finished QA
February 27, 2008
Posted by: Steve

Last night I finished entering Quidditch Through the Ages into the Portkey database. That’s the last of the books to be entered, so now the Portkey covers all seven novels and the two Schoolbooks, as well as all the Famous Wizard cards. Surprisingly, there was actually an earthquake just a few moments after I entered the last part of the book into the Portkey. Kind of made it feel like a momentous occasion.

The Daily Prophet newsletters are next. The first issue is partly entered already. I think I’ll do some non-Portkey work on the Reader’s Guides first, though. There are a lot of chapters that have no commentary yet. Just remember, Reader’s Guide commentary automatically appears in the Portkey entries for the passages from the books, just another example of how the Portkey pulls everything in the Lexicon together in one easy-to-use research tool.

Searching for Gwenog
February 23, 2008
Posted by: Steve

With yesterday’s emphasis on Quidditch, I’ve been muddling about with the Portkey, adding information to the Timeline, and testing out how it all fits together. When I add a date to the Timeline, for example, it’s supposed to appear on the Timelines tab of the associated Portkey entries.

I tend to work in outline mode, by which I mean that I go to the “Book Outlines” menu and choose the book I want to work with. When I click on a book (or other canon source), the Portkey shows me the full organized list of events from that source. So while I’m adding things to Quidditch Through the Ages, I keep the outline of that book on my Portkey screen.

As part of that process, I was adding information about Gwenog Jones, the brilliant but dangerous captain of the Harpies. I went through the various places she appears and tagged her on those entries, some of which hadn’t been tagged or iconned yet. Then I did a search of the Portkey for ‘gwenog jones’. I thought the thing had quit on me. It took over sixty seconds to do the search, and there was nothing on the screen to indicate that the search was still going on. Try it and you’ll see what I mean.

Obviously, this needs some tweaking. The search should be faster, although as the amount of information increases, that may be a problem. But some sort of “Search in progress…” notice on the screen would also be very helpful. I don’t currently have a programmer to work on those things, but when I find one, I’ll see what can be done.

In the meantime, if you do a search of the Portkey for a term (as opposed to an advanced search, which goes much faster), please be patient. The Portkey might look like it’s choked, but it’s just busy searching through a LOT of information. And if you know of a good programmer who might want to help with this, let me know.

Steve

Unusual Quidditch Matches
February 22, 2008
Posted by: Steve

Over the years, there have been a number of strange Quidditch matches played, many of them famous for their length or some odd circumstances surrounding them. Since February 22 is the anniversary of one of the strangest Quidditch matches in the Harry Potter books, I thought I’d mention it here, along with some other odd Quidditch games in history.

November 9, 1991 - a most unusual catch
Harry plays his first ever Quidditch match and ends the game by catching the Snitch in his mouth. This Snitch unexpectedly became an important artefact years later when Dumbledore hid one of the Deathly Hallows in it and bequeathed it to Harry in his will.

1269 - Bragge gives the players the bird
During a Quidditch match played in 1269, the Chief of the Wizard’s Council releases a Golden Snidget bird and offers 150 Galleons to whichever player can catch it. This added a new dimension to the game, with the result that Snidgets became endangered.

1884 - Lost on the moors
In a remarkable match where both Seekers played very poorly, the Snitch escaped on Bodmin Moor and was lost on the moor for six months. Some say it’s still out there somewhere. In fact, Bodmin Moor has a legend of some sort of unidentified beast wandering the moor, which may have been where Rowling got the idea.

1953 - The finest match ever played
The Holyhead Harpies defeated the Heidelberg Harriers in a seven-day match that ended when the Harpy Seeker, Glynnis Griffiths, finally caught the Snitch. The captain of the Harriers immediately proposed marriage to the captain of the Harpies, but was refused with a blow to the head.

1921 - Fastest catch
Roderick Plumpton, the Seeker for the Tutshill Tornados, caught the Snitch in three and a half seconds in a match against the Caerphilly Catapults. He says it was intentional, but opinions vary.

February 22, 1992 - oddest Quiddtich match in the books
No, it isn’t the one where Luna comments on cloud formations and accuses Zacharias Smith of suffering from ‘Loser’s Lurgy’. This was Harry’s second match, played against Hufflepuff. What was strange about it? First of all, it was played so late in the afternoon that it was dark shortly after the end of the match, and Harry caught the Snitch in record time. Normally Hogwarts matches are played at 11 am. If this match had been played out to normal length, they would have been playing in the dark. Even stranger was that fact that Snape was allowed to referee the match, although he had a very strong bias against Gryffindor and assigned penalties against them for no particular reason. This is the only time in the entire series when we see Snape on a broomstick. ETA: Phil noted that we do see Snape on a broomstick during the Battle of the Seven Potters, recalled in the “Prince’s Tale” chapter of DH.

Related Searches:

Timeline search for Quidditch

Portkey search for Quidditch

Note: We’re still adding information to the Portkey and Timeline databases. As they information is added, it automatically shows up in various entries which are related, which is pretty cool. While entries exist for the entire series of novels, they haven’t all been ‘iconned’ or tagged, so this search will change and improve over time. Also, I’m still adding entries for the last part of Quidditch Through the Ages and for the Daily Prophet newsletters. Try the searches again ever so often to see what’s been added.

Setting the record straight
February 12, 2008
Posted by: Steve

Questions have been asked and accusations made which require some kind of response. Specifically, I have been accused of lying in my declaration. This is a very serious charge. I want to make a clear statement of the facts.

In my declaration, I wrote that the income from the advertising on the Lexicon has “…covered the cost of operating the web site.” I never said that the income pays for hosting. What I said is that the income covers the cost of running the site, not hosting it. The costs of running the Lexicon are not great and they vary month to month. The money that comes in from advertising covers it. This ad revenue will also pay for hosting, which I have been trying to set up but have been prevented from doing.

I want to be as clear about this as I can. The Lexicon has had a link to Amazon for a few years and Google ads for the past 18 months. The amount of income from those ads varies quite a bit, but has averaged about $115 per month for the last year or so. I also have an ad on the Lexicon for the Cauldron Shop, the proceeds from which go to The Leaky Cauldron from which they pay for the hosting.

I have never bothered to track expenses, nor do I deduct them for tax purposes, so I don’t have an itemized list of what the ad revenue has paid for. However, I can give you some examples: the purchase of software and hardware including photo software, website management software, and a new keyboard and mouse; computer maintenance; postage for sending things to staff; internet charges (both normal monthly charges and separate charges at hotels or campgrounds when I’ve been traveling); various books and other reference materials; and other such things. After these expenses, the rest doesn’t even cover the taxes I’ve paid on that money.

Before there were ads on the site, I paid all the expenses myself. Since the ads have appeared, the revenue has gone to cover the cost of running the site. If there was any income to me, it wasn’t much, especially by comparison to the income other websites have earned. Emerson Spartz, for example, has stated in an article in Business Week that he makes a “six figure income” from Mugglenet.

I ask everyone to consider the facts before rushing to judgment.

Steve

ETA: I am baffled how this calm explanation of facts could be blown so out of proportion. I do not want to drag Leaky into anything. The reason I am trying to arrange for the change of hosting is to allow Leaky to keep itself separate. The only reason that the finances question was brought up at all in the filings for the case was to show that the Lexicon, like other Harry Potter websites, does indeed bring in some money and is therefore a commercial venture. That statement certainly wasn’t intended to drag Leaky into the matter.

No one from the Leaky Cauldron has ever asked us to pay toward our own hosting until now. When the Cauldron Shop was created, it was stated clearly to the other Floo webmasters that the CS was intended to support all the Floo sites. We were never told how much hosting cost or how much the Cauldron Shop brought in. As far as we knew, everything was working out just fine. There were still some costs to running the Lexicon, however, and so I put Google ads on the site to help cover those. The ads were there for over a year and no one from Leaky ever mentioned them. If they would have asked, I would have been happy to show them the records of the small amount of money coming in and if they would have asked for a share, we would have talked about it. They never said anything.

When Melissa informed me that the Lexicon needed to take over its own hosting, I considered a number of offers. She connected me up with someone from Idologic and eventually I agreed with her that it would be the best option. So I contacted that person and we exchanged a couple of emails. He said he needed some more information about bandwidth and the like and that he would get back to me. This was in December. I heard nothing back from him until January. I told Melissa about this delay and she assured me that no one was in any hurry, that Leaky only wanted the transition to be as smooth as possible. This is the kind of relationship the Lexicon and Leaky have always enjoyed.

It is true that it’s been several weeks since that contact and I am only getting around to making the switch now. Quite honestly, I’ve been very busy and I didn’t get to it as quickly as I probably should have. However, I had no reason to think that this was a problem, based on the conversations I’d had with Melissa. Once the legal filings were completed, I turned back to other tasks, and this was one of them. There is no connection between the filings and my getting to work on the change of hosting except for the fact that I had to finish one before I had time to work on the other.

If Melissa will feel better waiting to switch the hosting until after the hearing, that’s fine, although I can’t understand how that will help keep Leaky separate. I completely agree that Leaky shouldn’t be in any way involved in this case and should try to be completely neutral. Melissa and I have always worked well together, as she said, and I am so sad that this situation has damaged that relationship. I hope that this statement can help calm the storm a little.

Steve

New Page: Grimmauld Place
January 16, 2008
Posted by: John

A new page today for number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

Character page progress
January 3, 2008
Posted by: Lisa

I have begun a sweep of the character pages, but it is going slowly because it is so complicated. First, old style pages need to be switched to the new design, then double-checked for Book 7, all the old [Y-whatever] dates have to be removed, and then I need to check the page against the floods of new canon we’ve received since the last book came out. In some cases, the old page has details that once seemed pertinent or mysterious, but don’t anymore now that we know the whole story (Neville’s toad Trevor comes to mind), so most of the old entries are being re-written. Whew.

On the A-Z pages, I am re-indexing them with the names on the “No surname” page because it seems silly now to separate them. Why should people have to think about whether it is a first name or not? Eventually the “No surname” page will go away entirely. Can anyone find the new names I added?

So far I have finished the A, B and C pages. I work on them when I get home from my job and am averaging 2 nights for one letter of the alphabet. I know we keep saying this but please be patient. I know I lost about two months when it became too painful to think about Potter stuff.

I have some questions for you: Over the years I have struggled with what to call the two types of pages we have for important characters. One kind of page [sample] was meant for quick reference (though in Harry’s case, that’s a joke). The other kind of page is a more leisurely read, written in a narrative style [sample]. How do you use the two types of pages? Which do you think of as the “Main” page? What would you call them? I am thinking, for example of dropping the “Quick lists” and Quick facts” headings and using simply “Lists” instead. So it would be “Harry James Potter: Lists.” But what to call the other type? Should it just be titled “Harry James Potter” with no qualifyer? I don’t want to use “Essay” because that would be confused with our essay section and “Narrative” has always seemed clunky to me. Does “Profile” work for you?

P.S. How come people hardly ever draw Hannah Abbott? I know she started out as kind of a whiner, but come on! I’m looking for a portrait that shows what Neville loved in her (and sticks to canon, of course).

Update #1: I am mostly finished through “L” now, and all of the “No surname” entries have been moved over, so I have deactivated that page. As I go, I am taking extra pains to differentiate staff commentary with canon information through the use of italics. There are still a few pages that need such careful work that I am putting them off for the time being: the Death Eater page is a good example. Basically if you don’t see the “Deathly Hallows” triangle, I am not finished with that page yet. I just lost all my work on the Macmillan page (Dreamweaver doesn’t like Vista), so I guess I will end here for the night.

Update #2 (Jan. 21): Well most of my 150 character pages have been updated. Narcissa now has her own page, and the pages for Rita Skeeter, the Weasley family, Molly Weasley, and Ron Weasley have been substantially revised.

Still on my list to work on: Dobby, Death Eaters, Harry, Snape, Sirius, Muggle people, the Potter family, the Beings list, the book quotes and the character timelines. Whew. I also edit the “What Happened the Night Harry’s Parents were killed” page and that will need to be re-worked because of the revelations in the PotterCast interviews. Then, I want to work in a more systematic way on name derivations and do a better job of linking to our excellent essays. This stage of the work will go more slowly — I have 50+ roses to prune and/or re-pot in the next 2 weeks, and important work over at Accio Quote to do.

My favorite bit? It is still the profile I wrote for Neville.

P.S. Thanks for all the great comments on labeling. I have decided to keep “Profile” as the label for the narrative portions, and begin moving to “Data” (”Lord Voldemort: Data”) for the raw info sections.

More on abbreviations and dates
January 2, 2008
Posted by: Steve

After discussion with Lisa, I’ve decided to change the way we indicate Pottercast references. The interview with Jo is now referenced as PC-JKR1 and PC-JKR2. Any other Pottercast references will be given as PC#, so that a citation of Pottercast 121 will be PC121.

There have been some questions about the dates Jo has used for the deaths of Dumbledore (1996) and Fred (1997). In each case, she has given the date of the start of the school year (and therefore the book) in which the deaths occur. However, the actual events happened after the New Year in those books and therefore would actually be 1997 and 1998 according to the timeline of the stories (as verified by the dates given in book seven and other canon sources). We indicate the most correct canon dates in the Lexicon, so we list Dumbledore’s death as 1997 and Fred’s as 1998. We’ll keep an eye on this and let you know if we get clarification at some point.

The Battle of Hogwarts
December 31, 2007
Posted by: Steve

I have updated the timeline and the day-by-day calendar to indicate that the Battle of Hogwarts was on 2 May. Unfortunately, Jo wasn’t clear about which day of the Battle was 2 May, since the start of hostilities was the evening of one day and the final confrontation was sunrise on the next. For now, I’ve decided to place the final climactic battle in the Great Hall on the second of May. Hopefully we’ll get some clarification on that soon from Jo and be able to be more precise.

New abbreviations being used in the Lexicon are PC1 and PC2 for the two parts of the Pottercast interview, TBB for the Tales of Beedle the Bard, with individual stories indicated with a forward slash and the abbreviation for the story (e.g. TBB/FFF is the Fountain of Fair Fortune), and YL for “J.K. Rowling: A Year in a Life”. For a complete list of abbreviations and sources, see the Site Sources page.

UPDATE: Roonwit pointed out that the actual battle didn’t start until midnight, when Voldemort’s first ultimatum expired. That means we can firmly place the Battle of Hogwarts on May 2, from midnight until sunrise. Thanks! I’ll edit the timeline to make that clear.

“J.K. Rowling, A Year in the Life” airs in the UK, available online
December 30, 2007
Posted by: Lisa

On the whole, the show was lovely, although unlike the famous BBC “Harry Potter and Me” show (Part1 | Part2 | Part3 | Part4 | Part5), there is little new canon.

I think the title is a misnomer. Rather than being entirely about “a year,” we get a nice look at Jo’s roots with highlights of events from 2007. Among these are the moment she finishes Deathly Hallows (January 11), the hand off of the manuscript to her agent, a meeting of the worldwide publishers, footage of the book being printed, the OotP film premiere, the book launch at the Natural History Museum (and bits from world launches), at home baking in her kitchen for her son David’s birthday, and at a planning session for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park.

Other highlights:

• it is lovely to see Jo with her sister Di joking about old photographs,
• a stronger sense of place for towns where Jo spent her childhood,
• she is franker than I can remember about her relationship with her father,
• watching Jo draw the family trees of Harry and his friends,
• the wrenching scene in her old flat in Leith.

What were your favorite bits, or observations?

Update: There is an official video online now for everyone to view! Thanks Bander!

Weasley third gen names and more!
December 29, 2007
Posted by: Lisa

The third trailer for tomorrow’s ITV1 documentary [TLC YouTube Channel] shows Jo diagramming the family trees for the marriages and children of Harry and his friends. The tree is now on the Lexicon (thanks Mugglenet!) Here is a list of the new canon from the trailer:

• The Battle of Hogwarts took place May 2nd.
• Bill and Fleur’s children were named Victoire, Dominique and Louis.
• Charlie Weasley had no children and never married.
• Percy and Audrey’s children were named Molly and Lucy.
• George married Angelina Johnson and their children were named Fred and Roxanne.
• Luna and Rolf’s children (twins!) were named Lorcan and Lysander.
• Harry and Ginny’s children’s full names are James Sirius, Albus Severus and Lily Luna Potter.

The documentary will be broadcast in the UK on ITV1 tomorrow (December 30th) at 7pm.

Update! The door on Jo’s Website is open with the tree with additional information on Draco’s family.

• Draco and Asteria child’s full name is Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy.

List of new canon from PotterCast interviews
December 29, 2007
Posted by: Lisa

I posted this last night to Accio Quote, and figured it would be of interest here too…

PotterCast 130 (December 17, 2007)
text | audio

• Helga Hufflepuff gave the House-elves at Hogwarts “good conditions of work.” Her intent wasn’t to be activist, merely to be humane.
• The Beedle the Bard story “Wizard and the Hopping Pot” was used “to teach young wizards and witches that they should be using their magic altruistically.”
• The Beedle the Bard story “Fountain of Fair Fortune” taught wizarding children that “magic ultimately is not the best weapon” to achieve your heart’s desire.
• Originally Beedle the Bard was to be around 30 tales, but then Jo got the idea to hand write them and she did just the five.
• Jo chose “horcruxes” as a plural for Horcrux because Jo didn’t want too many words ending in r-i.
• Herpo the Foul created the first Horcrux, but Jo won’t say how, other than that it is a series of actions.
• Jo’s encyclopedia may not be published for ten years.
• Jo named John Dawlish for John Noe. Dawlish had been a powerful Auror, but was weakened by the time Augusta Longbottom laid into him.
• Augusta Longbottom was a “powerful witch.”
• Attitudes toward homosexuality in the Wizarding world are pretty similar to ours. People like Malfoy were more interested in someone’s blood status than their love life.
• JKR: “Dumbledore, who was the great defender of Love, and who sincerely believed that Love was the greatest, most powerful, force in the universe, was himself made a fool of by Love.”
• Grindelwald was Dumbledore’s “dark twin.”
• There is no romantic backstory for Madam Hooch.
• Harry was technically NOT a Horcrux because there was no intent to create one. The piece of Voldemort’s soul did not make Harry “evil” or “contaminated.”
• JKR: “The only time he ever felt it [Harry’s Horcrux] stirring and moving was in Order of the Phoenix, when he himself goes through a very dark time” and the piece of soul enjoyed it and fed off of it.
• The Sorting Hat detected the piece of Voldemort’s soul within Harry.
• Official definition of a Horcrux: “the receptacle is prepared by dark magic to become the receptacle of a fragmented piece of soul and that that piece of soul deliberately detached from the Master Soul to act as a future safeguard or anchor to life and to safeguard against death.”
• “In essence divided,” the scene in Dumbledore’s office where he watches a snake divide, was when the Headmaster was figuring out about the Horcruxes.
• Dumbledore suspected multiple Horcruxes because Voldemort treated the diary Horcrux so “casually.”
• Neville was born “hours” before Harry.
• Neville could have done what Harry did too.
• Neville’s family “just wanted him to match up” but it was “an impossible standard.”
• Alice and Frank Longbottom earned Voldemort’s ire because they were such “efficient” Aurors, and “were responsible for a lot of captures and arrests and imprisonments.”
• Voldemort asked Lily and James if they would join the Death Eaters, but they turned him down.
• Dumbledore knew about the attack on Godric’s Hollow because he had put a charm on the house.
• Jo isn’t sure how to explain Hagrid and Harry’s missing 24 hours after James and Lily were killed.
• Jo always thought of Hannah Abbott as being pureblood, but this contradicts her “cornerstone” notebook (visible to fans in “Harry Potter and Me” video). So to compromise, Jo says Hannah is Half-blood.
• Jo created her website because people wanted a fan club, but Jo wanted to do something that was free.
• There will be no more WOMBATs; they were created when Jo was advised not to publish bits of Book 7 on her website.
• Hermione went back to Hogwarts to take her seventh year and her NEWTs.
• Kinglsey recruited Ron, Neville, Harry to be Aurors; Ron and Harry never went back to Hogwarts to graduate.
• Hermione “had a bigger heart than she had a brain.”

PotterCast 131 (December 24, 2007)
text | audio

• Pansy Parkinson is the “anti-Hermione,” the personification of all the girls who teased Jo in school.
• Draco married Astoria Greengrass, the younger sister of Daphne. Astoria was two years behind Draco at Hogwarts.
• The Love Room in the Department of Mysteries contains a fountain in the center of the room full of a powerful love potion. Wizards and witches take the potion to study its effects.
• One “thread” in the books is what love does to people. It can make people heroic (Lily, Harry, Neville), it can also lead them into foolishness and evil (Dumbledore and Bellatrix).
• Bellatrix was obsessively in love with Voldemort.
• Not all Slytherins are bad.
• Jo is very involved in the planning of the theme park. It will have the “Jo touch.”
• Florean Fortescue was killed; there was more to him than was revealed in the books.
• Hagrid did not create Thestrals, he only bred the ones living at Hogwarts. He did breed the Skrewts.
• Wands are “quasi-sentient” because they carry so much magic.
• Wands they develop an affinity (”loyalty”) for the wizards who bear them. Disarming someone may not affect this, but if won in a duel the wand will switch allegiance. The exception is the Elder Wand which “knows no loyalty except to strength.”
• Voldemort confused “being prepared to murder with strength.”

Happy Holidays
December 24, 2007
Posted by: Steve

We here at the Lexicon wish you all happy holidays and safe travel! I want to wish a very happy (belated) birthday to Lisa, whose big day snuck by us on December 8. Sorry, Lisa…

We also wish a happy birthday (a little early) to Melissa over at Leaky, who turns…er, some youngish age on the 27th.

For all of you in the US midwest, buried under that massive snowstorm: settle in, drink mulled wine, and snuggle up with a good book.

Merry Christmas!

Steve