This is the blog of Joseph Simmons, alias Túrin Húrinson.
Now, who is this person and why would be you interested in reading his blog?
Well, as for who I am; I’m a student at the University of Dallas (class of 2011), a small Catholic liberal arts school in Irving, TX, USA (a city adjacent to Dallas). I am double-majoring in mathematics and English.
What do I do outside of school? Most of my activities can be divided into two categories – “writing” and “reading”. By the former, I mean those activities which involve creative thought, normally with a created artifact to show for it at the end of the day; by the latter, those activities which involve taking in the created artifacts of others, which is often just as intellectually stimulating.
Writing:
- I spend a lot of time writing fiction (normally of the sci-fi/fantasy variety) and poetry (yeah…). The fiction comes primarily in the form of short stories, though I’m working on some longer stuff as well; the poetry is occasionally personal, occasionally not.
- Formerly (and this is probably how many of my readers know me), I spent a lot of time working on Wesnoth and my personal side-project for that game, the World of Orbivm. (I don’t really do either these days, for various reasons.) I thus have some level of expertise in writing Wesnoth campaigns, doing pixel-art, drawing maps, and coding WML.
Reading:
- I’m slightly musically inclined; I played cello for five years but I’m not very good. I like listening to classical music, Celtic folk music, and certain flavors of metal, mainly symphonic, power, epic, and viking; Rhapsody of Fire, Blind Guardian, Týr, Kamelot, and Ensiferum are a few of my favorites.
- Like most people I watch television. I prefer series that have overarching plotlines, and often watch them on DVD after the entire series has ended; some of my favorite shows are Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Battlestar Galactica, Jericho, The Wire, and Doctor Who (which doesn’t have that overarching plotlines aspect, but which is awesome anyway).
My alias, if you didn’t recognize it, is a character from the Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien, who is one of my favorite authors. He’s a major source of inspiration for me, and for almost my entire life I’ve wanted to do what he did – write a fantasy book that would be beloved by millions. Of course, that will probably never happen, but one can dream.
Religion-wise, I’m a practicing Roman Catholic; politically, I lean right but wouldn’t identify as a Republican (I’m socially very conservative but economically undecided); philosophically, I used to be a Platonist but now lean more towards Aristotelianism. (I also like using parentheses, as you have perhaps noticed.)
So now that you know that, why would you be interested in reading this blog? Well, hopefully, because I talk about interesting things. All of the subjects I mentioned above I’ll talk about fairly often, plus the occasional post related to baseball (I follow the Texas Rangers) or social relations (I analyze about what most people understand intuitively about human behavior). I also at the beginning of each month write about how the previous month went and my expectations for the current one, and say what character from Wesnoth or Orbivm I will resemble. And I’ll take requests for posts on random subjects if you want my opinion on something I might not otherwise talk about.
Basically, I try to make my blog something that I myself would like to read. So if you’re me, or at least similar to me, you’ll enjoy reading it. If you’re not, you might enjoy some of my posts, since I write about a wide variety of subjects, so stop by every once in a while anyway. If you find me terminally boring, I doubt you’ve read this far, and so this sentence doesn’t really address anyone.
