The Hobbit Hole IV – The Road Goes Ever On…

[HairOfTheDog]

Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!

The Road Goes Ever On…

• First thread: New Zealander builds Hobbit hole
• Second thread: The New Hobbit Hole
• Third thread: The Hobbit Hole III - Journey to the Cross-roads! (Congratulations, we filled it up!)

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

[trini]

SO!

[My back yard]

My August Tolkien Calendar, Ted Nasmith

To his astonishment and terror, and lasting delight, Sam saw a vast shape crash out of the trees and come careering down the slope. Big as a house, much bigger than a house, it looked to him, a grey-clad moving hill. Fear and wonder, maybe, enlarged him in the hobbit's eyes, but the Mumak of Harad was indeed a beast of vast bulk, and the like of him does not walk now in Middle-earth... On he came, straight towards the watchers, and then swerved aside in the nick of time, passing only a few yards away, rocking the ground beneath their feet: his great legs like trees, enormous sail-like ears spread out, long snout upraised like a huge serpent about to strike, his small red eyes raging. His upturned hornlike tusks were bound with bands of gold and dripped with blood...and high upon his neck still desperately clung a tiny figure - the body of a mighty warrior, a giant among the Swertings.

Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit

[RMDupree]

I've got you now!

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

Good afternoon...

I've been busy datamining... I've got the "New Zealander Builds Hobbit Hole" and the "New Hobbit Hole" threads saved to my hard disk, together with images. Unfortunately a lot of the image links had died, but I got what was still showing saved. I'm working on saving "Hobbit Hole III"; I'm saving off "Hobbit Hole IV" every time another 250 messages get posted. Won't be losing any images on this one!

I've also got a start on counting the number of posts made by each poster... I'm finished with the first thread, and the totals are:

HairOfTheDog, 868 posts
JenB, 603 posts
2Jedismom, 559 posts
Overtaxed, 500 posts
penny1, 407 posts
carton253, 254 posts
BibChr, 178 posts
ecurbh, 100 posts
RosieCotton, 92 posts
John Farson, 66 posts
Lucius Cornelius Sulla, 56 posts
Alkhin, 29 posts
Carolina, 23 posts
Rebelbase, 21 posts
Wordsmith, 21 posts
Samwise, 20 posts
GretchenEE, 17 posts
jrherreid, 16 posts
NewCenturions, 15 posts
DonnerT, 14 posts
The Iron Duke, 13 posts
MAWG, 13 posts
Sam Cree, 13 posts
Blue Eyes, 11 posts
redhead, 11 posts
Burr5, 11 posts

In addition, 84 people posted less than 10 messages each. 13 messages had been deleted by the Moderator, and it was no longer possible to identify the poster on 4 of them.

I'm working on numbers for The New Hobbit Hole, but it's a much bigger job! I'll post news as I get it...

[HairOfTheDog]

Great SUPER High-Res shot of the Oliphants for ya!

http://img-nex.theonering.net/images/scrapbook/orig/7731_orig.jpg

[Wordsmith]

Hi Bear! Gee, I thought I had more posts than that, but I guess they've been on the more recent threads and on the Green Dragon Inn threads. BTW, how about ksen? And you and Rose?

[trini]

Oh Yeah?

[RMDupree]

YEAH!

[HairOfTheDog]

Oh dear....

[does not want to know this!] ;~D

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

Nope, "careering" is correct. In this sense, "career" means "To move or run at full speed; rush". "Careen" means "To lurch or swerve while in motion" or "To rush headlong or carelessly". Over time, "careen" has taken over this meaning of "career". Tolkien, being a professor of languages, would know this, and probably deliberately chose the "older" word.

(thank you Dictionary.com!)

[My back yard]

Cool, thanks. How interesting.

[trini]

Really??!!

[HairOfTheDog]

Alot of the ~now~ regulars don't have as high a count on that one (I wish they did!) That's just the first thread... The results on the other threads, if he does them, will be scary!

Bear.... be sure you count spam now! Corin ought to be a contender on thread 2...

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

I was surprised by how many of today's regulars either didn't appear on the original thread, or had very few posts there. I didn't start posting until "The New Hobbit Hole"; I don't think Rose posted until "Hobbit Hole III". ksen had 4 posts on the original thread; SuziQ and Ramius had 2 posts each.

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

I'm just counting the number of posts, not what type of post... so spam counts just like a non-spam post. I'm sure the counts for the New Hobbit Hole will be much different because of that! ;)

[HairOfTheDog]

And no Ruthy, Vim, Corin... We picked up a lot of new faces in thread two. I mean the first one was only 4,100 posts, right?

And all the removed posts were 2Js, I think! HA!

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

Sorry... I'm being a know-it-all today. ;)

[ksen]

I think our numbers, and Corin's as well will go way up with the second thread. I don't think I joined this merry group until the second thread. Actually I think I started in the Green Dragon and sort of migrated over here. It was a natural progression.

[RMDupree]

As if...

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

Yes, 4149 posts... I'm going to have to come up with a new method of counting posts. The first thread took about 3 hours to do... and the second thread is more than 10 times bigger. I'm thinking of writing a little Perl script to crank through the file... I might be able to tweak it so that I can use the result to create a database of who made each post. Sort of an index to the Hobbit Hole...