Nothing to say today, not really.
Some may have noticed a strange, new box in the sidebar. A little project of mine. As of right now it’s broken, but not to fear–I’ve found the error.
The top fifteen reasons people checked out allyngibson.net in the month of December.
15. “John Lennon atheist.” I wouldn’t call Lennon an atheist, per se, but he certainly had his issues with organized religion. Witness this quote–”Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I am right, and have been proven right. We’re bigger than Jesus, now.” Witness his song “God” on Plastic Ono Band. I don’t know what Lennon believed, but I can say that he had deep thoughts on the existence of a diety.
14. “Hobbit Calendar.” The Hobbit calendar isn’t like our own. It’s similar, but not the same.
13. “British Impressment Literature 1812.” I admit, I like nautical …
In the summer of 1999 I reread The Lord of the Rings for perhaps the dozenth time. With that particular reading I studied, really studied, Appendix D on the calendrical systems in use in Middle-Earth in the Third Age. I was drawn, in particular, to the Hobbit calendar and decided to write a quick-and-dirty computer program to convert our dates into Hobbit dates.
Today, November 20th, is in Shire Reckoning, the first of Foreyule.
What made me think of this, today, of all days? Maybe it’s playing The Third Age, EA’s Lord of the Rings turn-based RPG on the XBox. How is the game? I’ll save that for another post.
But for those who want to see the program, after the cut is the BASIC source code. Yes, I wrote it in BASIC. You have a problem with that?
Today is Mid-Year’s Day.
So, drink merrily, smoke some Old Toby pipeweed, have a safe summer solstice, and do the things that all you Hobbits do.
David Colbert’s new book, The Magical Worlds of the Lord of the Rings bills itself as a reference to the “amazing myths, legends, and facts behind the masterpiece.” Colbert is no stranger to this sort of book having authored a similar book last year on Harry Potter. At a slim 196 pages (including bibliography, suggested readings, and index) the book does not provide a complete reference to The Lord of the Rings; rather, it provides an introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy through a series of essays related to various topics, characters, and settings found therein. Each essay leads off with a question, typically something akin to “Could Middle-Earth be more magical?”, then proceeds to examine the topic at hand with examples …
