User:Chiswick Chap/About



—THEY order, said I, this matter better in France.—

Hallo, I'm Ian Alexander. If you're curious about my handle, Chiswick is a place (with a silent 'w') and chap means a man. It's चिज़िक चैप in Hindi's Devanagari script, which I think works rather elegantly. Maybe that goes with my Yoga edits.

I have to some extent specialised in biology articles, including evolutionary biology along with its history and philosophy, covering topics (to take a few that begin with A) as different as active camouflage, adaptation, Adaptive Coloration in Animals, aggressive mimicry, agriculture, Ammophila sabulosa, anatomy, animal, animal husbandry, animal navigation, antipredator adaptation, apex predator, aposematism, Arab Agricultural Revolution, Aristotle's biology (and the man himself), The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, and automimicry not to mention a whole lot of arthropods such as antlion, Anopheles, and aphid, (and I'm delighted these all made it to 'Good Article'). However I've edited on a host of other topics.

I suppose it is natural for an encyclopedia to look into the history of everything: after all, it cannot look forward or even at the present. A liking for Sweden led to "Il signor improvisatore" Carl Michael Bellman's wonderful 18th century songs, especially Fredman's Epistles. Similarly, interest in patterns led to tessellation, a meeting-place of mathematics and art, which led in turn to the splendour of Islamic geometric patterns. Another track is English cuisine, where I found a void in coverage of even the most important historic cookery books, and a remarkable amount of recentism. During the Covid lockdowns I walked the streets of Chiswick every day and did quite a bit on its coverage here. I've had a go at the whole area of living things in culture, another juicy subject with a rich history, and have scoured and renewed much of Wikipedia's Tolkien coverage.

I seem to enjoy creating order out of chaos, which is fortunate as there is a considerable supply of suitable articles. If you think this is all mad, I won't disagree with you.

Even back in 2011, I thought there was something very wrong with how Wikipedia looks to newbies, enough to write an essay about it.

I have, by the way, no connection at all with someone who uses the name "Chiswick Chap" on "Twitter"; I do not "tweet".

Wyrd oft nereð unfǣgne eorl, þonne his ellen dēah!