Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 03:51, 1 September 2005

Welcome to my talk page! Please feel free to leave me a message below the archives. My next WikiProject on my "to-do" list is to make a nice talk page for myself. Suggestions and commments generously welcomed!

Archive 1

LithoLink

Well done. The author is rather confused, methinks. JFW | T@lk 06:54, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Hey

I like the word association game a lot. But I must admit, I sort of cheated. The very first thing that came to my mind after octopus card (what the heck is that?) was giant squid, but since I thought I was supposed to use only one word, cuttlebone came next. Next visit, I'll be more spontaneous. I mean - "octopus card" - two words there.

The wiki vacation was very healthful, and I highly recommend it. I have come back with a deep appreciation and devout admiration for the reference desk. Not that I didn't appreciate and admire it before, but it feels different when you are just entering wiki to ask a question (however inane). It's like a miracle ocurring on-screen. Ask and ye shall receive, etc. Which reminds me, I must go back to the pumpkin person with a question. Thank you for thinking of me! --Mothperson cocoon 19:57, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Jello belt - let's do it! You'll help me through the horse hoofs, I trust. Sounds like fun. I'll start looking. trying yp typer eiyh e vsy cas ccat ! sharing the cvhair --Mothperson cocoon 21:31, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Copyright problems in "His Divine Grace..." articles

Thanks for your message. The author of that article has posted all these articles as well:

• His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
• His Divine Grace Srila Bhakti Raksaka Sridhara Deva Goswami Maharaja
• His Divine Grace Srila Narahari das Babaji Maharaja
• Srila Atulananda Acharya
• Paramadvaiti Swami Maharaja

All appear to be directly lifted from this site. I guess I ought to be tackling the copyright violations myself, but I feel I lack the experience in Misplaced Pages to be doing so.--BillC 23:57, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Interwikilinks

Hi HappyCamper! As with all articles, interwiki-links appear in the bar on the left side, under 'in other languages'. I remember I was lost too when I added them first to my page. As an aside, I very much like your work over at the Reference Desk (which is why I checked out your userpage). Kind regards, — mark ✎ 07:57, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

History of chemistry on WP:IDRIVE

Hi, thanks for your supporting vote for History of chemistry. The Idrive works this way: anyone can nominate an article to be improved. The article with the most votes becomes the project article for this week. So that the list does not become endless, we need a pruning system: articles with less than three votes per week are pruned. So history of chemistry stays on until the 25th of August now, if it gets more votes the deadline is extended. Currently History of chemistry is number 7, so it might drop out, but it is doing well compared to others. If it does drop out, I will renominate it on the new Misplaced Pages:Science collaboration of the week, where it is likely to win. Best wishes --Fenice 08:45, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Jello disclosure

We should probably tell each other where we are doing our research. And I have to disclose that a traditional holiday salad in my family involves green jello (and canned pears and cream cheese), but it is from my Lutheran maternal side, and I don't know any Mormons. Still, I have something of a bias in favor of green jello salads due to this (although not the shredded carrot kind), so you may have to edit me for POV. --Mothperson cocoon 15:57, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Pourquoi pas? Only now, with Shimgray's incredible site, I'm thinking the bumper crop of milkweed pods could be augmented by Queen Anne's Lace. But really, milkweed is pretty much my favorite plant, and I have been wanting to make paper out of it for several years. This winter, I'm going to do it! I'll send you some when it's done. --Mothperson cocoon 14:29, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Better than that, I'll send you the real thing with the familial recipe for green jello salad inscibed upon it. But I get ahead of myself. First I must make the paper. And the pods are still in relative infancy. --Mothperson cocoon 16:47, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Of course, I read your question about bales of hay. I have intimate knowledge of bales of hay - the easy-to-deal-with cubes, and the massive loaves of bread. Snakes love bales of hay, but fortunately, none are poisonous where I live. --Mothperson cocoon 00:18, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Ack - I haven't started yet. I slacked off. I think we need to look into Mormon socializing, Mormon cookbooks, and damn that no original research in this case, because it would be useful. But it would be wrong. Books about growing up Mormon. And there's also how jello fits into the whole American church culture (i.e. my family's Lutheran recipe). Data about Mormon populations by state would be helpful. Where Mormons are, green jello surely follows. I wish I had access to the secret files of the Jell-O company.

Alas, I haven't made the wonderful salad dressing yet, because I have no working refrigerator, and I would have had to eat the whole bowl the day it was made. Which I could have done. But again, it would be wrong. The weather is starting to cool off, though, so in a few weeks... --Mothperson cocoon 15:28, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

A Question

I responded to your question at WP:RD#List of most frequently misspelled words about common misspellings but I don't know what ESL student means. hydnjo talk 00:39, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Ahh, now I understand the root of your question much better. Thank you, hydnjo talk 01:06, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

loop quantum gravity

My source for the quantized time comment is a January 2004 article in Scientific American called "Atoms in Space and Time." It is, of course, speculation but it's an interesting article if you have access to old SA issues. (You can get the article online, but you have to pay.) --Tothebarricades 02:10, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

Re: Your comment on my talk page: Yes, I'm interested in it, but my knowledge is limited to the books I could get from my library and various articles. I'm off to NYU in a few weeks, but I don't know how much science I'll be able to study due to the fact that I'll probably end up majoring in literature. I hope to go through general physics 1 and 2 and then take an astrophysics course. Cutting edge physics stuff is really higher level and probably is only taken by physics majors. Anyway. Does your job relate to this kind of stuff? --Tothebarricades 02:24, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

Bales of hay

I know it's been a few days since you posted the question about the bales of hay so I just wanted to make sure that you saw my response. I didn't know if you were still checking it or not for new replies. Any more questions about hay and cows and I'll be happy to ask my g/f for ya. Dismas 03:53, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Hallo

I wonder where do you come from? You seem to have so much idea about Cantonese history. Deryck C. 05:57, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I did watch that. Deryck C. 07:23, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Flag of Hong Kong FAC

Misplaced Pages:Sandbox/Word Association

Hey HappyCamper, I'm doing just fine. I looked at the VfD, and it appears to me that it was a bad faith nomination suitable for speedy keep, so I have closed the discussion and removed the tag. If the IP causes any more trouble, let me know and I will block it. (It is unlikely that it will commit similar vandalism, as it is a dynamic AOL IP.) -- Essjay · Talk 01:49, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the coffee; I thought I'd drop off a pastry for you to go with the coffee. -- Essjay · Talk 02:07, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Conical intersection in DNA

Hi HappyCamper, I am a specialist in quantum chemistry (9 years postdoc) and in particular in quantum chemistry of small molecules. The work I am referring at is the work performed by W. Domcke (TU Munich), A.L. Sobolewski (Polish Academy, Warsaw) and others. One ref is A.L. Sobolewski and W. Domcke, PCCP 1 (1999) 3065 but you should find many newer papers on citation index. --Vb 16:29, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Func's RfA :)

HappyCamper, you helped to make me a happy camper! Thank you for supporting my adminship...and if the quality of my edit summaries ever falls below acceptable levels, please let me know! :)

Please never hesitate to let me know if you have concerns with any administrative action I may make.

Func( t, c, e,  ) 19:22, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

RE: Graphs of edits, data and such

Possible? Maybe. I've seen the size of the files, but not the contents. Those are truly big files. 22gb for old data? Wow! I don't have the room on this system to process that. I think I'll have to say no, I can't do it at this time. What's your goal? Maybe there's another way to achieve it. --Durin 19:12, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

• I looked up "stochastic signal processing" to get more information on just what that is before proceeding further. It's been a while since I could interpret such math :) So, you've effectively lost me unless I did some digging. I think your hurdle is with data, not how it's extrapolated. I suspect you can do the extrapolations. The original reference desk notations pointed you to places you could get the data. Such sources are admittedly large though. Another possibility is to do manual extractions of small sets of data. For example, Special:Recentchanges&limit=500. If you did 10 pages of that, it'd give you a 5000 element data set, though of course it would not tell you anything about the bytes of additional contributions per edit. I used the same method to generate the graphs you originally saw from me. I'm not sure this helps, but I hope it does. --Durin 22:43, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Adminship?

In seeing your edits, I think you would make a great admin. I will nominate you unless you don't want to, so let me know either way. Of course check out the Misplaced Pages:Administrators' reading list and answer the standard questions once I create the nomination. Thanks - Taxman 02:38, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Ok, its set up at Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/HappyCamper, so go there, accept, and answer the questions when you get a chance. - Taxman 01:32, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Reference Desk

I really appreciate that you archive the reference desk, but the last time was somewhat disruptive with the large number of edits, which really clogs up the history page and makes it difficult to use the compare versions feature. May I suggest that instead you create a working copy of the page and move questions to the archive page from there? Then you can replace the page in its entirety with the version you finished with, leaving on new questions, of course, all with one edit. James 03:03, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Conical intersection

Hmm, not sure what to make of this one. The author has edited many quantum chemistry articles and seems to know what (s)he's talking about. The problem is that DNA is not particularly stable to UV light, so this is a non-phenomenon he/she is explaining. Now if he were to discuss electron transport in photosystems, that would be interesting... Physchim62 01:05, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

German

The correct way would be "Stehen Sie bitte nicht auf." The reason is that aufstehen is a verb with a seperable prefix, so the auf must go in the last position in present and simple past. Usually nicht can go in any free position in the sentence, and the placement is only dependent on emphasis, but that particular sentence has only one free position where nicht would make sense.

The cool thing is that English has seperable prefixes, too, which native speakers often confuse with dangling prepositions. You can create vast lists of common ones if you're into that kind of thing, and one way to identify them in English is by the word order relative to their objects. Notice that I hand in the paper but I hand it in; the order of in and the object depends on whether the object is a noun or pronoun. The word in is not a preposition in those sentences (in the paper makes no sense here alone) but a fundamental part of the verb. In comparison German's word order is rather simple.

If you can't tell, I'm a big grammar nerd, so feel free to pester me with any other German grammar questions. --Laura Scudder | Talk 03:24, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Always a pleasure to support a good candidate. I wouldn't have even checked RfA if I hadn't seen the note on your talk page.

Ich möchte ein bißchen Deutsch sprechen ist perfekt. Die deutsche Wortstellung ist nicht immer deutlich und kommt meinstens mit Übung. Vergiß nicht: Time, Manner, Place for adverbial phrases; diese Regel ist wichtig wenn du länger Sätze benutzen willst. Wenn du willst, könnten wir mit einander auf AIM auf Deutsch sprechen. My German is about two years rusty, but I try to keep it up, and I always appreciate practice.

My love of grammar has served me well sometimes, but one doesn't usually study Latin, for instance, for the grammar. I can still decline a rediculous amount of stuff but can identify only a paltry number of roots in English. Anyways, like I said, drop me a line with any further questions and let me know if you want to practice sometime. — Laura Scudder | Talk 06:34, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

QAM

The honest answer to your question is that I don't know how the circular constellations are derived mathematically. I looked in a few books and they all just said the same: the 8-QAM constell is "known" to be optimal in the sense that it requires the minimum average power for a given minimum distance between signal points (in the diagrammed case, the distance is 2). However, by way of a handwaving explanation, look at the other 8-QAMs in the article. They are all really on two rings: one inner and one outer. If you work out the mean energy required for the three 8-QAMs shown, you'll find that the optimal one does indeed have the smallest, and that they all have min distance of 2. (I didn't label most constellations with coords — do you think I should, and then mention the need for energy normalization somewhere?) So looking back at the optimal 8-QAM, the inner ring cannot be made any smaller without breaching the minimum distance, the outer ring need be no larger to reach the minimum distance, and the angular separation between all points is maximal. The angular point can also be obtained by observing that changing the angular position of any point would breach the minimum distance either on its own ring or between it and the other ring. So I can see why it is optimal, but not how it would derived ab initio, which I imagine some clever person had to do once.

When I was writing the article, and was looking for a proof or two, there were several books out of the Departmental library; now that it's not term-time anymore I'll see if they have reappeared.

I am not sure the 16-QAM concentric rings has a derivation as such. I think it's just one way of arranging the points: although perhaps it is 'best' according to some metric or other: certainly the minimum distance is small but the angular separation is high. The optimal 16-QAM is two rings of 8, arranged like the 8-QAM. To complicate matters further there's lots of research on pre-rotating or pre-expand/contracting one ring or another to take account of channel impairments and wind up with the best error-rate given that a priori knowledge. Sometimes just parts of the rings are doctored in advance. I'd like to expand the article to include some of these really quite wacky designs, but I am unsure of the copyvio status of manually reproducing a design from a copyrighted paper or doctoral thesis (its not original research once its published though, so that point is ok).

Yes, I'd be very interested in a Wikiproject along those lines. It concerns me more than a little to see that at least several such articles are in the top 2 or 3 Google hits but could use some major work. I sort of have a mental list of articles that need urgent work (and some on my user page) but just yesterday I discovered the OFDMA article, for example. The comment on the talk page says it all, really and, argh, it's been added to the modulation category. Part of the reason I rework these articles comparatively slowly is that I know I can do decent job, but it's going to take me quite some time to do so. A project team would help a lot! I also have a mental list of questions I need to ask somewhere (e.g. should we include error-rate vs SNR curves), and a project would be a good place.

Apologies for such a long answer! -Splash 18:48, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Digi Comms

Good stuff on starting up a project. We evidently have a lot of work to do. I will have a think and hack at the project page over the next couple of days, and we should begin advertising it around the place. I think our biggest problem to begin with is working out what articles we do/don't have. So many of them are not categorised at all, and that makes it harder work than it might be.

For such a fundamental topic of such obvious encyclopedic importance, we are sadly lacking any featured articles. Since this topic is about as NPOV as it is possible to be, is ultra-stable and mega-well-referenced getting FAs should be possible. To which end, I rewrote Phase-shift keying a while back and have finally got around to adding the other stuff in I wanted. I think (imnsho) that it's getting within reaching distance of FAC, so I've put it on WP:PR. If you've got a few spare mins, go take a look. -Splash 23:46, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Hey, good start. I think we should be careful about chopping too much out of the lead in since they get excited about them ober at WP:FAC. I left some comments on the article talk page. -Splash 01:15, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

No! Don't stop! Between us, we can make it a good article. Btw, don't think that, if I reverse/replace/rearrange a change that I disliked it.

Thanks for the user page protection

You reverted before I noticed what had happened. I apprecaite it. Sirmob 05:00, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations!

Congratulations! It's my pleasure to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 13:35, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Ahh yes, let me pile on that of course! :) - Taxman 23:06, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Congrats, good work, get busy! Oh, and I'm sure we'll run into each other soon; if you ever want to do a theology collaboration, you know where to find me! -- Essjay · Talk 06:41, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

The mysterious "fellow admin not-logged-in"

"deleted "Site formation processes": content was: '{{db|test}}JKJKJNJML,NNNK' - checked page history, also entirely void of content. Reads like a "test" message, so speedy"

I see, you're new at this. You don't need to add all that justification for patent nonsense, but it's good to see you're thorough. :-) 131.155.69.249 13:21, 24 August 2005 (UTC), a fellow admin not-logged-in

Ah yes - thanks for the tip! I guess my commenting is almost habitual on Misplaced Pages :-)

Hmm...I wonder who this mystery Wikipedian is? Anyway, I hope to see you around the Wiki! --HappyCamper 13:40, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm sure we will. I didn't see your RFA, but that doesn't say anything. :-) Oh, while you're busy flexing your new admin muscles, here's a fun exercise: I want JADE (programming language) moved to JADE programming language, but non-admins can't do it, because the latter already exists (but has no content to speak of). You could delete the target and perform the move. (See WP:RM.) 131.155.69.249 14:02, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure if there's that much prowess associated with admin functions! :-) Anyway, I think I can help out here. I just moved the page and left copious amounts of comments to explain the rationale behind the simple procedure. Hope that helps! --HappyCamper 14:42, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

No prowess, no, but just the ability to do simple but necessary stuff like that makes it worthwhile. Thanks for taking requests, and happy editing! 131.155.69.249 14:51, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Hey thanks for doing that, the JADE programming language was my first article and I was glad that someone was there to look over everything and make sure I had done things right. --BSTRhino 11:51, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the thanks!

Thanks for the thanks! Could you possibly takre a gander at my RFA if you get the time? --Celestianpower 16:00, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Your RfA

Congratulations! The pleasure was mine to support you for adminship. Thanks for the wonderful comments, hopefully we can keep in touch.

Also, I hereby give you this Working Man's Barnstar for diligent efforts and contributions to Misplaced Pages. D. J. Bracey (talk) 16:35, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Take care, D. J. Bracey (talk) 16:35, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations, and you're quite welcome! --Merovingian (t) (c) 23:43, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations from me too!

Your idea for History of harmony is a good one; we really don't have an article about the historical development of harmony (and tonality--on first blush I think they should be together as one article). It's a huge topic, and rather terrifying, but if approached in small bits it would be doable. (I've almost avoided writing about things right in the center of my main doctoral area--it's just so hard to do them justice!) But it is a topic that needs to happen. Hey, enjoy the adminship; it's useful to have the extra tools, and easier to stay out of controversy than you might think. Best wishes, Antandrus (talk) 23:45, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Congrats again. No thanks needed -- I stumbled across that and thought it worth adding my vote to. The horses are by Eadweard Muybridge, an early pioneer (19th century) of the history of photography; the first fellow who had the bright idea that you could take a lot of very quick photographs to see how things worked in slow motion, and later developed some early tools in animation. His photographs are talked about a lot in the critical theory of representation for creating a technology which radically changed the way in which we view the processes of the world (our eyes become inadequate instruments, unable to perceive things as they really are, even when they are right in front of our faces). Anyway, I've always thought his work was beautiful, and I find 19th century photography often seems to have a lot more depth and character to it than more advanced methods. There's a raw quality to it which I appreciate -- the individual photographer, the limitations of the medium, the inexactitude of reproduction of image; they are all written all over it. --Fastfission 00:21, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

No problem, you deserve it. I hope to see you around more often now. Congratulations. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 02:55, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Being relatively new, I don't recognise that many names, so I only vote when I've seen that person 'in action'. You didn't seem like a dork (which is my sole criteria :) ), so deserved admin status. Congrats! Proto t c 08:21, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I support the statements that every editor has made in this section. Good luck, I know you'll work hard and do the community a great service. See you 'round the wiki! Hamster Sandwich 16:20, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

OQPSK?

Hey there. I know you're busy experimenting with your new buttons, but I wonder if you can help me? I've spent ages trying to draw the waveform for OQPSK. Dead easy to code, of course. But when I draw it I get 180degree shifts which simply shouldn't occur, as well as some of the legal 90degree ones. I'm using MATLAB and I wonder if it is a numerical precision thing at symbol boundaries or something. Do you have access to a tool that can easily produce that kind of picture to see if I'm imagining things. I found this PDF which has nice pictures in. But for the OQPSK example, using the same bit patterns, I get a little lump right at the start of my output wave, which those notes don't. Which do you reckon is right? -Splash 03:19, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I uploaded an OQPSK timing diagram. I'm concerned about it though. Its transitions go through zero, which I though OQPSK was specifically supposed to avoid! What do you think? I suppose the cheat's way out is to twist the constell diagram to be on-axis, and remake the images from that! -Splash 23:42, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. But if you pick your way through the bit stream with the existing diagram, it shouldn't ever go through the origin. It crosses the axes without both I and Q going to zero. I'm reasonably sure that it doesn't matter which QPSK diag we choose, it's not supposed to have zero crossings! -Splash 00:12, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok. I'd really prefer not to rotate the constellation diagram, since then the carriers alternate between 'off' and 'on', rather than being always 'on'. So we'd have horizontal lines at zero for a lot of the time in the components, and it doesn't look so nice and doesn't make a useful analogy with BPSK (which would always be on). -Splash 00:18, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Click! My timing diagram is all wrong. Too much copying Haykin! My constell diagram is 180deg out compared to his, so my signal space mapping on my notepad is wrong. I was just modulating I and Q according to whether the bit in question was +/-1 (ie 0 or 1 respec) but that's wrong with my constellation. Since Haykin's diagram is much more intuitive, I think I'll rotate mine to match his, but I'll check first. -Splash 00:27, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Humph. Actaully, after reading several textbook chapters on this, I still can't decide. However, studying my new image carefully, I can see that the phase shifts are down to size but the signal does still go through zero on some transitions. Maybe that's just life if you this constellation. My original timing diagrams were wrong though, so I'll upload replacements in a bit (no pun).-Splash 01:35, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, there you go. Bend your brain and decide if think that π4-QPSK timing is right, wrong or just alien. Some odd skips and jumps in it in places, but then it can make movements the other QPSKs can't. The edit conflict came as quite a surprise — spying on my contribs list, huh?? -Splash 03:53, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Hey, good picture. Couple of things: I reckon you need a NRZ encoder, else you'll be transmitting on the axes rather than off the axes when you multiply the I and Q components by zero. Also, I've changed the bit-stream in the timing diagrams to avoid the ambiguity we had before, so I wonder if you can twiddle your diagram to match? -Splash 03:38, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

The one in bold at the bottom of the QPSK diagrams. It's that bitstream that gets split up between I and Q waves (except in diff. encoding since that doesn't need splitting). I used the same bitstream everywhere: 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0. The I-channel takes 1 0 0 1 and the Q-channel gets 1 0 1 0.

The picture in Haykin's book has been updated in the newer edition. So he goes:

Binary data -> Polar non-return-to-zero level encoder -> demux -> etc

So yes, I think you just need an NRZ block before everything else. Or a simple comparator block with an 'if' condition would do, although one of the peer reviews asks for mention of NRZ. -Splash 04:18, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations!

Congrats on your recent RfA. I'm glad to see you doing some admin things now and that you've really helped out here. I really hope things will go well for you. Good luck being a Misplaced Pages admin! — Stevey7788 (talk) 01:13, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

All page TOC

You may be interested to look at how the Misplaced Pages:Reference desk/all page TOC looks now. Please also see Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk#Misplaced Pages:Reference_desk.2Fall for how the discussion over how this worked out. Superm401 | Talk 02:23, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

Adminship

You're welcome! Congratulations! Acetic Acid 08:29, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

Reference desk

Great work!

• And on a similar note, thanks for drawing my attention to (and creating?) the view all facility. That's just the ticket. Thank you. --bodnotbod 17:58, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, too. ¦ Reisio 20:44, 2005 August 26 (UTC)

Reference desk/all protection

I understand that the format of the page doesn't need to be messed with, but I'd love for this page to be unprotected, so people can quickly scan the questions in all categories and click the section edit links to answer them. This would take them directly to the correct section. - Mgm| 20:32, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

Adminship

Congrats! No, I've never played that; I'm working on Lalo right now. Maybe next piece. Are you a cellist? Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 21:30, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Ref desk

Hi there Happy! Thanks for the message and the feedback, I love the reference desk. Yes, I saw that you can see all, but it's hard to see all the most recent, to check for new questions, you have to check in five places now, which makes me less likely to do it. I don't mean to complain, because the new layout looks cool, and I know a lot of work went into it, I just don't find it as easy to use. I'll try to persevere, thanks again, Trollderella 23:24, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi again. Thanks for the notice and yes I was aware of RD/All (I even tried to help with the TOC problem). I had been a little frustrated with RD for all the same reasons. Long load times, too many questions to scroll through before getting to the active/new stuff and way too many edit conflicts so I was enthused to see a new approach being tried. My mind is having some difficulty with the new format in that I'm very used to mapping the RD in series, relating one question to another by its serial positioning regardless of category. The new format requires that I map four categories in parallel with each other and then mapping the serial position within each. It's as though I'm having conversations with four users on their respective talk pages instead of four topics all running together with one user. Although it has only been one day, I'm finding myself less enthused about RD patrol than I was before the change. It's just more difficult unless you're a "one category guy" which I think neither one of us are. I know a lot of hard work went into the new fomat but it's difficult to make a call until it's actually in everyday use. As of right now I'm feeling a little negative and thinking that we made the solution too complex. Perhaps the energy should have been directed towards making the old format more manageable. Please feel free to comment to me about your own feelings after using the new format for a while. Regards, hydnjo talk 00:32, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. Let's of course give this some time to settle down and I wasn't in any way meaning to suggest otherwise. I was just giving you my first day's impression/thoughts. ;-) hydnjo talk 02:34, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Not at all. We are all resistant to change to some extent even if it's for our own good. I only thought we would all benefit by sharing our first real life impressions. Even though I was enthusiastically helping with implementation I wasn't actually experiencing using the product until today. Cheer up, we will in the end have a better RD one way or another. ;-) hydnjo talk 03:05, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

• A Barnstar - OMG - Wait 'till Heidi sees this! She sometimes calls herself a WP widow. I had told her about barnstars which resulted in a physical iron one being mounted on our front door. I always assumed that it would be the only one I would ever have. We are truly overwhelmed. Thank you and warmest regards from Heidi and Joe. :-) hydnjo talk 03:20, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Signpost

I am now the editor of the Signpost. I will be writing a story on the Reference Desk for this week. If you have any more information other than what you posted on Michael Snow's talk page, add it here. Thanks for informing me about the split! ral315 00:53, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

I've played around with the idea of having editorials, but basically what I'm looking for is a somewhat-detailed history of what happened, and then some other quotes, and whatever else you want to add. I'm basically going to take your account of events and make sure that I don't get the article wrong, plus sprinkle in some quotes from you. ral315 06:25, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

Esperanza!

Hey Happy, nice to see you join Esperanza. We're working a bit on it still so its not yet in the open. Wow that was some choppy writing... Anywho nice to see you Happy. Redwolf24 (talk) 23:17, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

User talk:Redwolf24#Hi there!. Redwolf24 (talk) 23:21, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Agricu.......ture

Hi Happy. This isn't a great time for me - I was just checking on a couple of things before bed. I haven't reviewed the case yet but I would think you could easily justify a 24h block as "apparent impersonation of User:Agriculture. In fact I think that might justify an indef block according to the user name policy but I'm not 100% certain. More than 15 min is totally doable. Keep in mind that if you try to impose a longer block while the short one is still active, the short one overrides. Either wait for the short one to end or go to Special:Ipblocklist and manually unblock it before imposing the longer block. Good luck! FreplySpang (talk) 03:34, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I reviewed a tiny bit of the case. I believe you are justified to block indefinitely as an account created solely for vandalism. Thanks for taking care of this. FreplySpang (talk) 03:46, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome! You didn't hold me up, either. I'm terrible at saying "I'll just look at one or two things" and then getting sucked in by the WikiDrama. :-) FreplySpang (talk) 03:50, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

I have 3 user names

I'v cross edited them a few times. this is the first time I asked for a delete w/ the wrong name. my bad. Crackatzzl 04:54, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

done

good looking out. I totally understand. I kinda thought it would be obvious, if you look at the histories. for a delete tho, u wanna be sure. by the by- what's so fun about orthodoxy?

Yameen? 05:07, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Blocking

After looking at that account you blocked, I think you're totally justified. Anyone whose user name is an obvious rip-off of another's is a perma-block candidate. Good call. - Lucky 6.9 06:59, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for the Barnstar. CG 10:27, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your message...

...it was comforting. Sorry, I might have been in the same borderline too... Yet, still two minor things:

• Is it at least possible to check whether the one is not sockpuppeteering for the other? I don't have to know the result.
• Could you please remove that single paragraph with my IP from that page? The paragraph where I say my IP is different from that of 217.140.193.13. I already removed that paragraph twice today, so removing it a third time would "tecnically" fall under 3RR. I tried to explain to Arrigo on his talk page why it was important it should be removed from wikipedia, and why it even no longer has sense to stay on that page, see: User_talk:Arrigo#Thanks_for_cooperation. Nonetheless Arrigo put it back a second time...

Thanks again! --Francis Schonken 14:08, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

More thank you-s

I, also, thank you for the barnstar. Cheers, --R.Koot 19:33, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Software engineering methodology

Why did you delete this page? It was a perfectly valid redirect that was very much incorectly tagged as a speedy. - SimonP 00:29, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

On SimonP's page: Redirect delete: Hey there! I deleted it because in some academic contexts there is a difference between software "engineering methodology" and "software" engineering methodology. One emphasizes the methodology as a subdiscipline of engineering, whereas the other focuses on the software part. In retrospect, this difference is probably too subtle to warrant the redirect being a misleading one. Guess that was a bad call on my part. Thanks for keeping track of my deletion activities. --HappyCamper 00:37, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

A new barnstar

Comments at the good old Misplaced Pages talk:Reference desk

<stuff and such>

Oh yes. That too. Primarily that I think. --HappyCamper 22:07, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

HC, are you trying to sound like Bilbo Baggins? ;-) hydnjo talk 02:34, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Dear Diary - Here's what I learned today: you know you've got a pretty trustworthy set of WikiFriends when they start referring to you with initials and joke about Bilbo Baggins! :-) It warms up everything around here, sort of like a nice cup of tea...diary entry continues and ends a bit later...

Now what in the world is HC talking about?? My friends, stay tuned, stay tuned... --HappyCamper 01:32, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

When I read that at the office today, it made me laugh so hard! I'm so thankful that we have Wikipedians like hydnjo around here! --HappyCamper 01:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

It's time to go home now and I've got an aching head,

So I give her the car keys and she helps me to bed.

By Eric Clapton

G'night guys - see you tomorrow hydnjo talk 03:24, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Helping out at Copyright Problems

Hi Fvw. I'd like to help out at WP:CP. Do you think you could give me a primer to get started? The page looks very overwhelming, and I'm not sure where is the best place to start. Thanks for your help! --HappyCamper 06:56, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, the whole closing procedure should be properly documented somewhere. Until someone volunteers for that, Misplaced Pages talk:Copyright problems#Closing_Old_Violations covers the basics. If you have any questions about cases (especially fair use issues result in a lot of incorrect decisions), feel free to ask here or just leave the case unclosed, there's generally no big hurry. If you'd help trim the backlog that would be very useful though. --fvw* 01:09, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Modulation

Re , you should have wikilinked modulation just in case they're an elec engineer or something! I think they had actually calmed down pretty much, but they had hit the page soooo many times before they did so! -Splash 03:29, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, cool. If it helps, Haykin has almost identical diags for the reciever in the new and older editions. He just adds an arrow saying "Threshold=0" pointing into the top/bottom of the decision device, which is his reverse of his NRZ block. We're just about done with the peer-review comments. Apart from the refactoring.... -Splash 00:38, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Reference desk/Miscellaneous icon

Somebodys got to do something about Image:P medicine.png. Even something like Image:Question mark.png if formatted correctly. I dunno, maybe don't worry 'bout it. ;-) hydnjo talk 23:38, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Whoa! Did you make that big ? at the reference desk ? How did you do that? hydnjo talk 03:30, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I did check it out. That's why I brought it up. It seems a bit BOLD. But better than I've been able to do so congrats you you you.  ;-) hydnjo talk 03:51, 1 September 2005 (UTC)