Personal web pages of

Tim Stinchcombe

Purple Mountain Exophrenics

I originally created this name to use as a limited company in the early 2000s. It originated from the phrase 'purple mountain majesties', which I had came across in one of Linda Goodman's astrology books decades earlier (and it was a decade or more before I learned that it also arises in the patriotic song 'America the Beautiful'). As a company name majesties would never be accepted (anything related to royalty or the royals is not allowed), and after dismissing variations such as 'Purple Mountain Software', 'Purple Mountain Management', 'Purple Mountain Projects' etc., I eventually decided to make up my own word. I combined 'exo' meaning 'outside', as in for example 'exoskeleton', with 'phrenic', an obsolete adjective meaning 'relating to the mind' or simply 'mental' (related is 'phrenology', an old pseudo-scientific discipline that purports to relate brain functioning to the shape of the head), to get 'exophrenic', meaning 'outside of the mind' (or head). (The whole phrase doesn't really mean anything, and was never intended to. A web search for 'exophrenic' at the time turned up just one other result—a very 'arty' website with a few photos on it and not much more—someone else must have had similar thoughts.)

As a company, Purple Mountain Exophrenics Ltd served me well for the years I was contracting, but the limited bit is no more, as I dissolved the company years ago. However I still use the name on any synth modules I build for myself, and leave this page here as a kind of proof that I have a prior claim to the name should I ever need to.

[Page last updated: 07 Nov 2020]