After 11 days of writing, and a ridiculously long and difficult week, I was sorely tempted to make a blog post that was nothing but geeky lorem ipsum text.
And then I thought … hey, I could do a blog post about geeky lorem ipsum text. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, lorem ipsum is Latin text used by designers, web developers, and others when they want people to focus on the layout of a page rather than on the contents of the page. Read more about it at Wikipedia.
Since few people can read Latin, the text doesn’t distract them from the task at hand. It looks and flows like English (or French, or German) but it’s nonsensical.
Of course, work on enough web projects and eventually, you get bored of the same old Latin. That’s when it’s helpful to have some geeky lorem ipsum replacements.
Zombie Ipsum
- Website: http://www.zombieipsum.com
Some projects are so tortuously boring you can feel your brains leaking out of your ears. Yummmm. Braaaaains!
Liven up those projects with some Zombie Ipsum, which sprinkles notable zombie characters, undead characteristics, and good ol’Latin (I think it’s Latin) into one almost readable mix:
Example: Zombie ipsum reversus ab viral inferno, nam rick grimes malum cerebro. De carne lumbering animata corpora quaeritis. Summus brains sit, morbo vel maleficia? De apocalypsi gorger omero undead survivor dictum mauris. Hi mindless mortuis soulless creaturas, imo evil stalking monstra adventus resi dentevil vultus comedat cerebella viventium.
Klingon Ipsum
For years the layout and pagination program QuarkXPress was legendary for its lorem ipsum text generators, including included the standard Latin, and decidedly non-standard Klingon. Sadly it has since been removed (and even if it hadn’t been, I’d no longer have access to Quark), but thankfully Shooshee posted a nice block of Klingon Ipsum text to her Tumblr:
Example: Qapla. Dah tlhingan hol mu ghom a dalegh. Qawhaqvam chenmohlu di wiqipe diya ohvad ponglu. Ach jinmolvamvad Saghbe law tlhingan hol, dis, oh mevmohlu. Ach dis jar wa mahcha dich wikia jinmoldaq vihta. Hov lengvad chenmohlu tlhingan hol e ej dah oh ghojtah ghot law.
The beauty of Klingon, unlike many of the other Lorem Ipsum alternatives I’m writing about, is that it’s still incomprehensible. Your brain may try and read it, but unless you’re a hardcore Star Trek fan, it’s going to fail.
Quenya Ipsum
Klingon not your thing? Then consider Quenya, the elven language invented by J.R.R. Tolkien for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Example: Ta ter hecil yulda sairon, méla sáma vórima nó tuc. Mer lú astar avamarwa calacaltasisílafaina, aman náhanemnam avá ta. Onóro halda yá war, úr toa fion sundo valarauko, quellë omentië nu iel. Fánë harë minya ve tac. Nimba ambarenya haltacapa ría to, oa iel yúyo nurtalom. Sín costa caima calpa oa, heru palla rotelë yav rá.
Doctor Ipsum
- Website: http://doctoripsum.com
The various Doctor Whos are legendary for their vocabulary, and each incarnation has had their own unique take on the English language. The Doctor Ipsum generator lets you create nonsensical text for any of the 12 known doctors or go nuts with the multi-doctor option. The text below is taken from the 10th Doctor:
Example: Black tie…Whenever I wear this, something bad always happens. New-new-Doctor. Allons-y! You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can’t spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on. Alone. That’s the curse of the Time Lords. You need to get yourself a better dictionary. When you do, look up ‘genocide’. You’ll find a little picture of me there, and the caption’ll read ‘Over my dead body’. Don’t you think she looks tired? Yeah? Well I’m the Lord of Time. Blimey, trying to make an Ood laugh…
Batman Ipsum
The doom and gloom of Gotham can now be part of your next project with Batman Ipsum, which generates text based on the various Batman movies.
Example: The first time I stole so that I wouldn’t starve, yes. I lost many assumptions about the simple nature of right and wrong. And when I traveled I learned the fear before a crime and the thrill of success. But I never became one of them.
It’s ends here. My anger outweights my guilt. Well, you see… I’m buying this hotel and setting some new rules about the pool area.
This isn’t a car. No guns, no killing. It was a dog. It was a big dog. Does it come in black? It’s ends here.
Star Trek Lorem Ipsum
Star Trek is legendary for its technobabble, so it’s not surprising that its lorem ipsum would be full of suitably scientific-sounding jargon.
Example: Unidentified vessel travelling at sub warp speed, bearing 235.7. Fluctuations in energy readings from it, Captain. All transporters off. A strange set-up, but I’d say the graviton generator is depolarized. The dark colourings of the scrapes are the leavings of natural rubber, a type of non-conductive sole used by researchers experimenting with electricity. The molecules must have been partly de-phased by the anyon beam.
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The myriad Dr. Whos, from the Doctor Ipsum website.