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Welcome! It is Monday, 9 June, 2008, and the time is 13:51 (UTC), or at least it was when the clock was last updated. It doesn't seem to work very well, at least not the whole time.
[edit] About Me
My name is CJMoss, and I am a teacher, mainly of English, but also French. My home base is currently Toronto, although I wind up in interesting parts of the world now and again in connection with my work teaching English.
See the picture? I always dress like that. No, not really, that was only for my brother's wedding. He got married in Scotland, you see.
He dressed like that, too, by the way. Also, many thanks to User:Glenlarson who has posted this picture in the "Kilt" article.
For a better look at the church that you see behind me, have a look at this article.
One of the great joys in my life is travelling. I have been to five continents – Antarctica and South America are the only ones I haven't visited yet. I've even spent five years living in China, but oddly, I've picked up very little Chinese.
My other interests include, as some may have discerned from my contributions, languages, geography, railways (merging Coupler and Coupling (railway) was fun!), photography (many of the photos I've contributed are my own), offbeat humour as exemplified by (you guessed it) Monty Python, and politics.
[edit] Username
The username? That's my Chinese name, 柯理思 (Kē Lǐsī), which I needed once for a bank account in China. The bank's system couldn't handle foreign names. The first syllable is a common Chinese surname which I was told had no particular meaning (although one dictionary that I looked in said it meant "axe helve"), and the two-syllable "given name" means "logical thought". It was not my own choice, by the way.
I have also discovered that I have a Chinese nickname among the Chinese staff at my school. It is 大胡子 (Dà Húzi), which means "Big Beard". I only found out about it when a Chinese colleague sent me an email with this as my surname in the "To" line. She obviously had my name like that in her address book.
I currently live in China, in Changzhou, teaching English at an international school, namely this one.
Here in China, Wikipedians need to use devious, underhanded ways of circumventing those who would try to control the flow of information. Sometimes my onion gets chopped, and I have to ask the information team to help me with that. It has happened twice thus far (December 2007, January 2008) and I credit Francine Rogers of the Wikipedia information team for helping get my editing ability back after more stringent restrictions were placed on my "onion". So, thanks.
WP itself is unaccountably unblocked from where I live just now. Could this be something to make the country look good in the runup to the Olympics?
[edit] Nationality
I ought to mention that I am.........
.........Canadian.
[edit] A few photographs
Here are a few pictures that I've contributed to Wikipedia. These are all my own work:
The Terry Fox loonie is actually a scan. The Icefall and El Alamein pictures are transfers from slides. Does anyone know a better way to accomplish this? I'd like to replace those pictures with better versions, along with a few others not shown here.
[edit] Sherlock Holmes and other articles
For all you Sherlock Holmes fans, all the articles about Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories about the fictional detective now have reasonably full synopses. You can thank me for that (for the most part). Don't try to pass it off as your own book report, kids. As a teacher, I can tell you that the easiest thing in the world for a teacher to do is to find out that you've downloaded your whole assignment from the Internet. Wikipedia is searchable using search engines.
I have started a few articles from scratch. Among them are the Solentiname Islands article (both the English and French versions; someone else did the German translation), the Constitution of Andorra article and the Outer Harbour East Headland article. Only Wikipedia would have an article about that. The Global Atmosphere Watch article is mine, too. I also inserted several lynx – I have a tendency to spell it like that as I am a cat lover – in existing articles pointing to my articles. Indeed, many of my contributions consist of inserting lynx to other articles.
[edit] German translations
I have translated a good number of articles from German about resistance fighters in Nazi Germany, and others who were unfortunate enough to incur the Nazis' wrath.
I have created or expanded articles about every municipality in the following German districts (Kreise): Höxter, Groß-Gerau, Waldeck-Frankenberg, Siegen-Wittgenstein, Hochtaunuskreis, Lahn-Dill-Kreis, Schwalm-Eder-Kreis, Wittenberg (district), Marburg-Biedenkopf, Vogelsbergkreis, Ebersberg, Aue-Schwarzenberg, Grafschaft Bentheim, Bamberg and Westerwaldkreis (that last one contained 209 articles). I have also expanded or created articles for individual towns here and there, such as Flensburg, Bobingen, Bergen auf Rügen, Gelsenkirchen (major expansion from the German article) and Forchheim (Oberfranken) (once again translated mainly from the German article).
The Rothaargebirge, Nuremberg U-Bahn and Kellerwald articles are mine, too. All are the result of translations from the German Wikipedia. Moreover, Friedrich Kittler, while a person rather than a place, and the Bombing of Braunschweig in World War II, an event, have claimed their rightful places here in the English Wikipedia thanks to my translating skills.
If you are into translation between English and German (either way), French and German, Spanish and German, Italian and German or Chinese and German I wholeheartedly recommend this link:
Its worst shortcoming, however, is that it cannot deconstruct those long German agglutinations like Lebensversicherungsgesellschaftsbeamtenvereinigungsführungssondergespräch, a reasonably common word (6000+ hits on Google) that I'm sure every German says at least four or five times a week – those with big lungs, anyway. Seriously, though, compounds must sometimes be broken down into their constituent elements and run through the dictionary separately. You then have to work out their combined meaning.
[edit] Geography and maps
Perhaps you've noticed a "geographical" streak in those articles that I mentioned. As a traveller, I am very fond of geography (or has my love of geography made me interested in travelling? I'm not quite sure). To that end, I have also linked several place articles to satellite images and interactive maps. I have also made maps. Here come a few now.........
I won a barnstar for that last one, and along with a number of other images that I've contributed, it has been uploaded to the Commons. If you'd like a map made for an article, I'll give it a try.
If you would like to try your hand at making maps, for Wikipedia or other purposes, I also wholeheartedly recommend this link:
I have discovered a little bug in this site. You must of course enter map coördinates – latitude and longitude – to generate your map, and instead of using the letters N, S, W and E to indicate hemisphere, you put a minus sign if you mean latitude south of the equator or longitude west of Greenwich. The trouble crops up when you want to generate a map of an area that straddles the 180th meridian. Have a look at my Fiji map up above and you'll notice that the 180th passes right through the country, but to generate the map, I had to specify an eastern limit of 182°, not -178° which I found caused an error message. But honestly, whoever heard of the 182nd meridian?! Anyway, the system does at least translate this into -178° when the map appears.
Another thing that can be annoying about OMC maps is that they are limited in size. You can make bigger maps, though, by generating 4 (or 9, or 16) maps of contiguous areas and then using Microsoft Paint, or another graphics programme, to stitch them together. However, this only works well if you use the Mercator projection, which is not always handy.
Happy mapmaking!
[edit] Travel
I have been to quite a number of countries. They are as follows:
[edit] In the Americas
[edit] In Europe
[edit] In Africa
[edit] In Asia
[edit] In Australia & Oceania
…and on the map, that looks like this: 
I have yet to set foot in either South America or Antarctica.
[edit] Interesting articles
What follows is a selection of articles that I have found on Wikipedia – none started by me although I've edited a few – which struck me as odd, funny, extremely esoteric or arcane, or whatever. Here they are...........
- Inflation fetishism — Some people have some rather unwholesome preoccupations. At first, I believed the writer was pulling our legs, and I am still not thoroughly sure he isn't. Update: It has been deleted, thus confirming my original suspicion, I would say. It was not an article about sex dolls, by the way, but the idea of people inflating, if you can believe that.
- Corn dolly — Ah, but are they inflatable? *ahem* Excuse me.
- Mooresville, Missouri — Population: 89. Awesome.
- Jerome, Arkansas — Here's a place with 46 people that calls itself a "city". It also has an area of about 50 ha.
- Illán de Vacas — Es el más pequeño municipio de España. En mi opinión, no vale la pena de mencionarlo. ¿Por qué hay un artículo sobre un lugar de ocho habitantes (o seis, según otra página)?
- Windhexe — Well I'll be blowed.
- Trim (cat) — Now how many cats go down in history?
- Stonecutters — A fictitious organization in a fictitious universe. Why is it worth noting in an article?!
- Cyniclons — I don't like anime; so what would I know about this? Well, apparently that writer doesn't know much about it either.
- Piss Beer — Leave it to the Aussies.
- The CAS School, Karachi — If I had to give this a new title, I would choose How not to write a Wikipedia article. Update: It has been improved ever so slightly.
- Infernum — Have you ever heard of these guys? I hadn't, but I'm not much into the Warsaw music scene. I get the impression from the article that they never exactly made a splash in the world of popular music. Are they really worth an article?
- Body nullification — Some new ideas for Michael Jackson?
- Centwine — Cheap plonk?
- Drag City — No doubt a lot of fun to visit if it suits one's tastes.
- Saavedra position — Sounds naughty; the article says it was named after a Spanish priest.
- Beaver Machine — No clergyman involved here, but it still sounds naughty.
- River Piddle — Sounds idyllic.
- Wank — Positively charming.
- Cum fart — Only on Wikipedia, eh? Also interestingly, another article on a similar topic, called Vaginal flatulence, is being considered for deletion. Update: The Vaginal flatulence article is apparently all right, but the Cum fart article has now been merged into Oral sex, and this link will now redirect there.
- Green manure — Not as disgusting as it sounds.
- Ganja State University — Like, woooow, maaaaan … where do I sign up?
- Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster — Very encyclopaedic indeed.
- Porker Hogg — Not quite kosher, I don't think.
- Seborga — Neither is this, but I suppose it brings tourists.
- Jerk — It's brainier than you might think.
- Cameltoe — But this sure as hell isn't.
- Golden Cross — Someone's favourite local?
- Joseph Carlton Loser — What a great name for a politician!
- Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz — Someone's trying to outdo me in the German concatenation department.
- Hollywood Left — Yeah, right. Celebrities are such brainless oaves they need a list.
- Mr Danger — It's apt, but I rather think it would have qualified as an entry on the List of political epithets or the List of pejorative political puns (which have both now been deleted, I notice), and not as an article. Update: It has now actually been expanded beyond one sentence.
- Ǯ — This is weird. This article doesn't even have a visible title, at least not on my browser, and here, the title is a little box. I guess this computer's a bit out of date with regard to funny foreign characters.
- Diet of Worms — Sounds yummy. I wonder whether Martin Luther enjoyed it.
- Buffalo Chips Running Club — That's a hell of a name.
- .mw — Well I'm glad I found out!
- Polish car number plates — Now here's something that'll appeal to a lot of readers.
- San Diego Yacht Club — Likewise.
- List of errors on Portuguese ex-Colonies stamps of Mozambique 1911 — Wikimedia ought to be careful its servers don't get overloaded, what with everyone busting to read this article.
- Nerd — A sociological exploration of ostracism from a rather interesting perspective, I thought.
- Exploding animal — Unwholesome preoccupations, indeed!
- Ray Twinney — A dead mayor of a suburban town whose term in office came to an ignominious end as the RCMP laid various charges against him. He will soon be forgotten. Why is there an article about him?
- One of These Days — That's what many kept telling Ray!
- Twatt — We'll eradicate bad spelling on Wikipedia one day, I'm sure.
- Darwinian poetry — This is supposed to produce "intelligent" poetry.
- Southpark Mall (Colonial Heights, Virginia) — Some kid's favourite hangout?
- Tai Mei Tuk — I have actually walked straight through this community and I didn't even realize it was a community. It is an utterly forgettable place. Why is there an article about it?
- explodingdog — I don't care what it takes! This has just got to stop!
- Toilets in Japan — and then there are other unwholesome preoccupations.
- The Amorous Flea — Does it like anything that inflates or explodes?
- Bach Aircraft — Wind, or perhaps Wing, on a G-String?
- Samuil Shatunovsky — It says he's a famous Ukrainian mathematician, and nothing else. There isn't even a Ukrainian interwiki link. I'm sure he was very famous.
- Anti-Barney humor — This is quite a long article considering the kind of thing that it's about, which surely won't stay in vogue all that long (if it even still is among the few who practised it).
- Spirit duplicator — Oh good, we need more ghosts.
- Penis panic — People have actually been killed in this, believe it or not.
- Leisnig — A little hamlet that no-one's ever heard of.
- Roderich Fick — A German man whose last name is a German vulgarism. Interesting. Even more interesting is the article about Raschau that I have translated from German. It mentions several people with the surname Ficker, and yes, to find the English meaning, one need only change one letter.
- Fucking, Austria — Speaking of which...
And now, just for the hell of it, a whole heap of userboxes........
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Today is 9 June 2008. |
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This user supports userboxes that display points of view. |
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This user still does not want people screwing with his userboxes.
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This user supports userboxes . |
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This user spends far too much time editing his/her user page. |
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This user adheres to the philosophy that an edit a day keeps the vandals at bay. |
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This user is bold, but not reckless, in updating pages. |
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This user uses Wikipedia as a primary point of reference. |
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This user believes it is every citizen's duty to vote. |
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This user is strongly opposed to all forms of eugenics. |
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no
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This user is against the war in Iraq |
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This user supports the inclusion of sex education in school systems. |
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This user supports the legalization of cannabis. |
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I would say I'm a cynic but I bet you just wouldn't believe me. |
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This user was born on 14 September 1963. |
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This user is a skeptic, even regarding this userbox.
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This user is of French ancestry. |
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This user is of Irish ancestry. |
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This user is a cat lover. |
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This user is, well … different.
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This user is a jokester or comedian.
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This user reserves the right to completely screw up his or her edits. |
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This user is pretty sure that he is an outlier compared to everybody else.
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This user is old enough to remember what a typewriter is, and that's all you need to know. |
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| Y! |
This user uses Yahoo! as a primary search engine. |
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This user uses Yahoo! Mail as a primary email service.
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This user does not and will not ever work at Buckingham Palace, much as he enjoys garden parties and the lovely young rich ladies you meet at them. |
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This user does not and will not ever work at the White House, even if a certain dimmer guy does get to work there. |
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This user does not and will not ever work at the Folies Bergère, which I guess is blindingly obvious, but these boxes have to come in multiples of 3 and I needed one more. |
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This user absolutely insists upon using whom wherever it is called for. |
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Ending a sentence with a preposition is something that this user is okay with. |
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This user understands the difference between its and it’s. So should you. |
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This user's favourite colour is red. |
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This user enjoys solving
Sudoku puzzles. |
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This user does not play or is not interested in video games. |
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This user reads between the lines. |
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This user enjoys heavy reading, such as Shakespeare and other dead guys. |
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This user enjoys reading humorous literature. |
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This user is a Trekker and knows that any real fan is not a Trekkie. |
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This user has been assimilated by the Borg.
Resistance is futile. |
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This person dislikes anime (or doesn't admit to watching it). |
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This user loves to eat pizza. |
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This user likes pie. |
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This user drinks wine. |
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This user drinks tea. |
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No user serviceable parts inside. |
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This user is interested in The Jedi Order.
My ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is.
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This user is being held hostage in a fortune cookie factory! Help! Ooooh.. here's a good one! Confucius says you will be held hostage in a fortune cookie factory. |
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This user is not and has never been Napoleon. |
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This user is suffering from userpox. Goggles seem to prove ineffectual. |
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This user uses entirely too many userboxes. |
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.png)
the UK
the Netherlands
Belgium
France
Monaco, the smallest country I've visited
Germany
East Germany, the only country that I've been to which has ceased to exist
Switzerland
Austria
Italy
Poland
Belarus
Russia, which is also in Asia (I actually went to Siberia, but I won't mention Russia again under "Asia")
Japan
Malaysia
Singapore
Thailand
Vietnam, the most recent addition to this list
South Korea
North Korea (that represents a trip to Panmunjŏm, of course)
China
Taiwan, which most governments will tell you is not a country
Brunei
the Philippines
Indonesia
Macau, which was Portuguese the first few times I went there; so I count it
Mongolia
Israel
Jordan
Saudi Arabia (one swinging place)
Bahrain
the United Arab Emirates
Oman
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