User:IguanaScales/Sandbox

 Diese englischer mutterspracher wird sehr angeregt, Deutsch durch Teilnahme in wiki zu lernen. &lt; -- schlecht deutsch!!! ...

'''I g u a n a S c a l <span style="color:#E54C00;">e <span style="color:#FF4C00;">s ''' is my wikihandle...

A/K/A

138.88.161.142 (before I got this account)

The (Very Few) Pages I Have Helped Rehabilitate from Stubdom
( ...or at least elevate from Stubdom to Stubplusdom )


 * Half Japanese, the lovable bedroom band


 * Topiary &mdash; mainly because I like hedge mazes and Edward Scissorhands and topiary is kind of fun (if sort of tacky)


 * Photorealism &mdash; actually, I kind of created the first bona fide version of this page, since the existing page was not about the art movement but about (surprise) CGI
 * (BTW, I'm not a huge Photorealism fan or anything, but it definitely deserved a better entry than the original.)

How I Can Maybe, Possibly Contribute to Wikipedia
I'd be willing to make graphics/images that I find worthwhile or useful.

I could research topics of interest in more "conventional" sources.


 * (I live in the Washington, DC metropolitan area and I'm lucky to have ready access to the Library of Congress and the National Archives, among other venerable fonts of knowledge).)

I can be a nit-picky spell-checker and/or grammar cop since that's an itch that I have to scratch sometimes. Of course, some days I feel I could use a refresher course myself. But The Elements of Style is never far from my computer, for sure.

Interests and Miscellany

 * learning languages (as a person who has a bit trouble with language acquisition &mdash; I'm far better at formal and written language than colloquial and oral language acquisition)


 * I am ethnically half-Japanese but I was not taught Japanese as a child and I have barely a rudimentary grasp of it. Hence, I am very motivated to learn it since it is a part of my heritage and someday I would like to be able to converse with my maternal relatives in their native tongue.  (If you read the section above you know that I also like the band Half Japanese but I swear I would still dig Jad Fair and Co. even if my ma wasn't from Nagano!)


 * translating articles from other languages of interest into English (a good exercise in learning a language in formal terms)


 * etymology &mdash; especially cross-pollination of words between cultures/subcultures


 * (a favorite Wiki section: the inventory of negative connotations associated with terms for left-handedness)


 * politics and society, but I try to resist the temptation to get caught up in things &mdash; too draining and people have a tendency to read each other wrong. A lot of politics is highly visceral and personal, too, which muddies the waters quickly

Links

 * My French Wikipedia user page
 * My German Wikipedia user page
 * My (English language) Wiktionary user page

For Me:
Wiki-related Meta References