| Revision as of 13:13, 11 August 2003 editTarquin (talk | contribs)14,993 editsm Reverted to last edit by Tarquin← Previous edit | Revision as of 17:01, 23 September 2003 edit undoMalcs64 (talk | contribs)25 editsNo edit summaryNext edit → | ||
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| : ''Is Wiki for everybody, even for those who don't care to educate themselves as to how it works?'' -- BlackHat on http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiSquatting | |||
| : ''Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are part of the charm of childhood. So is God. Some of us grow out of all three.'' -- ] | |||
| : ''La seule chose vraie, c'est la guerre psychologique!'' -- Savancosinus, ''La Zizanie'', Goscinny & Uderzo | |||
| : ''The vote went nowhere and became such a confusing mess and joke that people on nearly all sides of the argument were able to logically argue that their choice was the actual winner. '' -- no, it's not the "election" of Dubya. It's ]. | |||
| : The creationists have no scientific evidence to support their case, so instead they constantly repeat long-refuted pseudoscientific arguments. This has no place in the classroom. If a religion is incompatible with scientific thought, then so much worse for that religion. To argue that it is unconstitutional to only present scientific arguments on a subject that has nothing to do with religion is preposterous -- by the same logic you could argue that the theory of gravity should be balanced with "alternative views" because think they can fly in the air if they concentrate hard enough. -- ], writing on ]. | |||
| ------ | |||
| '''Current Misplaced Pages status, 25 March 03: due to other commitments (and wikipedia being sl-o-o-o-w) I'm no longer finding time to go through all of the night's edits in the mornings, or all of the day's edits in the evenings. I'm still logging on every day to check my watchlist & scan the default list of recent edits.''' | |||
| ------- | |||
| ''The state of this page tells you an awful lot about me: I tend to accumulate clutter, I hardly ever delete anything, and my mind tends to wander.'' | |||
| -------- | |||
| ''runs through shouting "]"'' | |||
| == need to know == | |||
| * slight wikipediholic tendencies (well, more than slight, I'm apparently 10th in ]. eek.) | |||
| * administrator, so feel free to ask me stuff on my ] | |||
| * generally of a crabby disposition, but it's all a front for rampant idealism (or perhaps the other way round. I forget) | |||
| * tendency to ramble, see below. | |||
| == subpages, attic space, out back == | |||
| In light of recent signature trends, I'm pondering a change to Taркюин.... not sure I've got my ] right though ... except that a quick eye-scan parses it as ] (at least I just did) | |||
| I have read the article on the ] with growing interest. This is a good time to announce to you all that I am in fact His Excellency the Grand High Poobah of Anle Verdishavia, Chevalier D'Aeon, Order of the Pyjamas, Duke of Hazard. | |||
| * ] | |||
| * Collection of links to pages in need of ] | |||
| * List of stuff ] | |||
| * ] | |||
| == the following will self-destruct in ... == | |||
| ... but ''look'' at the TeX equations! the soft curves of the integral sign! the variables leaping from tree to tree, as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia. ! The Giant Redwood. The Larch. The Fir! The mighty Scots Pine! ... Sing! Sing! | |||
| I'ma lumberjack, and I'm okay. ... (''men in white coats enter and carry Tarquin offstage'') | |||
| (In short: I ''like'' the new TeX markup.) | |||
| === Vague rambling biog === | |||
| Hullo. I'm Tarquin, for long and complicated reasons. Okay, they're not complicated at all. It's just an in-joke in my family. I may get round to explaining it one day, but it's really not that interesting. | |||
| There's a family rumour that we're descended from ]. My great-great-grandfather's family was from La Haye, Descartes' birthplace, and his father was mayor. It's completely unsubstantiated. | |||
| Meanwhile, I'm British. With, as well as the French ancestry, a few touches of other European countries thrown in. | |||
| Contrary to rumours, I am not an AI somewhere in northern Canada. I'm an AI in England. ;-) | |||
| I fall under the "hey, I ordered a cheeseburger" ]. Not that I'd be seen dead doing such a thing. I'm reliably informed on a semi-regular basis that I'm cantakerous. | |||
| Interesting life skills: I have both ] ''and'' ]. I've never been able to pin down just what the term "]" is supposed to mean, but I do have a good one. Stuff just tends to drop in of its own accord. It's very handy for building up the Wiki Web, as I tend to ''click'' if I've already seen a page on a given subject. It also means I regard pages like ] with complete bemusement: remembering "Roy G. Biv" or "HOMES" seems to me to be an extra burden on the memory, not a lightening. There's the mnemonic, plus what it actually is supposed to represent. "Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain" was drilled into me at school, but decoding that to get the order of colours is slower than just visualizing a colour wheel. | |||
| I'm a very sloppy typist. I have the unfortunate tendency of saving articles with one or two atrocious typos. On the other hand, I'm an excellent proofreader when it's someone else's work. So karmically it balances out... ;-) I probably fix two typos for each one I leave. | |||
| I run a wiki on the ] engine here: http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/ | |||
| ] score: 20 (increased now I'm on wikipedia-L) | |||
| : Feb 2003 revision: 41. I note with interest this question: ''Do you make edits while drunk or under the influence of other intoxicating substances and find that nobody reverts your changes?'' ... ... ... some of my finest work is made under the influence of single malt :-) | |||
| === An end to all edit wars === | |||
| Troubled with edit wars? NPOV going down the drain? Tearing your hair out over the latest edit conflict? Fear not. Here's the simple solution: | |||
| # First determine who is resolutely refusing to budge & making things difficult. Let's call them X. | |||
| # Identify their nationality | |||
| # Find the page "list of famous {nationality}" | |||
| # Add contentious entries. Remove some. Invent some names. Ideally, a pop band whom no-one has ''ever'' heard of. Give them a ''kooky'' name like "The Wet Fredericks" or "Tiger With Bagels". | |||
| # Bump this page on RC a few times next time X is around | |||
| # Reel them into a long and protracted edit was on the list page. Get them deeply riled about how famous or not their fellow nationals are. Imply that no-one cares. | |||
| # This will completely distract them from their earlier crusade. And let's face it, "list of X" pages are pointless anyway. | |||
| Points will be awarded for the best "Talk:list of famous {nationality}" pages. And what do points mean? | |||
| === Finding stuff === | |||
| Arg. I just went looking for the conventions on names of saints. Simple, eh? You'd think so. Well, I had to go through this list of pages: | |||
| # ] | |||
| # ] (good start) | |||
| # ] (seems reasonable to expect it here... but no. It says "see the talk page. So I move on...) | |||
| # ] (use browser's search function to find something in the morass... nope, not here either. Link to ''another'' talk page) | |||
| # and finally ] | |||
| ... only to find it's not decided yet. Four pages, wandering with no visible signs of organization. This is not a good way to organize things. | |||
| === Stub Tennis === | |||
| We should hold Olympics. ] mentions "WikiRoulette". I hereby coin the name "Stub Tennis". (I can be fairly sure I've made the name up, a search draws a blank both here and on WardsWiki.) To play stub tennis, do this: | |||
| * ] | |||
| * add something to it, either | |||
| ** some vague factoid you remember | |||
| ** do a search on the topic or some of the names in it & create two-way links (LinksAreContent...) | |||
| * for stub tennis to work, someone else has to react to its being bumped on Recent Changes. | |||
| * the article is batted to and fro between two or more wikipedians. | |||
| === Thoughts on Misplaced Pages === | |||
| I wonder sometimes... at what point will ]'s holographic image step out of the vault and tell us what our ''real'' purpose is? | |||
| === How I ended up here === | |||
| For those who really wish to know, I landed on Misplaced Pages quite by accident in January 2002: I was idly reading an article on operating systems for the next generation of mobile phones (I am not sure why...), which was detailing Micro$oft's foray into this field. The article went on to say that many cool things would be possible with the colour screens that we'd be seeing on advanced models; but that given minimal memory and ways of addressing the screen all aimed at minimizing power consumption, programmers who worked on games on 1980s computers such as the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum would find their skills at squeezing the maximum effiencency out of the minimum code once again in demand. | |||
| In particular (it said), the problem of "attribute clash" seen on the Spectrum was again rearing its ugly head. Intrigued by the term - it was implied that it related to colour on the screen - I Googled it, and the first link got me to Misplaced Pages... | |||
| I do of course try and tone done my style when writing Misplaced Pages entries: I do have a tendency to ramble. ;-) | |||
| === Rant and Rave === | |||
| ''the rant and rave section is currently closed while I think of something else to complain about'' | |||
| My (current) number one Misplaced Pages grouse is this: "Venice, Italy", "London, England" and so forth. That is how cities are indentified in the US; not in the rest of the world. A rout through UK train timetables for the few duplicate towns shows they use "Gillinham (Kent)", for example. The same form or "Gillinham in Kent" is usual in newspaper or reference articles if readers may not know which country a place is in. However, in the interests of consistency in page names, we're stuck with the stateside terminology. It's probably all irrational reactions to cultural imperialism. That or seeing that dratted comma always reminds me of Marilyn Monroe saying "Paris, France is in Europe?" in ''Gentlemen prefer blondes''... | |||
| Second grouse: bad French. Most Anglophones are shovelled some sort of French at school, and are under the impression that they a) recall it and b) it was correct in the first place. I tidied ], and just spotted ]. Translation is a sticky art, but I wish people would at least ensure nouns and adjectives agree in gender and number. | |||
| == Articles == | |||
| My principal fields of interest are music and maths, but also a mixed bag of things. | |||
| (this list that follows hasn't been updated in ages. as a WikiWeeder, I end up editing the most bizarre articles. I'd never heard of the ] car company, I have no interest in the ], and the ] was just a rumour I'd once heard) | |||
| lately, I've started: | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] (couldn't believe he wasn't already covered... ) | |||
| - ]: radical new start and moved older things to subpages. I somewhat see the sense in having the "disability etiquette" page, yet I can't help but think "how would people react to a page called 'how to address a black person'?". Were things like that written in the 1960s? | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] (the algorithm I linked to on KnowHowWiki is mine too...) | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] (feels like MONTHS since I've actually started a page; so much weeding to do!) | |||
| - ] (a stub whose progress I look forward to seeing) | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] -- who first devised these? | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| Stuff I've added to lately: | |||
| - ] (but, like, who hasn't?) | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ]: seeing this bastardized ascii IPA bugged me to the point that I had to dig up the page on it... found it in need of work; made tables and added diphthongs (...). I plan to upload recordings of phonemes soon. | |||
| - ]: gave this a polish | |||
| - ] -- it's great. I recommend it. Hard work and most teachers are expensive but it really is worth it. | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ]: gave this a rewrite. I've been fascinated by the tube map (& the metro map) ''as far back as I can remember'' (] voice-style ;) ) | |||
| - ] | |||
| - ] and ] | |||
| Stuff I intend to read up on: | |||
| * ] | |||
| * ] | |||
| To do: | |||
| * keep an eye out for ], ] and ] -- all three links exist, with no page yet. Clean up links when one is created. Also musing which name is most appropriate. | |||
| * rewrite ] | |||
| ---- | |||
| I'm vaguely collecing links to style guides found dotted around: ] (this is probably obsolete by the way.) | |||
| ---- | ---- | ||
| ''I really wish I hadn't written the following. 'twas in jest! But now we have an article on it. Hmm... *thinks* I wonder if I make a big sarcastic hue & cry about needing articles on the arts and literature, will the same thing happen?'' | ''I really wish I hadn't written the following. 'twas in jest! But now we have an article on it. Hmm... *thinks* I wonder if I make a big sarcastic hue & cry about needing articles on the arts and literature, will the same thing happen?'' | ||
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| : ''I was kidding about this, BTW. Well, that'll teach me!'' | : ''I was kidding about this, BTW. Well, that'll teach me!'' | ||
| ----- | |||
| http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?MyMyersBriggsTypeIs ENFP, apparently. Whoopee-do. | |||
| ---- | ---- | ||
| (removing profile -- why should the reader care about the profile of a nose picker?) | |||
| <!-- | |||
| (hey! you're about to add some text here? DON'T!!! Write on my TALK PAGE please!) | |||
| --> | |||
Revision as of 17:01, 23 September 2003
I really wish I hadn't written the following. 'twas in jest! But now we have an article on it. Hmm... *thinks* I wonder if I make a big sarcastic hue & cry about needing articles on the arts and literature, will the same thing happen?
Misplaced Pages is in desperate need of articles on nose-picking!
- How to get quality bogeys
- Stopping before the nosebleed threshhold -- and also how to go beyond it
- Nose-picking for the calorie-conscious
- aftercare: cleaning under one's nails
- bogey etiquette
- bogey cuisine: petrissage, squashing and moistening techniques
- bogey-flicking olympics
- I was kidding about this, BTW. Well, that'll teach me!
(removing profile -- why should the reader care about the profile of a nose picker?)