The Story Behind the Lists

As I was posting the latest additions to two of the lists in this blog, I realized I have never explained the reason why this blog exists. So, here is the explanation.

Years ago, I stumbled upon a forum in which the question (as near as I can remember it) was asked, "What is the greatest robot of all time?" I guessed by the narrowness of the results that most people were insufficiently aware of the vastness of the question's scope. There are many robots in the history of film and television, not to mention those in novels, short stories, comic books, comic strips, toys, advertising, radio shows, and plays (R.U.R., anyone?). Robots have been appearing in film for a hundred years. Perhaps, I thought, I could make a list of all robots, at least as they appeared in film and television, to educate others on the robot's impact on popular culture, and to inspire others to explore some of these lesser known movies and television shows. Soon, I began to widen the project to include spaceships, then computers, then weapons—all pertaining to science fiction. Then I started to convert the lists to javascript on one of my sites to facilitate the random generation of elements for my role-playing game, One Robot...One Computer...One Spaceship. Then I made a "Random Concept Generator" for one of my sites that attracted the highest number of hits I ever achieved for any of my domains. Alas, those sites are gone, and I started this blog to preserve the lists and keep them going for anyone who might be interested. The lists receive far less attention here than they did in their previous home, but someday they might approach their former near-glory.

If you find these lists useful or interesting, please feel free to comment.

Be seeing you...

The Long-Not-Necessarily-Awaited Update

Taking Names and Making Lists was never really intended to be a blog. It is a collection of pages transplanted from a domain I once owned, forced to grow in an unfamilar environment where it gets far fewer visitors. If I could present the information in the way I prefer, the home page of this blog would display the information from the Lists page so readers could see at a glance when each list had been updated — a pinned blog post so to speak. I compromised and posted an article as a makeshift table of contents, but that meant I couldn't post anything new without causing it to fall from view. I'm also tired of updating both it and the Lists page every time I update a list. So, the secondary table of contents is gone.

Had I posted new articles, I would have mentioned that the blog now has a hyperlink shortcut to the right (when viewed in normal Web format) entitled Jump to a List. Today, I added another link to it that simply takes the reader to the Links page.

Incidentally, nearly every list gets updated fairly regularly. Why am I still undertaking this project? I'm not sure, but I am, so enjoy it whilst it lasts.

Be seeing you...

Another Table of Contents

[This article has been deleted. For more information, please read The Long-Not-Necessarily-Awaited Update.]

Standard Welcome

Welcome to the latest migration of Taking Names and Making Lists, an odd site devoted to odd lists. These lists began on my old site, Cuparius.com, migrated to Wordpress, and are now here. Comment if you like. Suggestions for entries are welcome. Please enjoy your visit.