Welcome to my talk page! Feel free to leave a comment or question. If it's for the community, use the Village pump, otherwise leave a comment at the bottom of the page.



Edits to Appropedia by myself are generally as a regular member of the community, and sometimes as an administrator.
Unless otherwise stated, they are not legal or official actions as a director of the Appropedia Foundation.


Template:Gnome links


Also see:



Old conversations

Old conversations are in the Archive.



Conversations on other sites

Keeping an eye on...

notes for self

Idea for page and blog/forum post:

Forums:

Sustainable Humane Habitat in Developing Contexts - They seem very relevant to us and also connected historically with Engineers Without Borders UK - raise with Andrew Lamb.

  • Bring into any discussion on open design, and OSN.
  • Note they are funded by the European Commission's Asia Link Programme. This programme has been established in order to fund projects promoting Euro-Asian partnerships between research institutions addressing environmental and social challenges. Not exactly something we are likely to get as a US based org, but might give some ideas.

To do:

  • effect of keywords in PD search, e.g. reports
  • TT-related content then contact Lucy
    • search terms for Appropedia's Public Domain Search - TT doesn't work.
    • UP, housing options
    • transport - port this & anything good on this site.[1][2]
    • other TT themes/areas of focus?
      • need to be self-sufficient... with good local food networks, less energy consumption per head and strong practical skills,
      • climate change deals with the invisible and has very little positivity about it, whereas this is all about positivity. Everybody can get stuck in and design the change - it is very much a bottom-up initiative. - empowerment, participation, cf subsidies.
      • war footing, and TT as a leading example
      • TT & climate change - not necessarily constructive (if the change is to other fossil fuels) but most likely the general awareness and people's tendency to conflate issues mean that support for TT will mean a support for sustainable action, not ways to replace oil with coal.
  • http://forums.permaculture.org.au/ftopic4543.php - reply (bump) after adding more permaculture content.
  • original docs in mainspace; check what links to {{Includes content from}}, and also update that template.
  • Alan Alda as a supporter of green tech?
  • how does http://www.approvideo.org/blogs/ instruct/relate to Appropedia functionality?
  • contact a sympathetic WP admin re hexayurt article, getting a copy.
  • Wikipedia:appropriate technology examples -> each relevant topic page. Can be expanded and analyzed in a way not suitable for Wikipedia. Also consider adapting definition section (Jottings on appropriate technology?)

(Vinay, Mich, Mel...): Kiwanja, NGO-mobile. Innovative ideas for mobiles.


Porting

Well, I've been doing it manually. I could try out wikEd too, you can go ahead and download it on my page.--Fatima 19:43, 23 January 2008 (PST)


Hi Chris,

I was wondering if you could have a look at 'Handpumps'. It's almost done, I just can't seem to get the picutres to align right and it leaves all these gaps! (See fig 8 and 9). I did this page manually, from now on I'm going to be using wikied.

--How do I add the tables? I've been uploading them like the images, but it doesn't seem right. Is there another way to do the tables? Fatima

Hi Fatima, Check out Help:Tables (and Help:Contents in general). There is also a cut and paste tool at http://area23.brightbyte.de/csv2wp.php, I think you need to save your table from excel as a .csv (comma separated values) file first. Chris may have a good suggestion from WikiEd as well. Keep up the great work. --Lonny 15:00, 28 January 2008 (PST)
All I can think to suggest is that you try again (maybe on another page) using WikEd, and see if it does a better job of the table. You don't have to save that page - just use the [w] button, then preview, and copy the parts that work better than the current page.
That would be my first approach, anyway. If that doesn't work, the links Lonny gave should help. I guess see if you can copy from the PDF to a spreadsheet, and save as a .csv file. Hope that helps, let us know if it doesn't!
If you learn new good ways of doing things, please note them on the relevant porting page, e.g. Appropedia:Porting PDF files to MediaWiki. --Chriswaterguy · talk 17:55, 28 January 2008 (PST)
Very sorry, I've made a mistake - the PDF porting with wikEd isn't working yet. It's been a few months since I tried it with PDFs, and I'd forgotten about this. I'm now working on it and hope to have better answers within a week. In the meantime, I suggest you:


Thanks Chris. I'll just finish up the ones I've already started (taking Lonny's suggestion for the tables) and then work on html or word docs.--Fatima 12:45, 29 January 2008 (PST)


I tried doing the tables but somehow I can't seem to do it and the entire text ends up in the table! see this http://www.appropedia.org/Run-off_rainwater_harvesting#Rainwater_for_Agriculture How do I fix this, I've been trying alot of things but nothing works......!--Fatima 13:15, 29 January 2008 (PST)

Hi Fatima,
I think I fixed the table. Check it out and let me know if it is not what you were looking for. Thank you, --Lonny 16:27, 29 January 2008 (PST)

porting

Am I supposed to reply here? or on my talk page? does it matter?

Anyway, I did see that page. Wikipedia also has several very good examples. I am working through my list of authors, trying to contact them, but they all published in the 60's and 70's and they are very difficult to find.

Thanks for the help. --David.reber 11:32, 29 January 2008 (PST)

Thanks Chris. I actually got the non-free adobe acrobat from a very kind and generous friend! I'll try it out today and see how it works and will let you know!--Fatima 13:29, 3 February 2008 (PST)

I am about to port Ecological Sanitation from Practical Action to Appropedia but I noticed that there already exists a stub for Ecological Sanitation- should I create a new page or add Practical Action's article on Ecological Sanitation to the stub? --Fatima 13:39, 3 February 2008 (PST)

Responded on your talk page. --Chriswaterguy · talk 14:44, 3 February 2008 (PST)

I've started using the non-free adobe acrobat- and it has tremendously reduced the time to port material! Usually there is an error in saving the first page of the pdf in the rtf format, so I just do that page manually, otherwise it's working pretty well....... To see what is already done, I just put the topic title of the pdf brief in appropedia's search- if it's been done before, the page shows up, otherwise I just create a new page. But I'll look at the links you've suggested.--Fatima 16:57, 3 February 2008 (PST)

Chris,

I've more or less ported the water related practical action briefs- I am having trouble downloading Ecological Sanitation; otherwise I've done the others. Do you want me to port the other non-water related practical action briefs? ( I can do pdfs easily!) If not what other water related content do I focus on?--Fatima 15:07, 4 February 2008 (PST)

Fantastic! Either:
  • Use Appropedia's Public Domain Search to find high quality information (on water or anything else). I plan to do some serious work on the search engine in the next few days, but it should already give good results now - you just have to do some hunting (refining the search terms, and browsing results). If you're unsure if something is public domain (the search results are not 100% PD unfortunately) just ask me.
  • Port something from Requests for porting help on the porting page; or
  • Port other Practical Action content.
I also had trouble with the ES article - the PDF is just a blank page. I'll notify them.
Btw, have you found an easy way to extract the pictures from the PDF? --Chriswaterguy · talk 15:56, 4 February 2008 (PST)

Since it is easier for me to port pdf files, I think I'll port more of them. When I save the pdf file in the XML format, it automatically creates a folder with all the images in it, so I don't have to use the snap shot tool or paint, which is great! But...the XML document itself is a little puzzling to me..when I opened the XML document,it looked unusual..when I pasted in on to the web page in Appropedia , it wasn't coming out right. So now what I do is save the pdf file in Word Document format- I use this document to transfer the text to the web page and then I save the pdf again in the XML format to get the images folder- it really does'nt take that much time saving the pdf file in both types of formats so I do it. Is there any way I could show you the XML document (is it possible to email that doc ? I don't know too much about it) so that you know what I'm talking about?....--Fatima 19:49, 5 February 2008 (PST)

Hi Chris,

I've ported Conservation of indigenous breeds (Practical Action Brief)...but i'm having trouble doing the table (see the link)..I've been trying but I can't seem to do it right at all...your help would be appreciated..

http://www.appropedia.org/Image:Compostbin-table.jpg

--Fatima 19:49, 6 February 2008 (PST)



Scientific method on Appropedia?

Hi Chriswaterguy. I'm new here.
A question: I've been editing Wikipedia for a while, and there's a continuing discussion (aka war) there on the extent to which content needs to be governed by the scientific method and mainstream science, vs accepting "alternative science", "traditional wisdom", etc.
I'm especially concerned about this because of the likelihood of people furnishing harmful misinformation - it's bad enough when people say that you can build a 5 mw cold fusion generator out of paper clips and twine, but when people start posting that chicken soup cures AIDS or the like, I worry about the possibility of serious harm.
I'd like to know what the policy/guideline/"stance" of Appropedia is on this issue.
(I see that you wrote at Appropedia:Neutral point of view: "Appropedia also places a strong emphasis on scientific fact and Rigor.")
- I've also posted this question to Lonny's Talk page.
Thanks -- Writtenonsand 06:35, 15 February 2008 (PST)

Hi - thanks for your reply on my Talk page. On Wikipedia many of my edits are of the "WikiGnome" variety - "WikiGnomes work behind the scenes of a wiki, tying up little loose ends and making things run more smoothly."
I see a lot of redlinks and unlinked vocabulary pages here on Appropedia, and my instinct is to make stub pages for them or link them to W as appropriate. I assume that that would be okay? -- Writtenonsand 16:03, 17 February 2008 (PST)


Glad to have a WikiGnome on board! I've thought at times about our need for this. Some of us have been trying to juggle gnome work with other things, with difficulty, so your contributions will be very welcome.
Stubs would be great; linking to Wikipedia is also good (it's a judgment call - don't spend too long thinking about each one as they can be changed). I've stopped using {{WP}} now and use {{wp sup}} instead, as it allows an Appropedia redlink together with a WP link. (Perhaps we should even replace WP with the wp sup code, to make it simpler.)
In making stubs, I think you'll find APDS useful. Don't hesitate to contact me (or anyone else here) - email or IM (Skype, same username) also possible if you prefer. Thanks again! --Chriswaterguy · talk 19:35, 17 February 2008 (PST)


Thanks -- Writtenonsand 15:19, 18 February 2008 (PST)


List of redlinks?

Is there a listing somewhere of all redlinks? (I.e. articles/pages/stubs that need to be created) -- Writtenonsand 17:31, 18 February 2008 (PST)

Special:Wantedpages, right, thanks! -- Writtenonsand 17:37, 18 February 2008 (PST)


Drought Myth: copyleft?

Hi - I just went through and wikified Drought Myth, but now looking at it I'm not 100% sure that we were formally given copyleft to it.

It says "Source: Reprinted and shared freely by the copyright holder at http://selfmadefarmer.wordpress.com/", and was apparently originally posted to Appropedia by User:Krystle, who is "apparently" the owner of selfmadefarmer.wordpress.com . We're sure that this was intended to be placed under the GFDL by the owner? selfmadefarmer.wordpress.com doesn't seem to have any copyright/licensing info.

I'm probably being a little paranoid about this, but my experience with copyright, attribution, and editing articles on wikis suggests that that's often a good idea.

-- Writtenonsand 07:29, 19 February 2008 (PST)

Here's another: Methane: "Portions (cc) S.E.E.D.S. under Creative Commons".
What's "cc"? I can't find any relevant definition. "Creative Commons"? If "copyright" or some non-GFDL license, then this content can't appear on Appropedia, right? Is Creative Commons 100% compatible with GFDL? (Again, only asking because of the blood I've seen these issues shed in the past.) -- Writtenonsand 07:50, 19 February 2008 (PST)
Thanks for your diligence - I agree it's better to be a little paranoid, and make sure we get it right.
User:Krystle is indeed the Selfmadefarmer - she has a newsletter and we've exchanged emails. A user has the right to add anything they own the copyright to, and in doing so releases it under Appropedia's license. If there's still any ambiguity at all, please ask Krystle on her talk page, or let me know and I'll email her.
(cc) is indeed Creative Commons, and is a play on (c) or ©. Unfortunately CC-by-sa (the closest equivalent to GFDL, I believe) is not fully compatible, but that's expected to change soon - the people in charge of the licenses have agreed to make them interoperable. However, if a site uses CC-by or CC-by-sa, I expect they'd be happy to approve by email for it to be also released under GFDL.
I can't see a license statement or CC mark on S.E.E.D.S., so I'll email Ericblazek, who added this and the content now at Category:Biofuel. Then, if needed, one of us can contact the S.E.E.D.S. folks. Thanks again! --Chriswaterguy · talk 15:00, 19 February 2008 (PST)
Thanks again for all your help. -- Writtenonsand 18:33, 19 February 2008 (PST)


Another:
Cider Cool Off the Press
(From BITTERSWEET, Volume I, No. 4, Summer 1974)
Story and photographs by Rick Bishop
- I see that this is Category:Bittersweet, and that there are 29 articles in this category. We just have blanket permission for all articles in Category:Bittersweet? -- Writtenonsand 17:43, 20 February 2008 (PST)


"Skills" :-)

You wrote: "so that a WikiGnome such as yourself can work more efficiently and make better use of your skills."
Heh, "skills". I wouldn't actually claim any, but I can lift heavy things. Or actually, light and medium things.
Thanks again for the tips. (I'm certainly interested in developing my skills.)
Also, I see that User:Smallaxe's page says: "ENGR 305 Project: Directed Internship to overhaul the current Appropedia design, to add a more appealing and user friendly environment to this implementation of "MediaWiki"," along with some details. Sounds interesting. -- Writtenonsand 16:26, 21 February 2008 (PST)

I've certainly seen you show patience, persistence, good judgment and knowledge, for a start... whether we call them skills is incidental :).
I hadn't noticed that on Smallaxe's page - it seems this is one of Lonny's students, taking on a very valuable project. --Chriswaterguy · talk 16:43, 21 February 2008 (PST)

SfGS

Hi Chris,

I was thinking that we should rename all SfGS pages as SfGS then the page name, with no colon (so as not to look like a namespace). So SfGS: Zero-Waste Party would become SfGS Zero-Waste Party, and that they would all be categorized under Template:Tlc (which we could do with {{SfGS}}). Please let me know what you think and if you would like me to make the changes.

Thank you, Lonny

Agreed - but either we leave the pages with colons as redirects, or we need to change the template on the old wiki and enter the target page manually. Is that worth doing, do you think? Happy for someone else to decide and do :). Thanks! --Chriswaterguy · talk 05:22, 26 February 2008 (PST)

Ecovillages

Not sure what the policies are on adding or editing stuff, so I thought I'd ask here before I sign up. I'm part of a new eco-village that's growing just outside of Ithaca, NY (near but not the same as EcoVillage at Ithaca). We have a very strong focus on sustainability and emergency preparedness, and I've been promoting appropedia to our members as a great resource. Is it appropriate to ask for, or to add myself, a link on the Ecovillages page that you edit?

Also, just to point out, Ithaca is misspelled in one or two places on the existing page.

Thanks!

Please add a link, and (even better) add a page describing your project. We'd love to hear more about what you're doing - and please let us know if you need any help!
I trust our gnomes will fix the spellings in time, but aways feel free to make corrections. --Chriswaterguy · talk 18:13, 8 March 2008 (PST)

note to self

http://www.linuxsa.org.au/tips/disk-partitioning.html

Having to reinstall - back later - Chris

I have no idea where this should go.

And you're the water guy.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080409/ap_on_re_us/deteriorating_water_pipes

--Simpsons 20:32, 8 April 2008 (PDT)


I've created Category:Water distribution - perhaps add a paragraph and link on that page, or start a new page and add that category. Thanks. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 20:56, 8 April 2008 (PDT)

Note to self ;

Twitter: greenskeptic GPF (Global Philanthropy Forum): Fazle Abed (founder of BRAC): "All our solutions have been small scale; we hv not been ambitious enough to end poverty." about 14 hours ago from web


AIDG aidg Tech Tuesday: Urine-Diverting (Dry) Toilet [Shada, Haiti] Pt 1 http://tinyurl.com/4xsofp about 20 hours ago AIDG aidg Urine-Diverting (Dry) Toilet [Shada, Haiti] Pt 2 http://tinyurl.com/3qqaeh about 20 hours ago

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/Contents.htm -- Chriswaterguy

debugging:

mcc

shutdown from CLI:

halt / shutdown -h

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-linux-add-user-use-adduser-command/

Q. How do I add a new user using command line tools? What are command line option recommended.

A. You need to use useradd command, which is responsible for creating a new user or update default new user information

The useradd command creates a new user account using the values specified on the command line and the default values from the system. The new user account will be entered into the system files (/etc/passwd) as needed, the home directory (/home/username) will be created, and initial files copied, depending on the command line options. Task: Add a user to the system

Syntax is as follows for useradd command: useradd <username>

By default user account is locaked, you need to setup a new password: passwd <username>

For example add a new user called tom and set password to jerry:

  1. adduser tom
  2. passwd tom

If you want to add a user to group read how to add a user user to group

List of common options:

   * -c comment: Add a comment for the user
   * -d home-directory: Create a new home-directory
   * -e yyyy-mm-dd: Date for the account to be disabled
   * -f days: Number of days after the password expires until the account is disabled. (If 0 is specified, the account is disabled immediately after the password expires. If -1 is specified, the account is not be disabled after the password expires.)
   * -g group-name: Primary Group name or group number for the user's default group (group name must exist)
   * -G group-list: List of secondary additional (other than default) group names or group numbers, separated by commas, of which the user is a member (group name must exist)
   * -m: Create the home directory
   * -M: Do not create the home directory
   * -s: User's login shell (default /bin/bash)

To read all command line option type following command: $ man adduser

Found the bug, I think

http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=86418

You can login from terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F1 when the dm starts) and then type drak3d in order to disable 3d and unsderstand what's happened. If drak3d is not found there then you have to reinstall it ('urpmi drak3d' and it should install its dependencies)
I'd uninstall compiz (# urpme compiz) and then installed it again (# urpmi compiz).

More ideas: http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=83433

Boot from USB

USB Flash Memory HOWTO

Blog

strongly recommend a readme.rtf or equivalent:

  • Standard one for Linux.
  • distro specific
  • known critical bugs and warnings at the top; link to live page
  • Easily accessible later (menu or via CLI)
  • Context specific ones, e.g. when first installing a 3D desktop.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10friedman1.html?em : FRIEDMAN surprised by dual flush?

examine the details on Ap: "responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent."

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/what-is-the-future-of-suburbia-a-freakonomics-quorum/?em


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/opinion/09bissinger.html?ref=opinion :

I have already gone on record with a Times Op-Ed article in April saying the games should be banned entirely because of their incontrovertible history of corruption and politicizing...

“Why is winning the only thing that matters?” asks Sey. “There must be some national crisis of self-esteem for us to push so hard for these medals. Otherwise why would you need it?”

Because that’s SportsWorld. Which is also why upon further review, I’ll stick with the Beijing pollution index and the blue sky index and not watch women’s gymnastics. I will no doubt miss out on some of the best performances of the entire games. But that’s the trade-off when you’re just not a fan of child abuse.

Articles

Knol mags

Meeting Vasco-Pyjama.

Hi folks - can't connect much today. Meeting Vasco-Pyjama from LJ this arvo. In Sydney probably tonight.

Note to self: nav links top of http://www.demotech.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Design.TechnologyWthinPoverty

attention grabbing stuff: Die green...

The deceased will be buried in biodegradable coffins between gum trees in a protected koala sanctuary.
Reflecting a worldwide trend towards environmentally friendly burials, the site, on bushland attached to Lismore Memorial Park Cemetery in the Northern Rivers region, is due to open on July 1.
Families visiting graves would be lent a satellite navigation device, Mr Whitney said.
allow headstones made from natural rock.
conventional funerals and cremations are ecologically damaging because cremations produce greenhouse gases; embalming uses harmful chemicals that can enter soil and waterways; gravestones are made of granite shipped from China; coffins are made from particle board or rainforest timber, held together with poisonous glues, lined with plastic and varnished, which pollutes the land.
-Green reaper's grave new world

--Chriswaterguy 16:02, 19 April 2008 (PDT)

Thanks Chris.--Fatima 18:54, 2 May 2008 (PDT)

Personal message

Sorry, Chris! Could not figure out where to put a personal message to you, so I try here.

I react to your input on my talk page at Demotech. I appreciate to talk to you about the contribution Demotech may have to Appropedia as I am aware that you are one of the drivers of Appropedia. My Skype name is reindervt You can reach me best at midnight my time. Evenually you can make sure by sending a mail to info@demotech.org .

I look forward to speak to you!

Greetings, Reinder

Cool - talk to you soon! --Chriswaterguy 05:28, 8 May 2008 (PDT)

Ekopedia and others...

I arrive and actually I do like most of the people create a new subject without being sure that there are none already talking about this... I am part of Ekopedia. It is a participative encyclopedie about alternative technique... It start in French but now it develops in many others languages...

Check Ekopedia

We earlier tryed to have a collaboration with Tiptheplanet... It did not work out... Pity so much dubble information...

Check TipThePlanet

On their Website I now discover Appropedia seems to be the same also...

Check Appropedia

I have to had this student initiative...

Check Demotech

So I feel a little bit sad to see so much person motivated but not working together... If you feel like talking about and trying to create synergie... mail me at olivier(a)kaospilots(dot)nl

Thank you

Very exciting! Answered by email. --Chriswaterguy 22:30, 25 May 2008 (PDT)


Hi Chris, I am trying to contact you, but I can't find your email on the site, so I'll try like this... I would like to discuss with you the idea of putting a book I have written online so it can be collaboratively revised.... hope you can help, I think it will be a rather exciting project (for me anyway!). I am new to the ins and outs, the perils and pitfalls of such a thing, and also the support you are able to offer... my email is robjhopkins (at) gmail.com. Many thanks, Rob.

Answered by email. --Chriswaterguy 18:02, 4 July 2008 (PDT)

Water ways as a natural highway

I thought you might like this.

http://bigrivershow.com/

Thanks! Will have a closer look when I have a faster connection. --Chriswaterguy -13:34, 15 July 2008 (PDT)

Hi from Egypt

Quick hi to Appropedia folks. In Alex now for Wikimania. Linux on my laptop is playing up for me again so I'll connect in the morn (about 9 hours). --Chriswaterguy -13:34, 15 July 2008 (PDT)

Math and formulas on Appropedia

Hi Chris, I'm Alvaro. We met last night at IDDS. Im involved in the design of the ropeway, and wanted to share some of the calculations involved in the security of the cables. It seems however that the math mode is not enabled in appropedia (this is the message: Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \frac{x}{csh(x/a)}). Who should I talk to to repair that? (if you think it's a good idea). Thanks. (4 Aug. 2008) [contact, ab1805 [-@-] mit [#dot#] edu]

Hi Alvaro,
Thanks for pointing this out. It now works. E.g.
Keep up the awesome contributions, --Lonny 02:35, 4 August 2008 (PDT)

Allo

I finally succumbed to the desire to contribute. :) --pfctdayelise 02:20, 8 December 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Woah

Sections gone mad

Man. What have you guys done to your MediaWiki? Look at what happens when I click 'edit' on your talk page! Where have the 'edit section' links gone? I can't even find the section I originally started, to reply in. How do I get rid of these break-out sections?? "Generic mode" was no help -- still didn't show my section. It has disappeared into the aether!

Anyway... Papyrus sanitary pad - hadn't heard of those before, sounds pretty mad although perhaps scratchy?!. But are they reusable?? Can you rinse out papyrus?? If not, then I would guess cloth pads are the go. Menstrual cups are internal and thus more comparable to tampons.

Will you be in Australia in January? I've probably already asked you this but I can't remember the answer. LCA is in Hobart around January 20th. At any rate I will look forward to seeing you in Melbourne some time.

And I think if anyone wants to have any influence in the wider world these days, having economists on side is an absolute necessity.

cheers :) pfctdayelise 03:32, 8 December 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hey - hope the Uniwiki didn't cause too much grief! It has some great features (esp the category selector on the right) but some problems for serious wikiators. (I'm trying to come up with a generic word for people who do wikis - wikian looks like someone who's with Wikia.) I archived from my page, with a bit of url hacking and dividing up the page into supersections - Uniwiki doesn't like really long pages.
Hey, I've never used a tampon - I was just reporting what seemed a cool idea, to let girls go to school. The synthetic gauze cover seems like it should make it less scratchy. Have heard of menstrual cups, and they sound maybe a wise idea - but I'll leave such decisions to those more qualified than I :-).
This coming January? No, still far, far away. Sadly, and yet happily. --Chriswaterguy 05:27, 8 December 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Hmm.... so there's really no way to turn it off? Or at least no way to get section editing back? I kind of like that a lot... --pfctdayelise 11:50, 8 December 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
In this version, only with a url hack - click edit then add &section=n (n being fiddly to calculate on a long page with subheadings). Ugly, but I do it sometimes. I'm incline to think that we wait for FCKeditor, and see if we can add the really cool bits from Uniwiki to that (category selection and optional - not default multiple boxes).
Uniwiki was designed for Africa, for kids with no computer experience, but Merrick Schaeffer from UNICEF said (at Wikimania) that they'd used it with success in an office setting, I think. Not ideal for hardcore wiki folks, tho. Combining with FCKeditor and tweaking, we could hopefully have the best of both worlds. --Chriswaterguy 22:20, 8 December 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Some more porting questions

Hello Chris,

I am currently an intern for Appropedia and have been given the task of porting PDF's to MediaWiki format. I had a question that Lonny suggested that I ask you about. Should I go by your format of having an original, and a editable page in Appropedia?

Thanks, Steven M.

Chriswaterguy still alive

I'm going to Suchitoto today, 1.5 hrs from San Salvador. I was going yesterday but had a major ^(@P*@@$)&* up with my Linux system. I've managed to backup, so I can safely head off, but I won't be logging on till probably tonight - I get there this afternoon, and at some point need to fix my system.

I've been learning a few things, and am planning a brief blog post, and a series of microblog posts on LinuxEssentials:

  • Be sure to have a "rescue disk" - this is a LiveCD designed for the purpose, not a heavyweight distro. Knoppix (with rescue tools & a lightweight desktop environment) is good. Geekier folks have other options like Slax, and running from USB.

--Chriswaterguy 18:14, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Connected again. Still fiddling with Linux. --Chriswaterguy 03:58, 15 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Draft notes for forums

Hi - I'm looking for advice on reliable distros with good repositories. The ideal might be if it used the Debian repositories or only slightly modified Debian repos (or repos from another major, reliable distro - maybe RedHat or Fedora) but was packaged in a more user-friendly way than Debian. Suggestions?

"Which distro do you recommend?" PS - the reason I don’t like any distro is exactly because I’ve never found one where I *didn’t* find myself doing stuff an end user should *not* have to do. Not that I can’t, but I do administration for my day job — I don’t wanna go home and do it s’more! ;-)

IRC notes

(10:28:05 AM) Chriswaterguy: Hi - I'm looking for advice on reliable distros with good repositories. The ideal might be if it used the Debian repositories or only slightly modified Debian repos (or repos from another major, reliable distro - maybe RedHat or Fedora) but was packaged in a more user-friendly way than Debian. Suggestions? (10:28:43 AM) Titan8990: Chriswaterguy, opensuse (10:29:21 AM) Titan8990: Chriswaterguy, but IMO, nothing beats debian package management (10:29:32 AM) xy|ox: Chriswaterguy, ubuntu (10:29:46 AM) neoteny: errr Titan8990 opensuse doesn't provide anything Chriswaterguy asked for. (10:29:50 AM) Titan8990: xy|ox, you must have missed his first sentance that included "reliable" (10:30:24 AM) heftig: Chriswaterguy: centos (10:30:28 AM) Titan8990: neoteny, it matches reliable and user-friendly package management (10:31:18 AM) xy|ox: Titan8990, so you recommend opensuse, do you miss the his first sentence? (10:32:18 AM) Chriswaterguy: Thanks for the answers! (10:34:02 AM) Chriswaterguy: Titan8990: I'd love access to the Debian repos, but decided against straight Debian. the Debian install disk couldn't even recognize the HDD on my ThinkPad (and I bought this machine because it was supposed to the most compatible with Linux!) (10:34:35 AM) Titan8990: Chriswaterguy, are you sure you wern't trying to install the unstable version of debain? (10:34:55 AM) Chriswaterguy: xy|ox: Ubuntu works for a lot of people, but I'd rather avoid it. it doesn't strike me as reliable - from my own awful experiences and from what I've read. (10:35:22 AM) Titan8990: Chriswaterguy, wikipedia has a list of distros that use debian package management (10:35:30 AM) Chriswaterguy: heftig: I was thinking about CentOS. (10:35:42 AM) Titan8990: Chriswaterguy, centos is not one of them (10:35:46 AM) Chriswaterguy: heftig: It uses the RedHat repos? (10:36:21 AM) heftig: Chriswaterguy: it uses its own repos, but they're practically clones of rhel (10:36:55 AM) Chriswaterguy: RHEL packages should be good - Debian might be the ideal, but not the only option. (10:36:57 AM) neilthereildeil: adaptr: ok ill try to steal the script (10:36:59 AM) bolt [n=r00t@cE797BF51.dhcp.bluecom.no] entered the room. (10:37:00 AM) heftig: mib_gmzx4o: ask your distro :) (10:37:09 AM) monestri: Can I try a different client? (10:37:10 AM) neilthereildeil: but i guess its manually editing the menu.lst file until then.... (10:37:11 AM) linatrix left the room (quit: Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)). (10:37:11 AM) neilthereildeil: thx (10:37:14 AM) neilthereildeil left the room. (10:37:16 AM) mib_gmzx4o: ok, are things ok for some distros ? (10:37:18 AM) Browser` left the room (quit: "Lost terminal"). (10:37:20 AM) c64zotte1 left the room (quit: Client Quit). (10:37:24 AM) Titan8990: m0nst3rkill3r, ehh, ~/.gnome maybe (10:37:24 AM) HellMind [n=RANDOM@190.18.84.5] entered the room. (10:37:25 AM) c64zotte1 [n=hans@62-12-246-241.pool.cyberlink.ch] entered the room. (10:37:34 AM) mib_gmzx4o: because my gma 950 sucks balls on archlinux (10:37:35 AM) heftig: Chriswaterguy: CentOS is RHEL without the price tag (10:37:47 AM) mib_gmzx4o: how are things over at debian or ubuntu ? (10:37:47 AM) HellMind: how can assign a core to a process? (10:37:50 AM) mib_gmzx4o: or fedora (10:37:53 AM) Titan8990: m0nst3rkill3r, but if you are referring to non-GUI applications then they need scripts in /etc/init.d and they are added to startup with the update-rc command (10:37:54 AM) adaptr: RHEL is just as free (10:37:55 AM) Just4Now: monestri, another clieint prob won't help, but i didn't much care for the firefox ftp client (10:37:59 AM) here4thegear left the room. (10:38:15 AM) Titan8990: mib_gmzx4o, they all use a similar kernel (10:38:15 AM) xy|ox: Chriswaterguy, what you understand by reliable? (10:38:16 AM) linatrix [n=ali@196.202.20.11] entered the room. (10:38:19 AM) heftig: mib_gmzx4o: running fedora 10, intel performance is awful. fedora 11 uses the new stuff. going to try the alpha soon (10:38:26 AM) Titan8990: mib_gmzx4o, and thus the same driver (10:38:26 AM) Chriswaterguy: Titan8990: I was trying the testing version of Debian. I figured that Stable was not going to be updated for another 18 months - not an attractive option. Testing is supposed to be at least as stable as most distros. (10:38:32 AM) AngryElf left the room (quit: "leaving"). (10:38:37 AM) mib_gmzx4o: i mean, this has been going on for too long now (10:38:41 AM) mib_gmzx4o: at first i was patient (10:38:47 AM) mib_gmzx4o: but now it's just too much (10:38:48 AM) Titan8990: Chriswaterguy, not really, I also had the driver problem with debian unstable (10:38:51 AM) mib_gmzx4o: how long has it been (10:38:54 AM) mib_gmzx4o: since .27 ? (10:39:07 AM) Titan8990: Chriswaterguy, its marked unstable for a reason and distros such as debian don't update as often to maintain that stability (10:39:21 AM) monestri: well i'd use it if I knew how to upload with it Just4Now (10:39:22 AM) mib_gmzx4o: i mean, there has to be something wrong when diablo 2 is slow as molasses on an intel gma 950 (10:39:23 AM) Titan8990: Chriswaterguy, you have to make a choice between "bleeding-edge" and stable, period (10:39:35 AM) Just4Now: your client on windows or linux (10:39:39 AM) Chriswaterguy: How do OpenSuse repos compare? I've heard good things of OpenSuse, and I gather it supports LXDE (my favorite desktop) (10:40:11 AM) mib_gmzx4o: Chriswaterguy: there is no special "support" needed for a window manager or desktop enviroment (10:40:20 AM) mib_gmzx4o: unless there's something terribly wrong with the distro (10:40:21 AM) extor left the room (quit: Remote closed the connection). (10:41:04 AM) wooby left the room (quit: Remote closed the connection). (10:41:07 AM) ognirc [n=doon@pool-72-65-75-107.clrk.east.verizon.net] entered the room. (10:41:12 AM) mib_gmzx4o: Titan8990: i was thinking more among the lines of some distros refusing to offer the new stuff in the repos until it matures (10:41:17 AM) Chriswaterguy: mib_gmzx4o: there's a difference between winging it with a different desktop and using one that is standard or semi-standard for the distro. (10:41:17 AM) mib_gmzx4o: what a crappy step from intel (10:41:25 AM) jwhite^ left the room (quit: No route to host). (10:41:57 AM) icatorze left the room (quit: Remote closed the connection). (10:42:00 AM) Titan8990: mib_gmzx4o, gentoo masks packages until they are 100% mature (10:42:10 AM) Titan8990: mib_gmzx4o, but its not for new users at all (10:42:17 AM) Chriswaterguy: Titan8990: So you think "Stable" would recognize my HDD? I don't see why that would change between Lenny and Testing (especially since they only diverged last month). (10:42:23 AM) mib_gmzx4o: Titan8990: isn't gentoo dead already ? :) (10:42:54 AM) mib_gmzx4o: and anyway, i don't find watching text scroll by all day long any fun.... (10:42:59 AM) Titan8990: Chriswaterguy, idk, I do know even when specifying the right driver for my sata controller in the debian unstable release, it still failed to recognize (10:43:00 AM) Chriswaterguy: mib_gmzx4o: There's something terribly wrong with a lot of distros :-). Even fantastic ones have their problems. (10:43:03 AM) monestri left the room (quit: Remote closed the connection). (10:43:07 AM) Titan8990: Chriswaterguy, so yes, I think stable debain will work (10:43:10 AM) Titan8990: mib_gmzx4o, not even close (10:43:14 AM) mib_gmzx4o: Chriswaterguy: touche (10:43:19 AM) heftig: mib_gmzx4o: nah, it's not dead. but it's still an exercise in patience :P (10:43:37 AM) shadeslayer left the room (quit: "bye"). (10:43:51 AM) osubuck: gentoo teaches patience huh? (10:43:59 AM) heftig: yes (10:44:12 AM) Just4Now: would my one and only hard drive be /dev/hda0  ? (10:44:14 AM) mib_gmzx4o: you know (10:44:20 AM) garme left the room (quit: "Leaving"). (10:44:20 AM) Renfield [n=Renfield@c-24-63-157-129.hsd1.nh.comcast.net] entered the room. (10:44:22 AM) Titan8990: osubuck, and lots of troubleshooting skills (10:44:22 AM) adaptr: Just4Now: just hda (10:44:25 AM) mib_gmzx4o: there can be a thing as too much patience (10:44:32 AM) osubuck: then what's the point? (10:44:34 AM) heftig: Just4Now: it would be /dev/hda if it's IDE, or /dev/sda if it's SCSI or SATA (10:44:36 AM) Hodapp_: Chriswaterguy: What do you propose is terribly wrong with a lot of distros? (10:44:39 AM) osubuck: why would you want to use something like that (10:44:44 AM) mib_gmzx4o: Just4Now: more likely /dev/sda (10:44:45 AM) Just4Now: thanx heftig, it's SATA (10:44:50 AM) ToreadorVampire left the room (quit: "... and now back to the REAL fantasy world!"). (10:44:53 AM) Raistl|n [n=TheCrow@c-67-176-114-13.hsd1.co.comcast.net] entered the room. (10:45:15 AM) Just4Now: my OS won't boot with grub, so I'm trying to to boot from the centos cd and then boot from there. i found a document that says try vmlinuz root=/dev/sda (10:45:22 AM) mib_gmzx4o: when is .29 coming along ? (10:45:28 AM) mib_gmzx4o: or is it out already ? (10:45:34 AM) mib_gmzx4o: and i'm just being silly now (10:45:39 AM) Chriswaterguy: Hodapp_: Just going by experience - instablity, things not working. Not to say they don't have a lot a great features, and won't get a lot better and maybe crush MS. But not this year. (10:45:41 AM) mib_gmzx4o: how's intel on 2.6.29 ? (10:45:53 AM) xokaido [n=xokaido@host-62-168-165-53.adsl.caucasus.net] entered the room. (10:45:53 AM) Just4Now: cannot open root device sda, or unkonown block (0,0 (10:45:58 AM) xokaido: hi all... :-) (10:46:08 AM) mjf [n=mjf@r6y10.net.upc.cz] entered the room. (10:46:10 AM) path_ [n=path_@pc-15-190-86-200.cm.vtr.net] entered the room. (10:46:15 AM) mib_gmzx4o: Just4Now: you need to specify a partition, that's that number after /dev/sda (10:46:17 AM) Kitar88 left the room (quit: Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)). (10:46:21 AM) Renfield: Ha! I love your web site "Cookies must be allowed to vote". (10:46:25 AM) Kitar88 [i=Kitarist@BSN-142-77-67.dial-up.dsl.siol.net] entered the room. (10:46:25 AM) osubuck: MS is about due for another success (10:46:36 AM) mib_gmzx4o: osubuck: you mean with win7 ? (10:46:42 AM) osubuck: yes (10:46:50 AM) mib_gmzx4o: it would seem so (10:46:52 AM) osubuck: vista was like the ME of this generation (10:47:01 AM) mib_gmzx4o: and it can only be a good thing ;) (10:47:09 AM) Dexter left the room (quit: Read error: 113 (No route to host)). (10:47:13 AM) Chriswaterguy: Re "distros that use debian package management" - if a distro uses APT, that's not the same as using the Debian repos, is it? (10:47:22 AM) Just4Now: likely to be /dev/sda0 then right (10:47:26 AM) mib_gmzx4o: Chriswaterguy: of course not (10:47:26 AM) Just4Now: first i created /boot partition (10:47:32 AM) Kitar|st left the room (quit: Connection timed out). (10:47:39 AM) mib_gmzx4o: Just4Now: if it's the first partition then yes /dev/sda0 (10:47:45 AM) mib_gmzx4o: if not, then move the number up (10:47:59 AM) mib_gmzx4o: you'll hit it eventually if you're not sure (10:48:01 AM) mib_gmzx4o: :) (10:48:03 AM) Just4Now: cannot open root device "NULL" or unknown block (8,3) (10:48:04 AM) Chriswaterguy: mib_gmzx4o: just checking :-). So using APT doesn't mean it has good repos. (10:48:13 AM) mlarsen [n=mlarsen@0x57370230.esnqu1.dynamic.dsl.tele.dk] entered the room. (10:48:26 AM) Chriswaterguy: Also planning on giving Knoppix a whirl. At least I'll have a good LiveCD for when I need it. (10:48:29 AM) mib_gmzx4o: yup (10:48:31 AM) Renfield: I need some assistance with my udev rules. I want to create a symlink for my external DVD-RW. It appears that the symlink points to /dev/sg0, but in order to actually mount a CD, I need it to point to /dev/sr0. Anyone know how I go about doing this? (10:48:41 AM) osubuck: knoppix is decent (10:48:48 AM) osubuck: uses LXDE (10:48:53 AM) Frederick [n=ubuntu@unaffiliated/frederick] entered the room. (10:49:11 AM) mib_gmzx4o: knoppix with LXDE ? (10:49:13 AM) mib_gmzx4o: my my (10:49:16 AM) mib_gmzx4o: i though it was kde (10:49:22 AM) mib_gmzx4o: well, who could blame 'em (10:49:23 AM) osubuck: thats what the live cd i got came with (10:49:26 AM) Frederick: folks ive had to reisntall windows vista and it removed my grub, im having problems to set it again I have 3 linux installs I dont want todo again can I have some help? (10:49:28 AM) mib_gmzx4o: the new kde is crap (10:49:32 AM) xokaido: in the past I have used the port of a site (it was 81), the main reason was testing purpose of a website, now I have switched the port to a default one (80) but firefox has somehow stored the port 81 and doesn't let me get to default port 80... (10:49:37 AM) xokaido: what can I do?... (10:49:42 AM) mib_gmzx4o: Frederick: you need a live cd (10:49:46 AM) osubuck: kde 3.5.10 still works good here :D (10:49:53 AM) simard [n=simard@modemcable234.226-83-70.mc.videotron.ca] entered the room. (10:50:00 AM) Frederick: mib_gmzx4o: im on one (10:50:03 AM) Frederick: can you help me? (10:50:04 AM) xokaido: Frederick, yes you can... (10:50:11 AM) mreiss_ [n=mreiss@MREISS.RES.CMU.EDU] entered the room. (10:50:15 AM) Tirili [n=opera@dslb-088-070-046-052.pools.arcor-ip.net] entered the room. (10:50:23 AM) xokaido: Frederick, use: grub_update and evetyhing would be just fine... :-) (10:50:24 AM) mib_gmzx4o: Frederick: can you install grub from that live cd ? (10:50:27 AM) mib_gmzx4o: which one is it (10:50:31 AM) p4s4l left the room (quit: Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)). (10:50:32 AM) Ether_Man left the room (quit: ). (10:50:56 AM) wooby [n=Peter@p5B085E6E.dip.t-dialin.net] entered the room. (10:51:04 AM) mib_gmzx4o: oh, back on the intel graphics topic (10:51:16 AM) Frederick: mib_gmzx4o: it iis ubuntu live cd (10:51:21 AM) mib_gmzx4o: anyone else experiencing high Xorg memory usage (10:51:26 AM) mib_gmzx4o: ? (10:51:44 AM) xokaido: does anyone know why FF should port of a site (in the past I have used port 81, now I don't want) and how to change it?.. (10:51:45 AM) heftig: 646m virt (10:51:52 AM) heftig: topped by firefox at 1g virt (10:51:58 AM) mib_gmzx4o: Frederick: try this ---> http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/reinstall-ubuntu-grub-bootloader-after-windows-wipes-it-out/ (10:52:02 AM) donglep3 left the room. (10:52:13 AM) aff___ is now known as killown (10:52:27 AM) linatrix- left the room (quit: No route to host). (10:52:57 AM) Schoktra left the room (quit: ). (10:53:07 AM) xokaido: does anyone know why FF should remember the port of a site (in the past I have used port 81, now I don't want) and how to change it?.. (10:53:14 AM) jnewt3 [n=jnewt@adsl-75-46-219-141.dsl.ksc2mo.sbcglobal.net] entered the room. (10:53:25 AM) mib_gmzx4o: xokaido: if you're not sure (10:53:34 AM) mib_gmzx4o: just wipe firefox from your system and reinstall it (10:53:42 AM) Titan8990: mib_gmzx4o, are you serious? (10:53:42 AM) mib_gmzx4o: BAM you get defaults back (10:53:51 AM) SQlvpapir_ [n=teis@0x50c60c4b.virnxx10.dynamic.dsl.tele.dk] entered the room. (10:53:55 AM) mib_gmzx4o: Titan8990: about what ? (10:54:00 AM) xokaido: loool, I really don't want to be done... (10:54:02 AM) Titan8990: xokaido, ctrl+shift+delete (10:54:08 AM) wooby left the room (quit: Remote closed the connection). (10:54:13 AM) Titan8990: mib_gmzx4o, lol reinstalling firefox to reset settings (10:54:16 AM) xokaido: am sure there would be an easier solution, thx anyway... ;-) (10:54:21 AM) Frederick: setup (hd0) (10:54:22 AM) Frederick: Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition (10:54:26 AM) Texou left the room (quit: "++"). (10:54:35 AM) mib_gmzx4o: Titan8990: well, whatever :) (10:54:39 AM) kksm19820117 [n=kksm1982@121.247.73.92] entered the room. (10:54:41 AM) mib_gmzx4o: the man's question sounded specific (10:54:42 AM) xokaido: Titan8990, doesn't work... (10:54:44 AM) mib_gmzx4o: never heard of that (10:55:07 AM) Just4Now: Ok, i'm sure it's /dev/sda0. But i still get " cannot open root device "NULL" or unknown block (8,3)." Which makes me wonder, how could the install CD boot from the HD without loading the drivers first? (10:55:08 AM) Chriswaterguy: I definitely want a distro with LXDE :-). So nice, so fast, works smoothly. (10:55:10 AM) mib_gmzx4o: xokaido: just do a rm -r ~/.mozilla


I like a fast, light system. Fast = green. Lean code = less waiting, less headaches. LXDE/Openbox is the best I've found for my level of ability.

(11:32:39 AM) Chriswaterguy1: heftig: I assume "time to set it up" means I need a deeper knowledge of Linux than I have? i.e. good working knowledge of the CLI for a start. (11:33:05 AM) F00f00foo: Chriswaterguy1: for gentoo install ? yes. (11:33:14 AM) heftig: Chriswaterguy1: they do provide very nice guides. (11:33:39 AM) segin|kvirc left the room (quit: Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)). (11:33:43 AM) Chriswaterguy1: heftig: "nice guides" - link? I doubt I'll go there, but I like to see good docs. (11:33:56 AM) F00f00foo: you need another machine though... or a printer.. or a nack for using multiple consoles and text based browsers (11:34:19 AM) Chriswaterguy1: I mean, doubt I'll install, but I really believe in good docs. (And yes, I do contribute, to various wikis) (11:34:46 AM) heftig: Chriswaterguy1: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1 (11:34:47 AM) F00f00foo: Chriswaterguy1: google gentoo install (11:34:55 AM) heftig: Chriswaterguy1: takes you through the whole install process of a minimal system

Beginners_permaculture_garden

Chris - not sure where to respond to you. So I'll put it here. Thx for the twitter help for Beginners_permaculture_garden. Our Chicago project is to build a Chicago MyFarm organization like MyFarm. See Chicago MyFarm. We want the whole thing to be open source, creative commons, etc. So, we'll be pushing how-to's to Appropedia, etc. - user:bmorrisett (morrisett at midwestcyber.com - my spam software works pretty well)

Thanks for the note! I only just noticed it, and moved it from my user page to here on the talk page. (Sorry, it's still a bit confusing for people new to wikis.)
Great project. Keep taking the lead, and keep me updated - actually, keep the Appropedia community updated (which includes me of course). --Chriswaterguy 04:37, 15 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Some questions about translating pages

I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this but here goes. I was wondering how exactly to format translated pages when it's not always obvious? For example, the "Tepache" stub I recently put up -- the word tepache already is in Spanish, but it's also the title of the English article, so what title do I give the Spanish translation? is there a standard? (I tentatively did a translation of Kvass and titled it Kvass_(es). Seems simple enough, but maybe there should be a es.appropedia.org subdomain like Wikipedia has?) + is there a template tag to add to the top of pages to direct users to translated versions? (there was mention of this in the translation help article, but couldn't tell if it exists) Oorxax 17:25, 15 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You handled it very well.
I added the interlanguage template to the Kvass pages,and yes, yes, yes, we need subdomains like Wikimedia projects (or subwikis like Wikitravel, but I think subdomains look tidier). We have been extremely short of tech help - Lonny's the master of tech things and doing a good job of keeping things afloat, not by choice but because there's noone doing it. We're working on recruiting volunteers - do you have any green geek friends? :-) - and have recently set up a dev wiki. We're also discussing a merger with Ekopedia, which is mainly French and already has the subdomains. Thanks! --Chriswaterguy 03:39, 17 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]


Help with porting

Hi Chris, I apologize for the untimely response. Everything seems to be going well. I am currently doing much of the porting manually and have had very little to no problems doing it in this manner. However I am still in search for an all encompassing program, or suite such as OpenOffice to perform all the steps. Lonny and myself have found several PDF to word converters but I haven't been satisfied with the exporting from .odt to mediawiki. Anyhow, I will respond in a timely fashion from here on out. I appreciate any help. Thanks! --Steven M. 16:17, 18 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

E-waste Installing Linux on old PCs

Hey there Chris, I came across an opportunity to reduce the e-waste in Humboldt County. Basically, I was approached by a classmate wanting to know how to install a Linux distro on old PCs in order to reuse, recycle, and educate. It's the same project outline as Free Geek. As far as I was told most of the e-waste in Humboldt gets shipped out once a year and only one person in the county is taking advantage of it in a business fashion. Anyhow, I hear you are the resident guru with Linux and was wondering how I would go about installing Linux on these PCs. I found out that Vector Linux or Slackware might be good distros to use but I have several questions on where to start i.e hardware specs, software, etc. Any direction would be greatly appreciated.

Also, in the near future I will be going over the GNU and CC agreements in order to get permission for the database provided by agroinnavations . I'm not quite sure how to approach this. Lonny suggested that I make a spreadsheet listing all the relative copyrights. I don't have a exact question pertaining to this for you yet, but look for some soon.

Thanks, --Steven M. 00:40, 10 April 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

George, still running after mosquito

Hi Chris, This is same George & am still after mosquito. I am still alive and feel stronger after the second angio-plasty, thank you for your prayers. Still remember you having told that you don't have much time to waste on silly matters. I find you busier than ever. Good. Keep it up.

But what to do? Unfortunately, as usual, I have a small problem now & thought you will be able to guide me out of it. Me unable to access the forums page on mosquito control http://forum.appropedia.org/forum/efficacy-source-reduction-mosquito-control#comment-118 . Could you please spare a short span of your valuable time to tell me how to sort out this or who can be approached to get this set right or clarified? Does this page still exist? How to find out? Bye4now. E.M.George talk

Hi George,
I hope I didn't give the impression that I'm too busy for you or others in the Appropedia community - we're always available for you :-).
The forum site is down at the moment - Curt is working on it. The forum never took off though, so I'm thinking of doing a blog post and inviting comments there. We could also take content from the forum page (when it's fixed) to the wiki, and summarize the arguments there.
I'm glad you're feeling stronger - keep taking care of yourself! --Chriswaterguy 17:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Aloha CWG...

thanks for the tip on how to make my <references /> thingy work better ==

....and thanks for rolling out the welcome mat to me too. Hope to talk more soon. For the life, Stele Ely http://XOEarth.org http://ecofx.org

Hi Chris

Thank you very much for the instantaneous reply. Can I expect a mail when the site is up?

EMGeorge

note to self

http://www.geocities.com/allhou/taiwan.htm

Offline a few hours

Chriswaterguy here - broke my computer cable so I'll be offline much of today.

Notes for myself:

-- Chriswaterguy 02:01, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Notes to self

The solution I found to empty the swap is to disable it: it forces the kernel to empty it first. Then I just re-enable it as soon, and I the system starts from a clean sheet so to speak. To disable swap: $ sudo swapoff -a Then re-enable it: $ sudo swapon -a There is also another use case for this off/on trick: When I was (not using it anymore) the Hibernation feature, I noticed that when resuming, the system was very slow... it was using swap a lot, even though zero swap was used before hibernating was triggered. So you basically have a responsive/snappy system before hibernating, and when resuming, ytou get a slow system... how nice. So turning the swap off/on following a resume, fixed the problem. -- http://www.linux-archive.org/ubuntu-user/269721-not-enough-free-swap-space-hibernate.html

not enabled:

  • bluez - bluetooth
  • cupsys - printer service
  • SaMBa Server for MS networking

Great EULA - blog?

md5sums: http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/using_md5sums.html recommends digestIT http://www.colonywest.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=56

Hi Chris

This is George, popularly known among close friends as mosquito george. This time I have come with a still more controversial statement.

MyDiabetesIsCured   Diabetes_mellitus_cured.  Please visit the page and comment.

MosquitoGeorge · talk Shooter 09:53, 16 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Already getting in touch with medical people

Hi Chris,

Thank you very much for your generosity.

I am already on the move to get the thoughts & critical opinions on this matter. Have already collected the contact details of a few. Drafting a letter is in progress. Will be back to you soon.

MosquitoGeorge · talk Shooter 06:51, 26 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi Chris, this is George

I am extremely sorry for the delay in uploading the ENGLISH VERSION of detailed account of curing disease. Translation took much more time than preparing the original. It is placed in a blog utilising the space of Google. Its URL is http://diabetescured090909.blogspot.com/2009/10/my-diabetes-is-cured-do-you-want-to.html and title is: "MyDiabetesCured; do you want to cure yours?". Hope you will see that. E-mail containing the link of the Appropedia page Diabetes_mellitus_cured and a request to join the discussion is sent to 10 physicians at various locations. Their responses are awaited. Thank you once again for allowing the page to be retained there. A neighbour who has been diabetic for more than a decade, and on insulin for more than 5 years was havins Fasting Blood Sugar 225 mg% & HbA1C 10.5% a week back. Now her FBS is 71 mg% following my routine. Shall et in touch soon.

  talk Shooter 08:06, 9 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]


Hi Chris, this is George

I am back after prostate removal surgery (TURP). But still bed-ridden due to post operative problems. So not in touch with NET or PC for last 2 weeks. Will get in touch with you as soon as I am back on track.

talk Shooter 13:42, 25 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

green communities

Hello ! thanks again for having pointed out people who could give me some answers yesterday ! Here are our questions if you feel like giving your opinion : Age : Occupation: Country : When did you join the community ? How did you get to know it ? Why did you join it ? How many times a day/week/month do you go on the website ? Did you ever take a part in concrete actions following online discussions ? If you did, how often and what kind of actions were they ? How committed are you ? (in your community, and more generally, in the whole green « revolution » ?) In online discussions, what do you see the most  : friendly and general discussions or talks about specific green topics ? How would you qualify your relation with the community (expectations and mutual benefits ? ) ? In your opinion, to what extent online green communities can be useful ? thanks ! sarah

Images ISF-IAI documents

Hi Chris, Just finished up on the latest articles I made, some bugs remain here and there (a few tables aren't completely correct, ...) but overall the documents seem good enough for now. Have you already contacted the person intrested in porting the images using Adobe Acrobat ? For the moment, I'm now going to be off the grid for 1,5 week because of an upcoming exam (boating licence) , so I won't be on-line this week and a half (I'll do the first part of the Agriculture manual later-on). What should I do with the ISF-pdf's; I could sent them to the person you mentioned, but perhaps I could also simply upload it to Appropedia (temporarily) ? I btw also sent the mail to ISF-IAI for the required permissions. KVDP 13:34, 20 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

OBED

Hello Chris,

I knew OBED was being spammed. Gave up deleting spam as it was very time consuming and was waiting for my brother, who set it up and hosts it, to add Captcha security. He finally did this about a week ago. I just checked and there is a huge amount of new SPambot users and no easy/quick way for me to delete them all. DO you know of way to do this?

As for the community there, sadly its a community of one, me. I'd be happy for you to mirror the content here.

Best

Darren

Instant messaging +categorisation

Hey Chris, having been thinking about your mail in which you stated you worked with a bot, I thought it would be handy to use this bot to help us set up the instant messaging idea. I thus made a small page called Members, and the idea is that the bot could prod all the Appropedia members to place in their own information. Look whether the table is OK and whether extra info needs to be placed on to be requested to the members. Note that I think the Category:Members should be used to replace the Category:Users by interest (subcategories already explain the ... by intrest) Note that some categories as "users intrested in water and sanitation" are also best changed, in line with my recategorisation remarks (meaning that eg for this category, the category would become eg "users intrested in water harvesting", and "users intrested in sanitation". I think the ..."users" category are also best swapped with "members" (as users can also be passer-bys; not having an appropedia account). The members category should also no longer come under Category: Appropedia administration (members are not part of the administration; eg they are not administrators). If completed, a link may be placed at Appropedia:About to quickly click to the members list. As noted in the village pump, the anonymous editing and anonymous page viewing of specific pages as this one first needs to be switched off to eliminate spam. I think that to implement this measure, it may be needed to talk to the other administrators.

Kristof

Thanks - interesting idea re instant messaging. Initial thought: This can be automated once we get some semantic capabilities. That will be much easier, I think, so how about we focus some attention on how to choose and implement our semantic setup? --Chriswaterguy 11:20, 30 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I've been a little busy with family, and ate something I shouldn't have (but better now) so I've fallen behind a little, but still working towards getting some PDF help, and thinking about manuals and policy. Would appreciate your thoughts on Talk:AT villager recruitment.
Hey Chris, comment added at the same article

Kristof

A small extra idea regarding the members: perhaps it's useful to include information about the AT organisation the member adheres to. In this respect, it would be useful to have them act as "representatives" for the AT organisation, and possibly have them selected as the main porting helpers for porting the articles off the organisation (ideally in both ways; meaning that the AT organisation also selected the member to port their articles; and that the initiative thus not only come from the member itself (eg similar to myself)). They can also compile a list of articles written by the AT organisation, so as to know how much we still need to port.
Certainly. At the moment, anyone can use (or make) a userbox to put on their userpage, showing their affiliations or interests, and the box can add them to a category. We can do more when we get semantic features. Did you have other ideas? --Chriswaterguy 07:30, 14 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, but I think it's best to "automate" this a little. Perhaps that instead of a standard welcome message (eg as with Wikipedia's "the pillars of Wikipedia", ...), the "To do"-list, and the infoboxes with the necessairy personal info can already be automatically placed on the user page (eg generated when a new user is made).
Definitely! We'd love to do this but aren't sure how. There are various extensions used by Wikia, but I'm not sure how well they work. I'm not sure what skills are needed - probably PHP, but to write a wizard to help someone set the userboxes, I'm not sure.
MediaWiki isn't really designed to make this easy, but the other option is to partner with a social network and merge the userpages from each site. That might be best. --Chriswaterguy 13:35, 17 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Also, I would also like to hear your comments on the switching off of the anonymous editing. Besides being necessairy for eg spam, ... (as mentioned in this section before), I think that this will persuade many more AT organisations to increase their porting of their documents to here. A main argument against Appropedia (which I btw also heard from Ingenieurs Zonder Grenzen) is that the data is not kept secure enough (they are thus less eager to become dependant on the documents stored here). I think that simply switching anonymous editing off (aswell as making certain very specific documents unreadable without account) is more then enough to adress this. Captcha, ... (used eg by other wiki's as PESwiki is I believe not required).

I believe the value of allowing anon editing is greater than the tradeoffs. Spam and vandalism have been greatly reduced. Some people worry about anons and security, but would they edit anyway if we had closed editing? My experience makes me doubt it. For every 100 people who browses on Appropedia, maybe 1 will actually contribute - I think that's how the web works, and trying to change our site to make non-contributors happy should not be a top priority.
I understand that people will be quicker to edit pages, but I'm not sure whether this really justifies not switching it off. People that are more quick to edit the pages, logically seeing, would normally not really add substantial info (aldough perhaps they could provide some simple cleanups, ...). Often the people that are willing to really provide a contribution will gladly go into the trouble to register. As for the browsing, indeed more people will simply browse appropedia and not necessairily edit them, but then they also aren't affected by the switching off of the anonymous editing.
In our experience here and when studies have been done on Wikipedia, anonymous editors have overall been positive contributors to the site. As they say, Wikipedia only works in practice, not in theory :-). Often what happens is that new contributors do so anonymously a few times, and only then go on to register. This includes people posting projects. So we want a low barrier.
My comment about non-contributors was in reference to organizations and people that express this concern about anons. My question is: if we turned off anon editing, would these people and organizations contribute to the wiki? My guess is that they would usually continue to not contribute, because A. most people don't contribute and B. they aren't so enthusiastic about it that they've contacted us or even tried to edit here. That's okay, and I hope they get value from the site, but we work with the people who do contribute. --Chriswaterguy 12:55, 16 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If specific pages should be protected from anon editors, they can be "semi-protected" by an admin. I see no problem with requesting this for specific project and organization pages if there is a concern. We'd also be happy to hear from organizations such as Ingenieurs Zonder Grenzen about their specific concerns, and how we could address them. --Chriswaterguy 07:30, 14 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Small remark: I stated that specific pages are best protected from viewing by anonymous users. This because, as in the example of the members page, e-mailadresses, ... are best protected from spam, ...
It's important to protect email addresses. There are other ways though, e.g. the {{email}} template, and possibly the mw: Extension: Bad Behavior plugin, to stop harvesters. We'd need tech help with the extension. Restricting reading of pages is hard in MediaWiki. --Chriswaterguy 12:55, 16 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I wanted to explain our reasoning more, so here are Open edit and Quality in an open edit wiki - I'm sure there are other writings as well that could be referenced. --Chriswaterguy 14:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Finally, is there any progress on the logo ? I sent a message to Tressie a while ago, but I'm guessing she's no longer active. I had btw also had an idea about a mascotte (such as eg Tux with Linux), hereby opting for either the birdman (Tangata-Manu; http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangata_Manu; see http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/oceanic-mythology.php?deity=TANGATA-MANU&ds=N) or an equivalent I've seen in the Dresdener Codex (http://www.famsi.org/research/graz/dresdensis/img_page08.html third one at the top or http://www.famsi.org/research/graz/dresdensis/img_page02.html entirely at the bottom). Dough I had this idea for while now (a few years), I was reminded on it due to a NGC-documentary in the run-up to the 2012 movie. However, this idea is probably not usable for Appropedia, and also doesn't give a "positive" message. Perhaps I could use it for something else in the future.

UPDATE found another useful logo, namely the image from the cover of the book "Deadly companions by Dorothy H. Crawford". Note that a Dresdener codec image seems less and less appealing; it appears that 2012 isn't the right date of the end of the world according to the Mayans, its 2200 (see wikipedia, edited text)
I see what you're doing with the logo, and yours is certainly much clearer. I haven't heard from Tressie or anyone else, but I think many people like a design which is more for aesthetics, and less clear, rather than a diagram. The diagram can be used in another way.
Indeed, it could be used for some other purpose as well, maybe to accompany the text in the CategoryTree.
Interesting thought about a mascot - I wonder what a suitable one might be?

At present, I'm working on translating the newly uploaded documents at the agriculture manual (also going to upload some new schematics at wiki commons, so perhaps I'll need to delay 1-2 days). The exams I mentioned before have been finished since a week, so I'll now have some more time to continue my work here. KVDP 14:34, 10 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Great news - hope you get the results you wanted! --Chriswaterguy 07:30, 14 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Passed the exam. As for the agriculture manual, there is one other thing i've been thinking about. Similar to what I proposed in the categorisation, we will need to include info not only on food production, but also food processing and storage. At wikiversity I already have some 2 (quite useful) documents that can be ported, aswell as some ideas for the inclusion of a map (world staple foods, ...; see the invisible remarks at the article's TOC). However, the "Agriculture manual" should probably only include "agriculture" or food production. I did however already include a section on processing. To include all of the steps, we can thus change the name to "Food production, processing and storage manual" or simply "Food manual". An alternative is splitting up the manual to include simply food production, a manual on processing, a manual on storage and have a seperate manual eg on Nutrition (mentioning eg global deficiency ilnesses per world country and causes, the main nutritional elements for humans, ...). The downside with this splitting-up in several documents is however, that one can quickly lose sight of the big picture and that edits will be done lacking a complete approach (eg by including foods that are unsuited to long storage, can not be processed in derivative products, ...).

81.245.94.151 12:34, 16 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Congratulations on the exam! Looking forward to seeing the pages about food.
"The downside with this splitting-up in several documents is however, that one can quickly lose sight of the big picture" - it's certainly important to have overview pages, and sections of articles that refer to other pages, e.g. the {{main}} template and a brief summary. Food production and food processing are already extremely broad topics so they should be overview pages, but it's possibly to have a higher level as well. I'm keen to get to work on the lower levels so that we have pages to refer to in the overviews.
I have to sleep as I have an early morning - will get back to you soon! --Chriswaterguy 12:55, 16 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Pumps

Made some primary drafts from http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ah810e/AH810E06.htm#6.1.1 Not sure dough whether when I finish them, they are modified enough to be published as public domain. How much exactly does this need to be (eg beyond recognition, or simply modified so that it's "different") ? Also, I haven't finished them as I'm not sure about the specific differences between a piston and a plunger pump (I'm guessing you may know a little more in this matter, I did some research such as on http://www.wot.utwente.nl/information/tour/handpump.html, but this wasn't very helpful). On the water lifting devices page, in some images it seems like a plunger pump is a pump where the water is pushed so that it rises on the sides of the plunger towards a pipe (see Fig. 28), not sure about the piston pump(eg perhaps with the latter it could be the combination of pushing + pulling the water up, but then the difference between a bucketpump or direct lift would be little, so not sure). On an other image I made, it merely looks like a piston pump is simply a pump with a smaller pusher, and a plunger a pump with a larger pusher. The images would be useful to document a future manual on the construction of borehole pumps (for potable water harvesting, not irrigation) KVDP 14:58, 30 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm not a pump expert :-) but I found this:
Piston Pump – the high-pressure seal reciprocates with the piston and slides though a smooth-bore cylinder
Plunger Pump – the high-pressure seal is stationary and a smooth cylindrical plunger slides though the seal
- more details here.
Indeed useful, but not sure whether all piston pumps have a "unflow" and all plunger pumps have a "direct flow design" (http://www.catpumps.com/pumps-how-they-work-piston-plunger-sf-flushed.html). For example do piston pumps exist that also have a seperate inlet and outlet (and vice versa). I'm thus no sure how I need to alter my Piston_VS_Plunger_Pump.png
Regarding th Piston_pump.png, I'm not quite sure whether the water flows trough the valve or around it (nor exactly how it works). I thus need a little help figuring out how I need to color the image (and or add any parts to it).
The basic point confirmed here (PDF). Hope that helps.
Re public domain: I think it needs to be simply modified so that it's "different". How to define that is hard. The same idea rearranged a bit and some different wording is okay, I believe. And in the case of the FAO, I don't expect them to cause big problems - at worst we'd have to do some more rewording.

--Chriswaterguy 17:06, 30 November 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Recategorisation

Hey Chris, I implemented my main recategorisation as noted earlier (see http://www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:CategoryTree). I however still need to move all the articles under the "Water" and "Food and agriculture" category to respecively the "Water harvesting" and the "Food production, processing and storage" category (Healthcare already finished). These new categories are needed as the water category is still used/mistaken to include sanitation (moved to healthcare) and "Food and agriculture" doesn't make it clear that several actions are included in this category (production, processing, storage; subsections can be made later-on) and the "Agriculture" part is redundant and again also refers to activities that are unsustainable (eg cattle breeding, ...)

Is it possible to program the Chriswaterguy's bot to change the category links of the articles automatically for these new categories ?

Kristof

Answered at User talk:KVDP#Emergency management and healthcare.
Btw --~~~~ creates a signature. There's a button on the edit bar (left of the horizontal line button) that does it too. --Chriswaterguy 16:22, 1 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Added some replies at the same article. Also take a look at the Village Pump regarding the categorisation for the Wind Power/Energy category. (at the bottom)

KVDP 12:39, 2 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi Chris, this is George

Sorry to pester you again. In order to maintain the neatness of this page, I have placed the material for your kind attention in my talk page. Please read it and as usual extend a helping hand to clarify things. Georgedappilly.talk Shooter 07:37, 13 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Just responded

Just responded to your comment on my user pageJoe Raftery 16:08, 19 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

breathe;

yes sir; plus more i suppose. :) Emesee

compromise in advance?

perhaps if I create something and you would like it to be "deleted" you could move it to my userspace until it is developed furthur? ... :) Emesee

Cool, will do. --Chriswaterguy 01:31, 22 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Response

Responded on my user page. Btw: also see the page talk at the Climate news page. KVDP 08:51, 23 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Google SketchUp course

Hey Chris, a few weeks ago I attended a Google sketchUp course (to learn all the remaining program-specifics). A coursebook of this is available at http://www.skup.be/syntra/sketchup/ (password:syntrup). It is in Dutch, so translation needs to be done, but as the course is given by a Dutch person (for a Dutch class), I think he will agree to give the permission for using it. As google itself (http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/training/atc.html) doesn't provide any good courses (only some demo's, interactive video's, ...), it may be valuable (especially to distribute the AT-technologies better eg via a single, freely usable CAD-program). If there's intrest, we could have it included here. I already contacted ingenieurs zonder grenzen about it, perhaps they could lend us a hand. KVDP 14:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Early messages regarding AT

Hey Chris, not sure whether Appropedia can use/integrate it at the moment, but I sent some messages (a long while ago) to some people working on AT. The messages can be found at [3]. Perhaps you know some people which are intrested in it. KVDP 10:24, 5 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Google Wave

Hi Chris, received your message regarding Google wave. It seems however that Google wave allows chatting even when not online in real-time. It's thus a bit hard to know when we can talk (it doesn't indicate when you are on-line, meaning I cant use it to predict when I would need to tune in for a real-time conversation. I placed a schedule for this on Members. KVDP 10:51, 13 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It's definitely best for the asynchronous stuff, I think. I'm just experimenting for now, but I thought it could be useful for keeping track of projects and tasks.

Hmm; I think the Appropedia user page is better used for this, I proposed to integrate a more persionalised user page (immediatelly imbeddding eg To do, AT organisation affiliation, ... ) As for simple contacting if you're stuck on a project, I think a regular instant messenger (thus not Google Wave) would be best. I would like to set this one up soon, but I'm not sure what members are still active, and there is very little cooperation on the Members page. Also, some additional site make-up would be needed; eg a the Members page would need to be easier available, ...

I wanted to ask if you'd been in touch with the copyright holders of the work you're translating, re releasing under our CC-BY-SA license?

Not sure what work you're referring to; in any case I don't have anything I'm working on at the moment at Appropedia, now mostly finishing up some new images at Wikipedia.

Finally, regarding the anonymous page viewing, I remembered you stated that this can not be easily done in a wiki. However, do you then mean that it can be done, but that it's not easy to set up, or can't it be done at all. Regarding some other pages I'd like to make, ... I think switching off page viewing is pretty much the only solution, so we'll need it. Otherwise, we can set up a ftp-site in which a section is closed off by a password (the ftp can then also be used for swapping files that still need processing; eg pdf-files that need to be translated, or where images need to be extracted from). KVDP 09:10, 15 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi Chris, George here

Thank you very much for the clarification.

My pleasure! --Chriswaterguy 21:08, 13 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Practicalities... Ekopedia - Appropedia

I found back this... Is it still possible and is it the strategy we will use to import Ekopedia En on Appropedia?

Is it possible to create robots to transfer the content from Ekopedia to Appropedia and vise-versa?

What about the possible similar pages?

I am quite busy preparing a 3 month project in Israel Palestine but I am also really wishing to help so if you see anything I can do.

And I want also let you know that I am really happy that you are building so great on my small initiative to connect you.

Olivier C 11:22, 22 February 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Transferring content is actually easy between MediaWiki sites (using Special:Export and Special:Import). I think it prompts when there are pages with the same name, but we can check that.
An approach I'm taking with the Appropedia:Stubs from Wikipedia articles project is to edit the exported XML file, to add (from Wikipedia) to each title. Then after importing, we can do a mass move (by bot) to remove the suffixes - the pages that fail to move because of an existing page will still have that suffix in the pagename, and need to be merged. That looks to me like a good process to use for the Ekopedia/Appropedia wiki merges - it makes it easy to keep track of groups of pages that need merging.
Your initiative to connect us was wonderful, and it has come so far! --Chriswaterguy 15:28, 24 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

So exited to see the collaboration evolving and going on. Olivier C 12:25, 14 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi Olivier. Yes, the export-import is still what I plan to use. Actually the challenge now is the images - I've asked for help, and am not sure when I can solve it, but should be all complete late this month, at the latest.
I found a simpler way to avoid pagename clashes for this case - I make a list of links to all the pagenames, on Appropedia. Any that is not a redlink is a clash - I'll edit the pagename in the XML file I get from Special:Export, to avoid that.
Thanks for your encouragement! --Chriswaterguy 13:10, 14 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

copy right vios

C -- the lithium ion battery page is ok -- I believe all the images and the graphs in Hot-Melt Extrusion are violations -- I leave it up to your discretion if it is better to delete images and leave the page or pull the entire article....Thanks--Joshua 18:58, 14 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sewerage

Finished up on a image at wikimedia commons, uploaded here too. See [[4]]. Has some guidelines for improving sewerage systems KVDP 15:40, 25 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hands image

I finished up on the image modification for the new hands image. I overwrote the old image, so it bears the same name. KVDP 13:42, 4 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Members

Hey Chris, Updated the Members page, aldough it will still probably miss some users (I compiled list manually), it's probably already good enough to publish a link directly from the navbar, could you do this ? To complete the list, perhaps you know an automatic way (I still have the txt I used if this is helpful; used Another notepad for automatic listing).

In addition, I integrated the Category:Members; this category can be used to list all the members (perhaps the Chriswaterguybot can add the templates to all the User: pages

UPDATE

I just realise that something extra is missing: there is no differentiation between active and inactive members. I'm guessing that many (most?) members from the list have already stopped contributing and are no longer active. I'm not sure how to solve this, but it's annoying as the list gets hard to browse easily with so many inactive names. I'm not that up to date with wiki-software, but perhaps we can integrate something to fix this ? I was thinking about letting the Chriswaterguybot take out all the names that have been inactive for say, 2 months and place it on another article (thus building another list here with inactive members). This allows us to keep the data in case the member comes back after a while.

Also, we'll need to notify the older members to add their contact data to the list. Perhaps with the village pump ?

KVDP 09:32, 10 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I do believe that this has to be done using semantic functions in some way, which we hope to install soon. That way the list can be automatically kept up to date. The alternative (asking people to add themselves by editing a table in wiki markup) just won't work IMO.
I don't know how to easily distinguish between active and inactive... Special:Statistics gives a number, but not a list. I just looked and found mw:Extension:CurrentUsers- but installing a new extension is a big task, esp if there are conflicts, and we need to decide first, as a team, if this how we want to improve our ability to communicate.
If you know anyone who is good with PHP or Mediawiki, please point them in our direction! --Chriswaterguy 01:06, 11 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Here's an example of a MediaWiki site that can list active users: http://yomi.mobi/egate/Special:ActiveUsers - but I can't see on the version page which extension makes that possible. --Chriswaterguy 01:11, 11 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Not sure whether it's helpful (I'm quite oblivious on this matter), but searching a little I found the "SocialRewarding-extension"; see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SocialRewarding It also seems the extension is integrated in the "Mediawiki" wiki-website (see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developers ) Also, perhaps you can manually connect with some wiki-wizards on IRC (see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developers), http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:List_of_custodians and perhaps via the mailing list (https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l)

KVDP 10:33, 11 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Automatic welcome message

UPDATE

We'll also need to start on the automatic welcome message and Automated user page. For the welcome message, I already prodded User_talk:Steven_M.

For the automated user page (which would be automatically made when a new account is made; I would like to include the suggestions I made at Village_pump#AAI_projects. In practice, this means that we have this text generated at the page automatically:

==Current Appropedia projects== # ...

The tags can't be automatically added (different for any member); this is thus simply mentioned in the greeting (see Steven M.'s talk page). The tags themselves still need to be made however. Regarding the text in the greeting, you'll also notice the "Appropedia meeting place" entry; details on this at village pump#Site_reorganisation

KVDP 09:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

What about the user profiles at http://www.gardenology.org/wiki/User:Chriswaterguy ? I think it's a good start.
Hmmm, personally I think too little info is given. Good thought dough on adding the personal information, indeed this was still missing on the user page. However perhaps that again this problem is best handled with the wiki-software ? We already need to implement our own name at Special:Preferences, so perhaps that if we place some extra personal information (ie adress, telephone number, ...) at user:Preferences we can simply have the software show the info at the other pages aswell ? Again however, the issue of the anynomous user page viewing is lurking around the corner. This info should not be visisble for any anonymous user viewing the site. Some of the info (ie adress) is even best only shown specifically to other users that are within a AT-organisation. Requesting the adress could nonetheless be useful to facilitate eg projects of AT-organisations. Finally, I'm also guessing that the instant messenger info could be requested on the Special:Preferences-page, this info could then be automatically written into the Members table using the Chriswaterguybot (and in turn, the info can then be relayed to the inactive page when the user becomes inactive). It's becoming quite complex that way, and things will need to be set up well, but perhaps it's an option.
KVDP 10:46, 11 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Indeed I think the wiki software is the best way to implement it, using extensions. We must get a more active tech team to work on this. --Chriswaterguy 11:06, 11 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
UPDATE-->I noticed that Appropedia/wikis already have a user list(Special:ListUsers&limit=500). Perhaps that we can use this page as the members list by having the extra info from the User:Preferences shown here. Reason for this is that I'm not sure whether a seperate page that has a table implemeted can indeed be used for our purposes (might not be compatible)

KVDP 09:58, 19 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

That could be a really cool extension - perhaps you can describe it in detail as a new entry at Appropedia:Site_development/Desired_features. But first have a search on the web (esp mediawiki.org) to see if anyone has tried doing it already. --Chriswaterguy 14:53, 19 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
We could add welcome messages for new users by running a bot periodically. I'd be interested if we could learn how to do it automatically.
I'm not sure about "Current Appropedia projects" - many users would find it hard to specify particular projects. More (including myself, from experience) might list some pages, then forget about it for many months, so it ends up out of date. --Chriswaterguy 01:22, 11 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, I myself am about the same. However, simply the fact that you still have the list of things you still like to do makes it worthwhile. After some time, you'll notice them again and perhaps that as such, you'll still commence on them at some point. Also, having the text is useful fo others (If people leave we'll have a list what we still need to do/implement). Otherwise, if they leave the information/ideas they had leave with them.

KVDP 10:46, 11 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

UPDATE: Perhaps it is useful to also make a Template:Appropedia CAD team tag. We'll probably need a CAD team too in the future to draw out our ideas.
I don't know much about CAD, but certainly I'd like to support any tool that helps with design. I'm sure the Open Manufacturing people would know something about these things. --Chriswaterguy 13:26, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Probably, but this seems to be more about c&c, rapid prototyping etc. I would like to keep it simple at first; ie simply making regular CAD or SKP files using Google SketchUp. I also have the (Dutch) manual we can use as (basic) support for new members to this group. The CAD-models are useful for posting on blogs, wikipedia, ... aswell as when we wish to sent mails to companies that would actually be intrested in the designs/ideas. The c&c stuff is something we don't really need to get into, this can be handled by the companies.

KVDP 15:38, 13 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

copy right

Thanks Chris -- I should have had that in the project description -- it will be there next time -- Thanks --Joshua 15:19, 11 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Rfd

Hey Chris, The mysterious Guyonthesubway (which has been a driving force in removing allot of my articles) again posted another of my articles for deletion. See [5] . Could you place your vote on the page ? Perhaps there are any other people at appropedia too that could add their vote ? Thanks. KVDP 15:33, 13 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I left a comment - agree it should be kept. To avoid problems, be very careful to avoid neologisms. That invites the wrong kind of attention! --Chriswaterguy 06:22, 14 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Blog

Hey Chris, I sent a blog writing request to your google emailadress (singkong). Did the same to Curt, please accept the invitation. The idea is not to have you write my blog (since you stated you didn't have time), but only to set up things to move the blog to another account and to have several writers that can edit the blog when finished. See http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=41448 The new co-writers will then also have permission to invite new authors, ... so we can have other Appropedia members added later-on too. KVDP 09:39, 20 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks - have accepted the request.
Hope it's a fruitful exercise - certainly it's good to organize your ideas and invite feedback.
My own immediate plans for aid related info are to get more content for Template:Tlc and Template:Tlc. --Chriswaterguy 13:26, 20 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Casting & file hosting

Hey Chris, I was wondering whether you already read my email regarding the ISF-images and the set-up of the file-hosting (the latter would btw also be useful for the CAD team, ...). If you decided on how we may proceed (or not; ie we could wait untill we have a better solution aswell), please sent me a reply.

Regarding the aluminum recovery manual, I was thinking that we might perhaps implement some improvements. This, as trough a documentary I saw named "Mega-carrier: The construction of the USS George H.W. Bush" (showing the steelmaking at Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipyards ) I noticed that they are able to speed up the process. I dropped the "Apprentice School" a line, perhaps something might come out of this.

Finally, I noticed that there is already a oxyhydrogen generator design (from Dangerous laboratories) that we "might" use. See Alternative_ICE_fuel_generator (updated the page with some other info too). Offcourse the design will need to be improved a little (to make it safer, ...) but I'm guessing that if we do, and perhaps make a CAD model, we'll already have somewhat of a (extra) solution to the transport problem. We'll still need to fetch some data first dough on whether the production of oxyhydrogen is technically/economically viable using simple devices such as these. Perhaps we could sent a mail to the commercial company that has a oxyhydrogen generator (ie the Punch HHO generator, see http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Home_Generation:Hydrogen/oxyhydrogen_generator#Commercial_oxyhydrogen_generators)

KVDP 09:04, 26 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

thanks

nic... good to know.. seems pretty standard, thankfully. :) ~~

thanks

nic... good to know.. seems pretty standard, thankfully. :) ~~EME

thanks

nic... good to know.. seems pretty standard, thankfully. :) ~~EME

thanks

nic... good to know.. seems pretty standard, thankfully. :) ~~EME

thanks

nic... good to know.. seems pretty standard, thankfully. :) ~~EME

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