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

DynamicPageList

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice - que?

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

Dvorak converters

Slow computers: http://wbic16.xedoloh.com/dvorak.html

Fast computers: http://webspace.webring.com/people/jm/malibu_malv/convert.html

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]

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 "uniflow" 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]

Update --> http://www.appropedia.org/File:Plunger_pump_with_AT_valve.png needs to be removed
Update --> finished up on everything, also ported images to wikipedia

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]

I'm behind in my email - give me a day or two more to respond. Thanks. --Chriswaterguy 10:59, 1 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

thanks

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

File extensions

Hey Chris, It seems that there are a few file extensions that should be supported, this to allow some files to be uploaded for use with the SketchUp Beginner Manual (see appendix 1). KVDP 10:33, 1 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Came across another problem: we currently do not have the Multiple images-template. This causes some problems at page 1 and 2 of the SketchUp Beginner Manual KVDP 11:32, 5 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I checked Wikipedia:Template:Multiple image, and it relies on parser functions (note the "#if"). We're getting help with the dev wiki - still waiting on news but really hoping to have this soon. --Chriswaterguy

funding notes

are we capturing behavioral change?

are we tracking use patterns?

stats and stories

classes and change-makers

surveymonkey - front page

show a live active community

philanthropy aust - dir of foundations and trusts. - pay directory. maybe $100 for good half-day workshop on proposal writing

ASIX's trust plan; ATA funding partnership

US foundation center - http://foundationcenter.org/ - pay directory, free guides

Curt: what do you need when talking to funders?

AT netorks, agencies, CERES? google AT foundation...

contact, who knows: CAT? wto toilet.

2 hrs/d for phone calls.

donortech.com.au & adobe site

podcasts

ZumoDrive

Hey Chris, I tried out ZumoDrive, its pretty similar to Box.net, but easier to use and it provides us some extra disk space (1,2 GB, upto 1,5-1,7 upon attaining my "black belt" from the ZumoDrive dojo ,-) Anyhow, I placed the images I downloaded using Adobe Acrobat from the ISF-pdf's in this ZumoDrive. The files are downloadable using links, similar to Box.net; the links are placed on my user talk page. It will allow Appropedia members to work together on files, ... atleast to some degree (we'll still need to mail the files to 1 person which uploads the files to his Zumodrive-account; as users even within a group can't upload files themselves, they can download dough). I btw also sent you a permission mail for 1 file, but it seems that this permission mail only provides extra features to Zumodrive-users; as such its probably best to simply use/share the links. KVDP 14:53, 11 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Cool, that looks handy. Also see what you think of http://openpario.net/ --Chriswaterguy 18:49, 11 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Checked it out, but to me it looks more of a site for testing new pages, ... I don't think its particularly handy for quick sharing of files. The best solution would be a true FTP-server, as this allows anyone to upload files, and also provides a first connection to the root document, rather than having a link that needs to be shared for each map. These are the main flaws for the ZumoDrive-system.

KVDP 17:17, 14 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

UPDATE I'm already uploading the ISF-images to the Appropedia articles myself, so these ZumoDrive maps will go offline soon. However, some images don't seem to be downloaded with my (older) Adobe Acrobat version, even dough it apparently worked without problems at first. So someone else will need to do the rest of the images from the pdf's. Nonetheless, much work will be finished when done (within a couple of days)~.

KVDP 16:08, 16 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

User image

I took notice of the statement in the Welcome message to "share a picture of yourself". Aldough I didn't notice it before, it seems you can't simply upload this to your Appropedia account (at My preferences). Not sure how we best fix this, but I'm thinking that when you integrate the template for the user page of every new user (thus at the User:... page), you may integrate a image link, ie File:IDimage.jpg; I'm thinking that the images I made, knowingly File:John Doe avatar.jpg and File:Jane Doe avatar.jpg can be used as the standard image links (perhaps the image link can be switched automatically when selecting ie Male or Female at the user preferences-tab. KVDP 17:22, 14 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This is all beyond my technical ability - I think we need to find more tech help, and launch a project to try out social networking options. Until we know what larger solution we adopt, it's probably too early to tweak preferences for avatar upload.
I'm interested to see what we can do with WordPress plug-ins or Wordpress compatible forums, which we can connect to the wiki through a single login (OpenID backend). I met a WordPress developer - I'll look for his email... --Chriswaterguy 03:13, 15 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Intresting, indeed I thought about using a central database for the member information too. OpenID may be a good way, aldough I guess it's mostly used to avoid the need of making a new user for each new site, rather than the best way to share your information (for example the sharing of information is optional). Generally I thus prefer using simply Facebook, but this method offcourse doesn't allow the not needing of making a new user at new sites/wikis, ...

KVDP 08:00, 15 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Category tree image

Hey Chris,

Having thought a bit on what you said about the logo on the right

Appropedia logo 2009 11 2.png

, (ie that it could be used "in some other way"), I came up with a new idea. Perhaps that we can use the image to mark the categories; ie by adding clickable areas ("hotspots") (I've seen this being done in wiki commons charts too). The images that are now used would not be lost; instead they can simply be moved to the portal-page of the category.

Hmmm... I think in a page for the very technically minded, this could be interesting. Do you know the idea of different learning/communication styles, that some are more visual, some more "kinesthetic"... see the VARK model. Maybe this is good for one style of learning/communicating than others, e.g. the auditory/verbal approach. I personally still like a colorful and basically simple image where any user can tell in an instant what topic the image represents. --Chriswaterguy 10:21, 15 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

As for the hands-image, I was thinking that perhaps this could be used as the main Appropedia-logo (offcourse some visual improvements can first be added first). Perhaps I could mail Tressie for the brush-up (and not just "User talk" her like before) ?

KVDP 09:42, 15 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think a similar issue applies here... but the best place to ask this is at the Village Pump, to see if others have similar views. My feeling though is that it will be difficult to sway the community on this one, so it may be better to put your positive energy elsewhere. --Chriswaterguy 10:21, 15 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Having been thinking about making an image for the "nitrogen oxide IC-engine" idea, I thought (a variant of) the Red-John-Smiley-Face.png (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red-John-Smiley-Face.png ) might be useful. The idea here was too make the idea even a bit more appealing/trendy, which could be very useful as the idea is already on the line of the more "popular technology" (ie Tesla Motors roadster, electric vehicle conversions, Fast and the Furious-like car improvements, ...). Also, if the idea could be executed, it would be likely that the first modifications would be performed in ie car tuning businesses, ... publics which are mostly easy to inspire even with a simple logo, ... Hence the idea of making a logo.

However reflecting on matters even a bit more (despite that my initial idea is already a bit far-fetched ;) ), I was thinking that rather than making only a logo for this idea, we could perhaps make a logo for all AT technology, as a way of providing a "certification". This seems useful as, as more and more appropriate technology will be coming out (which are usually very eficient and fair in pricing), traditional companies (that pursue profits) could in the future try to make profits from things we've come up with (ie designs like the Hammer mill, ...). Aldough this is not necessairily a bad thing (they can make some money if the product still provides benefit in pulling people out of poverty, ...) some companies may bend things too much, and having an ace up our sleeve to combat this (even if we don't implement it right away) might be useful.

For the certification, I find the current Red John-smiley pretty good, as the smiley holds the middle between crying of joy or of misfortune (you can't really tell, i'll explain the deeper meaning depending on whether you like the basic idea or not). I would however modify the current image or make a new one (from a video; episode "His Red Right Hand"); this as the current version is a bit off. An alternative of the image might be something like a samurai, bapu/guru (to reflect to the Bushido, ahimsa, ... this being somewhat in line with the ethics underlying the AT-concept), or something similar. In addition to the image, we would however also need to make a database with designs that are fairly AT-specific (a bit similar to "patents"). We can then put companies next to the name that are still in line with our vision (ie that they sell it at not too great prices, make durable devices, ...) and also allow the use of our designs for non-commercial purposes (ie DIY construction, ...).

KVDP 13:19, 19 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Certification is an interesting idea... I've had an idea about certifying products as being made according to the principles of industrial ecology. It would not be suitable for Appropedia to approve or reject certain designs, IMO, but I'd like to see some "certification" done by objective criteria. Though, objective criteria will be easier for industrial ecology than for AT, since context and values are critical to AT.
Not sure what steps to take, but will think on it. --Chriswaterguy 07:29, 20 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Update; made the image for zero-emissions fuels:
ZE_fuel

Recharging batteries

Hey Chris, I noticed that there currently isn't much information about batteries at Appropedia. One particular thing I think would be useful to mention here is the recharging of "non-rechargable" batteries. This can be done using devices as the Batboostor (http://www.econologie.com/forums/batboostor-chargeur-d-accus-et-de-piles-jetables-vt3777-50.html ). I'm not sure but perhaps some chargers (that can do this) may be open-sourced (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_charging) Most of the main info can be grabbed from Practical Action (document: "How to Store Electricity in Batteries"; also available via Howtopedia). Note that its best to redirect the page from "Batteries" to either "Electrochemical cell" or "Energy storage"; note that Electrochemical cells are divided in "primary" and "secundary" electrochemical cells (see my AT terminology page). I tried updating the Wikipedia using these more accurate definitions a while ago, but no luck in this. I'm hoping the terms could be however be used here.

Having this info, aswell as the info about the recharging of regular non-rechargable batteries is useful, as I know that many people in the developing world still require upon it (ie for listening to music from walkman/discmans, ...). This particularly as the electricity grid is often so unreliable its often the best method.

Personally I don't really think its a good solution at all (as alkaline batteries are still costly even if they're used more than once) and as its not very multifunctional. Having some car batteries hooked up to the grid (for charging) is a better solution, and having some updates (as mentioned in my "[http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/DIY_home_electricity_system DIY Electricity System/ DIY UPS (google doc, not sure where I left link here at Appropedia)" at wikiversity) makes it even better.

Nonetheless, it could be useful here, ie for the devices mentioned above, aswell as perhaps for some low-power devices as locks, and small DIY electronic devices.

Note that if you embark on uploading the info, it's useful to also link to our the Appropedia document from some articles at Wikipedia.

KVDP 15:54, 20 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It would be great to have more information on batteries - please go ahead and add more. It's best to use established terms, but can mention alternative names in the articles. Thanks --Chriswaterguy 03:34, 21 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I'm tied up to other things at the moment, perhaps later-on.

KVDP 08:34, 22 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Water harvesting

Trough the text at the Optimized Water Catchment System article (left a comment), I noticed that some of my images were not available here, knowingly:

  • File:CatchingHillRunoffwater.jpg
  • File:PressurizedRooftopRainwaterHarvester.jpg
  • File:Rainwater harvesting system.jpg

Uploaded them for now, but I'm not sure whether they actually fit into the current Appropedia articles. They're also rather low-quality, but I recently left a image improvement request at our friends from the Wikipedia:Graphic lab. Perhaps that if new versions are made of the images, the images can be overwritten, and we can put up some links between the wikipedia Rainwater harvesting article and our articles.

UPDATE

Fred the Oyster at Wikipedia's Graphic Lab made some new versions of the images:

  • File:CatchingHillRunoffwater.svg
  • File:PressurizedRooftopRainwaterHarvester.svg
  • File:Rainwater harvesting system.svg

Note that as a thumb, the images are displayed very poorly (at least with me). The texts looks like graphiti/arabic text.

KVDP 08:34, 22 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

SVG's

Hi Chris, Just a small issue: Appropedia appearantly doesn't support SVG files; I noticed something like this a while ago when I posted an SVG about water harvesting (see post above), and it seems that with other SVG's, the file isn't shown at all, see http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Renewable_energy

In addition, it seems that there isn't a "move" button with categories (ie articles beginning with the name "Category:" I tried changing "Category:Muscle_power" to Category:Power from muscles (more suitable name, first one is strictly seen incorrect) but as I didn't see a button, I couldn't move it. KVDP 11:59, 3 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

SVGs: File:Hand.svg seems to work. I did a search for svg. If you can't work out where the problem is, try asking Lonny.
Categories: Categories can't be moved - this is to prevent problems if someone fails to edit all the pages in a category to change the category tag; also because it means a lot of changes, so it's best to get consensus first. Actually, [:Category:Muscle_power]] seems ok to me, and a bit simpler. Are you sure it's incorrect? --Chriswaterguy 18:28, 3 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Have a nice day

Why the fuck did you delete my article? Happy Hitch 00:58, 3 April 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This is not a site for bands - as I explained on your talk page. Please be civil and respect this site. --Chriswaterguy 01:23, 3 April 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

AT factories

Hey Chris, I made the article AT_factories. The idea here is to have the AT factories of the different AT-organisations work together (refer to the village pump). This might speed up building projects allot. I would however need some cooperation from the other "AT organisation liaisons" (see http://www.appropedia.org/User_talk:Steven_M.#Welcome_message_update ). I'm not sure whether some members have already been selected as liaisons however; perhaps we could make a page with a table in which the members are named for each AT-organisation.

We've had a few interns from Humboldt State University... these people aren't permanent though, usually just as long as their course lasts.

Re factories... I love the idea of indexing and mapping such sites. How people use that, and how they work together, is hard to predict, but creating the opportunity, plus people's creativity, could lead to good things. --~~

In addition, I also made a suggestion for a small new page which might be useful: see Talk:AT_CAD_Team

BTW: Did Appropedia already receive any response from the Grand Idea Studio and/or MIT's CADlab ? If not, I was thinking of sending the first one a letter but I didn't seem to find any actual postal adress for them. If we could get them cooperating with us, even by a little, we could perhaps get somewhere with the AT CAD Team.

KVDP 09:09, 13 April 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

No news from Grand Idea Studio or MIT's CADlab yet. We do have contacts at MIT which we've been meaning to chase up... thinking about seeing if we can get a communications intern to take a lead on these things. Hmmm... (sorry, trying to juggle many things, but I'll ask around about this...) --Chriswaterguy 10:21, 14 April 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hydrogen production + energy production

Hey Chris, finished up on 2 images for the wikipedia, uploaded them here aswell. File:Plant Microbial Fuel Cell.png File:Microbial electrolysis cell.png Take a look, its very useful technology, the first generates instant hydrogen, the second one generates electricity. Especially nr 2 is very useful for AT as the setup is very simple and requires very little material? Nr 1 remains to be seen, its the best method to make hydrogen but we still need to compare this gas to the other gases (ie nitrous oxide, oxyhydrogen, liquid nitrogen and so on) KVDP 13:38, 23 April 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

PS: The changes I noted in my e-mail have been done, so that's already out of the wayKVDP 13:38, 23 April 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

NOX Steam engines

Hey Chris, I placed a new idea regarding NOX steam engines at the village talk page (see Appropedia_talk:Village_pump#Nitrous_oxide_steam_engine . However, I'm still not sure how to proceed on this; we would actually need to look into the useability of NOX as an AT fuel aswell. However, I'm still unaware of whom we could talk to to have this sorted out.

In addition, I also had some 2 extra mails; 1 with ideas regarding solar stills, and another regarding taking over some loom designs (to Suzuki USA). I'll make these into google docs and link them to the articles; that way the template letter can be used by other appropedians to sent requests to other companies/branches (ie Suzuki Japan branch ?, ...)

KVDP 07:26, 5 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I wonder if we could engage with academics and their students, so students could do a Life cycle analysis of an idea or design such as this, as well as an assessment of whether the technology is appropriate. This can be a project for their course - HSU and Queens University, Kingston students already do these things, I believe, but we need many more. Perhaps there are educators at your university who would be interested in doing this? If you could point them to Portal:Service learning, they will see the kind of work that students do, and some of the advantages of being involved.
Let us know what responses you get to the letters.
Thanks ---Chriswaterguy 11:08, 5 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Updated my images, now includes entire working of steam engine, ... I also made my personal variants of the images, ie which include modifications on the firebox, a very simple "valve gear" (actually simply a piece of metal with holes), ... Modified images are linked in description at wiki commons image. Also updated the main firebox image at wikipedia (original one was incorrect).

BTW: I'm not engaged in any university, my personal educational background is also very modest at best. I'll now continue back on the electrical locomotive (usable for the AT Interstate traveller design) and finish up on some other ideas. KVDP 11:30, 7 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hey Chris,

Finished on the electrical locomotive. Also updated the valve gear, and put down some extra info at village talk section. Regarding the letters, I'll upload the suzuki-letter, and for the other letter regarding solar stills, I just put usable info from it at Talk:Solar_Still#Usable_commercial_solar_stills_.3F .Perhaps that my last idea may be useful for a AT design ? Otherwise, we could already use the product from the company mentioned, or Zonnewater and/or improve it. Also, I'm wondering whether Hatenboer-Water (Drinking with the wind) would be mentionnable at the solar destillation page ("seawater destillation section") (it's not really AT, but perhaps the product is still comparitively quite cheap).

Now going to work on biofuel/biodiesel page KVDP 09:58, 10 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Finished up on this one, my text at the image description will still need to be poured into the article; image at Biodiesel

KVDP 07:49, 11 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'll get started on perhaps a variation of the steam locomotive; a steam engine powered by a firebox running on solar power (concentrating solar plant). Perhaps I'll be able to make it more AT; I'll look on the plastic lenses I mentioned a while ago. --> finished up on this design, called "Solar pyramid in pit"

KVDP 09:01, 17 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Appropedia animations

Hey Chris, Having worked on the steam engine stuff, I noticed that there were allot of simple steam engine animations worked out by wikigraphists. I was thinking that we could do something similar for the Appropedia logo in the top left corner. A simple animation wouldn't require much bandwith to load, and it plays in a loop, so there's just 1 download. Also, we could recover the hands image, and update it. I was thinking of having a merging a pinion gear with the hands-image (having them spin and blurring and swapping the images as they pick up speed. This reflects the diversity of our members, aswell as the focus on simpel technology. If you like this (or if you have another suggestion), we can post a request at the wiki graphics lab (for the Appropedia page; and use image here aswell).

I was also thinking that, once we've done the more important stuff for Appropedia (ie member interaction, ...) we could possibly also make a Appropedia "intro" (ie using flash, ...) Again, I was thinking of again something with gears, ... , a bit like Celine Dion's One Heart movieclip.

Appropedia tune

Finally, an additional idea is to have a Appropedia theme song; I was thinking of something like K'naan's Waving Flag, with heavily modified lyrics. In addition, perhaps we could have the lyric "polyphonised"; ie music reverted to a special "ringtone" scheme; like they use on cellphones. This allows use of the song on low(er)-tech imbedded electronics (cellphones, DIY electronics, ...)

KVDP 07:53, 11 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Small update: seems the "polyphonising idea" is doable, see http://www.sofotex.com/download/Multimedia/Ringtone/ However, after reconsideration, K'naan's waving flag is probably already too popular (its also used by Coca Cola in their commercials). I've been thinking about a mechanical/engine-like tune instead; perhaps the melody of Alvin & The Chipmunks (http://music.aol.com/video/witch-doctor/alvin-and-the-chipmunks/2045440 ) ? Also, aldough it's useful that the melody can be repeated in a loop (for other purposes), when used on the website, it should only play once (ie when entering the site or logging on, ...)

KVDP 08:36, 3 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Interesting, new idea to me - a kind of audio branding. Something simple and pleasing to the ear, of course. It would need to be something unique and owned by Appropedia, or which we have permission to use. --Chriswaterguy 08:43, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
yes, and that will be the result in case we morph the Chipmunks-tune. I dug a little deeper and found that the polyphone music formats will probably be too good to allow the morphing I had in mind (I did a test with a conversion to .AMR). Instead, we'll probably need to use monophone or older file formats. Possibilities are the Harmonium file format (still unsure what this is), RTTTL, RTX, and some others such as eMelody, ... (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringtone#Ring_tone_encoding_formats ). Take a look on how the encoding is done at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_Tone_Transfer_Language .

I also recombinated the chipmunks-song (the part that repeats) to an own version, which is I believe better for use here (shorter, powerful, easy to remember). The tune goes:

  • tu-wee tabadam dam (exclemation on "dam dam", a bit conceived after the vandenborre tune, www.vandenborre.be/ ) )
  • the longer version goes: tuu-wee tuu ta taa (first part original tune), inmediatelly followed by "bing bang (silence) wa-la bing bang"

I think the second part can be composed by recombinating sections using Audacity. I already have the original music, so I'll get started on this. Once finished we can convert it using a music convertor as http://convert.viloader.net/ . (depending on what filetype we use, ie RTTTL, ... it may also be possible to look at the code, so as to check whether the verses are completely the same, and to use this method for other music projects aswell, also, in case the Audacity is too difficult to worl with without experience, we can use this method to skip the cutting and pasting) After conversion, the end result would sound allot different (engine-like) and it would also be legal for use by Appropedia (own work). KVDP 10:56, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Children of Shuang Shi tune (another usable tune : dabedabedabedabedabtabtaa dabedabedabedabedabtabtaa + chipmunks them makes: too-pop-e-di-ta-bedab-tab-taa, too-pop-e-di-ta-bedab-tab-taa

Usable software --> http://www.widisoft.com (WIDI recognition software + able MIDI editor)

Contact

Hey Chris,

I recently contacted someone for one of our projects. However, on the question on where we are located I replied the following:

Like Wikipedia, ... Appropedia is an open organisation, having members around the world. That said, 2 of the main member "hubs" are located in the USA (Humboldt State University) and Canada (Queens University), the actual departments can be found trough http://me.queensu.ca/ and http://www.humboldt.edu/engineering/

I guess that this is fairly accurate, but I noticed that we actually don't have actual adresses on our Appropedia:About page. Perhaps you could add this information ? It adds some extra credibility to Appropedia.

KVDP 11:15, 13 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks - that's a great response, but I've also asked Curt & Lonny what address we should use on the About & Contact pages. --Chriswaterguy 11:28, 13 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Locomotive image voting

Hey Chris, could you put down a vk vote here --> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Inaccurate_railway_locomotive_diagrams Losing the images at wiki commons (aldough we also have duplicates) would be quite harmful for the workout of some projects at the AT CAD section. 91.182.138.17 11:56, 14 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I don't know anything about the subject, but it seems agreed that the pictures don't represent actual locomotives... I think it's best to put effort into making suitable images based on actual existing designs, then there shouldn't be any issue with deletion. --Chriswaterguy 08:07, 15 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Hmmm, well the locomotives weren't authentic (ie the setup won't be completely true to how they are generally built). However, the system as how I drew it out will nonetheless work. We can perhaps improve the system later-on (ie with steam injectors, ...) Anyway, it seems like I'm getting some support, and I put down additional arguments, so perhaps that they won't be removed after all.

KVDP 08:58, 17 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

If it's not authentic but (by reasoning) you believe it should actually work... that sounds unsuitable for Wikipedia actually. I think it's good to listen to the concerns of the Wikipedia editors on this issue.
From a learning perspective as well, it's really valuable to delve deeply into things which have been built and used successfully, and fully understand them first, so doing diagrams based on authentic locomotives would be a really valuable exercise. --Chriswaterguy 21:20, 17 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Image renaming

Hey Chris, perhaps a newbie question, but how exactly do I rename images at Appropedia ? I want to rename File:Plunger pump with AT valve.png , but appearantly neither the rename media, nor the db-f8 template seem to work here. KVDP 16:00, 25 May 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

UPDATE

made a new image, this older image can be removed (valve I designed seemed unuseful with same diameter pipes, ...)

Schematics

Hey Chris, commented on your post at my user page. Tell me if you need any more info KVDP 14:21, 1 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

BTW: I had another question: is Appropedia already registered as a non-profit ? If we would do so (ie via http://ihcenter.org/, ...) we could perhaps request funding (which we could use to implement the discussed wiki-software upgrades, ...) from ie organisations as http://www.clintonfoundation.org/what-we-do/, ... That way things could go faster. KVDP 14:29, 1 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yes we are... 501c3 (tax exempt) charity, registered in California. Curt and I are looking at funding possibilities, actually.
Perhaps you can mention this at the About page.

KVDP 18:30, 2 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Done. Thanks, didn't realize that was missing. --Chriswaterguy 04:19, 3 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks for the clintonfoundation.org link - any relevant leads like this are valuable. --Chriswaterguy 01:16, 2 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Hey Chris;

a new idea: I just heared of the 2010 Cancún conference, and it seems that they are going to start a fund to provide money for developing countries in order to reduce their emissions. Personally, I'm since long not a fan anymore of the whole "climate change"-debacle and the organisations designated to "fix the problem", mostly because they talk allot and provide almost no practical changes (ie "advocated" reduction of 20% where almost 100% is required). Nonetheless, as they are finally providing a seperate fund for new initiatives (there allready were some funds' ie regarding reforestation, ... but these were very well-defined) and I think that Appropedia is one of their best bets cost-effectiveness wise. This as it's centralised and many of our projects (including the 3D models of the "AT CAD Team", and general Appropedia projects/information) offer allot of environmental advantage for a very limited cost. Perhaps we can write them a mail once they got their fund set up and once a website, ... is available. See

KVDP 13:35, 19 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks Kristof. This gives me an idea - if you're interested in working with me (and anyone else interested in finding funding for Appropedia), your work in finding specific links and funders would be really helpful. You're very persistent when you work on a task, and that's very valuable with this.
We could share a spreadsheet for keeping track all the information. Let's talk by email - will be in touch soon. --Chriswaterguy 12:11, 23 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Design philosophy

Chris, Having noticed that the KISS design philosophy has been mentioned by some at Appropedia, I was thinking of adding a replacement for this along with an article. This, especially as it doesn't really give a good representation, and I also don't like the "stupid" at the end. The alternative would be Durable, efficient, stoïc. It is however again an own creation, so I'm not sure whether I could mention it as a "general philosophy" for the AT CAD Team. However, it is already gives more info than just "appropriate technology". KVDP 18:30, 2 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I also don't really like the "stupid" at the end, but there are other versions of KISS or KIS - see Wikipedia:KISS principle. "Durable, efficient, stoïc" is different, though these are also positive attributes. --Chriswaterguy 04:24, 3 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
well, not completely different, stoic simply replaces "simple", so it simply adds 2 other charisteristics. We can add it into the proposed Appropriate technology design principles article, see http://www.appropedia.org/Talk:AT_CAD_Team

KVDP 08:35, 3 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I've redirected Appropriate technology design principles to the existing Principles of appropriate technology - I don't know if they could be separate articles, but one can do for now.
Yes its the same, so one article suffices. However, I used Appropriate technology design principles as the main name, so that in case we implement the Appropriate technology page, this can be easily added, and the distinction between the articles remains clear.

KVDP 17:56, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

--Chriswaterguy 08:39, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Implemented the info from the talk page. Additionally, I noticed the articles you made "Appropriate technology for refugees" and "Appropriate technology for Indonesia". I think that both need rewording here. The first one describes how to respond in an emergency (when things need to be placed and get operational on the spot), so it best to call this something like "Emergency response appropriate technology" and the second one is best perhaps moved to something like "appropriate technology around the world", so that it can be mentioned with other countries. Also, it's best to give more specific info, ie exactly what technology to use, ... At this point the articles make it sound like AT is different depending on the situation, or is country-specific, which is offcourse not the case. Finally, I think it's best to have the links removed from the AT design principles page, and moved to the main "Appropriate technology" page (we don't seem to have one, only a portal with a AT projects list. We can perhaps take over the AT-page from wikipedia, I updated this for a while and it's pretty good at the moment). This would add allot of info (page still needs a little work dough to be perfect).

KVDP 17:46, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks.
the second one is best perhaps moved to something like "appropriate technology around the world" - actually I think both are needed. The Appropriate technology for Indonesia can mention very specific facts and contacts for Indonesia.
At this point the articles make it sound like AT is different depending on the situation, or is country-specific, which is offcourse not the case.
well, yes and no. It is different depending on context, though this is less about which country than about the specific situation. The article appropriate is a very basic start on this idea. So, (to be completely hypothetical), a village in Eastern Indonesia may have important similarities with a part of Ethiopia, in terms of its rainfall etc. But it may be completely different from another village only 1000 km away in Indonesia. Chriswaterguy 03:01, 5 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, I was referring to the country and not the situation. However, I do think that appropriate technology also pretty much remains the same even regardless of the location. This is because we actually do keep reusing a "library" of technology, but we will pick specific technology out depending on the situation. For example, AT (aldough agreeably opinions vary on this, see the wikipedia AT-page) will never include things like gasoline-internal combustion engines, windmills and water mills keep being a prominent tool to supply in the energy needs for many projects, ... A logical consequence could be the appearance of general-purpose AT designs which are then eg modified depending on the situation, and/or AT-technology that becomes "globalised"; ie by having a good global distribution network and well-positioned factories (see AT-factory page), some AT can be made all the time, thus regardless on which material is present at a certain location (this being possible as the material is in plentiful supply at the factory anyhow)

KVDP 14:08, 6 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

We can perhaps take over the AT-page from wikipedia, - Good, I've been thinking of this... I'll do this as I can import it with history (need to be an admin). Many good edits by Appropedia's criteria have been deleted, so the history could be valuable. --Chriswaterguy 03:01, 5 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Costeffectiveaid-blog/Appropedia mailadress

Some time ago, I removed my admin-rights and removed my old emailadress from the costeffectiveaid-blog. Reason is that I didn't use the old one anymore and wanted to ditch it, however I already have blogs on my other mailadresses, so I can't use these anymore. I was wondering whether I could get an appropedia mail adress (ie kvdp@appropedia.org) and put the admin-ship on this one (you'll need to do this via blogger.com, since I'm no longer an admin).

Getting an appropedia mail address would be a bit complex... is it possible to create a new address somewhere? --Chriswaterguy 05:44, 7 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Uhm, well I suppose I could but I don't like creating emailadresses I'm then not going to use anymore. The mailadress isn't vital for the moment, could you simply copy-paste the info at the mentioned page (log in via blogger.com).

KVDP 12:51, 10 June 2010 (UTC) --> UPDATE how about I use your costeffectiveaid-blog "emailadress" (actually just a login name) and pass. If you change your pass to a combination you don't use for other things, this is safe, hassle-free (you already have the required permission for altering the site), and quick. Just sent me a mail with the new pass (or the current one if you already selected a unique one), and I can upload the data. (like to get this finished quick) KVDP 08:00, 16 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Actually that's probably the most secret password I have, since it's my main account for many things. Sorry - can't really think of a solution other than making a new webmail address. Since this isn't a high security account you need, you could always make a hotmail account and save the password in your browser. --Chriswaterguy 08:08, 16 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
OK, plan B, use (email removed for spam reasons - no longer needed here --Chriswaterguy 05:36, 23 June 2010 (UTC)) and give it minimum priviliges, We'll delete it when done. We'll solve the issue next time with JM Pearce, when the site begins to become useful, he can appoint a member to maintain it, and then we sent future info directly to the maintenance person via mail.Reply[reply]

KVDP 06:52, 17 June 2010 (UTC) Is it thus possible to sent the invite for the blog to this e-mailadres ? (log in to blogger.com)Reply[reply]

Done - sorry for the delay. --Chriswaterguy 05:36, 23 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks Chris, just got back from vacation. It seems though that the text which is in "extra pages" requires that I also have administrator clearance, so I'll need to ask you to again log in and give me higher clearance; I'm sorry for the hassle.

KVDP 18:49, 30 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Done - no problem! --Chriswaterguy 19:07, 30 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Some info I want to add to http://costeffectiveaid.blogspot.com/p/environment-rehabilitation.html

Done

The connection were proposed based on maps by WN Atlas productions. I'll look further whether I can add some hydrography maps to wikimedia, perhaps by HydroSHEDS, ... The suggestions would fit together with the new boat design (Low-cost catamaran, replaces the Canot du Maitre). We'll still need to check what the maximum depth & width of the boats can be in the rivers, and whether locks need to be placed to avoid mixing seawater & freshwater rivers.


Organizational chart + Appropedia main office adress

Hey Chris, Having had some time thinking about some issues, here are some new ideas:

  • Firstly, I was thinking that we aren't approaching the AT village concept from the bottom-up. Rather, at present, we're looking at the most promosing villages globally to make an AT-village, and this is actually approaching the concept top-down. Perhaps that it is best that we change tactic (especially as the first tactic isn't working; ie I also sent some initial mails for information, ... and even these haven't been responded to). Rather than picking out villages, it is probably best that we look at the AT organisations we currently cooperate with (we need to compile a list of these first) and see which villages/regions they are active in; these villages can then be build out as an AT-village instead. Offcourse, progress on building the city will be slower, but then again we'll be able to construct it more efficiently (and more modular), and we can keep everything very basic (we don't really need all that much to transform a regular village to a AT-village, offcourse it also depends somewhat on the village we select (smaller cities require less improvements).

To determine the best regions, ... perhaps it would be best to use the chart I made at the AT factorys article.

This is well away from my own focus, which is on providing general information resources, designs etc, which can be used by people around the world in their own context. Happy to encourage you to do this, though - keep me in the loop, if you get responses.
Could you send me a copy of the mails you've been sending out? --Chriswaterguy 11:29, 3 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Next, I was thinking on the Appropedia's main adress; as Appropedia is already a non-profit, do we have a legal adress ? Depending on this, perhaps we could choose one of the AT-villages to base our main office in. This could give us some more credibility, and could also add speed to set up a first AT-village. The "main office" could be an adress only in name, the main research is still maintained at the universities, ...

Also, after this is done, I'll first focus on my images as requested (and I also need to do some extra updates on the stirling engines, ...) and after this, perhaps we can look again into the communication/messenger stuff. BTW have you also read my UMPC, ... suggestions (at wikiversity website). The communication would also need to be worked out not only for better collaboration between members at present, but also for possible on-site communication (ie within the village/country). I'm not quite sure whether this was clear in my original posts at the discussion page.

Finally, I'll look into the tune, and I also think it would be suitable to change the logo (ie from the hands-logo, perhaps animated). Perhaps that we can put up a discussion between the members on how we can improve it.

I'll also get started on some new articles, more soon. KVDP 19:23, 30 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

UPDATE 2 --> Checking my images at wikimedia commons, it seems that 2 images of designs I made are completely incorrect (current designs can not possibly attain their objective ; these are currently posted at the article Watervehicle_conversion (2 top images). I gave them the Template:Status-Model-Failed template for now. However, this template doesn't yet exist, is it possible to request the creation of this template to the person who made the templates ? An alternative template would be Template:Status-Design-Failed; see the Category_talk:Status page for more info. Comments why it won't work are added at talk page; with these we can update the image, or if the entire concept can't possibly work, delete the images. KVDP 08:25, 2 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

To recover a deleted page, including a template, you need a helpful admin. On Wikipedia, there's Wikipedia:Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles - maybe Wikiversity has something similar, or just a friendly admin... are you able to try those approaches?
Well, the images are already deleted on wikimedia commons, not only because they are incorrect, but also because many admins don't want any own ideas/schematics being posted there (this is btw the reason why I have so much "proposals for deletion" on my wiki commons user page; note dough that policy-wise it is not strictly forbidden at wikimedia commons, they've said to look into changing the policy rules ;) ). As such, fixing the image wouldn't help much to keep it there, but I still feel that the 2 images would be very valuable designs to have if we can improve them so that atleast there won't be much efficiency loss (since it protects the fish).
It sounds like a really useful idea for a template. --Chriswaterguy 15:26, 2 July 2010 (UTC):Reply[reply]

UPDATE 3 --> See Appropedia_talk:Village_pump#Fuel-based_energy_storage_system

I'll see if someone else answers this - you really need someone who understands the specific technical aspects. --Chriswaterguy 15:26, 2 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The schematics of these were totally correct; there were again other objections though why they were removed; ie mostly because I showed a "domestic" system and economically-wise, hydrogen-based energy storage isn't that good and only few domestic systems exist (and they aren't used much neither). However, if you read trough my counterarguments, you'll see that the schematic was made for other another reason, and use of the system would be quite thought-trough, there would be much load-levelling. I finished up on the new schematics (they look much better than old ones, some modest changes are also made)

KVDP 09:50, 3 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

AT village nutrition centre & making advantage of local hierarchy

Something I forgot to mention yesterday is whether or not it's suitable to mention the concept of a AT village nutrition centre at Appropedia's Appropriate nutrition manual (via a new article) ? The idea would facilitate the modifying of the cities' agricultural system, and would be quite modular (since the centre could help out in the planning). In addition, the centre could calculate the energy requirements per person, yielding a more accurate prediction (as mentioned before, this is useful especially if the person is larger/smaller than average, ...) Given some objections of the dietary reference values schematic at wikimedia commons (see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jameslwoodward#Dietary_reference_values_image_and_waterwheel ), I'll also look whether its suitable to change the graph for Appropedia. Aldough most objections at wiki commons were hypocritical (main objection was the fact that I averaged out male/female graph despite that its only a guideline (PAL's change per person as their activity levels differ), and there always is some variation anyway, simply because people don't grow uniform, ...), I'm still not sure about how we best arrange the centre. Ie we could let them calculate the requirements per person using a formula, or alternatively, we could make a set of graphs so that the people in the centre simply read off the requirements from a graph. The latter however would require us to make a series of graphs (with varying PAL's and person heights).

The second idea is for a new another new article involving the taking advantage of local social hierarchies. Aldough again this may be a bit controversial, I do think that the technique may be useful to us in setting up projects (they could provide support, ...), ... and I believe that preserving the power structure may be the best option in certain cases, since the structure is already stabilised, and eliminating stability is never a good option. We should offcourse never support structures that are ethically incorrect (ie castes, ...) but certain local ethnic structures may be supported. In particular, there are eg still "kingdoms" in many parts of the world, aswell as local leaders and believes that may be used to our advantage, and which we could thus use in the intrest of our projects (which benefit the/an entire region). For example, I remember the example of Arthur Paes which demonstrated the concept (see http://www.somey.nl/pagina/king_somey/index.html ) There are also other means of tapping into the structure, ie in some countries such as Micronesia there still is matrilinear progression of power, ... and finally there are also cargo cults, ... (ie Vanuatu, ...). It's just an idea, but perhaps its useful to make an article about it.

KVDP 10:19, 1 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Solar pyramid in pit

Hey Chris, it seems that you deleted File:Solar_pyramid_in_pit_concentrating_solar_plant_2.jpg . I only requested the deletion of the png-file though (see User_talk:KVDP#Appropriate_living_manual. Is it possible to undelete the file ? I'll still need to do a small image update, which I'll get started on once the file has been reinstated.

Thanks, KVDP 07:38, 4 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sorry - done. --Chriswaterguy 08:33, 4 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

No problem, thanks.
Cleaning up some more images and bringing them line with the prepositions from the admins over at commons, the File:Ship compartment purposes.jpg also needs removal; I swapped this with another image I recently uploaded.

PS: Is there a way to delete the images myself, rather than simply marking them for deletion with the db-self tag ? That way I don't need to bother you with this and things can go a bit quicker.

KVDP 09:51, 5 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Unfortunately no - don't worry, just add {{delete}} or any deletion tag, as long as it's a tag that includes the Category:Pages marked for deletion. Every few weeks at least, one of us will do a sweep and delete everything in the category. --Chriswaterguy 11:34, 5 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Categorytree images

I added a new image for the energy category (looks a bit empty at the moment dough, perhaps I'll need to add a green arrow next to the yellow one?), in addition I also have following images which could be imbedded to (new?) categories:

KVDP 12:51, 10 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

TTT diagram

Hey chris, just noticed that there isn't a TTT-diagram mentioned at steelmaking and the tempering of steel/iron isn't discussed, see http://www.appropedia.org/Talk:Production_of_iron_and_steel

KVDP 11:57, 9 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Cooperation

Another wiki with whom we may merge: OS Ecology: http://www.openfarmtech.org/index.php/Main_Page They seem to have more info on farming and automating farm vehicles. KVDP 06:54, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yes - actually we've made this suggestion, and our friend Vinay Gupta has urged Marcin from openfarmtech in this direction. They are thinking about it, and maybe it will happen one day, but for now they are at least making their information available as public domain, IIRC, so we can reuse as we like. --Chriswaterguy 08:26, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Heaving read a recent intresting article in Time about the Gülen movement, I was wondering whether perhaps its wouldn't be intresting to contact them (especially as our main hubs are already schools and this seems to be working) ? Given that religion (Islam) is still a prominent feature in the schools, we could perhaps cooperate as ecology is important in Islam (aswell as in any other religion). IFEES, ... also shares this viewpoint. Also, the fact that they're one of the largest school networks around (aldough the schools aren't that connected, see time article) , and given that they operate in allof of developing countries also make them more valuable to Appropedia. Perhaps the only downside is that they do not (thoroughly) teach multiple religions, but then again for our purposes this isn't vital, and they probably already provide a liberal method of teaching Islam.

See http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1969290,00.html See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement See http://www.guleninstitute.org/

KVDP 07:10, 17 June 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

note to self

http://pfctdayelise.livejournal.com/138585.html

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WorkingWikily/~3/uuaHhEny8BU/


dmrc issue

http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=12836&p=80060


start off with this error:

User's $HOME/.dmrc file is being ignored, preventing default session and language from being saved. File should be owned by user and have 644 permissions. User's $HOME directory must be owned by user and not writable by other users.

and then get "Your session only lasted less than 10 seconds..."

I tried the failsafe options, but no luck

the details for the second message are:

/etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
Can't save user-dirs.dirs
Unable to create /home/USERNAME/.dbus/session.bus

"

Methods of transport

--> moved this to Appropriate methods of transport

CCAT Website & Appropedia

Hey Chris,

I just finished the basic layout of the new CCAT website and I'm going to be working on getting actual content onto it over the next few weeks. As part of that process, I'm going to be moving a lot of old CCAT project pages to Appropedia and then linking to Category:CCAT from our site -- as opposed to the old way, where projects were haphazardly spread across some combination of Appropedia, the CCAT site, and external student websites. This should be a lot neater.

I'm also thinking of embedding certain project descriptions (for the most current and/or most popular projects, for example) on our site if I can figure out how to scrape Mediawiki text. The content will be attributed to AP, naturally, and the CCAT site itself is CC-BY licensed (but the AP content will additionally retain ShareAlike obligations since those are AP's terms). I assume this would be all right given the license, but let me know if I'm mistaken :)

One other thing I'm considering is having blog entries cross-/re-posted between the AP blog and the CCAT one whenever it makes sense, but I wanted to run that by both you and the CCAT Codirectors first.

Do you have any additional ideas of how we could make the two sites work together better for everyone?

Thank you! -Roger 18:30, 19 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sounds excellent, Roger.
I'll be interested to know if you find a way to scrape the text. Google has become smarter at finding the body of the text to use as snippets, and ignoring things like the site notice at the top of the page. Only one idea occurs to me, if you don't have a better way - using Special:Export you could download one or more categories, then do some search & replace with regular expressions to give you the first n characters or words from each article. A bit clunky perhaps.
Re the blog, we could agree on tags to use that would be cross-posted, so it could be automated or semi-automated.
I wonder about some navigation templates for CCAT on Appropedia - e.g. at the bottom of each CCAT article. A bit like how Wikipedia:United States Environmental Protection Agency there's a template (Wikipedia:Template:ES Government) which lays out the various departments, services and offices. In this case it could describe areas of focus, with highlighted projects for each.
Will let you know if I have more ideas - anyway, it's great work. --Chriswaterguy 00:50, 21 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I'll let you know what I manage to accomplish :)
As for the navigation templates, I think certain articles and/or categories do have them on AP already. I'll include them when appropriate.
Thank you!
-Roger 00:57, 21 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
We have the dependencies on Appropedia now to make Wikipedia-style {{Navbox}}W templates. The first example is {{Appropedia searches}}. We can have a navigation template corresponding to every significant category, or whatever groupings of articles make sense. See Categories, lists, and navigation boxes for a comparison of basic navigation methods on Wikipedia, which we can duplicate here. --Teratornis 22:46, 12 February 2011 (PST)

template stub

Someone moved the template stub to a http://www.appropedia.org/Summary_of_Malawi%27s_appropriate_technology -- and then edited it to death -- I am not sure how to put it back easily? Any ideas?--Fixer 18:35, 8 September 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi Fixer,
Thanks for always being so true to your name. The best way would probably be to copy the content of the Malawi page, revert it back to the template content and then move (rename) the page back to where it belongs... then create a new Malawi page and paste the Malawi content in. I didn't do that. I just found the Template content from the history and copied that over the Template page which works fine, but doesn't preserve the history of the template page.
Thank you for your awesome help! --Lonny 20:35, 8 September 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks, both of you, for getting on top of this.
I think since the content of the template is very basic, we don't need to worry too much about the history. (Another more obsessive solution is to export, edit title in the xml, import, delete page and do a partial restoration of revisions... But we can save that for pages with more content and much more complex histories.) --Chriswaterguy 03:53, 9 September 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
While I was there, I prettied it up a little. --Lonny 09:20, 9 September 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Nice work! --Chriswaterguy 09:54, 9 September 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Images

Birdman

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.

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.
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) UPDATE 2 --> I was thinking about whether we coudn't immediatelly make and image based on a 3D caracter; I was thinking about perhaps using a 3D image of Sony Pictures Animation as a basis (ie the Chicken Joe-coconut image; from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surf%27s_Up_(film) )
I'm not sure where we would use a chicken logo...? Relieved that the earth will not end in 2012 (just kidding). --Chriswaterguy 12:48, 8 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Finally started and finished up on that birdman image, see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harbinger.png We (well I) can use it in regards to categorising the 3D models (don't ask, ... its complicated)

KVDP 12:20, 23 September 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Mascot

Interesting thought about a mascot - I wonder what a suitable one might be?
I think I came upto something useful regarding the mascotte-idea; I was thinking about making a visual representation for "pollutors", "regular people" and non-pollutors". My first idea was to use something of a rabbits to represent non-pollutors, and S.W.I.N.E-like-pigs as pollutors (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.W.I.N.E. ). The rabbits can be based on the Duracell bunnies or the Rayman raving Rabbits bunnies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVTo4y5e08k&feature=related and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayman_Raving_Rabbids). Duracell rabbits are thus made by PLEIX (http://www.vizworld.com/2009/09/duracell-ultra-bunnies-pleix/ )The pigs can also be based on the Certus-pigs (http://www.certus.be/filmpjes.php?clipje=3) and/or on BG&E Pey'J The pig should wear a high hat, probably of a (light) carmine red color, and with a black band (see http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:D69KlivolQD60M:http://www.chin.gc.ca/Parks/db_images/03-00079.jpg ,but higher and more sloped). For the "regular people" I was thinking about using an image a bit of a crossover between Oddworld's Abe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddworld) and the Simpson's Moleman. The label can be "Muggles" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggles). Image is best composed of all 3 mascottes next to each other, with the center one (muggle) having the arms stretched next to the body.

UPDATE: A alternative could be the use of a monkey (chimpansee) as the muggle image, and a monkey with a wrench (gibbon-like appearance) as the non-pollutor. For the pollutor, perhaps some monkey-features could also be added. This would present a form of evolution in the image (ie exterior images being an evolution of the center one), rather than forming a homogeneous group of caracters. KVDP 17:27, 14 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Finished up on the monkey/persons images. See

The only thing that now needs to be done is to actually use them in projects (ie on children's education, ...) To determine the children to find to what group they belong, the eco footprint method can be used. I think to remember that a carbon footprint of 0 to 2 tons of CO²-equivalent = enlightened person, some 4 tons = oblivious person, and 6+ tons = destroying person. BTW: we could also mail the groups behind the eco footprints-stuff and ask them whether they are intrested in using the images.

Interesting... I feel that this could be a project for a children's education or activist oriented site. What do you think? --Chriswaterguy 03:16, 15 March 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Presumably that is tons (or tonnes) of CO2eW per year. According to TerraPass, one round-trip flight from Sydney, Australia to Cincinnati, Ohio, US spews 7,749 lbs CO2, which gets a person more than halfway to being a "destroying person" by itself. That's before we add in emissions for food, housing, other transport, and everything else a person consumes. Since we aren't likely to stop eating, it's hard to squeeze in much flying under the 2 tons annual limit for an enlightened person. Not without a convincing carbon offset strategy. --Teratornis 16:05, 3 March 2011 (PST)
Great - numbers! All the fluffy, shallow green talk in the media, schools and elsewhere is pointless until start to look at numbers. --Chriswaterguy 16:59, 3 March 2011 (PST)

Without numbers it is impossible to know whether we are doing net good. For example, if someone flies from the US to Africa to set up a rural biochar project - how much biochar do they need to sequester just to offset their flight? Of course TerraPass should not report this number with four significant figures, when it's really a range of values spanning at least a factor of two or possibly more. Variables include:

  • Type of aircraft (newer models are more efficient than older ones; the year-to-year improvement is slow, but commercial aircraft can stay in service for four decades or more, so there can be considerable difference between the latest most efficient aircraft and old aircraft nearing the end of service. This also means that a downturn in air travel cuts emissions faster than passengers, since airlines will retire older less efficient aircraft first as they downsize their fleets. Similarly, a person's decision to stop flying will incrementally increase the retirement of old aircraft.)
  • Weather (wind direction and speed vary a lot at high altitude, e.g. the jet streamW).
  • Passenger load (lower load means more fuel per passenger, to move the fixed weight of the aircraft itself). However, if most passengers stay home, the lightly loaded aircraft will burn less fuel in total than it would burn with a full passenger load. Thus it's hard to know whether to count the load factor for or against the individual passenger.
  • Whether one agrees with the IPCC that "aviation’s total climate impact is some 2-4 times that of its direct CO2 emissions alone".W If that is true, then ground travel with the same fuel efficiency per passenger mile would have less climate impact.
  • Fuel source (oil from tar sands has about triple the carbon footprint for refining compared to the highest grades of sweet crude). However, since the refining emissions occur at ground level, the aviation multiplier does not apply to them, so they are additive rather than multiplicative.
  • Passenger class (first class passengers occupy a greater fraction of the airplane than coach class passengers, thus accounting for a higher share of overall emissions).
  • Passenger weight (heavier passengers and luggage cause the airplane to burn more fuel than light passengers).

The worst case would be something like a morbidly obese passenger flying first class on an old lightly loaded aircraft, against the jet stream, burning fuel from tar sands. If we throw in the IPCC's worst case estimate of aviation's total climate impact, the effective carbon footprint could be several times higher than the best case for the same flight. --Teratornis 23:54, 3 March 2011 (PST)

hey Chris, added some new suggestions for replacement images for some images at the category tree. See Appropedia_talk:Village_pump#Logo_change .Also, I added another new suggestion as a replacement of the Appropedia logo. If you like any of the suggestions, we can work on them. KVDP 11:49, 16 October 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Biofuels

Hello Chris, Had a quick look but couldn't easily figure out how categories and subs work. Was going to scrap vegetable oil fuel and replace with pure plant oil fuel. Vegetable suggests part of the plant is edible and pure to distinguish from biodiesel which is a plant oil based fuel. --Darren 00:23, 15 October 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Template

Hey Chris, I was wondering whether you could make a quick template for use here and also on wikipedia (upload it there too). The explaination is found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_templates#Template:Google_Warehouse

I intially requested the template there, but since they don't seem to be working on it, I like to request it to you (or alternatively someone else at Appropedia). The template should include the direct link to the model, thus not just a link to the main google warehouse site. I think it will be quite useful to get some more audience to not only my project site, but also Appropedia itself, since it links from both wikipedia, and Google warehouse. KVDP 09:04, 19 October 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Guide for arrivals in the developing world

Hi Chris, Just noticed your Guide for arrivals in the developing world article. Although an article could be useful for some general advice on how to start a development project, I think that the way on how you look at it seems a bit narrow; ie you state:

"You've just arrived in a less developed country or community. The language is different and the culture is different - not to mention the food. You came because you want to help, but where do you start?"

To travel to most developing countries, one can not simply "pack up and leave", and extensive planning actually needs to be done beforehand to allow any development project of having any chance to succeed. Offcourse some things can't be foreseen and one will need to assess the situation and needs locally, but things like vaccinations, learning the language, assessments on durability (ie how long can you stay with a visum, for how long do you have antimalaria pills, ...) definitly needs to be done in advance (atleast up to several months before departure). Regarding the malaria problem (other diseases ie yellow fever, ... can be resolved permanently by vaccination), one would also need to foresee a permanent solution (ie growing of Artemisia annua) given that it would be too costly (even for westerners) to continue taking pharmaceuticals.

I thought about making an article myself on this a while ago, but having found wikitravel back then (Travel Topics, the rest isn't that useful (mostly Lonely Planet-style "info")), I think that rather then spending time on writing everything out, it's best to simply refer to this and some wikipedia articles on etiquette, table manners, ...

Another last thing that isn't present is "when to fold" (when to cease trying to create a local development project). Some countries are simply way easier than others when trying to do a development project, and I think than rather than trying to force things and spend way more energy and money to get something started, and finally ending up with something you can't be satisfied with even if it does succeed (ie due to local social circumstances). Thus, it is then best to call it a day and try somewhere else, at another time, to avoid ending up like the frog of the story "The scorpion and the frog". For example, and this will be controversial, in some/most African countries, it's pretty hard to do any project for people of another skin tone, simply because people travelling from other countries are perceived as cash cows/Santa Claus', and are thus major targets (robbings, beatings, ... are frequent methods to obtain the "cash"). Thus, due to corruption it's hard to erect any project, and even if it succeeds, one can never truly be happy living and working there. I think that Ian Hislop said it best in "Ian Hislop's Age of Do-Gooders, when he spoke of Mary Honor Crowley, and concluded her misfortunes with "in the end, you can't help anyone that doesn't want to be helped".

Besides a single voyage to one African country, I can't really speak for other countries, but I suspect that this kind of situation would not occur in most Asian countries, not only due to the social indoctrination, but probably also because the financial situation isn't as severe as in African countries. Hence, perhaps that it's useful to add a "development index map" to the new article, or in a new article (ie there still isn't a Developing countries article. Perhaps other data maps that can assess this could be the "Gini coefficient " (devision of wealth in a country), and another map that could be useful is the "Corruption map" (see wikipedia on the issue).

KVDP 10:03, 14 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

UPDATE --> I might have come on a bit strong in same paragraphs, the point I tried to make though was that there is a danger in painting an overoptimistic image of things. Often, development work is more like an uphill struggle than a walk in the park, and the article should reflect that idea.
In addition, I also wanted to express that durable development is a 2-way transfer. This goes, not only for the general working conditions/atmosphere (which need to be suitable for both parties), but also in regards to help from the people for any project, and adaption from the people towards the development worker (regarding customs) aswell as vice versa. The latter, especially in regards to only adhering to customs that are acceptable to both parties (ie some local customs, ie towards women, minority groups, ... are unacceptable to Western standards).

KVDP 12:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi KVDP, thanks for your comments.
Regarding the parts that are missing, certainly, it's just a start. I wanted to start, and hop that others would also contribute. I'm not clear that a Gini map is helpful on this page, but other ideas here are worth adding.
I think there's a place for something specific for aid & development workers, and the kinds of issues they face. Referring them to Wikitravel and other sites is appropriate, for certain types of info.
I agree the article must represent the struggles and the hard realities, as well as the joys and benefits when and if a project is successful; and should also give some very initial tips on what makes that difference, and point elsewhere for more learning (which it already does, to an extent). The fact that someone may just not be able to help in some places is part of the reality and deserves a mention; though an emphasis on "how to choose a location" will help to keep it positive.
Indeed, a section "how to choose a location" could keep things positive while still informing someone that helping is not always possible on each location. However, the name for the article you chose is "Guide for arrivals in the developing world", and it talks about (as mentioned above)
"You've just arrived in a less developed country or community. The language is different and the culture is different - not to mention the food. You came because you want to help, but where do you start?"
The idea here is that the article assumes there hasn't been any preperation done beforehand, nor any planning whatsoever. Thus, it's best to either change the article name to ie Executing a development project, and add sections regarding planning and preperation (at home, before arriving at a specific destination country). If the article is intented on how to make the best of backpacking trip, which ends up in some kind of attempt to do a development project, the article is best fitted with the earlier proposed section (which is more negative).

KVDP 12:55, 19 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

2-way transfer - certainly. But as this is a guide for arrivals, I'm not sure about putting much emphasis on this, here. I'd be more keen to see ways to bring out the best in relationships with locals. --Chriswaterguy 15:50, 16 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Again, I'm not sure how you would like to make the article; personally though, I would assume that there is more extensive planning beforehand (anything else usually winds up in failure, unless the backpacker is extremely capable and everything falls into place). In the latter case, we can and should assume that there is adaption by and for both parties, which facilitates things, and which, in my view is the only way a durable development can blossom.

KVDP 12:55, 19 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Agreed that planning needs to be emphasized. The article needs work.
Can I change the name, or do you prefer another one ? The current name is too confusing tough (not really clear on what exactly the article is about)

KVDP 09:26, 27 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Adaption by and for both parties - no harm in mentioning that. It's possible to go too far and adapt to things that should be stopped (including local versions of corruption, abuses and unhygenic practices) - it's a matter of having the judgement and knowledge to know when to go with the flow and when to take a stand.
UPDATE 3 -->

I just remembered that I allready made a similar article, in specific Appropriate_living_manual_TOC .In my view, there isn't any difference in arriving in a "less-developed country" as opposed to arriving in a "developed" country (in essence, I think people aren't really better equipped ie on regards to self-suffiency, skill, ... when you compare the 2). I can't get rid of the idea that this article is nonetheless somwhat different and appears to focus on the travel difficulties itself (ie language, vaccinations, visum, ...) rather than the development project. Once you rename and refocus the article, we could probably align the article and the manual better together (ie linking).

I think the challenges of going to a country which is both less developed and culturally "exotic", esp for the first time, is quite different. And it seems more exotic to us, since someone coming from Asia or Africa has usually been exposed to our culture and physical environment (in an admittedly distorted form) from childhood, through TV).

Chriswaterguy 10:33, 23 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Offcourse there are challenges when embarking on a development project, or simply by going to a different country (ie for a trip). What I mean however, is that perception of both parties/cultural differences, ... do not play any role whatsoever. The main problems with starting a development project are structurally/technical in nature, and these are the same regardless on where you start the project. If you simply intent to visit a different country however, cultural differences (ie local language, history of the country, ...) will play a bigger role.

KVDP 09:26, 27 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi Chris I just saw that one of my articles at wikiversity is up for deletion, given that it's somewhere on the line of the issues above, I was thinking we could move the article here ? It's not yet a good article, but I guess we can make better and integrate it suitably. See http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Cheap_independent_travel

KVDP 03:40, 1 March 2011 (PST)

I also added the Category:How tos; appearantly this is a pretty large category, falling right under "Fundamental". I'm wondering whether perhaps I can get started on a category rearrangement proposal, perhaps aided by wikisoftware allowing me to print out the current categories in a tree. That way, I could do most of the work by hand (pen & paper), and perhaps I can use wikisoftware to implement the changes, without typing everything over. I find the current categories very confusing and a hindrence to the making of new article/the expansion of Appropedia. Once we have the proposal, we can discuss it, and perhaps we can use bots to automatically change a one category name to another (so we don't need to go over everything one by one). User:KVDP 16:35, 21 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

What do you mean by wikisoftware?
I don't really know what's possible under mediawiki software, but there should probably atleast be something that allows to automate most of the work of the categorising; ie I assume a bot can change the articles by swapping a Category:CategoryName1 by eg Category:CategoryName2, ... I don't mind studying a printed categorytree with all the categories in appropedia and simplifying it down to a more suitable, understandble/usable categorytree. However, I'm not really looking forward to changing all of the articles (Categorynames) by hand.

KVDP 09:26, 27 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Agreed that categories need more work - there are some tools to make finding and adding categories easier, e.g. HotCat, but it will take work to apply them on Appropedia. --Chriswaterguy 10:33, 23 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Business category

Hi Chris, Having been working on a few articles regarding manufacturing, I made the category:Manufacturing ,and placed that under Category:Business of the CategoryTree (although I'm not sure whether "Employment" wouldn't of been a more logical division). Nonetheless, there also seems to be a category:DIY (placed this too under Business for now), that contains allot of articles and that appearantly hasn't been taken appart yet, I think it's probably best to place each article under category:Manufacturing ,and remove the DIY category/article, ...

Finally, there seems to be an article that contains useful info, yet isn't exactly available: see http://www.appropedia.org/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=glass+making+%26+coloring&go=Go It redirects to "Making", but from the search, it appearantly contained other information. Not sure whether the original article (made in 2006) is retrievable.

I'm also wondering about glassmaking, I'm recently reading up on it, but given that the production requires allot of energy, specialised equipment, ... I'm not sure whether it is possible in a appropriate context. I'm thinking it's better to advocate only plastic production, and use this ie for windows, greenhouses, ... KVDP 14:30, 16 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

DIY is a popular term, and refers to the household level... I think "manufacturing" usually indicates business level production, even if only small scale.
Yes, but DIY can mean allot of things, including repair (ie of plumbing, ...), and making small things (ie furniture) that is unsuitable to automated/small scale or large scale production. In the Do-it-yourself article there are allot of articles that can be auomated/set up in small-scale production plants, so I would nonetheless pull these apart and reorganise them in the Category:manufacturing. We could preserve a DIY category for the more artistic projects (ie plumbing repair, furniture, ... as described above)

KVDP 12:24, 18 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm really not sure... you could try the Village Pump. I'd want to see some support before making such a significant category change. --Chriswaterguy 11:34, 19 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I'm reluctant to post small article sections at village pump, since you told me that others get a notification mail everytime I add something. I think though that the organising of the CategoryTree is something that would actually need to be undertaken face to face on a table. That way, we can evaluate which categories are allready made, and how the reorganisation should happen (via CategoryTree and Category:Stubs) To a certain extent, I stick to what I stated at the village pump (#Site reorganisation), but offcourse there would also need to be allot subsections made, ... Also, we should look on how we can alter the current main categories; ie I allready discussed that some are best pulled apart, ie "Health and Safety", ... but as you stated, this offcourse winds up in more categories and showing these on a single screen can be difficult. Hence it would be best that such issues are discussed face to face (using printed pages and old-skool pen and paper; too my weapon of choice ;) ). I think though that the best possible categorisation is probably better handled sooner than later, since more articles are added everyday and this issue will be exponentially more difficult later-on.

KVDP 13:13, 19 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The article had a forbidden character in the title, so I exported, edited the title, and reimported as Making and coloring glass. Thanks for finding that so I could fix it. I think I've found and fixed all but one now, and I'll fix that soon.
I think plastic and glass both benefit from economies of scale, and local manufacturing might involve doing things with those materials... though I think similar to what you say, that plastic is often more appropriate. It will be even more appropriate as hardy bioplastics become available and affordable, so they can last for years in use, but not centuries as rubbish. In the meantime, long-life plastics might be more appropriate - they last longer, but on the other hand, they use much more mass of plastic. Perhaps studies have been done comparing them, and I'm sure it depends on context, care taken, and which kind of plastic. --Chriswaterguy 17:03, 16 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Regarding the appropriateness of using of both plastic and glass: Yes and no. I think that for ie windows, plastics are best always used, for other uses (ie bottles, wecking jars, ...) glass may be useful too. In the latter case though, I wonder whether ie ceramics aren't a better alternative, the only disadvantage of these being that they are not transparent. But on the other hand, transparency here can simply be a gimmick; a good bottle/jar design (ie one that can be cleaned totally on the inside) might be more important here.
Regarding the types of plastics; I think I allready described these in the Plastics recovery manual, and basically, the more durable ones do not require more "mass of plastic"; rather they are just different types (other molecular structure). Similar to how malleable metal and hard metal are different, the atoms are simply arranged better, and are able to withstand more, it does not require more material. However, in a appropriate context, we would actually make plastics from plastic waste material, so we don't get to choose which type we want; hence if it is a softer plastic, we'll probably need to increase the thickness.
-->UPDATE checked the types of plastic, allot of commont types have indeed been mentioned allready in the manual. However, there do seem to be still other types, of which most if not all are mentioned at this wikipedia entry
Finally, regarding bioplastics and the environmental friendliness of regular plastics: bioplastics do degrade but then again also last allot less long, so actually with good use, non-bioplastics may be more appropriate (but not more sustainable since the plastics need to be burned if completely worn down). Although it thus still generates emissions, burning them still doesn't create that much emissions (atleast not compared to other materials; ie life cycle analysis), and in most cases, we just remelt them (which doesn't generate any emissions if I'm correct). So the basic thing we should focus on is reuse of waste plastics, an then optimal use of the regular plastics, and no littering.

KVDP 12:25, 18 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hmmm... a few assumptions here - some of which may be correct, but they need analysis, and a weighing of different options and viewpoints. In general a wiki page shouldn't advocate, but inform. When the information (balanced, NPOV, scientific) leads someone in a certain direction, then hopefully it's the facts themselves doing the "advocating." Thanks. --Chriswaterguy 11:34, 19 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Re burning plastics: undesirable as it releases toxins. People burn trash regularly in Jakarta due to lack of effective garbage collection, and the smell of burning plastic is terrible. Even more problematic, perhaps, is the unburnt plastic that enters waterways, causes floods and harms water ecosystems. Re "no littering" - this is an enormous task, and as a species we're not doing well at it. My opinion of human psychology is that it's unnatural for most people to take a lot of care with details like this. Look at very traditional practices and other creatures and you'll see that "waste" is not actively collected, but falls and is processed by the ecosystem; and in practice, we're not getting closer to this "no litter" ideal, at least nowhere near fast enough. Far more promising to use materials which are fundamentally harmless. --Chriswaterguy 11:44, 23 December 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Your edit to a spammed page

I was looking through Special:UncategorizedPages which led me to Acid Value which was informative in its first revision, but then User:83.233.30.34 spammed it. The latest edit appears to be a null edit by you, but you seem to have left the spam. I can understand your edit comment, but I don't understand leaving the spam. Special:Contributions/83.233.30.34 shows some more spammed pages. --Teratornis 08:31, 4 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for spotting that - replying on your talk page. --Chriswaterguy 11:06, 4 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

volunteering?

Hello,

I was wondering if there's anything technical I can help out with. I'm a CS major and I've done some tinkering with mediawiki before, though not specifically with bots. Is there a list of technical things that need to be done somewhere?

Tahnok 17:35, 4 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Appropedia:Site development/priorities looks like a place to start, while you're waiting for definitive answers from Chris. --Teratornis 04:16, 5 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I've replied on Tahnok's talk page, but that is indeed a good place to start - thanks for the reminder. (One thing we need to do is organize our to-dos... which we'll be much more motivated to do with help from good tech people including Tahnok.) . --Chriswaterguy 22:00, 6 January 2011 (PST)
Appropedia might have enough project and help pages to justify an Editor's index to Appropedia, separate from an index of Appropedia's article content. I'm mulling that over in my notes. From what I've seen, it seems the Appropedia inner circle wants to have a stand-alone set of project and help pages, to minimize referrals to Wikipedia's internal documentation. Vibrant non-Wikimedia wikis like Wowpedia maintain their own fairly comprehensive help systems (but check out Wowpedia's to-do list - sound familiar?). It's kind of alarming to see all the brainpower being squandered on game wikis. In the meantime, the Keeling Curve keeps ticking up. We may render the biosphere inhospitable to humans, but at least we'll know all about computer games. Imagine if everyone who had a technical interest would apply it to figuring out how to stop burning fossil fuels. --Teratornis 21:39, 17 January 2011 (PST)
Editor's index sounds good. Re our project pages, I've done a lot of the work there, partly as a way of thinking things through and putting forward a suggested way forward. I feel uneasy with adopting a policy and running with it without an open discussion about it, but if I've made a project page, I feel that it's then a negotiable thing - anyone who doesn't like it can see the reasoning, and edit or comment there as they wish. I don't know if people actually read that stuff though. (There have been a few page views, so I guess some have.)
I'd love to see people get engaged and stay engaged. The reality is about getting and keeping people's attention, and giving people some kind of good feeling... television is great at doing that, but doesn't achieve much for the planet. Developing the community and conversations might help, so I'm keen for us to get our forum set up (very soon now), and a newsletter at some point.
Of course I could get into human nature, but I'll be happy just to engage with the kinds of people who are interested in these things. Even there we need to do something to keep them engaged, I think. --Chriswaterguy 06:36, 18 January 2011 (PST)

Soft redirects

I added some supporting pages for the {{Soft redirect}} template you created:

The guideline page is stubby at the moment. Feel free to expand it. I hope this wasn't too aggressive. I've been going through Special:UncategorizedPages and trying to categorize everything. That led me to the soft redirect page you created, so I thought it would be appropriate to duplicate the machinery from Wikipedia for soft redirects. This might seem like overkill, but going forward it will keep track of the soft redirects, and avoid creating new ones as uncategorized pages. --Teratornis 23:27, 16 January 2011 (PST)

Thanks - I knew it could do with more work, but wasn't sure about how far might be overkill, and it would have taken a while to figure out what all the code did. I knew you were working on this, so I'm happy to let you take the lead. Looks good, thanks! --Chriswaterguy 20:15, 17 January 2011 (PST)
The working principle on Wikipedia seems to be "There's no such thing as overkill." I think the incredibly elaborate infrastructure there has played a key role in enabling Wikipedia to grow to enormous size without breaking down. But it raises the difficult issue of deciding how much of the infrastructure to duplicate when setting up another wiki. My thinking is to duplicate as much as I might personally use, and then some. Making a wiki comfortable for editors who have a lot of experience on Wikipedia would be a good strategy in light of the Pareto principle.W Not only do readers outnumber editors on a wiki by two or more orders of magnitude, but casual or occasional editors outnumber the handful of nerdcore editors who understand and maintain a wiki's coherency. If there are even a few experienced Wikipedia editors looking for alternative outletsW (to circumvent Wikipedia's self-imposed content limitationsW), you want to attract them to your wiki. They will arrive already knowing a lot about how the world's most successful wiki works. If they see that another wiki is missing most of the features they took for granted on Wikipedia, they might continue searching until they find a wiki more conducive to productive editing as they have learned it. This is one reason I would be cautious about departing from Wikipedia's norms in other ways, such as by using the talk pages of project pages as discussion pages. Someone who has gotten used to the idea of, for example, Wikipedia's Village pumpW being a set of project pages that work like talk pages, while also having their own talk pagesW where editors can have meta-discussions about the Village pump itself, might be somewhat perplexed to see that on Appropedia, the corresponding project pages are redirects to their talk pages. Not that I'm suggesting any change to the custom here, just pointing out that I don't understand it. (The other reason to be cautious about departing from Wikipedia norms is that almost everything on Wikipedia resulted from long, intense debate. Before assuming I had a better idea about how to organize something, I would first want to make sure I was fully aware of why Wikipedia wasn't doing it my way.) --Teratornis 21:05, 17 January 2011 (PST)
If I'm getting too preachy just let me know. --Teratornis 21:07, 17 January 2011 (PST)

Red links

While roaming around Appropedia I saw Red links, which looks like it should be in the Appropedia: namespace rather than in article space. By analogy with Wikipedia:Project:Red link, I think it would be more comfortable at Appropedia:Red link (or the plural if you prefer). Since you created the page, I'd guess you had a reason to create it as an article. I was thinking about shortcutting it as A:RED but I'd only do that if it was in the project namespace (since the A: shortcut prefix should aim at the Appropedia: namespace). Let me know if you are OK with me moving the page and re-targeting all the redirects to it. --Teratornis 10:30, 18 January 2011 (PST)

I remember thinking about it and weighing it up, but can't remember my reasoning. Feel free to move it.
Re the shortcuts, I've got an outstanding request to make "A:" into an alias for "Appropedia:" (which requires editing the LocalSettings file, i.e. server access). Hoping that will be applied very soon. You can make shortcuts, but later I can move them all to "Appropedia:" with my bot.
I can fix all double redirects on the wiki, too (extremely easy with bot). Just ping me any time and I'll run it. --Chriswaterguy 01:41, 19 January 2011 (PST)
I found some other pages in article space that might also need to be project pages. I'll look at that later. I might play around with $wgNamespaceAliases on my offline wiki to see how that works. I wasn't aware of exactly what would happen to pre-existing pages whose names begin with a pseudo-namespace prefix after that prefix becomes an alias to a namespace. (Thinking about that kind of makes my head hurt.) For now I will port some templates because Lonny enabled subpages in the Template: namespace, which should let Wikipedia's complex templates work. --Teratornis 01:16, 20 January 2011 (PST)
I'm cool with all those pages being moved.
Don't worry too much about what'll happen with the "A:" pages :-). I think it'll be easy-ish to move them all by bot, which of course will create redirects in the same spot, which I can delete by bot. Deletion just makes Special:Allpages a little tidier - not really a big deal.
Glad to hear about subpages - and thanks for taking a lead with this! --Chriswaterguy 00:35, 21 January 2011 (PST)
LocalSettings should be updated, thanks to Lonny - possibly by the time you read this. Check. --Chriswaterguy 01:01, 21 January 2011 (PST)
Do the red links that many of the A:-prefix shortcuts have become mean you ran into a problem? --Teratornis 16:46, 21 January 2011 (PST)
Yes. I have all the commands set up to fix things, but I need to get Lonny online at the same time. I need to turn off the alias for about 10 min while I run the bot commands. Could be a few days, sorry - I'll be traveling. Catchya. --Chriswaterguy 17:49, 21 January 2011 (PST)
Thanks for the update. Given that the environmental crisis will probably take at least a century to solve, a few days shouldn't matter.W Have a safe trip. --Teratornis 19:11, 21 January 2011 (PST)

The A:-prefix shortcuts are still broken. Do you have any schedule for fixing them? --Teratornis 00:45, 19 February 2011 (PST)

If you don't have time to do this, it's no problem. I can assign the interns to fix the shortcuts manually, as part of a larger maintenance task (e.g. adding shortcuts to all project and help pages that lack them, as well as adding shortcuts to key sections that we allude to frequently in edit summaries.W) The interns will learn from the repetitive nature of the exercise - repairing several dozen broken shortcuts will teach them the structure of a shortcut. --Teratornis 12:45, 20 February 2011 (PST)
I am pretty sure Chris is on this. He had us temporarily remove the alias about 6 hours ago... I think it will be back on today. Thanks, --Lonny 13:01, 20 February 2011 (PST)
Thanks Lonny.
Teratornis, the troublesome pages have been moved/deleted (changes) and the "A:" alias should be turned on shortly. Sorry for the delay, and thanks for the reminder. --Chriswaterguy 15:42, 20 February 2011 (PST)
Thanks. --Teratornis 16:10, 20 February 2011 (PST)
The alias is back on - everything should be working, so if anything's not right, let me know. --Chriswaterguy 17:03, 20 February 2011 (PST)

I'm gnoming

While tidying up shortcuts, I came across Appropedia:Gnome tasks#Shortcuts for Appropedia namespace pages which had earlier suggested some of the tasks I was just then doing. Great minds think alike, which helps when one great mind doesn't read what the other great mind wrote earlier. The Index of Appropedia is going to help with that, I think. --Teratornis 23:51, 18 January 2011 (PST)

:-) Indeed! I'm sure I've created a lot of duplication, and I lose track of pages and notes I've made, & your work is really helpful. I'd forgotten about that particular task - I think the alias (mentioned above) will help, so, say for page Appropedia:Foo, there only needs to be a redirect at "Appropedia:F", not "A:F". But yes, will be nice to have a well-organized project space! --Chriswaterguy 07:01, 19 January 2011 (PST)

re: Black Soldier Fly

Yes, these are truly amazing. You must listen to the Agroinnovations podcasts where the BSFblog guy was a guest. BSFs are much more versatile than worms, but have a more complicated life cycle. This is the main impediment to implementation. The yuck factor is easily overcome once people realize all the benefits of BSFs. I have had contact with Paul Olivier who has done a lot of academic work on BSFs. He is now in Vietnam, I have linked to his company on the BSF page I made here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 14:17, 21 January 2011, Rasmus

Recent Changes Camp Canberra 2011

Great to meet you, Chris. Hope I can learn more about Appropedia. Sincerely, James. Jtneill 01:08, 28 January 2011 (PST)

RCCx in Sydney

Chris, let's get in touch to organise the Sydney RCC!!! I'll contact you via skype! Jutta

Hey Chris, Not sure if you have my email. It would be good to communicate via email re RCCx. If you don't have my email, can you send me yours via skype? I am online most days. Quick update: I got in touch with previous Sydney WikiWednesday people and I am now looking for a suitable venue. I am also going to get in touch with the rest of the RCC people that are located in Sydney and see if they have any ideas for a good location.

Water purification and BodyDim

Hi Chris, I recently decided to give some articles at Appropedia an update after receiving a mail about the DIY water purifier schematic from someone. New articles made: Charcoal making,Low_cost_water_filtering, and Heating water. The last article is useful as it allows to eliminate SODIS in certain situations (SODIS is often used to reduce costs, however when using wooden containers, this problem is also solved).

I also updated Solar_Still; note though that http://www.appropedia.org/File:Still1.gif is still present, and I'm not sure whether the image should be kept as how it is now (I can colour it up a bit at first), however even then I'm not sure whether a box like that won't leak. Usually, batch heaters (cilinder-like) are used; I have a 3D model we could take an image from.

Something more pressing is regarding body dimensions (see my article at Appropriate_textile_production_manual_5 ). I think the numbers are a bit off (men/women's height is the same), and I was wondering whether you could open a program called BodyDim (see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/download/bodydim.pdf )? Given that I don't work with Linux, I can't use it and we could use the values in the program to correct the values for the body dimensions. KVDP 07:51, 15 February 2011 (PST)

Finished up on this, see article. Will get started on the 3D model, after that we can use the model in our 3D models of other designs.

KVDP 05:19, 14 March 2011 (PDT)

UPDATE

It seems like I'm allready getting some help on improving my body dimension tables. I'll let you know if I still need the values from the program or not.

Also, I replied at Talk:Appropriate food preparation, storage, consumption utensils

KVDP 02:24, 17 February 2011 (PST)

UPDATE --> Reformulated text at article based on your recommendations, also made a new article (Industrialisation_of_local_food), removed Delete-template.
Re Media:Still1.gif - "however even then I'm not sure whether a box like that won't leak." Are you saying that this is your own design, which you have not built? If so, this must be clearly stated wherever it is used. If it's a speculative design, then it could be on a page marked as speculative.
No, look at the uploader, it's from Jaran Ellermeyer. As I understand it though, the box would probably be made DIY, hence probably from wood. However, at the seams it could probably leak easily, and if wood is used, the wood will probably soak up allot of water itself. I guess that if the box is made from plastic (using a mold), or if a plastic sheet is placed in, it will work OK.
KVDP 04:55, 24 February 2011 (PST)
Okay, thanks for explaining that ... we really need to get our forums up and running to discuss things like this. --Chriswaterguy 04:01, 25 February 2011 (PST)
I'd like us to be very careful that for topic pages we only show designs which very carefully replicate real-world, proven designs.
Thanks for your work - I'll look at those pages. --Chriswaterguy 17:33, 20 February 2011 (PST)

mauve links

Hi Chris:

At the top of the page, it says red links are invitations for people to contribute. But the words are in blue!

Red Links are red.

DOwenWilliams 19:43, 9 March 2011 (PST) David Williams

Yes, because the page about red links already exists... I was wondering if that would confuse people.
Is there a nice, brief way to make it clearer? I'll think about it more, and I'll ask people In Real Life if they find it confusing. --Chriswaterguy 19:47, 9 March 2011 (PST)

Air filtration

Hi Chris, I recall you asked for an article on Gas filtration ? (http://www.appropedia.org/User_talk:KVDP#Air_filtration ) Finished up on it. I didn't find any reference to the absorption however, I am assuming that there is a difference between gas and liquid filters, absorption may be present with the latter.

Cool - that's a good start!
Note that the Wikipedia article on adsorption starts with Not to be confused with absorption. It's another example of how confusing and crazy the English language is, that "absorption" and "adsorption" are one letter apart but have an important difference in meaning.
Adsorption in filters doesn't seem to be covered in Wikipedia - but there are some hits "filters+work" here

BTW, It seems that the current chain of events in NE-Japan have resparked the nuclear energy debate once more. I'm pleased to see that things are being looked at very objectively at Appropedia, by observing the causes in detail (Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents#Causes). However, there is one thing you haven't mentioned: inheritly safe reactor types.

Ie in one of my previous [Appropedia_talk:Village_pump#Micro_nuclear_reactors posts], I mentioned the micro nuclear reactor idea. These made use of inheritly safe designs, some even didn't use water for cooling at all, so they also wouldn't need to be build near sea neither. Perhaps the only thing they do need is a system that prevents against earthquakes; this too can be solved, I mentioned one system that can protect against any earthquake, even upto strength 10.

KVDP 03:21, 17 March 2011 (PDT)

I followed the links - interesting! I'd never heard of the Toshiba 4S micro nuclear reactor, or anything else like that. These deserve a mention in the Appropedia article. I'd want to study them much further before commenting on their safety, though.
Whether something is "inherently safe" requires judgement and assumptions - assumptions that nothing has been forgotten in the design, and that nothing stupid or irresponsible will be done in the future. These judgements and assumptions can be wrong.
Something that is often taken too lightly: A series of safeguards can be put in place, but it's possible (though rare) for one failure to occur after the other, all the way to disaster - see this and this. So I'd want all that to be kept in mind when making assessments about the safety of nuclear power. The Beyond Zero Emissions approach seems much more positive and more risk-averse to me.
But as you note - Appropedia is a place for looking at it objectively. The risks (and the real potential for disastrous chains of events) must be noted, but there is no bias or foregone conclusion that a particular form of energy or technology is always good or bad. --Chriswaterguy 05:35, 17 March 2011 (PDT)
One issue with nuclear power is that the great mass of the general public is in no position to know whether a given nuclear power plant (for example the nearest plant to them) is safe. The public is generally not allowed into the premises to inspect the plant, the staff, and operations. Most people lack the necessary expertise anyway. So the general public simply has to trust the plant operators, and the government regulators, to maintain the highest standards without fail for the entire life cycle of the plant, from construction to decommissioning (a period of 60 or more years). During that time, the plant owners will be under constant pressure to cut corners to reduce costs. The regulators must resist all temptations to be corrupted by bribes, and must be shielded from any budget cuts or political interference that would reduce their ability to do their jobs, despite any administration changes or political shifts. Given the long life of nuclear reactors, some of the people responsible for maintaining constant adherence to the highest standards may not even be born yet. There is also the question of terrorism: we don't know whether future technological progress will favor the terrorist. There are already man-portable demolition devices capable of breaching a reactor containment (M150 Penetration Augmented Munition), and that is a reason why nuclear power plants require many heavily armed guards.
Beyond Zero Emissions' work sounds similar to that of Mark Z. Jacobson. See for example:
--Teratornis 23:30, 27 March 2011 (PDT)
Very, very, very important points (to be remembered during public discussion about the safety of nuclear power). I hope they find their way into an article here :-). --Chriswaterguy 06:40, 28 March 2011 (PDT)
See wikipedia:Nuclear power debate. It's hard to write similar articles on Appropedia since we are missing so much of the infrastructure, such as articles to define all the topic-specific jargon terms. We can't write just one article about nuclear power and expect it to make much sense, unless:
  • we link all the jargon terms to Wikipedia articles (which is ugly), or:
  • we also write articles for all the jargon terms, i.e. we gradually duplicate the entire subset of Wikipedia which relates in any way to any topic that Appropedia covers.
A problem with introducing this material on Wikipedia is that it often violates wikipedia:WP:SYNTH since it is hard to find a reliable source that supports every point one wants to make, no matter how seemingly obvious. For example, the M150 device can defeat reinforced concrete bunkers similar in construction to nuclear reactor containment buildings, but unless you can find a source that specifically discusses the use of that device on nuclear reactor containment buildings, someone could challenge that on Wikipedia as a synthesis to advance a position. On Appropedia we might be less strict about requiring sources, but as Appropedia gets bigger we could start to experience more disputes over content. Wikipedia makes disputes less common by requiring sources for every statement that someone challenges, which has the effect of sharply reducing what you can write on Wikipedia. --Teratornis 00:23, 29 March 2011 (PDT)
Regarding the nuclear reactors; another thing I recently read (and which after some searching on internet, seems capable of being used in small nuclear reactors ie SSTAR, see ) is thorium. I'm not sure whether it's better in regards to nuclear waste (using reprocessing the nuclear waste of plutonium/uranium can be pretty much completely cleaned up). However, certainly in regards to the weaponisation it seems allot better as it can't be used for making nuclear bombs (although I'm not sure whether perhaps dirty bombs could be still made of it). Then again, dirty bombs (not nuclear bombs) can also be made from any nuclear material and some waste material can simply be picked off from the road in allot of remote locations (ie floating under/on the sea in barrels after being dumped in the sea, waste material that simply fell off during transport to reactors, ...). I once saw some documentaries on the issue and things on this allready aren't pretty, not to mention allot of other (even much simpler) approaches terrorists could take on making allot of casualties (you really don't need an M150 or a small army and rob a working reactor). Regardless, I do think that with thorium, the issue on satefy regarding terrorism could be reduced (again as far as that's possible, since I don't think anyone would actually rob a working reactor at all). Also, since I'm mostly seeing the small reactors as for use in appropriate villages, and since the villages themselves would eliminate any breeding ground for terrorism at all (due to fair/good governance, increased wealth, ...) there shouldn't be an issue of insecurity/terrorism anywhere near the reactors' location.

The SSTAR reactor on thorium: http://www.thorium.tv/en/thorium_reactor/thorium_reactor_1.php The liquid fluoride molten salt reactor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor and http://energyfromthorium.com/

KVDP 07:28, 28 April 2011 (PDT)

Water purification and article changing

Hi Chris,

I don't have much time anymore before logging off today, but I wanted to inform you of some water purification methods using activated carbon. I placed links at the "external links" section of A simple water filter design and most important is the fact that the methods allow even portable low-cost systems and small-scale stationary systems. Note btw that the systems include more than just activated carbon, they include nano-technology; simple activated carbon wouldn't be sufficient. Finally, also note Electric cotton, another process (didn't include this at article)

Another thing I noticed, by searching my older articles for things I wrote about water purification in the past is that some of my original articles gotten "corrupted" by rewrites by others. I don't mind that others add info, ... but it seems that some of my articles get so changed, that the initial meaning of the articles and how I see things get changed/distorted.

For example: at Appropriate_living_for_one_person, rejoicingapathy (see http://www.appropedia.org/index.php?title=Appropriate_living_for_one_person&action=history ) has added ie the section "Animal_husbandry", whereas, I never advocated and even acted against the use of any animals in local food systems. See also a recent article I made: Growing_of_microorganisms (btw still need to add a word on incubators) I don't know what to do with the articles since some edits may have improved the article, yet others have definitly made it worse. I also don't know what we can do against this/monitor it.

User:KVDP 09:23, 21 March 2011 (PDT)

Re others editing articles, this is in the nature of wikis... if they've made it definitely less accurate and less helpful, that's a problem and needs to be addressed, but engaging with those different points of view is a positive thing. That includes finding the good points and removing the bad, & asking for input from other editors.
Re animal husbandry, I can understand your reaction, but what I'd really like is to see analysis (probably on a different topic page) of the use of animals in food systems (generally, and specific systems).
It's the issue of ownership - if it's a general topic page, then no one person owns it. It what makes a wiki both challenging and powerful.
Sorry I haven't had more time - I'm trying to focus on some intern/volunteer and funding work, and also doing my own personal cleanout (big giveaway of my stuff from a garage last night). --Chriswaterguy 19:24, 2 April 2011 (PDT)

Smart windows, etc.

Hi Chris:

I know you've already seen the little page I started yesterday called Smart windows. I hope people will find it useful.

I also made a stub for a page about Kim Øyhus, the inventor of the "SunValve" smart window. He has invented several things that would be useful in the developing world. I don't know many details, but I am hoping to persuade him to post them on that page.

He is Norwegian, and his name includes the "Ø" character that is on Norwegian and Danish keyboards, but not many others. For the benefit of people who can't type that letter, please arrange for "Kim Oyhus" to redirect to his page. Thanks.

DOwenWilliams 07:12, 26 March 2011 (PDT) David Williams

No problem - thanks for your contributions! I don't get to spend as much time reading and editing as I'd like, but I like to help with some quick categorizing & other small things where I can.
I'll make the Kim Oyhus redirect now - for future reference, I'll make a page at Appropedia:Redirects to explain how it's done :-). --Chriswaterguy 02:01, 27 March 2011 (PDT)
I had connection problems starting just after I wrote the message above - but it's done now. Thanks again. --Chriswaterguy 06:10, 28 March 2011 (PDT)
Thanks Chris. DOwenWilliams 07:21, 28 March 2011 (PDT) David Williams

Language fluency box templates for user pages

Hi Chris,

I've seen boxes on user pages on other wikis that describe the user's language fluency. I wanted to add one of those to User:Kili's page, and came to your page to grab the template. Surprise! Not there. How do you feel about these templates? I'm biased toward all multilingual folks jumping in with that, partly as a means to help build out our non-English connections, perhaps make us more welcoming? CurtB 09:19, 16 February 2011 (PST)

Sorry for the delay - this message somehow ended up on my user page instead of here and I didn't notice it. (MediaWiki usability issue - I'm sure the Wikimedia tech team are thinking about this.)
I like the templates - I've got them on my WP profile: wikipedia:User:Chriswaterguy.
I'm sure Teratornis has an opinion on this, and he's more handy with templates than I am. --Chriswaterguy 17:23, 30 March 2011 (PDT)
My opinion is that these templates frighten me, at first glance anyway. The implementations on the English Wikipedia and on Wikimedia Commons are complex, with deep stacks of dependencies, categories, etc., with the added complication that the templates for various languages display text in those languages. That might make it hard for any one person to port a comprehensive set of them. (So far, I have not attempted to port templates with multi-lingual features from Wikipedia or Commons, although I am aware that Appropedia intends to be multi-lingual and will probably back its way unintentionally into the need to deal with the resulting complexity.) As with any template porting challenge, the first decision is whether to do something quick and dirty (which generally dumps cleanup work onto future editors, much like dumping carbon dioxide into the air now creates problems for future generations), or bite the bullet and port Wikipedia's comprehensive solution which can scale smoothly to handle arbitrarily many languages. I'm not a big fan of quick and dirty (i.e. minimally abstracted), unless the intent is to keep Appropedia always small and dirty. If the intent is for Appropedia to grow in size and participation, it needs the structure to handle and facilitate such growth, which Wikipedia and Commons have already built and we may copy (with considerable effort, but probably less than the effort to stumble our way incrementally toward it as Wikipedia did the first time). "There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over." I've added a note about these templates to my tasks page (U:TTASKS#Babel) and may look at them eventually. --Teratornis 13:01, 31 March 2011 (PDT)
I should clarify that fear alone does not deter me. I've done a lot of things on wikis that frightened me initially. But if I'm afraid at first, that usually means a particular problem will involve a lot of work. --Teratornis 15:25, 31 March 2011 (PDT)
I might add that Wikimedia Commons is multilingual on a single wiki. The various language Wikipedias focus (obviously) on their respective languages, whereas Commons tries to support every language on one wiki (although in practice it mostly English, with parallel copies of some pages in the major languages). On Commons there is some tricky template code for localizing the display of some things to the user's language preference. That might be a good model to study for making Appropedia multilingual. --Teratornis 22:00, 31 March 2011 (PDT)
Thanks for the comments. Based on past conversations with Curt & Lonny, I think we've assumed that we'd go to language subdomains (as Ekopedia has). So the single wiki is currently being used as an incubator for other languages, as well as an English language wiki.
My preference would be (1) to aim long term for separate subdomains, and (2) set a separate incubator soon, on its own subdomain for all non-English content.
The Wikimedia Commons model is interesting, though I suspect that works better when the emphasis is on media that is of interest to people of any language. I'm open to being convinced, though. --Chriswaterguy 02:39, 1 April 2011 (PDT)
I'd prefer subdomains (the Wikipedia model) for encyclopedic (i.e. article) content. We could have our own media file repository that would work like Commons - i.e., enable all the language Appropedias to share a common set of media files. Otherwise people would have to upload media files to every language subdomain they wanted to use them on. The model for our growth could be the same one Wikipedia used. Of course that would depend entirely on attracting a user community with the same depth of technical ability to set everything up. Note that even Wikipedia hasn't really gotten far beyond the handful of major languages. They have a long tail of small language Wikipedias that aren't very good yet. The Wikipedia community as a whole cannot help much with the small languages most participants don't know. I think that will change in the future as machine translation improves. --Teratornis 16:13, 1 April 2011 (PDT)
Agreed to all of that.
One reason I'm hoping to find someone (volunteer or modestly paid) to do a nice new skin for us is that I want a machine translation option on the page - e.g. see Wikiprogress.org, bottom right.--Chriswaterguy 16:24, 1 April 2011 (PDT)
Google Chrome has a machine translation option that works for every site in 52 languages. It is more efficient to put the option into the browser one time, than for millions of individual Web sites to redundantly invent that wheel. --Teratornis 09:29, 2 April 2011 (PDT)
Sure, for those who actually do it. I don't use Chrome (FF4 FTW!) but even assuming there's a Firefox extension, most people are going to remain unaware of it. Sometimes the inefficient way is more effective, for better or worse... --Chriswaterguy 17:35, 2 April 2011 (PDT)
Which of the following two things will happen first:
  • All major Web browsers copy Google Chrome's machine translation feature.
  • Appropedia displays its own machine translation link.
It could be nice to have our own link but if we procrastinate for a while we might not need it. I can think of some other problems on Appropedia that won't solve themselves. For example, persuading/educating everyone to follow the naming convention (in particular, the lowercase rule of wikipedia:WP:LOWERCASE, wikipedia:WP:CAPS, and wikipedia:WP:MOSHEAD, which a lot of pages on Appropedia violate). --Teratornis 22:19, 2 April 2011 (PDT)

Rocket box stove

Hi Chris thanks for being in contact and your input into the Rocket Box Stove page I created last week.

In answer to your question I worked for AIDG in Guatemala in 2009/ 2010 as a technical documentation intern. I produced Design Manuals and Fabrication Guides for several technologies. These resources have been published on AIDG.net but little has been done to publicise the existence. Therefore, Pete Hass of AIDG has suggested crating summary information on Appropedia with links to these docs on the AIDG.net site.

The Rocket Box Stove page is the first of these.

I would like to add photos to this page, but am waiting for AIDG to get back to me with the image files so this can be done.

Another issue I am trying to persuade Pete Hass to resolve is that some of the documents in question that appear to be downloadable on (aidg.net --> technical documents) do not actually download (often the Spanish versions.) If ultimately it is impossible to get AIDG to resolve this, would it be possible to upload the design manuals/ fabrication guides directly to an appropriate page on appropedia (the technologies are: the Rocket Box Stove, the Serpentine Solar Water Heater, and the ARTI Bio-Digester)?

I would be grateful for any tips/ info on how to tag/ categorise the Rocket Box Stove Page so that it comes up for Appropedia users looking for related info.

Thanks Ben Dana —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 11:38, 11 April 2011, Ben Dana

Approtable class

Hi,

Because the wikitable class is so blah!, one thing I did at Kivapedia was create a kivatable class that matched the site's color palette.

/* kivatable class for skinning normal tables */
table.kivatable {
 margin: 1em 1em 1em 0;
 background: #FCFFF5;
 border: 1px #A6BF73 solid;
 border-collapse: collapse;
}
table.kivatable th, table.kivatable td {
 border: 1px #A6BF73 solid;
 padding: 0.2em;
}
table.kivatable th {
 background: #D9ECB0;
 text-align: center;
}
table.kivatable caption {
 margin-left: inherit;
 margin-right: inherit;
 font-weight: bold;
}

It seems a stylized table palette would be a nice touch here too. I'm sure you have the details worked out somewhere, but if you want to see some other wikioptions, I made some samples and tool links at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RichardF/Palettes

Regards, RichardF 19:10, 4 May 2011 (PDT)

I added some sample palettes at User:RichardF/Palettes. --RichardF 21:34, 7 May 2011 (PDT)
Thanks Richard - I'll look more closely when I'm back on a laptop (just have my phone for the next 3 days). Sounds good, tho. --Chriswaterguy 21:40, 7 May 2011 (PDT)

Okay, now the best view of all the stylized palettes and table layouts is on my main user page. --RichardF 18:11, 8 May 2011 (PDT)

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