h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Simple really. I am curious to know the make up of our research team (where you were born and/or where you live, whichever seems to you most relevant) and what it was that brought you here.

Born and raised in Manchester. Started off in Moss Side.

Still live in the surrounding area.

Came here when the company I worked for dragged itself into the 21st Century and allowed employees to use white listed interweb sites (there weren't many actually, the Beeb was the main one used by all) Didn't leave.

Thanks Magwitch. What brought you to this particular corner of the bbc site?

Born a teuchter, raised a Fifer, wandered the country since but settled in Stirling now. I came to h2g2 to settle an argument with my wife about microwave targeting systems on orbital platforms.

Forgot that bit, benjamin

This particular place looked a damnable site more entertaining than the 'other' Beeb pages and there was the little thing about it having sumat to do with DNA...

The response to my first post made me shudder, but then I got involved in Phantasy Phootball.

Mu Beta has a *lot* to answer for

Yeah, it's all my fault.

B

Born Hitchen, Hertfordshire 1980

Moved to Chesterfield, Derbyshire 1989 (age 8)

Left home (after a severe and protracted bout of unemployment), age 30 and moved to Newmarket - where I am now - working just outside of Cambridge.)

I came to h2g2 with the question "what is the difference between a philologist and a lexicographer?" and it was answered by Some Bald Bloke. The latter compiles dictionaries, but both study language.

Mut- Yes, it is.

Magwitch- thanks for filling in the blanks

Clive- you were born in the same place (probably the same hospital) as me, only a year earlier. What made you think this would be the place for your question about orbital systems (which is not to say it isn't, but I only found that out after I had asked what I thought was a stupid and obscure question)

swl- Same secone question.

Well. I was also born in Hitchin hospital. Considerably earlier than you two though so I win.

I came to h2g2 having read an article about DNA in, I expect the Guardian newspaper where it mentioned this place. It looked more entertaining than the Jane Austin community so I stayed.

Born in Waren / (East) Germany.
Raised there as well, though not in the hospital I was born in.
Travelled to the other side of the globe for a sense of perspective (Minnesota, US).
Studied in Berlin.
There I read in the newspaper about a webpage one of my favorite authors had designed. In fact, DNA was in Berlin, promoting the site.
So I logged in, after spending a week or so trying to think of a name for myself.
My first "home page" (as "My space", formerly also known as "Personal Space" was formerly known) sucked and did not contain any tags. Via GuideML I learned the basics of html...
Stayed on because this is, seldom as I post, my spiritual online home, much more so than boofcake or any of them places.

Y.

"What made you think this would be the place for your question"

I found the link in the inside cover over a recently acquired copy of DNA's "The Deeper Meaning of Liff"; the internet was still (to me) a very new phenomenon; I'd read The Guide as a teenager - and laughed and loved it all the way through - so a website dedicated to it by it's author was right up my street!

I remember finding Ask, and seeing that it was a place for just asking questions; the one about lexicographer and Philologists had puzzled me for some time, and it's hard to think of it now but in the era before hypertext and google - I didn't know where to go to look that up or whom to ask.

I was impressed by the speed and succinctness of the reply I got so I stuck around, some time after that we were bought by the Beeb and entered The Interregnum (also known for some complicated reason as "Rupert"), and it was on the Yahoo messager boards that The Thingites were born. When the site came back, I wrote the Thingite manfesto dedicated to basically being as silly as possible and that then got weirdly popular, at the first ever h2g2 meetup we staged a coup and kidnapped then acting Editor Mark Moxon to promote our cause which didn't work but by then I was hooked, I've been here ever since.

I took the name of the cartoon doodle I used to obsessively draw over everything.

Other names I toyed with included "sheep bleating" which just struck me as funny. Thankfully in the great history of ill-considered idea gratefully avoided, I went with "Clive" instead.

To this day some people still refer to me as 'Clive' even though that isn't my real name! This is still amusing to me.

I can't really remember. I think I discovered SEx first via a Google search and was amazed how quickly I got an answer - within about three posts. That answered my question but the dozen or so posts after that, where things got weird and off-topic were what hooked me to the site.

It almost seems to be an unwritten rule of h2g2 that once a genuine question has been answered, it's ok to get creative.

I was born in Suffolk, near, in, or not Lowestoft... I went to university in Cambridge, then went to Uni for a masters in Manchester (which Is when I started using the net properly with the decent university connection, and found h2g2, and ultimately met a deranged woman carrying a bunch of raddishes outside the Manchester shopping centre; it sort of started from about there...)
Then I finished the degree in Manchester, didn't know what to do, so came back to Cambridge for the cheap accomidation prices and low cost of a pint of beer, though I fear I may have made a slightly miscalculation in my mathmatical working out of the relative prices of each between here and Manchester.
I found h2g2 before BBC, during Rupert, and I think I may have gotten an E-Mail or something, when rupert disapeared, to say it was reappearing on the BBC site... can't really remember
I then decided to stay because of people carrying bunches of raddishes, acosting tourists on London bridge and asking them where nighthoover was, and other assorted weirdos and bus nutters I ended up meeting through the site

I try not to ever reveal where I Live. I did not find my way here until 2003. I was doing an Internet search for some obscure subject and landed at H2G2. I had already read the first book several times, and had been dabbling at writing myself. This one one of the very few sites I bothered to register on, and even during the time I was inactive, I checked in regularly. When NPL took over I came back full time.



FS

US.
Loved the bbc radio late at night ,as a kid, when I was supposed to be sleeping.
Then Loved DNA writings later in life.
Those two made me more curious and hopeful when I first came here.

I came here when I was looking up feral children,.
I read for years before signing up.
I remember the look of the site changed a lot.
I read for 1-2 years after signing up ,before saying anything.

I liked the mix and flow of useful and silly.
My viewing habits are similar- dcoumentries or dramatic stories and then silly
for the much needed comic relief.

It's nice to see that so many of our researchers were born Hitchin'


As for me, I was born in the North West of England, raised on the South Coast, and currently living on the Surrey/Hants border.

I came here when the BBC messageboards were offline for ages in 2003 and the community there fractured. I started on the silly word games.

I was born and raised on the Isle of Wight (I think I've mentioned that before).
Went to university on the Mainland in Southampton. Spent a little time in Leeds to be with my then fiance (now wife)
Moved back to the Isle of Wight but couldn't find a job there, and spent a couple of years commuting over to Southampton on the mainland. Currently I'm staying in Eastleigh, a town halfway between Southampton and Winchester, but I have every intention of moving back home.

I joined h2g2 in the first year. I was a big fan of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and my good friend Peregrin, who had seen the Tomorrow's World launch, kept pestering me to join, and so eventually I did.

<BB<

I read an article in Focus magazine with a tiny interview with DNA (does everyone know who that is? I wonder...) where he mentioned the Earth Edition of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What he described then (as what he would like it to be) was something that would only really be possible with a mobile internet device.

But... I came, I saw and I stayed.

oh as for me: Born in Sheffield and moved around a lot being an Army brat. Boarding school, Army - service in Germany and stayed here when I threw my green camoflaged towel in.

I saw a link from the official Hitchhiker's Guide TV series website, read an Edited Entry that ultimately changed my life (the one on Polyamory) and decided to stay.

Occasionally me and Hootoo have a minor falling out and I stomp off in a huff, but I always come back.