User:Psicorps

About Me
Hello. Psicorps is my pen name (see below), and I am now back in Birmingham, United Kingdom again, with my husband Alan. We married in June 2006. We've been together for 13 years, and when we get to 20 years, I reckon we'll have a party with a nice big fat cake and a few glases of fino!

I have the Tattoo of Rassilon on my right shoulder.

I'm sort of resting away from Wikipedia at the moment, I don't have as much time to contribute as I used to. This is because I am once again studying with the Open University, this time for my BA (Hons).

My work
I am presently employed by a large insurance company dealing with motor claims. I worked in personal injury claims for a while however the department closed, so I stuck to what I knew and went back to motor. For the benefit of anyone who thinks insurance is interesting, take my word for it, it's not. If you don't believe me go and read about vicarious liability and ex turpi causa non oritur actio.

This week I shall be mostly reading...
Recent novels I have read:


 * The Seville Communion, Arturo Pérez-Reverte
 * The Club Dumas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte
 * Earth Made of Glass, John Barnes
 * A Million Open Doors, John Barnes
 * Angels and Men, Catherine Fox
 * Hitchhiking to Heaven, Lionel Blue
 * Brat Farrar, Josephine Tey
 * Baggage, Emily Barr

The amount of time I have to read has been drastically short, as I have resumed my Open University studies.

Currently playing
In my MP3 player at the moment I have a BBC Radio 3 play called Andalus, based on a novel by Jason Webster.

TV and radio

 * Doctor Who - particularly Tom Baker stories
 * Torchwood - John Barrowman is magnificent in this series
 * Big Finish adventures - especially the 14 Gallifrey adventures featuring Romana and Leela... want more!
 * Babylon 5 - looking forward to the new The Lost Tales series
 * Blake's 7
 * Star Trek - particularly Deep Space Nine and Voyager
 * The Prisoner - not looking forward to the new spin-off
 * Frasier - okay I admit it, I'm a wine snob!
 * Lost - who couldn't like Jack and Sawyer?
 * Desperate Housewives - love Ryan Carnes and Shawn Pyfrom, totally not my 'thing' normally but there's just something about Ryan
 * ER - who couldn't like Goran Višnjić?
 * The West Wing.
 * Eastenders - thanks to my mother we are now hooked on this again after a gap of about ten years! We have a bit of a thing for Robert Kazinsky.

Other interests

 * Flamenco - Big fan of Estrella Morente, Enrique Morente, Vicente Amigo, Paco Peña, José Mercé.
 * Genealogy - I have been researching my family tree for around a year now.
 * Biographies
 * Domestic travel - Bournemouth, Blackpool, London, Bristol
 * Overseas travel - Berlin, northern Tenerife, and Andalucía, but away from the popular British areas such as the Costa del Sol.
 * Languages - notably Spanish (fluentish) but also German
 * World religions - particularly Anglicanism and Judaism. Although I would presently describe myself as an anglo-Jewish agnostic I have an academic interest in Reform Judaism and the Metropolitan Community Church, largely steming from their inclusive stance towards LGBT members.  I have in the past been a member of the LGCM.

Groups and memberships
I am a member and keen supporter of Amnesty International, the Liberal Democrats, the British Humanist Association. Formerly a member of the British Interplanetary Society and briefly a member of Mensa, however given the unpleasant elitism of the latter, I am with Groucho Marx (and decline to continue belonging to a club that would have me as a member).

I am also working towards my licentiateship of the Royal Photographic Society.

Contributions
At the moment I am still finding my feet on Wikipedia but I am enjoying doing minor edits to both improve pages and also learn the ropes - in particular to Torchwood-related pages. However I have made significant contributions to Fall Out (episode of The Prisoner), Puerto de la Cruz, Matthew Waterhouse, Marc Sinden, Estrella Morente, Triana (Seville), Jaime Gil de Biedma, León Felipe, Gabriel Alomar, Manuel Altolaguirre, Manuel Andújar, Eduardo Asquerino, Miguel de Barrios, Manuel Bretón de los Herreros and José Manuel Caballero.

Frequently used reference articles
This is more for my own convenience than anything else, it's a handy index to all the junk that I look up relatively frequently. My sandbox is here.

Spanish stuff

 * Andalusia, Seville (province), Seville, Sevilla (Spanish version)
 * Utrera
 * Andalusian Spanish, and therefore Ceceo
 * Caló (Spanish Romani)
 * Flamenco
 * Estrella Morente from the Spanish Wikipedia

Other stuff

 * List of colors
 * List of Torchwood episodes
 * List of Lost episodes
 * Cross
 * User:Avazina/Bible on Homosexuality
 * Userboxes

Reinstated articles

 * Dun Cow (Coventry)
 * Craven Arms (Coventry)
 * These are reinstated copies of two articles I wrote which was originally deleted. They are both about pubs that my maternal grandparents ran during the 1950s.  That's democracy for you.  A pity but there we are, however now they are available again for anyone interested.

I have also recently signed up at WikiProject LGBT studies, looking forward to doing some good work over there.

Vandalism
One of my pet hates on Wikipedia is vandalism, and I've been spending a bit of time lately reverting malicious edits. It's time-consuming, and until Wikipedia has a change in policy of allowing unregistered users to edit pages, there may be no real solution in sight.

I will always revert vandalised pages wherever I can, but if people wipe out their talk pages to remove warnings etc, I generally leave that to others, unless the user page belongs to a user whose act of vandalism I've just cleaned up. Otherwise time is precious and therefore life too short.

My record so far was on 13 March 2007 when I reverted 37 vandalised articles... someone give me a barnstar, please!

Origin of the name 'Psicorps'
The name comes from the science fiction series Babylon 5. Psi Corps is the name of the fictional organisation on Earth which purportedly regulates and controls the standards and behaviour of all registered telepaths. However the organisation does not always meet its own high standards, and considers itself and its 'members' superior to 'normals' (or 'mundanes'), i.e., non-telepaths.