User talk:Spellbinder/archive

Hello Spellbinder! Use your magic arm-fireball thingies for good in the Wikipedia :) Anyway, I hope you like the place and choose to stay.

Some links that may be of use:

• Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers
• Wikipedia:How to edit a page
• Wikipedia:Village pump - ask questions you may have here, or leave a message on my talk page

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Hi 152.78.0.29, hope you managed to follow me here.

Glad you haven't been too discouraged about my reverting your work. :-) I notice that your IP is a soton.ac.uk proxy, so I assume you're at Southampton Uni, which is where I did my maths degree many moons ago!

As you should be able to tell from the history of this talk-page of mine, I've only had my logon since yesterday. Prior to that, I was just an anonymous user identified by IP like you. I would urge you to get your own login, it's very simple and then you have the option to add pages to your 'watchlist' so that you can tell at a glance which of the pages you're interested in have been updated; I don't think there's a way to get notified by email, but I may be wrong.

The links above are useful starters to find out about Wiki - so you might want to have a look at those.

Good luck!

Spellbinder 16:16, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Forgot to mention that you can write in my talk-page yourself of course; each user has a talk-page just like each encyclopedia page does. If you create your own login, you'll get your own talk-page too - which you can use to talk to others or just use to test things out. Feel free to ask if you need more help - and let me know what your login name is if you join :-)

Spellbinder 16:26, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I now have logged in! I am Robinh, as of yesterday. I've started adding a couple of pages, just stubs at this stage...check out Boussinesq approximation and Euler equations. My current work involves Bayesian simulation, and I'm working with Jonty Rougier and Tony O'Hagan (although my bit of the project hasn't really got started yet). I do feel a bit of a fake, as I'm most specifically not a Bayesian. +

I'm actually down the road from soton, at SOC. I've only been here for a few weeks.

You were right about Fowler...I also checked the OED, which basically says that usage changed in the 18th century. It might be worth doing my doing a bit more research and adding a little to the apostrophe page. The annoying thing is that correct usage is determined by actual usage...(does this mean that the fruitmongers are right after all?)

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Robin, left a note on your own talk-page - you should see a New Message indication at the top of your pages.

Spellbinder 17:29, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hi again Spellbinder.

Calling it a Wiki "bug" is just right...it's addictive, isn't it? I have plans to create a whole new vista of industrial risk assessment stuff (the current risk assessment pages are mostly financial stuff, not my scene at all).

SOC stands for Southampton Oceanography Centre. I'm working on ocean-atmosphere modelling to predict climate change.

hey, gotta go.

good chatting

Robinh 20:36, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

-re/-er

Thanks for the compliment, although I must confess that I was inspired by Angela's user page. I think the spelling theatre is generally considered classier, since it may evoke thoughts of the legendary London theatre. Regardless, I personally consider it somewhat classier. The spelling colour is not common at all here, so I'm not sure what the reasoning behind using it is... maybe something similar to the usage of theatre? Or maybe the owner is a Brit? Cheers, Minesweeper 09:12, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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Hi Spellbinder,

I tried to answer your questions. Cheers, Jurriaan 22:07, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

some more answers (I hope). Cheers, Jurriaan 09:57, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Soham murders

Hi Spellbinder, pleased to meet you. Glad you've pulled the Ian Huntley article I started into shape.. was a few dubious sentences in there til you got your hands on it. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 18:24, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Ditto on the congrats. Could you put the link to the news about the Huntley/Nixon name confusion somewhere clickable? Maybe that information should also be restored to somewhere on Wikipedia: it is after all part of the ongoing story. Phil 11:43, Dec 22, 2003 (UTC)

Likewise see my reply there. Phil 16:51, Dec 22, 2003 (UTC)

municipality subdivisions

Hi Spellbinder,

I moved your remarks/question to User talk:Patrick and answered it there. - Patrick 20:45, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

My Fowler's Modern English Usage gives the clue as to why it's Bayes' Theorem and not Bayes's Theorem:

"It was formerly customary, when a word ended in -s, to write its possessive with an apostrophe but no additional s."

That's why those forms like Jesus' nativity hang around.

Because Bayes' Theorem has been around a long time, it's still got its original possessive, which is now set in stone. I have a maths degree and it was always Bayes' Theorem and never Bayes's Theorem though I do agree that the latter form would be the correct one if the theorem were named today.

[ ..... ]

Spellbinder 15:41, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

When did it cease to be customary? Fowler wrote in the 1920s. I am not aware that that practice is no longer standard. I suspect that is because I am an American: We still write "Mr. Smith" rather than "Mr Smith" and we still call that particular punctuation mark a "period" rather than by the more recent name "full stop". Michael Hardy 23:13, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

There was a time when the Bible was not written down

There was a time when the Bible was not written down, but remembered by special people with eidetic memory, like the ones in Fahrenheit 451. Moses spoke the words, just as Julius Caesar spoke his Gallic Wars commentaries. There must have been multiple rememberers so that they could check each other's memories. Islam also accords a special name for those types of people. Anyway, when the Bible was written down, there was a great outcry because "something was being lost" by the capture of the words in script. My reference is the Oxford History of the Bible. Ancheta Wis 15:13, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, it was not an illustrated edition; I would have to go to my public library to look up the ISBN; but then I can simply use the internet there to type in the ISBN for your talk page. Ancheta Wis 21:11, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

See Torah#The_Torah_and_the_oral_law