User:Ian Dunster

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About Me

This user is a Wikipedian in the United Kingdom.
The motto of the WITUK is Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense, which translates to, "Let him be shamed who thinks ill of it".

This motto reflects a key Wikipedian desire, and is a reference to the British 'Order of the Garter'.

There are things particularly relevant to British Wikipedians at the UK Wikipedians' notice board.

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6,000+

This user has made over 6,000 contributions to Wikipedia.

en	This user is a native speaker of English.

EN
UK

This user understands the difference between England and the United Kingdom

Needle
Nardle
Noo

This user listens to The Goon Show on the modern-type, steam-driven cardboard wireless.

This user is a fan of Monty Python!

ISIHAC

I'm Sorry...

This User Hasn't a Clue

Goody Goody
Yum Yum

This user is a fan of The Goodies.

This user knows that 42 is the answer to the Ultimate Question of life, the Universe, and everything.

NOW

This user loves The Now Show and hates The Git Wizard.

This user contributes using a PC

This user contributes using Microsoft Windows XP.

This user contributes using Mozilla Firefox.

Today is 11 June 2008.

This user's time zone is GMT.

Note: As of June 2006 I've stopped supplying images to Wikipedia, as quite frankly, it isn't worth the hassle.

I award you the Aviation Barnstar in recognition of your knowledgeable contribution to aviation articles. -Bzuk

1 Editing Images
2 Audio Excerpts

[edit] Editing Images

Hi everyone.

As someone new here you may have noticed by now that the thing I do most is edit images. I use Photoshop CS3 Extended set to 'Europe Web/Internet' with a calibrated (gamma 2.2 - sRGB) Compaq P1220 CRT monitor and generally try to get as much information and detail from an image as I can. Most of the images on Wikipedia are actually better than they look and I can usually make an improvement - or at least what looks like an improvement to me! On old (mainly B/W) images, I also try to remove any blemishes like those caused by dust on the lens, or scratches. In the case of a large picture which was originally quite dark, the act of lightening adds more information to the picture, increasing the file size somewhat and sometimes this takes the size over the 2Mb limit, so I then save at a higher compression - hopefully this won't be too noticeable.

Most of the photos taken by Wikipedia contributors themselves are very good, but I know not everyone has access to graphics-editing software so if I can make the pictures look even better, I generally 'tweak' them a bit, so if anyone thinks I have ruined a prized photo or made it look worse, then feel free to revert to the previous version. I generally try to do the editing at night when there isn't much ambient light, but sometimes when I adjust an image during the day, it may not look quite okay(!) Actually, I keep copies of the unmodified files anyway - I started doing this before I found out about being able to revert to a previous image!

I'm not sure what the edited pictures look like on other people's systems - they should look better on most, including Apple Macs - so feedback would be appreciated, if only to tell me I'm wasting my time!!

BTW, apologies to those who's pictures I have edited but not gotten-around to letting-know yet, especially Adrian and Paul - its just that every time I find a particularly good picture of something that interests me (mostly aircraft) it usually turns out to be one of theirs!

Regards,

Ian Dunster 13:11, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

For users wishing to get the best from images on the web there are a number of simple (and free) utilities available for setting your monitor's gamma to the recommended web default of 2.2 (sRGB)

Monitor Calibration Wizard
Advanced Gamma Corrector
QuickGamma
WiziWYG - free & paid-for versions available.

[edit] Audio Excerpts

I have also added audio samples to a number of Wikipedia pages. These are created using Sony Sound Forge 8 and saved at the lowest quality setting available for Ogg ABR - 96 Kbps. Some of them are longer in duration than I would like but it's often difficult to edit a music track down to a length reasonable for 'fair use' without ruining it - I usually try to include a verse and a chorus. Some of the excerpts are taken from the extended 12-inch or longer album versions, often of five six or seven minutes in length, so these may be a bit longer than the others - if anyone thinks they can do better they're welcome to try.