Fantasist's Scroll

For those few, brave souls that still read this blog, be of good cheer, for you will be the first to know that my infamous conlang scripts are reactivated.  Yes, that’s right, all those good, tasty scripts for generating languages on the fly are active once again.

My webhost has changed hands several times and the most current owner of my web account has done an update on the servers, so, we’ve tried reactivating the devilish conlang scripts that seemed to cause so many before them trouble.  No idea how long, or if, they’ll stay up and running, but, for the moment, they are.
Use them in good health!

Today is the birthday of novelist and critic Anthony Burgess

He was born John Anthony Burgess Wilson in Manchester, England on this day in 1917. Though he had written several novels early in his career, none of them were particularly successful. His career took a different tur, however, when, in 1959, he began to suffer from severe headaches and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The doctor told him he only had one year to live. The diagnosis turned out to be incorrect. However, Burgess wrote five novels in that following year, the year he believed to be his last.

Though he wrote and edited a large body of work, including a fair selection of non-fiction, he’s best known for his novel A Clockwork Orange, which is perhaps most famous for the slang language he invented specifically for that work, called Nadsat.

You may have noticed this blog dying a slow death.

There’s a reason I haven’t been posting much here, besides author birthdays, lately.  Beyond the fact that I’ve been battling cancer, this site has grown in a chaotic way and in directions I did not intend.  What’s more, the name no longer describes what I intend for my creative endeavors.  I feel limited by the name, Fantasist.net, to, well, fantasy.  But, even here, there is a fair amount of science-fiction, too.  And, I don’t want to be limited to either genre.  So, I’m brainstorming a new domain name and I’ll eventually set up a new site, with a new look, that’s less restrictive in nature.

In the meantime, I’ll keep posting writer’s birthdays, but not much else.
If you’d like to see what I’m up to these days, check out my much more current blog, Diary of a Network Geek.  (And, yes, it is my goal to move all my conlang resources to the new site and get them all working again, too!)

Well, as several of you have noticed, there seem to be some on-going issues with the conlang scripts.  After getting them working again post ISP move, their usage has spiked to a level that the new ISP/WebHost can’t seem to handle.  So, I’m working on it.

Unfortunately, I’m also a cancer patient who’s got to go into the hospital rather frequently for chemotherapy, so I don’t have a lot of time or energy to work on the problem.  I’m about a third of the way through my treatments, so you can expect me to work on this issue sometime before the end of the year, but I can’t make any guarantees as to when.
Sorry.

Not sure how long these have even been broken.

Honestly, I’m a little shocked that no one told me some of my conlang scripts were broken, but they have been.  I think it happened when my web host sold their business to someone else and they changed servers, but I’m honestly not sure how long that these haven’t worked.  Usually, when something goes wrong with them, people are all over it, so now I wonder how many people still use them!
Well, in any case, they’re all fixed and working again, so enjoy them!

Today is the birthday of novelist and critic Anthony Burgess

He was born John Anthony Burgess Wilson in Manchester, England on this day in 1917. Though he had written several novels early in his career, none of them were particularly successful. His career took a different tur, however, when, in 1959, he began to suffer from severe headaches and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The doctor told him he only had one year to live. The diagnosis turned out to be incorrect. However, Burgess wrote five novels in that following year, the year he believed to be his last.

Though he wrote and edited a large body of work, including a fair selection of non-fiction, he’s best known for his novel A Clockwork Orange, which is perhaps most famous for the slang language he invented specifically for that work, called Nadsat.

Tired of Latin?
At least, are you tired of using that classic “lorem ipsum” Latin text in your demos? Well, why not try Geek Machine next time! You can generate test text in styles including; Hillbilly, Marketing, Matrix, Metropolitan, Pseudo German, and Techno Babble. Some of them are really pretty good, too. Hey, at least it’s a change from the tired, old Latin.
Now, if they’d only add in Lovecraftian or Tekumelani or, even, Nostrodamusian….

Okay, I dare you to use this on your next corporate development project. Just fill in some Techno Babble or Marketing speech and see who notices. Just make sure to do it on a Freaky Fun Friday!

I always love collections of fantasy names.
Of course, I have my own set of fantasy name generators right here, but, sometimes, you need inspiration from other sources. And, frankly, getting fantasy names down so that they sound “right”, but still different and alien, is a big challenge. At least, it is for me. So, that’s why I fell in love with this site: Fantasy Names.
The names are all at other sites, and I don’t think they list mine, but this is about the best collection of links to every kind of name generator, fantasy, science-fiction and otherwise, that I’ve ever seen. If you’re looking for fantasy names, for whatever the reason, it’s worth a look.
Besides, it’s a Friday and if you’re reading my blog, you don’t have anythng better to do anyway, so click the link!