Who would have benefited? Who was in a position to know about both plots? And the thought of Lady Margolotta emerged; point taken about my throat here! An alternative reading: perhaps knowing, she let it happen, reasoning the Magpyrs were about to realise they'd bitten off more than they could chew in the form of Witches, and any consequent weakening of one of the old reactionary Vampire families could only strengthen her position.

As you say, incidental! And.... I got the name of the pub in Lancre wrong... it's actually the Goat and Bush... what did you make of the story itself, or is this just a polite way of not commenting on it?--AgProv 00:49, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

And what is going on with the apostrophes? Sometimes they're there, sometimes they're question marks. Anyway, it's very hard to criticise when I know how difficult it is (to the extent that I don't do it beyond a couple of pages: I get stressed and tense and obsessive.) My general impression is that Fingers is two stories not well enough integrated, MPII is the best overall and in this case you do well with Sam and Sybil's dialog but writing in the voices of the Witches may be too hard; it would scare me to death. --Old Dickens 02:16, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Minor Edit

Why do you mark every edit you do "minor"? Even ones with 800 bytes added to the article. This is not a criticism I am merely curious. You could change it by going to preferences. I am in awe at the amount of effort you put in. Thankyou.--Beligaronia 07:18, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Beligoronia!

Not so much "effort" as "compulsion".... re. my comments above:-

In the eighteen years since (first picking up a Pratchett), I've read so much TP that it's overflowing out of my brain in newer and interesting recombinations and puddling on the paper. Especially since I've been writing here and contemplating - deeply - how it all fits together.

I started to tick the "minor edit" box more-or-less automatically, I suppose in response to Sanity and Death and Old Dickens. This was in the days before I acheived Sysops status: if on the "Recent Changes" pages, three out of every five contributions were down to me, then altering the page setting to "ignore minor changes" made it so much easier for them to select and monitor contributions not made by me. This made "Recent Changes" less uncluttered, if there were a string of four or five minor alterations to the same page. You're right, though, i'm probably using it indiscriminately and I need to look at that. Thanks for the kind words! --AgProv 14:01, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

(You can't pin it on me. I've never filtered the list at all. --Old Dickens 19:37, 22 August 2008 (UTC))

I don't filter the list at all so it doesn't matter to me I was just squidlike. there is a link to hide "my edits" at the top as well.--Beligaronia 11:43, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Terry Pratchett, interviewed on writing

I discovered this interview with TP:-

Are there any misconceptions about you that you'd like to set straight? Or about writing, in general?

"There is one thing that I get asked all the time -- on a daily basis actually -- by aspiring writers who contact me. They say, "I keep starting things; I don't know how to finish them. I don't seem to be able to find time to write. I don't seem to be able to get my ideas down on paper." What I always say is, "Consider, just consider for a moment, that although you want to be a writer, being a writer may not be where your particular genius lies." When I was a kid, I really, really wanted to be an astronomer. I have no real mathematical abilities whatsoever. I'm fine when it comes to the numbers, but when you show me a quadratic equation I'm completely lost. What I wanted to do was to stare in wonder at the universe, which is not exactly what an astronomer has to do. I think that what a lot of people who want to be writers really want is to have written. That is harder. What I tend to say is, "Look, if you wanted to be a boxer you would listen if someone like Mike Tyson said to you, 'Ok, you've gotta go down to the gym. You've gotta eat the right kind of stuff. You've gotta do your road work. You've gotta work at it for years and years, and it's going to be quite hard.' You'd say, 'Yes, Mike.'" So to writers I say, you're going to have to read a lot -- shitloads in fact. So many books that you're going to overflow. You've got to hook into the popular culture of the 20th century. You've got to keep your mind open to all sorts of influences. You've got to sit down for hours at a time in front of the computer. And you must make grammar, punctuation and spelling a part of your life.

"People actually start arguing with me at this point. They think it should be easier than that. But it's not easier than that. After a while, it becomes less difficult because you've developed your own technique. But it is every bit as hard as quite a lot of other things. What seems to be happening more and more (and I don't know why this is so) is that a lot of people labor under the misapprehension that if they cannot write it's because some kind of outside influence is preventing them from doing so -- as if the universe itself is conspiring against their natural destiny of writerdom.

"People write to me for advice. If I'm kind, I send them back maybe 400 words on how to write. And it's a valuable resource. But people don't want to be told that they have to sit there for a long time and work hard at it. That is not the answer that they desire to hear. I'm sure you get that all the time, people saying, "I've written a book and I don't have the faintest idea of what to do to get it published." And the obvious answer (which they should know) is that if they go down to a library, there is a whole shelf full of books talking about manuscript preparation and how to submit a manuscript. I mean this is not difficult stuff to find out. If you can't go and find it out, maybe you're missing something."

I find it fairly reassuring that I'd worked the greater part of this out for myself - the rest is down to me...

Redundant U

I don't know if Spanish or the typewriter influenced the double letters or other economies of American English, but the extra "u" is older and simpler. It was inserted by English fops over the 18th century when a core population had already emigrated to the 13 colonies; the Americans just never picked it up. There's no consistency anywhere, though: the Latin ending escapes intact when it implies "one who" (just kidding about the "authour".)
Not that the Americans can take much credit for rationality in language: they follow this model to remove the "u" in "neighbour", too, which has nothing to do with it. It should be "boor", but "bour" is closer, at least. --Old Dickens 14:41, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Astonishment

I just discovered A.A.Pessimal. My jaw drops again. (On the off chance this is not you, look it up and yours will, too.) --Old Dickens 03:17, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi. It's me. I thought it was time for a namechange and the logic was that if I adopt a Pessimal identity (A.E.'s older brother) it would force me to pay close and diligent attention to even the smaller and finest details of the Canon... (that is, in Fanfic you can pause the known reality of the Canon at a chosen point, and then take liberties with it... but to do that, you have to know your Canon inside-out in order to make it work!)--AgProv 12:43, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

So you're putting in all this work and producing all this material for a minimal audience and no reward. Have you tried coming up with an original scenario and doing more re-writing and polishing (i.e. to produce a salable manuscript)? I'm the opposite, of course. I wish I had the glibness, or talent to produce that volume of useful prose, but a page will take me a week and no end of angst. TP, I gather, did ten or more drafts of an unusually high number of titles per year, at least until recently, and produced two finished pages a day, or more. The fact that he didn't have a day job doesn't console me. --Old Dickens 01:31, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

At the moment I only have a proper day job for two days a week (but paid well enough to cover my needs, which is handy). So I can afford to hone my writing skills and launch them at a small select audience for feedback.. and yes, the idea of working up an original novel is certainly there! --AgProv 23:57, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Apparently you weren't sending Esmi your best work.
Sending editor's notes and comments on a couple to last known address. Ignore at your pleasure. --Old Dickens 00:23, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Not ignoring as such... still digesting. Thank you for an in-depth approach! --AgProv 00:07, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I see Esmi has finally put up the new batch. You might want to bash mine for a change. If you haven't read it yet, it features a character known to you and provides some historical set-up for your Graduation Class. Yours were published before, of course. Excellent voices in the Hat. --Old Dickens 02:02, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Greetings, A.A. Pessimal. You seem to own the fanon wiki, from what I've seen, so I wonder if you could answer this question for me: How exactly does the fanon wiki work? Also, would it be permissible for one such as myself to use the Pessimal Discworld as setting for some fanfic? Clurinzler 20:25, 25 August 2011

A Weekend at Bernie's

I recently introduced the Oswalds to deafening silence (there needs to be a pointer to it on the main page, I suppose); Bernard Selachii would take the Molehill Award for the greatest effort on a minor mention. --Old Dickens 00:00, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

A lot of people were fretting about it and it was only kind... besides, it was niggling at me too, until I was nudged into remembering where I'd read the Bernard Selachii anecdote! (Memo: would the Assassins' School have room or inclination for a Creative Writing teacher? "Which literary character - or author - would you most wish to inhume? Tell me about it in no less than 1,000 words...")

My Polish is limted to maybe a hundred or so words and a few basic expressions, but it was good enough for me to pick out points of familiarity...

so i get the teddy bear?--AgProv 00:02, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
Sure, kid, Dibbler gets 'em for 8p from a sweatshop in Klatch. --Old Dickens 00:23, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations to TC01 and Iron Hippo on their elevation to the priesthood/sysophood. (I hope Iron Hippo is still there, we haven't heard from him for two weeks.) Now that there are at least four of us (Fhh98 always seems to pop up when needed, but I'm not sure how closely he follows proceedings) available for committee work, I hope we can get a consensus on questions of policy and dubious contributions. I've been doing most of the police work, but that's no good. If I let everything go there will be a mess, but if I set all the policy it becomes my blog instead of a wiki. Please pitch in with opinions on anything that comes along, therefore. The new additions seem to know the mechanics well already; if there are any questions about the newly-available operations, ask any of us. Fhh98 is the expert on the inner workings; AgProv and I have just been around a while. --Old Dickens 18:42, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

cc: Sysops

Name

D'yer know, I've always wondered about without thinking about your nom de plume. Now I have thought about it, I'd have said you were an unlikely choice. Surely you should be working from within to destabilise, rather than shoring up the rather leaky aspects of this wiki? However, it's better than my first guess - "AgProv" seemed to be a Swiss financial services institute, as opposed to the rather suspect connotations you have chosen. --Knmatt 09:35, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

As always, the reasons for bad choices are historical...

sometime around 1998, I first popped up on the now defunct Channel Four UK talkboard "Reach Four", a forum for the independently minded (read "bloody minded") to talk about Channel Four television and branch out into any conversational topic we chose.

Reach4 may have long gone, but the user name I chose remains. It began as "Agent Provocatuer" but kept getting mistaken for a brand of frilly female underwear. So it shortened to AgProv - less typing and no inference of cross-dressing.

oh, I've experimented - AA Pessimal, on the fanfic site, is me. (wanting to get the detail right, with Pesimal's attention to detail as a shining beacon to aspire to).

And I'm Marshal Zhukov on military modelling sites. But AgProv remains my main identity, if only by default...

I've read some of your stuff, under more than one pseudonym. Pretty good! I'm not sure about the homo-eroticism between Angua and Ms Band, but that's me. I've also seen your stuff on H₂G₂. I also presume you mean provocateur. Frilly underwear? What kind of morons? So unlike the high class of people on this wiki! --Knmatt 11:32, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

By Godfrey that were quick! Well done that fellow! --Knmatt 09:14, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Drat - should have barred the user as well. I'm getting out of practice at this sort of thing... "Lisa something". I think I'll go back and check.. --AgProv 09:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Tune up the keyboard

...just to make sure you've noticed the Terry Pratchett Prize. --Old Dickens 22:59, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Very tasty! I've read the terms and conditions and of course it has to be 100% original, which debars fanfic (I was expecting that) but as it happens I have been doing a lot of thinking along the lines of the multiverse model of creation.

As a for instance, there was a really fascinating article in the Guardian on Saturday, of a guy with no past, no memory, and no traceable family or history, who was found naked in the yard behind a fast-food joint with total amnesia and the very vaguest memory of Indianapolis, a thousand miles away from where he was found. Now without giving my plot away, everyone dealing with the mystery assumes Indianapolis is the place and it refers to nothing else... theere may be a story here.

This guy might just as well have been dumped here from a parellel universe...

I've been setting up another Discworld fan-fic, at the moment in notes only, that crosses into the Blackbury of the "Johnny Maxwell" books... the central character is of course Mrs Tachyon. I might discard this and incorporate the ideas into a prizewinning attempt! --AgProv 09:40, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Only, I think it's supposed to be set in an alternate earth, not just having a visitor from one here. --Old Dickens 19:10, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Quite possibly a trap to avoid.

But my restless mind which I have been told absorbs trivia like the proverbial sponge was thinking of a sideline to the Bermuda Triangle business. There was a ship, I believe it may have been called the USS Indianapolis, that was allegedly fitted with top-secret magnetic equipment, ostensibly to make it invisible to mines and torpedoes. But the monment it was switched on in 1942, the tale goes, the effects of so much electromagnetism in so small a space caused the ship to appraently dissappear completely... when it "came back" many of the crew were "missing", others had gone mad. Speculation was made that the Americans had inadvertently found a way to cross between dimensions - but a wild, uncontrollable one.

The idea of a guy popping back into existence sixty-odd years on, naked, with no memory, chimes with an odd story related to the experiment..AgProv 10:03, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

USS Indianapolis was the ship that sank with huge loss of life, mostly due to sharks, as it returned from delivering the atomic bomb to the air base whence the Enola Gay would deliver it to Japan. --Old Dickens 14:12, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

The dissapearing ship; isn't that renowned as the Philadelphia experiment ? --Iron Hippo 17:16, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

And I stand corrected: it was the USS Eldridge that - allegedly - was used in the Philedelphia Experiment. The USS Indianapois - exactly as above. But then, I'm writing fiction here and this scenario offers interesting possibilities...--AgProv 21:17, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Location

OK, five miles out of Yorkshire. Actually, I knew that; the trouble is that I went several years thinking you were in Leeds until your mate Pessimal denied it. Gods know where I got the idea; I didn't know anybody in Leeds then although I've acquired a son-in-law from there since. (Better football team, though.) --Old Dickens 19:07, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

"Chance favours the prepared mind." (fascist and occassional actor Stephen Segeal)

Knowledge dispels fear". (British army training mantra)

It ain't real until it's made you laugh". (Robert Anton Wilson)

Current Events

Sorry to hear about your troubles with the BBC board, but, hey, more time for us...
Rag Week is bloody genius (saving the obnoxious "alright"). --Old Dickens 04:56, 25 September 2010 (CEST)

Fanon wiki

Funny, the fanon wiki doesn't work with Opera. I can reach from an outside link, but then the cursor is permanently "busy" and nothing works. Firefox is ok. --Old Dickens 15:53, 31 October 2010 (CET)

Cologneblue.js

I was attempting to use Navigation popups Myrtone@ 14:50, 13 December 2010 (CET) I now have a a signature subpage I link to from my userpage. Do you like that idea? Myrtone@ 16:50, 15 December 2010 (CET)

History

As far as I can recall, you were the first British member here, after a number of continental, American, Australian and Canadian contributors (Shadeofblue was here long before but never contributed anything). How do you suppose that came down? --Old Dickens 03:55, 11 April 2011 (CEST)

Sounds almost like an accusation! Thinking back... I discovered the Wiki as part of a general exploration of the L-Space Web and I thought "I can do things here". My first two or three entries weren't strictly within the rules - I opened general articles on Douglas Adams and Michael Moorcock as authors who either influenced Pratchett or were spoofed by him in the first few books, only to be gently reminded this sort of thing really belonged under "Reading Suggestions". As I was very heavily influenced by mr Beobaart and Mr Kew in the Annotated Pratchett File, and was a bit frustrated they didn't seem to be in a position to accept updated entries. So my ideas as to all those sly nudges and digs and references in the books had to go somewhere! Then I discovered that 50% of the time, the entry to go with the annotation hadn't yet been written, so - ah well - roll your sleeves up and craft it...

I do wonder why so many contributors here are people to whom English is not a first language - although some of them, I suspect, speak it better than I do. Better than my French or Dutch/Afrikaans or German, I think! Perhaps it's that urge, fairly indefiniable but an urge nonetheless, to get past the necessary restrictions of reading a book in translation, and to get to grips with it in the original language? (I'm reliably told there have been at least four Dutch translators of Pratchett, for instance, who range from "excellent" to "appalling".) This is a big thing on the French VadeMecum site, although readers of Pratchett in French whose English is also good enough to tackle the originals do tend to speak well of their translator. And English humour, the quirkier the better, does seem to travel well... (look at the way Monty Python and its descendents are a cult thing in the USA)

As well as annotations, for me, there's also an urge to mention all those little leaps of logic that connect otherwise unrelated facts mentioned in different books - inferring that because Lady Sybil and Serafine von Überwald went to the same school The Fifth Elephant, and Lady Sybil's school, named in Thud! as QCYL, therefore Serafine must also have attended QCYL. (Which leads to speculation - as opposed to known fact - that Angua may also have attended QCYL.)

Getting the entries as accurate and as complete as possible gets to be a bug after a while... --AgProv 10:20, 11 April 2011 (CEST)

Still to do

I can't believe there are yet 785 "Wanted Pages", hundreds of them legitimate, besides 2854 existing articles! I won't live long enough... --Old Dickens 00:51, 18 April 2011 (CEST)

Well, early last night there were 807.... I deleted some that were irrelevant, redirected others to more suitable existing articles that already covered the ground adequately as one or two line references, and where all else failed, opened a few new entries where I already knew the subject matter by heart and could do some sort of decent opening shot. As a strike rate of 22 per session, one determined person could kill the lot in 37 three hour sessions...--AgProv 09:25, 18 April 2011 (CEST)

Mmm, that's pretty determined. Really, it could wait for years; have a pint before you do yourself an injury! --Old Dickens 23:51, 18 April 2011 (CEST)

More botnet

Now where did those come from? I seem to remember removing at least two of them. --Old Dickens 02:39, 8 May 2011 (CEST)

Hi. I went into the Special: New Pages list to look back through all recent cxhanges that were highlighted in yellow - ie, unpatrolled by a sysops - and patrolled them all (twenty or so entries). Three of them appeared to be hangovers from the recent spamming problem that had been overlooked, although I discovered the perpetrating bots had all been blocked. So this is historic stuff - it's certainly not a resurgence of the old problem! --AgProv 02:48, 8 May 2011 (CEST)

Darven Samhedi

Hi AgProv!
Could you please take a look at this page and give us some idea of what to do; it would be a great help. Thanks!--Zdm 00:05, 11 September 2011 (CEST)

A true case of suicide... sysop inadvertently blocks himself from site...

Aaargh, now I at least know sysops powers involve instant ressurection from the grave, as I just did a truly dumb thing and blocked myself from the site.. lucky the WIKI system does not recognise that sort of suicide or self-inflicted injury, as it allowed me to unblock (or rather didn't recognise the block) and let me in again to boot out the person I really intended to exclude.... either that, or somebody else recognised I was being extraordinarily stupid and unblocked me, in which case I thank them...

done that on a phpBB system before. And it does let you commit suicide. --Fhh98 18:42, 21 October 2011 (CEST)

It reminds me of a man who cut his own sword hand...--Old Dickens 21:46, 21 October 2011 (CEST)

Well, on one other site I have admitted there is a little of Lieutenant Blouse in me... this afternoon was my own fault for not paying attentin, as I could swear blind I, was blocking the account of the person who was spamming the SverigesMasterere, which is all very interesting, but nothing to do with Terry P. Then I looked down and realised I'd clicked "block" against my own username...

Fanfriction

Do you have any actual reference to a gendarmerie in Quirm or is it just a fanfic construction? Snuff seems to mention only a "Quirm City Watch" and I doubt there was ever a mention before. Following the rather complicated French model, the Watch might do routine policing within the city while a gendarmerie patrolled the rural areas, borders and the port. The characters mentioned, though, seem to be "City Watch", and no gendarmes in sight. It plays hell with the force I developed. --Old Dickens 17:38, 23 October 2011 (CEST)

You are right, there isn't. I've rechecked Snuff too... perhaps a rename for the article and a rewrite where necessary? Alternative French words might include milice, le police, and collouquially les flics, but Terry uses none of these, either... Ah well, another gun leapt and another false start there. Back to the starting line!--AgProv 20:15, 23 October 2011 (CEST)

I am not Myrtone

Hopefully, this is the correct way to answer: no, I am not Myrtone.

And about time

The prodigal returneth! I shall make offerings to Anoia and Reg. There was an eerie quiet there for a while. --Old Dickens 00:09, 12 January 2012 (CET)

Counterspam

I wonder if your preemptive strike tactic is worth the trouble. I doubt that the spammers read their pages or Talk pages (I wonder how many of them read English at all). It seems easier just to whack the moles when they pop up as we've always done. They always seem to be able to come up with new IP addresses anyway. What really boggles is how it's worth it to them or whoever pays them: it's always deleted within hours and they can't ever have generated a kopek's worth of business here. --Old Dickens 22:08, 13 January 2012 (CET)