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Actually, was thinking of paperkey, as TFI is feasible with that. But PaperBack or optar may well be useful too.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
    Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
    And the mome raths outgrabe.

Lewis Carroll, 1872

[citation needed]

Here it is.

But wait, here is another. I was studying a foreign language in school, many years ago. The language had a pronunciation that is very different from my native language. Me and my friends sometimes used a "secret language"; it was a transliteration, when characters of words in language A are transliterated into [poorly matching] script B, with di- and trigraphs, and the result pronounced with phonems of B. It was completely unintelligible to speakers of either language who don't know the rules, but we could easily speak it. That "secret language" would have conformed to Zipf's law because it was a natural language.

Do you have a result from scanning Jabberwocky (or other verse in a similar vein) with Google's OCR?

Just for you, I made one, because I'm that fucking cool.

1. Visited http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/jabberwo cky.html.
2. Printed page 1 (all but one link at the bottom of the page) with default settings on a HP LaserJet 2300.
3. Scanned on an Epson 3170 as a 300 dpi grayscale PNG with otherwise default settings. (God DAMN this scanner is fast. But then my scanner at home is a shitty Mustek 1200UB since I broke my Canon LiDe.) 2528x3281 pixels.
4. mespinoza@sec2lpt7-linux:~/ocropus/ocropus-cmd$ ./ocropus ocr ~/Desktop/out.png | tee /home/mespinoza/Desktop/jabberwocky.html (lots of output)

Prepare to be unimpressed, because Results follow:

JABBERWOCKY Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872) `Twas bri11ig,_ andjghe 4s1it_hy toyes Digl gyre amid gimblejn thg wabe: All xiiimsy wei^e thg borogovgs, And theamome raths outigrabe. ''ggwqre thg Jalgbervvpck,_my sqn! The jaw; that bijtel the clayksathat catch! Bgyvaiie the Jubjub bird, anti shun The frumidus Bandersnatch!' I-Ie took his yorpal sword in hand: Long timg tlgewmangome foe he sought So rgSted he by the Tu_mtum tree, And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jalgbgjwoclg, with eyes of flame, Cqmgwhjfflixgg through fhe tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! Qne, two! One, two! And through and thIi`Ollgh The jrorpgal b]ade went; snicaker-snack! I-Ie left iifdead, and with its head He went galumphing back. ''And, has thou slain thejabbexfwpck? Cpmg to my a_rxps!_my ljgaxjgishboyl Ojralqjousi dwgy! Qalladhl Callayl' He chortled in his joy. S

\ A S

X A ?`^s :

, ' Was ga. ka%#* mm. -- M 1 1 Q at ) a iv 2. `Ail A it 3*,* `i 2 (V H ;. ````( * 4 ^Nq@ Eu..*s..%im X M is ? lgh ~ ``A? S [ A Fax I /),2*gE it ^`* 4 ~ *: ' X A mg x ix, ,t~;;;..: v' it ix '~ t ~ ^ ,4~ ---= =-^ A A i gv ; * XX, x> . . N S A ft 1 A-`A 3; `> ' ''YY \Jh ^***`(?i* , ~~ x `* at -;v- *<~ ' H ~~~-=.- ; `Twas bri11ig,_ and_the 4s1it_hy toyes Dig gyre arid gimblejn the wabe; All Qiixjnsy wei^e thq borogovgs, And thdmome raths outvgrabe.

dshaw@iabbenNockv.com

Return to Glorious Nonsense Return to Lewis Carroll

Results End.

Beautiful, eh? I also tried a 100 dpi grayscale scan, which came out even more like hash (one big paragraph) and a 300 dpi bitmap (1bpp) which was about the same as the 100 dpi gray scan in quality, though a bit better.

Looks like ocropus has a while to go before it can slay the Jabberwock instead of thejabbexfwpck.

Isn't

"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimbol in the wabe."

British? Broil is what you do at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

"`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."
-- Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

1. X10 controller
   1. SmartHome.Com
   2. web-based X10 controller
   3. Complete listing of X10 software
   4. Linux-based HomeVision
2. GNU Automaton
3. an established IPv6 tunnel with your own IPv6 address subnet (it's a whole new world out there)
4. SMS server for your cell-phone (good with X10)
   1. X10 event to your SMS phone (via paging)
   2. Control X10 from your WAP cellphone
5. Mobile IP server for your roving laptop

Coffee Maker (this one needs an Java-Dispenser SNMP agent badly)

We're almost there...

1. They still conform to proper phonemic structure of English;
   
2. English grammar is upheld;
   
3. The English phonology and alphabet are used;
   
4. Rules of poetic structure are upheld (eg. rhyme, meter, etc.).

I like Sci-Fi (trek, B5, etc) but some fantasy novels just try too hard and end up making me bored. Should I even try to make it through LOTR?

For you, probably the answer would be: no. If you're mostly into just sci-fi, then most any fantasy, including Tolkien, will probably fail to excite you.

I say this on the basis that it used to apply to me. (I know, I know--that's no way to make an argument, but I'm doing it anyway.) I was all sci-fi and no fantasy when I was a kid. In high school, I was forced to read _The Hobbit_ and _The Fellowship of the Ring_ and I hated them. I can't stress that enough. My favorite character, Gandalf (favorite because: he's a wizard = posessor of secret knowlege = closest thing to a techie in a fantasy world) got killed off half-way through _Fellowship_ and the reading got that much worse from then on out.

Later on--years later--I learned what kind of a role the LOTR trilogy had in the grand scheme of things and I started to gain some respect for it. Then, for a while, my friends and I were into Magic: the Gathering. After we got tired of it, we tried Middle Earth: The Wizards and I got to see decent pictures of all those characters I'd read about a million years ago.

When they announced the movies, I decided to go back and finally make the effort to read the trilogy (at some point, I had listened to it as a series of abridged audio books). It went surprisingly well. The neat part was that I was already vaguely familiar with lots of general stuff from the card game and from hearing my friends talk about stuff from the books--stuff like Palantiri (sp), Sauron, Orodruin (sp?), Galadrial, hobbits, ringwraiths, Gollum (he's not technically a hobbit exactly), etc. Then, when reading the books, I got to learn how all these general pieces of information fit together to tell the story. I mean I already knew, for example, that the quest was to destroy The One Ring (a.k.a. The Ruling Ring, Isildur's Bane, The Precious, or just The Ring), and I even had a pretty good idea about how the goal was going to be acheived (because of the audio books), but I didn't know about all the adventure's they were going to have on the way (Faramir is cool!).

But back to the original question: Should you read LOTR? Maybe not, but you may want to make an effort to become familiar with it because it's actually embeded in popular culture. e.g. If you know what to listen for, there are Middle Earth references in a couple of Led Zepplin songs: "In the darkest depths of *Mordor*...but *Gollum* and *The Evil One*...", "...*ringwraiths* are out in black." There's lots more I could say about it, but I'm tired and I have to go to class soon and I think I've "gushed" enough for one message.

P.S. oh yeah, almost forgot..

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

--
Furry cows moo and decompress.

So are you saying that most poems cannot be copyrighted? Jabberwocky is a decent sized poem (seven verses), yet it is only 164 words long. Are you saying that Lewis Carroll can't maintain copyright on it?
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