User:Grendelkhan

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I'm an administrator on the English Wikipedia. Thanks to everyone who supported me.

My primary calling around here is janitorial stuff. I've yet to write a featured article (though I do have a featured picture); I tag images, disambiguate links, fix up syntax, and generally try to make it easier for bolder contributors to do the real work. Any actual encyclopedic writing I've done is only because I felt a burning need to have an article there, and no one else stepped up.

Contents

[edit] Subpages / Links

/Images . /Scratch . /SNES Screenshots
CfD . IfD . VfD

[edit] Philosophy and Practices

I consider myself an inclusionist, for the most part. I believe that every ep of every vaguely significant TV show ever produced should have its own page. I think that, Wikipedia should strive to be most things for most people, that if you want to know something, anything, this should be where you start.

I also believe that Wikipedia should have the highest-quality images possible---I look forward to the inclusion of vector-based (SVG) graphics. I'm a huge fan of the autothumbnailing feature; I believe that digital camera pictures should be well-focused, well-composed and well-lit; I'm quite picky about the ones I upload.

I believe that Wikipedia should be print-ready. (Or at least ready for high-quality 300dpi displays, like this but cheaper.) To this end, all images should be kept at the highest possible resolution. This doesn't mean that JPEGs should be saved at the maximum available quality factor; the returns are terribly diminishing at that point.

I wish wiki2pdf had images working, automatically fetching high-quality versions to sub in and scale for the autothumbs. That'd be hot.

[edit] Interests

I'm from Northeastern Connecticut, at the moment. I'm trying to fix that.

I'm currently (well, occasionally) working on importing the Library of Congress classification information available here. Also speedy-deleting a lot of obsolete thumbnail images.

Also have introduced the word hierarchicalization around here. If it's still around in a year, I'll be proud.

I am an amateur photographer. I hope to get better at it as I take more pictures. When I grow up, I want to be Arpingstone.

[edit] Education

My main fields of knowledge is in computer science, though I took some college courses in mathematics (third-year calculus and differential equations, signals and systems, abstract analysis, point-set topology, and abstract algebra, which I did terribly in) and physics. (My mechanics is good, but my E&M needs some work.)

For fun-reading, I mostly absorb science fiction. I've read the entire oeuvre of Robert A. Heinlein (with the current exceptions of Tramp Royale and The Star Beast). Enjoyed Vernor Vinge greatly. Am still trying to get everyone I know to read Kings of the High Frontier by Victor Koman. Was underwhelmed by The Da Vinci Code. Am checking out Terry Pratchett's work at present.

My practical education is wide-ranging but rather shallow. I have a variety of Boy Scout knowhow, several years of experience in the martial arts and consider myself a connoisseur of cheap pens.

[edit] Pages I've made significant contributions to

These are some selected pages I've made more than cosmetic changes to. They're chosen mostly on the spur of the moment, when I notice something too bare or too ugly to leave alone, or when I need to reference something that there's no article about yet. For an encyclopedia of this size, it happens surprisingly often.

300 (comic book) - AMD K5 - Bok choy - Boruvka's algorithm - Buchbinder, Szymon - Brown, Alice - Canon EOS - Canon EOS 10D - Canon EOS 300D - Cerebus the Aardvark - Chaplin, Charles Joshua - CHILL programming language - Christopher Commission - Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums - Color rendering index - Derbyshire, John - DVI file format - Geddes, Anne (SCARY) - GNU readline - Gottlieb, Maurycy - Hughes, David E. - ISO 3103 - Kings of the High Frontier - Kinney, Harry E. - Koman, Victor - Library of Congress Classification and most pages under it - List of mayors of Albuquerque - List of moments of inertia - MacKinnon, Catharine - Mauve - Omega (TeX) - Perry, John - PostScript Printer Description - Preece, William Henry - Privat-Livemont, T. - Rust, Bernard - Shallit, Joseph - Sleigh, Sylvia - Soft focus - Space activity suit - Stoltenberg, John - Tan (color) - TeX font metric - Three Rivers Community College (Connecticut) - Three Rivers Community College (Missouri) - Trappl, Robert - University of Göttingen - Willimantic River - Willimantic, Connecticut - Windham Textile and History Museum - Zero Girl

Category:Digital cameras - Category:Harry Potter - Category:Fictional - Category:Matrix series - Template:ARC artist - Template:BadReligion - Template:isfdb name - Template:isfdb series - Template:isfdb title - Template:US currency and coinage - Wikipedia:Categorization

meta:Article validation - q:Phyllis Schlafly

The images I've contributed can be seen on my images page.

[edit] Projects

[edit] Large and/or ongoing work

  1. Add nice versions of the cm fonts (via Metafont's printing capabilities) to A, B, ...
  2. Occasionally work on Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links.
  3. Convert every GIF I can find into a PNG.
  4. Work more on this project.
  5. Spruce up pages like Preacher, Strangers In Paradise, etc.
  6. Use this page to find taxoboxes to update to use the new syntax.
  7. Work on Wikipedia:Untagged images.

[edit] Quick notes to self

  1. Read In the Beginning Was the Command Line.
  2. Take a picture of the mill museum and add it to Windham Textile and History Museum.
  3. Image:Kde3.1-screenshot.jpeg is a JPEG where it should be a PNG. It's also in the wrong place (doesn't make sense where it is), and 260k. Make a replacement.
  4. Get my copy of Structures: Why Things Don't Fall Down back from whoever I lent it to, and use it to update the article on ballistae. (Damn it, ballistae were better than catapults! No weapon until cannon could knock down stone walls after the technology of the ballista was lost in the dark ages!) (References [1] through page 87, I think.)
  5. Scan a better version of Image:Oheaviside.jpg.
  6. Get a larger version of Image:Rabin at peace talks.jpg
  7. Fix Image:Somerset sm market.jpg.
  8. Edit Bondage Fairies.
  9. Wikipedia:Producing maps with xplanet.
  10. Edit disjoint-set data structure to reference maze generation.
  11. Use the FAA's airport diagrams to illustrate airport articles. Convert PDFs to SVGs, as in Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (see CVG airport diagram.svg.)

Last update: grendel|khan 16:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)