User:JackofOz

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JackofOz This photograph is not quite true to my own notion of my gentleness and sweetness of nature, but neither perhaps is my external appearance (A. E. Housman)
JackofOz
This photograph is not quite true to my own notion of my gentleness and sweetness of nature, but neither perhaps is my external appearance
(A. E. Housman)
This user is proud to be Australian.
This user is proud to be Celtic.
This user is of Irish ancestry.
Scotland This user is of Scottish ancestry.
This user is of English ancestry.
pno-3 This user is an advanced pianist.
This user is a member of the League of Copyeditors.
LE-0 This individual still maintains a shred of dignity in this insane world by adhering to correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalisation.
Wikipedia:Babel
en This user is a native speaker of English.
ru-1 Этот участник владеет русским языком на начальном уровне.
Search user languages
to¦go This user chooses to sometimes use split infinitives.
BOOK
This user is working on publishing a book.
This user loves writing, but can hardly find the time to do so.
This user enjoys reading non-fiction.
This user is interested in the Romantic period.
This user is interested in beauty.
This user loves Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
This user is interested in Russia and is capable of speaking in a Russian accent.
This user enjoys optical illusions, especially the impossible constructions of M. C. Escher.


This user loves the Autumn.
This user really enjoys dark and stormy nights.


This user is a member of the LGBT community.
abc This user loves vinyl records.
News This user reads broadsheet newspapers.
Kindness Campaign This user is a member of the Kindness Campaign.
This user's looking at you, kid.
Gone with the Wind Frankly my dear, this user doesn't give a damn.
"Surely this user can't be serious?"






Christmas is over, but there's no reason why we shouldn't continue the Christmas spirit indefinitely.

Therefore, MERRY CHRISTMAS and PEACE ON EARTH to men and women, and children, and dogs, and all other living creatures, of good will - and everyone else too.

[edit] Interests and activities

I'm particularly interested in:

I'm a kind of Reference Desk Regular (the best kind, naturally). I tend to hang out on the Language, Humanities and Miscellaneous desks these days. I occasionally put in an appearance at Mathematics and Science. I have never even visited Computing, and don't intend to.

If you like, check out:

[edit] Achievements

I have created 97 new articles, and my most recent stub is Desiderius Orban (7 June 2008).

On average, that’s one article every fortnight since I started my first article on 13 June 2004. But it's not as regular as that. My most "manic" period was when I wrote 15 new articles in four days (27 February-2 March 2006). At the other extreme, I’ve twice gone as long as six months without writing any articles at all, and there have also been periods of 114, 101, 86, 74, 57, and 54 days with no new articles. Not at all sure what this says about me ... but it’s not as if I'm being paid for this (damn!).

In not one single case did I plan to write the article I wrote. I never wake up thinking "I must write an article on X today". It just happens through some mysterious process. May it ever be thus.

[edit] Who the Hell am I?

My name's Jack and I'm a 5th-generation Australian. I was born at a very young age, somewhere between the 31st of February and the 12th of Never. I live in Maffra (Gippsland, rural Victoria), where I share my life with my male partner. We were recently described as "Maffradites", an epithet we wear as a badge of honour. I moved here 18 months ago, having previously spent my life in Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Wagga Wagga and my birth-place Albury.

Jenny Randles defines the Oz Factor as "the sensation of being isolated, or transported from the real world into a different environmental framework...where reality is but slightly different, [as in] the fairytale land of Oz" [1]. I can certainly relate to that. Oz is also a nickname for Australia.

I strongly identify with my Celtic roots - Irish mainly, with dashes of Scottish (and a bit of English for good measure). My 2 adult sons are ethnically half(ish)-Russian (one more than the other), with dashes of Serbian, Polish and Jewish. You can read more about my family connections below.

In Melbourne I worked in the private health insurance industry (about which I have often said "Anyone who isn't confused by this business doesn't really know what's going on"). I'm currently in the process of reinventing myself. And I'm writing a book (but who isn't, these days).

I am a kind of poor man's polymath ... well, pauper's polymath, more like it. The term "Jack of all trades, master of none" was coined in my honour, personally. I have a degree in Mathematics and Russian from the University of Canberra, but my usage of either skill is depressingly low these days.

I like to take a broad intellectual view of issues and see them in perspective. I'm definitely a "glass half full" person and a "big picture" person. But seeing the big picture can sometimes cause me to sit on the fence, where I can listen, understand and accept opposing views without really knowing what I personally think of the issue. Then there are other subjects about which I have very passionate views indeed - as you might discover.

I'd like to think I have the artistic temperament and bohemian lifestyle of someone like Oscar Wilde ... if only this were true.

I am most definitely a "broadsheet" person, not a "tabloid" person.

When it comes to "Shakespeare", I am a strong supporter of the Oxfordian theory. The evidence for the 17th Earl of Oxford is, to my mind, compelling. By far the best I've come across is contained in Mark Anderson's 2005 book "Shakespeare" By Another Name: The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, The Man Who Was Shakespeare. Another very detailed, but less readable, work on the subject is Charlton Ogburn's The Mystery of William Shakespeare (1988). But I read and debate the upcoming literature with interest.

I have thick skin and broad shoulders, but I am not as ugly as that might lead one to believe. (Moreover, as Konrad Adenauer said, "Thick skin is a gift from God".)

To anyone who dares to disgree with me about anything, I can do no better than quote the conductor Hans Richter:

Up with your damned nonsense will I put twice, or perhaps once, but sometimes always, by God, never.

Despite, or perhaps because of, all that, it should be clear by now that I am a perfectly wonderful human being. (Oh, and apparently I'm also a horse - [2]).

But seriously, I try to be guided by the following words, which were written by Marianne Williamson (and not, as is often wrongly claimed, spoken by Nelson Mandela at his inauguration as President of South Africa, or at any other time) :

  • Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

[edit] My Heroes

My heroes are all deeply flawed (like me, and everybody else). They include:

[edit] Synchronicity

My life has always been full of synchronicities and coincidences. I'm sure these happen to everyone; maybe I just notice them more often. I've decided to start documenting some of the more interesting ones.

  • In the late 1990s, in a previous life, I was a taxi driver. One day, the owner of the cab I drove asked me what sort of music I liked. I said I liked many types, but I generally listened to classical music by choice. He gave me 2 cassette tapes that he'd recorded, and he thought I might enjoy them. One was easy listening and light classics, and the other was country & western. I didn't have the heart to tell him that C&W was not quite my thing, so I thanked him and kept the tapes. I listened to the first one, once, but never got around to the second one at all and I had no idea what songs were on it. End of story - or so I thought. In 2006, I met the man who quickly became my partner, and I decided to move from Melbourne to the country to be with him full-time. He's got a great voice, he's an arch-romantic, and he would sing "I love you because ... but most of all I love you 'cause you're you" to me all the time. It was vaguely familiar to me, from the Jim Reeves recording, but it soon became our "theme song". One weekend prior to the big move, my man was staying with me and I was sorting stuff out and deciding what to keep and what to chuck out. I came across the 2 cassette tapes, and on a whim I decided to put the country & western tape on for the first time, because whatever was on it, I knew he'd enjoy it. To our great surprise, the very first song that came out of the speakers was "I love you because", in the Jim Reeves recording.
  • I saw the movie The English Patient at the movies when it was first released in Australia in 1997. I enjoyed it, although it wasn't the sort of movie I would wish to see again in a hurry, and I never saw it again, on TV or anywhere else. On 18 March 2008, I was browsing in a record shop and came across a DVD of it, and on an impulse I bought it. The next morning, before I'd had a chance to watch the DVD, I heard the news that the director Anthony Minghella had died the previous day, the day I bought the DVD.
  • Some years ago I bought John Cargher's autobiography "Luck was My Lady: Memoirs of a Workaholic". He's not the world's greatest writer, but it has lots of interesting anecdotes. Then I filed the book in my library and virtually forgot about it. Even when I created Cargher's Wikipedia article in September 2007, I didn't remember owning this book so I naturally didn't use it as a source. I moved house in January and I decided to cull my library, removing books I have never finished and am never likely to finish, or ones that I'm not likely to ever read again or even consult. I collected five boxes of books for disposal, and Cargher's book was one of them. On Wednesday morning, 30 April 2008, I promised the books to a charity I'm involved in, so that afternoon I got the boxes out of the shed and went through them to make doubly sure I wasn't giving away something I really needed after all. I had heard that Cargher had retired from radio broadcasting the previous weekend, after a record-breaking 42-year career, and when I came across this book I decided to hang on to it and re-read it for old times sake, something I rarely do. Although John Cargher was now 89, I had no idea that he'd retired due to illness or was likely to die any time soon. On Thursday it was announced that he'd died the previous day, 30 April, the very day I found and started re-reading his autobiography after an interval of at least 7 years.
  • 22 May 2008 - As I was posting my first answer to this question, a Ravel piece was playing on the radio. Not the Pavane, but still too close not to notice. Then I had to go out and do some business for a couple of hours. When I got back in the car, what was playing on the radio? - the Pavane.

[edit] Who would I be if I weren't JackofOz?

Well, user names I considered included:

  • Agaponthus
  • Arctic Heart
  • The Beastorn
  • Breakfast with Beasts
  • Brianette Bombshell
  • The Butterfly of Death
  • Chronic Low-grade Fame
  • Clyde Hairworth
  • The Cornish Ogre
  • Crackrag
  • Cryptic Triptych
  • Dabbling Dilettante
  • Delicious Sister
  • Descending Ducks
  • Ecclesiastes Eccles
  • Enoch the Roman
  • Fried Nocturne
  • Hiding in the Wings
  • Inveterate Lyre
  • Jakarta and Fugue
  • Jangled Ganglia
  • Jimmy Crack Corn
  • Lime Diamond
  • Lubricious Doings
  • Lyrical Miracle
  • Man of Pluck and Dash
  • Minnie Ganderplast
  • Nigel Actually
  • Nessun Doormat
  • Not Always But Invariably
  • Octopus Nostrils
  • Peacocks and Pavlovas
  • Phoebe of February
  • Psychic Sidekick
  • Real Eye-Opener
  • River of Silence
  • Rocks and Raspberry Jam
  • Simeon Graveley
  • Sluglust Slutglut
  • Spaghetti Polonaise
  • Sun-ripened Henry
  • Superb Conceit
  • Supposed Nonexistent Injustices
  • Tequila Mockingbird
  • Third Bird
  • Tomb of the Unknown Shoulder
  • Toothless Totalitarian
  • The Truth About the Planets
  • Various Vegetables
  • Violet, Spider and Bruno
  • Voblik
  • Wanderlust Mazurka
  • Wizard Japes.

In the end, I opted for the first one that came to mind when asked to create a user name - JackofOz. But never fear, in my future reincarnations I will eventually assume all these user names, and I will keep adding new names from time to time. And yes, that indicates my belief that Wikipedia will be around for a very long time, so we may as well make it work as well as possible.

Oh, if anyone actually has one of the user names listed above (I could check, I suppose, but I'm too lazy), please let me know and I'll strike it out. That, by the way, is NOT an invitation to steal any of them, but I suppose I can't actually stop anyone; and if you do, you might do the right thing and give due acknowledgment.

[edit] My Favourites

[edit] Favourite Painting

The Abduction of Psyche (Le Ravissement de Psyché, or L'Enlèvement de Psyché; 1895) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau,

... closely followed by his earlier version Psyche and Amor ...


Acknowledgments to User:Masamage for bringing the 2nd one (the earlier version) to my attention

[edit] Favourite Opera Composer

Giuseppe Verdi

[edit] Favourite Opera

La Boheme by Giacomo Puccini.

  • Some snobs insist the Leoncavallo version is better and that anyone who likes the Puccini is insufferably middle class. I say, stuff them.

[edit] Favourite Playwright

[edit] Favourite short story

[edit] Favourite short poems

[edit] Favourite Spectator Sport

[edit] Favourite Films

My two all-time favourite films are:

Others I never tire of are listed here.

[edit] Favourite Film Directors

Sir David Lean, Billy Wilder and Stanley Kubrick

[edit] Favourite Composers

I include this list as a compromise. What I'd really like to do is list my favourite musical works, but it would be a very long list. I will do it some day when I have time. However you may be interested in Timeless Tunes for Tuneless Times.

An appearance on my list of composers does not mean that I necessarily like everything they wrote. And a non-appearance does not mean I don't like many of their works (eg. Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Delius, Dvorak, Haydn, Holst, Liszt, Mozart, Mussorgsky, Ravel, Schumann, Stravinsky, Wagner et al).

The following are the guys (and they are all guys) whose style and musical creativity I consistently resonate with: Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin, Sir Edward Elgar, Gabriel Fauré, Leopold Godowsky, Percy Grainger, Enrique Granados, Leoš Janáček, Aram Khachaturian, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Gustav Mahler, Federico Mompou, Astor Piazzolla, Francis Poulenc, Giacomo Puccini, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Domenico Scarlatti, Franz Schubert, Jean Sibelius, Richard Strauss, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Giuseppe Verdi and ...

  • Moritz Moszkowski. I put Moszkowski last, because (a) he is not as well known as I think he should be. Ignaz Paderewski said, "After Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano" - high praise indeed; but (b) one of his works in particular is a very serious omission from the repertoire of virtually all concert pianists. This is the Polonaise in D major, Op.17, No. 1, a fabulous piece of (almost) undiscovered genius and an absolute gem of piano writing that withstands comparison with any polonaise of Chopin (no disrespect intended).
  • To the best of my knowledge, this Polonaise has only ever been recorded once - on a piano roll by Leopold Godowsky in the 1930s. This was transferred to LP in the 1970s (Everest Records, Archive of Piano Music, Series II; X922). I came across the LP in a record shop about 30 years ago, which is how I know the piece; and I've since obtained a copy of the score, which enables me to have a bit of a go at it myself. But in over 40 years of concert-going, radio listening, LP/CD collecting, and reading, I've never heard or seen any other reference to this magnificent work.
  • It baffles me that the Polonaise in D isn't in the repertoire of every serious classical pianist. And it baffles me that some enterprising pianist hasn't recorded the complete piano works of Moszkowski on CD. After all the great work done by the likes of Michael Ponti, Stephen Hough and others, there's still so much wonderful music just waiting to be re-discovered and recorded. Moszkowski must by now surely be the next cab off the rank. I understand Seta Tanyel started on such a project, but the company went broke before she was even half-way through.
  • Please contact me if you come across either a CD transfer of the Godowsky recording, or any recordings of the work by other pianists. (I don't realistically expect they could play better than Godowsky but, judging from the printed score, his piano roll recording makes a cut towards the end, and I'd like to hear the full piece as conceived by Moszkowski).

[edit] Timeless Tunes for Tuneless Times

This is an ever-expanding list of tunes that will never die. When I say "tunes", I mean tunes, not necessarily entire works. The basic criterion is that it's something you can whistle (ok, I know you can whistle Beethoven's entire Choral Symphony, but let's get serious).

[edit] Favourite Film Composers

David Raksin and Bernard Herrmann.

[edit] Favourite Individual Film Score

Schindler's List by John Williams.

[edit] Favourite Definition

  • Sesquipedelian macropolysyllabification is defined by Nicolas Slonimsky in Webster's New World Dictionary of Music (McMillan; Schirmer Books; 1998; ISBN 0-02-862747-4) as ... wait for it:


Quaquaversal lucubration about pervicacious torosity and diverticular prosiliency in diatonic formication and chromatic papulation, engendering carotic carmination and decubital nyctalopia, causing borborygmic susurration, teratological urticulation, macroptic dysmimia, bregmatic obstipation, crassamental quisquiliousness, hircinous olophonia and unflexanimous luxation, often produce volmerine cacumination and mitotic ramuliferousness leading to operculate onagerosity and testaceous favillousness, as well as faucal obsonation, paralellepipedal psellismus, pigritudinous mysophia, cimicidal conspurcation, mollitious deglutition and cephalotripsical stultitiousness, resulting despite hesychastic omphaloskepsis, in epenetic opisthography, boustrophedonic malacology, lampadodromic evagination, chartulary cadastration, merognostic heautotimerousness, favaginous moliminosity, fatiscent operosity, temulencious libration and otological oscininity, aggravated by tardigrade inturgescence, nucamentacious oliguria, emunctory sternutation, veneficial pediculation, fremescent dyskinesia, hispidinous cynanthropy, torminal opitulation, crapulous vellication, hippuric rhinodynia, dyspneic nimiety and favillous erethism, and culminating in opisthographic inconcinnity, scotophiliac lipothymia, banausic rhinorrhea, dehiscent fasciculation, oncological vomiturition, nevoid paludality, exomphalic invultuation, mysophiliac excrementatiousness, flagitious dysphoria, lipogrammatic bradygraphy, orectic aprosexia, parataxic parorexia, lucubicidal notation, permutational paronomasia, rhonchial fremitus, specular subsaltation, crapulous crepitation, ithyphallic acervation, procephalic dyscrasia, volitional volitation, piscine dermatology, proleptic pistology, verrucous alopecia, hendecaphonic combinatoriality, microaerophilic pandiculation and quasihemidemisemibreviate illation.


I kid you doubters not. Look it up.

[edit] Favourite Word Book

"Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure and Preposterous Words" (ISBN 0246111518) by Josefa Heifetz Byrne is a never-ending source of linguistic joy.

That her father just happened to be my favourite violinist ever, Jascha Heifetz, is just one of those examples of serendipitous synchronicity that my life seems to be full of.

[edit] Favourite Silly Law

  • The following is part of Australian tax law, specifically s.165-55 of the A New Tax System (Goods and Services) Act 1999 [6]:


For the purpose of making a declaration under this Subdivision, the Commissioner may:

a) treat a particular event that actually happened as not having happened; and
b) treat a particular event that did not actually happen as having happened and, if appropriate, treat the event as:
i) having happened at a particular time; and
ii) having involved particular action by a particular entity; and
c) treat a particular event that actually happened as:
i) having happened at a time different from the time it actually happened; or
ii) having involved particular action by a particular entity (whether or not the event actually involved any action by that entity).


Isn't that just wonderful!! The law is most definitely an ass!!

[edit] Favourite Insults

There are so many delicious ones, too many to list here. Instead, they're here.

[edit] Favourite Quotes and Anti-Quotes

Again, too many to list here. See here instead.


  • All my own work (blush):
"I like to admit my ignorance from time to time. It gives one a certain je ne sais quoi."
"I used to have a life insurance policy but I cashed it in when I got past a certain age. I figured, if I was ever going to die, it would have happened by now."
Less lumen, more lux.

[edit] Miscellanea

[edit] Family Connections

I have Irish, Scottish and English ancestry. The furthest back I've traced my documented genealogy is the English line. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents were Thomas Sheather (1635-?) and Jane Allowe (1636-?) [7] (that's 12 generations).


I am directly or indirectly related by blood or marriage to:

  • Brian Boru (941-1014) - according to family legend
High King of Ireland 1002-1014 (but which true son of Ireland isn't related to him!)
Prime Minister of the UK 1768-70
  • William Chalker (aka Charker; 1775-1823; great-great-great grandfather)
Pioneer of the Mittagong district (NSW) [8] [9]
Russian General; military commander during the Napoleonic Wars; hero of the Battle of Borodino; Governor of the Caucasus 1816-27. He was a character in Tolstoy's War and Peace, and in Prokofiev's opera based on the novel. Prokofiev's War and Peace was the first opera to be performed at the Sydney Opera House, a building that was the brain-child of Sir Eugene Goossens - see Nat Craig below.
  • Sir Luke Leake (1828-1886; second cousin's great-grandfather's son-in-law's uncle's brother-in-law)
Speaker of the WA Legislative Assembly
WA politician; Speaker of the WA Legislative Assembly; brother-in-law of Sir Luke Leake and uncle of George Leake [10]
Irish-Australian engineer; best-known for his work on the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme; eponym of the WA Federal electorate of O'Connor; suicided
  • Churchill Julius (1847-1938; second cousin's great-grandfather)
Archbishop and Anglican Primate of New Zealand
  • George Leake (1856-1902; second cousin's great-grandfather's son-in-law's uncle's brother-in-law's nephew)
Premier of Western Australia 1901-02
  • Sir Ernest Augustus Lee-Steere (1866-1957; second cousin's great-grandfather's son-in-law, or second cousin's grandfather's brother-in-law)
Pastoralist and businessman [11]
Inventor of the totalisator
  • John "Jack" McGrath (1890-1949; grandfather)
President of the North Sydney Rugby League Club and official of the New South Wales Rugby League [12] The McGrath clan
  • Tom Hogan (great-uncle)
"Father of Waverley Council". Mayor of Waverley (NSW) 1940, 1943, 1949, and an alderman for 22 consecutive years (1933-55). [13]. Eponym of "Thomas Hogan Reserve and Bird Sanctuary" [14] [15] [16]. He is buried in Waverley Cemetery [17].
  • Nat Craig ISM (1905/6 - 14 July 1972; uncle - married my mother's sister)
Sydney Head of the Australian Customs Service who in March 1956 was involved in the arrest of the composer and conductor Sir Eugene Goossens at Kingsford Smith Airport, Sydney, for importing pornography, thus ending his (Goossens') brilliant career. [18] p. 54
Fortunately, Goossens' brain-child the Sydney Opera House was built - see General Yermolov above for an interesting cross-connection.
Federal politician 1949-69; Minister for Defence, Works, Interior and Supply; missed his chance to become Prime Minister of Australia after the 1967 drowning of Harold Holt [19] [20]
  • Sir Ernest Henry Lee-Steere (b. 1912; second cousin's great-grandfather's grandson, or second cousin's grandfather's brother-in-law's son)
Lord Mayor of Perth 1972-78
  • Sir John Kerr (1914-91; his second wife's first husband was related to my grandmother's brother-in-law Jack Robson)
Governor-General of Australia 1974-77
  • Tamara Jermolajew (b. 1920; ex-mother-in-law)
Yugoslav-born Australian autobiographer ("It Can't Be Forever", Ginninderra Press, 2005; ISBN 1740272951) [21] [22]
1st cousin 9 times removed of King Charles II, who, through his mistress Barbara Villiers, was the father of the 1st Duke of Grafton. The grand-daughter of the 4th Duke was Elizabeth Fitzroy (1826-1906), who married Henry Lee-Steere (d. 17 June 1899) [23], a close relative of the Lee-Steeres mentioned above. I guess this makes the Queen my second cousin's great-grandfather's son-in-law's uncle's relative's father-in-law's great-great-great-great-grandfather's 1st cousin 9 times removed.
Australian painter, who was married to my second cousin Wendy Whiteley (nee Julius; her mother Daphne nee McKenzie was the daughter of my grandmother's brother Stan McKenzie) [24]. Brett Whiteley twice won the Archibald Prize, named after J. F. Archibald, who is buried at Waverley Cemetery, not far from great-uncle Tom Hogan. He died of a drug overdose, alone in a motel. Their daughter was ...
Australian actress

[edit] To do

  • Albert Arlen
  • Angus Armanasco
  • Désirée Artôt
  • Queenie Ashton
  • David Asimus
  • Sir John Atwill
  • Carlos de Beistegui
  • Sir Maurice Byers
  • Neva Carr-Glynn
  • Michel Chapuis
  • France Clidat
  • Bob Dyer
  • Dolly Dyer
  • Sir Richard Eggleston
  • Malcolm Frager
  • Ron Haddrick
  • Dennis Hennig
  • Clarrie Hermes
  • Frank Hutchens
  • Joseph Kalichstein
  • Ernest Llewellyn
  • Malcolm McEachern
  • Sir John Nimmo (judge)
  • Rohan Rivett
  • A E Smith
  • Teresa Stolz
  • Wendy Whiteley


  • Australia in Hollywood
  • The Bible set to music
  • Birth order
  • composers quoting names of other composers in the titles/dedications of their compositions
  • composers' opinions of each other, and their works
  • Patron saints
  • Shakespeare in Music
  • Teacher-student genealogies

[edit] Wikipedia Experience

Wiki ranking:

  • 15 October 2005: ranked 1646th (1552 main namespace edits) and 1807th (1838 edits in total)
  • 28 November 2005 - 2290 main namespace edits (47% increase), 2786 edits in total (51.6% increase).
  • 11 December 2005: ranked 1112th (2933 global = 2571 article; 136 user; 223 project)
  • 11 March 2006: ranked 1089th in main namespace edits (3483), and 1037th in all namespace edits (5658)

My current edit count

Another count

[edit] Awards and Honours

An Award
I award this Barnstar of Diligence to JackofOz for the endless
patience and care he takes in answering questions about all
manner of things great and small on all flavours of the Reference Desk. His knowledge, diligence, sense of humour and cool under pressure are an example to all of us mortals. Cheers! — QuantumEleven
I Seadog hereby award you (in the form of a box, The Dancing Happy Daisy award, for your countless (yet great) edits in many diverse subjects (and grammer fixings, Cheers!
The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
Your service to Wikipedia is most deserving of this barnstar. Good job! Sharkface217 21:42, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
An Award
Congratulations! Sluzzelîn hereby pins you with the NightFalcon’s award for having a “Z” in your name while at the same time managing to do lots of great work here on Wikipedia! Feel free to give it to anyone else who is doing lots of good work while still having a “Z” in their name! Sluzzelin
The Barnstar of Good Humor
For making critical comments about my buttocks, I award you this Barnstar. Bottoms-up! --Dweller 15:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


User:Rockpocket very kindly gave me the great honour of creating Wikipedia:What would Jack do?.

[edit] Special pages