User:Gerry Lynch

I'm Gerry Lynch. I was born on 28 July 1977 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, eventually studying Politics at the Queen's University of Belfast (after school at St. Malachy's College). I lived in the New Lodge all my life until I graduated in 2000 with first class honours and upped sticks for London. I returned to Belfast in 2007 to take up a post as Executive Director of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland. I have made much fewer contributions to Wikipedia since, largely spelling and grammatical corrections, thanks in large part to a mistaken identity issue resulting in serious moderator abuse and suspension of my editing privelliges in the Summmer of 2007.

Please send me a message on my User talk page in English, auf Deutsch ya da Türkçede.

Wiki contributions focus on the politics of Northern Ireland and its recent history, politics of Turkey, obscure contemporary classical composers, opera, amateur radio or Anglicanism.

I am a licensed amateur radio operator, with the callsign GI0RTN.

What's with Turkey? I've been on holiday there a number of times, gone to night classes and learned passable Turkish, really enjoy the country, thought I could use it to do something useful on Wikipedia.

I dislike reference fascists. I also dislike teenagers with User pages that consist of forests of userboxes but have made about two and a half mainspace edits in a year. What do they do all day?

I can remember wikipedia before userboxes, but I use them now as a sort of shorthand even though I'm not convinced about them.

The article I started on the galactic halo made it to the front page on August 3, 2004 - - see the record in the archive.

My picture of black-headed gulls in flight is a Wikimedia Commons featured picture and was a candidate for picture of the year in 2006!

I also contribute very occasionally to German Wikipedia and Turkish Wikipedia.

I like music. A lot. Music that leavens life includes: John Adams | Bela Bartok | Ludwig van Beethoven | Benjamin Britten | Maurice Duruflé | Gabriel Fauré | Gustav Holst | Howard Hanson | Zoltan Kodaly | Jean Langlais | György Ligeti | Gustav Mahler | Olivier Messiaen | Dmitri Shostakovich | Jean Sibelius | Richard Strauss | Igor Stravinsky | Ralph Vaughan-Williams | Richard Wagner | Takashi Yoshimatsu ----- Nat King Cole | Jimi Hendrix | Kraftwerk | Bob Marley | Pink Floyd | The Cure | The Pixies | The Smiths | The Stone Roses ----- Edip Akbayram | Sezen Aksu | Zülfü Livaneli | Tarkan ----- and of course, the wonderful music of morse code.

Articles I've worked on in some significant way:

Wikipedia:Babel

en This user is a native speaker of the English language.

de-4 Dieser Benutzer hat Deutschkenntnisse auf muttersprachlichem Niveau.

tr-2 Bu kullanıcı orta düzey Türkçe ile katkıda bulunabilir.

fr-1 Cet utilisateur peut contribuer avec un niveau élémentaire de français.

Bout ye-5 This user speaks with a Belfast accent and regards it as the most elevated form of English.

1337-0 This user can spell.

This user has an amateur radio license with callsign GI0RTN.

This user is homosexual.

This user is Irish.

This user is proud to come from Northern Ireland but does not regard the sectarian Ulster Banner as his national flag.

This user is a high-speed morse code operator.

This user is a proud cyclist.

This user studies or studied at Queen's University Belfast.

This user spends too much time and money going to the opera. Travelled to / lived in