Magical Personality Quiz

Recommended by Arref, and Meera.

My score:
Primary Creature: Unicorn. Air with Water.
Unicorn types are very concerned with the communication of ideas. They are witty and likeable but can also be quite shy. They are easily bored and easily distracted, and may seem unpredictable and superficial for this reason. Actually they are very deep and are usually trying to find the connections between the people and things around them. They are highly imaginative but not very practical. They love knowledge for its own sake and are not concerned about putting it to use. They are socially astute and sensitive to others’ feelings, but may still appear somewhat aloof. They are drawn to grand schemes for unifying people but these often don’t extend beyond the initial idea. Very logical and rational, Unicorn types are also unconventional and even bizarre. Other people may regard them as fey or just strange.

Shadow Creature:
Phoenix
Fire and Earth

This shadow is prone to a sense of stagnation due to lack of motivation and laziness. Nothing durable is ever produced. Practical activities may never be embarked upon. There is an underlying sense of futility and hopelessness. Disillusionment results from their lack of confidence that they can change anything for the better, and in any case they do not have the will. At the same time there is an underlying grandiosity and even megalomania reflected in their dreams and aspirations. They need to feel special. Instead, they may simply overindulge or neglect themselves physically. The biggest obstacle of weak Earth is to overcome self-centeredness and greed; the biggest obstacle of weak Fire is to overcome anger and aggression.

Interesting. These sorts of pop psychology quizzes have been around for some time, but this is a rather different take on it. I can see some of these traits in me, the good and the bad.

Added Alt tags to the Tengwar examples. Now you can learn what the mystery message is. :Grin:

My apologies to the "two Jenns" for conflating them on my Blog.

They will know what I am talking about, at least and I apologize for the inconvenience. All the rest of you can go enjoy the Tengwar some more. I'm inordinately proud of my work.

In other news, the site meter, according to good Ginger, is still being an ass...so I am yanking it. It's a bit of a vanity piece anyway. I want to thank her for helping to try and debug it.

I know, I should be, and am, working on Ambercon stuff, but I am also in a language mode, lately.

My example of translating the word Amber into the Elvish language and then the alphabet is not the only thing you can do with the tengwar symbols. What if you didn't want to learn the language, but liked the script?

Well, you can use Tengwar to write English...Tolkien did it himself! And, I think its probably one of the most fun uses of Tengwar. You don't need to know, or care, to translate Amber into Quenya, and then transcribe it, you can do it directly. However, since Tolkien was not consistent himself in his transliterations, you can wind up with multiple interpretations.

For example, a straight letter to letter translation of Amber to the Tengwar alphabet a-m-b-e-r looks like the graphic to the left, but the graphic to the right
shows that you can combine matters. Notice that m and b look the same...and so the mb combination is usually treated as a single symbol. Also note that it is
actually the 3 tehta (dots), not the i-like character which is the a. Similarly, it is the apostrophe which is the e, not the i. In Tengwar, vowels are usually these small symbols, and are either in front, above or inside the main consonants. If that is not possible, then the vowels are put on top of those of i-like characters which are called carrier symbols. Double vowels use a longer, thicker carrier.

My advice is to actually use the more literal translation...it is easier to read for a casual enthusiast...and if you wanted to use it as a alphabet in a game, you yourself could read the Tengwar with a lot more ease. Now, there are variants on Tengwar where a lot of the vowels are replaced with characters of their own instead of using Tehta (Sindarin, especially) and English usually favors the non-tehta way, but I myself like it.

So for today I will leave the subject of Tengwar with one more graphic to enjoy. :grin:

Just for your amusement...

http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm

Still working on the problem, which seems to be more of a javascript problem than a html problem. I don't know much about Javascript, but Ginger (thank you, if only you could read this) has pointed me in the direction of a Blog which has dealt with and licked the problem.

The travail continues.

Hmm. The hazards of multiple browsers.

Ginger has kindly let me know that Netscape does not render BJS well. Its her contention that its the site meter...I've tried to add height and width attributes to it, in an effort to correct the problem.

Once upon a time, when the Internet was young, browsers usually rendered things about the same. Even in a world where Internet Exploiter is the dominant browser, a lot of people use Netscrape and other browsers, and what may look good in one is not guaranteed to look that well in others.

I'd hate to think I've lost readership thanks to browser incompatibilities.

I was talking to Mike Levay about Gate Sorcery and he made the point that

"In a sense, the Portal power could be defined as an advanced form of Gate Sorcery, using a unique power source, yes?"

And he's right! I was wondering if someone would connect the two. Gate Sorcery is like a stepping stone to Portals, especially given that I have established that Portals have a strong sorcerous element to them in addition to their unique power.

Speaking of fonts...

Why would you steal something that's free? Or, to be more precise, try and make money off of something which is given to the public at large?

Case in point: Freeware Fonts. A lot of freeware fonts are not worth the time to download them. They have incomplete character sets, look poor at any number of resolutions, etc. However, there are a number of good font designers out there, who put time and effort into fonts you could use for any sort of material from casual to corporate, and only ask that you don't try and rip them off.

http://www.apostrophiclab.com/ is probably the best Free Font Foundry out there..and yet, the two main designers there are very seriously thinking of quitting, soon. Why? Because some asshole decided to take fonts from the site wholesale, burn them onto a CD, and sell them, as if it were their own work. The designers found them not metrely online...but in a computer store!

It's absolutely sickening. Its like someone took donated food from a food bank, and decided to resell it at a profit. It's immoral, its illegal, and its wrong.

More information on this topic can be currently found on Cybapee's website, at http://moorstation.org/typoasis/tbp/topic/topic03_2002.htm.

Just FYI, to show you how good and versatile the fonts look, the title graphic for BJS is derived from a Apostrophic Lab Font, and numerous examples of their fonts grace my pages.

I love fonts...and have a special weakness for fonts of well done, unusual alphabets.

Is it any wonder that I love "Elvish" Quenya fonts based on Tolkien's work?

Just for the halibut, I looked up what Amber is in Quenya...its Malikon. And converting to tengwar (the elvish writing system)...we get the graphic you should see below.