User talk:LucasVB/Archive0

I Believe Your Misrepresenting Wikipedia Image Naming Policy

The policy is "Use a sensible filename (e.g. "Eiffel Tower, Paris, at night.jpg") to prevent conflicts with existing files." (My emphasis added) I doubt anyone just looks at filenames and nods their head and says its appropriate for Wikipedia. I can name my file GreatestPhotoInTheWorld.jpg but it still can be a picture of my pet dog inserted in a biography on Albert Einstein. The proof is in the image, not the name. The unique name is so you dont overwrite an exisiting filename. All the appropriate information on the file is found in the text and a search will bring up al the images of Albert Einstein. Thats the beauty of an SQL database. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 07:11, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Note

Please add new comments as sections (you can use the link above). This helps to organize the talk page. — Kieff | Talk 00:27, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

IMDb template usage

Sorry about the incorrect IMDb template usage -- curse my sloppy cutting-and-pasting! :) Tregoweth 22:56, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

Links to IMDb

I have dropped a note on Tim Starling's talk page asking him where we can find an informed opinion on the dangers of adding those links. He's busy (and in an Antipodean time zone) so it might be a little while before he can answer. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 08:00, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

Image:Pixelart-tv-iso.png

Hi!

I noticed your nice isometric TV drawing. However, I would like it if you clarified its licensing status. The use of by-permission images on Wikipedia is deprecated and they will eventually be removed. Would you mind licensing the image under GFDL, or perhaps public domain?

Also, your "released as fair use anywhere outside" doesn't make much sense, since a copyrightholder doesn't "release" anything for fair use — fair use is merely a defence against accusations of copyright infringement.

— David Remahl 14:29, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! — David Remahl 17:43, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Re:HHGG

Just in case you are not Watching my Talk page, I have explained what I was doing with the HHGttG page there; I look forward to your response. JesseW 05:54, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Godel and God.

Kieff, IIRC the standard reply to your argument (which is essentially the argument that God cannot be omniscient) is that God is not subject to the normal laws of mathematics-he wrote them, he can change them. In any case, even if you accept the argument it only rules out an omniscient God. Related arguments are the omnipotence paradox and the problem of evil - and you might enjoy the arguments against the existence of God article.

In any case, I get the sense that your real question is "how do I deal with annoying Christian missionaries"? As an atheist, my suggestion is to simply refuse to engage them in argument; you simply can't win an argument with them no matter how hard you try. Their entire worldview is based around a belief that God exists, they cannot be swayed by logical argument in normal circumstances, and they view discussing issues of religion with an atheist purely as a chance to convert you. The only time that kind of Christian can change their mind (and generally they have to do it themselves, belting them round the head doesn't help) is when the dictates of their faith clash with their own observations of the world. If they persist with their spiel, politely explain that you're just not interested, and if they don't take the hint tell them that they're testing the friendship by continuing on with this discussion (which they are, IMO).

Otherwise, get on with your life and don't take it personally. --Robert Merkel 02:41, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for Photoshop feedback.

Hi:

Thanks for the kind note about my dark photo removal request. Actaully, I only had the problem because I'm lazy/busy. I simply have not taken the time to calibrate my new LCD monitor and Photoshop. I have to get off the dime for a photography article and website I'm doing soon, though. --NathanHawking 06:46, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)

MIDI files

Hi, I just stumbled across the discussion about midi files, and was staggered to see what opposition you met. Now, I'd be interested whether this ended with a positive result. --Wpopp 12:55, 2004 Nov 16 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer, yes, I was inquiring about the Commons discussion. --Wpopp 09:56, 2004 Nov 18 (UTC)

Image tags

I'm working on Wikipedia:Untagged Images and I added a {{GFDL}} tag to Image:Circle-golden_ratio2.png, since you have such on most of your other diagrams. Please change it and yell at me if I'm wrong. — JanSöderback 21:10, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Image:Petersen.jpg listed for cleanup

Hi Kieff, I noticed you listed Image:Petersen.jpg as needing cleanup. Does Image:Petersen graph.png address your issues? --Dbenbenn 23:48, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Pangea

Greetings. Thanks for making a new image for Pangea. I tried to clean the old one (with the continents labeled in Polish!) up a bit, but your new one is much improved. —Tkinias 00:45, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

star template

Actually, what I want to do is Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomical_objects#Category:Stars_.26_Category:Galaxies create a no-maintenance listing of all stars. Placing it all in Category:Stars is a messy proposition. The CFD on Category:List of stars shows that's not the way to do it either. User:JYolkowski suggested that each article use the Template:Star template, but that requires quite a bit of information to fill out. On a stub of a star article, it would be inappropriate. A bit of text, and a what links here (as per JYolkowski's suggestion) would probably work well. As Category:Stars is being reorganized to clean up clutter, (since other things are there besides just star articles, like star types, etc) reintroducing stars into stars would return it to the old problem, and have stars under a parent category and a sub-sub-cat. 132.205.15.43 04:10, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I suppose I could turn it into a box, that just says Star \n listing of all stars. And perhaps modify the current template:star to have a headerbox as another template. But the WikiProject came up with the star box, so I'm not sure about editing it. 132.205.15.43 04:29, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Untagged images

Hey, I noticed some of your PD circuit images don't have the {{PD}} tag. Can you tag them as such, helping the guys on the untagged images project? — Kieff | [[User talk:Kieff|Talk]] 04:59, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Alright, i think i got them all - Omegatron 15:45, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Tfd

Any reason why you listed Template:Unquadunium infobox on WP:TFD? I just started developing a new, nicer system to handle the infoboxen on the articles of chemical elements - see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements. The fact that it was just created a few minutes ago might have been a clue that it does not exactly make sense to immediately list it for deletion, don't you think? -- Schneelocke (cheeks clone) [[]] 02:57, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

(Note: I left a reply to your reply on my talk page instead of here, since I don't believe in spreading conversations over several talk pages). -- Schneelocke (cheeks clone) [[]] 03:06, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikification and cleanup of billiards and related articles

Hey, I replied to your request for help. Refer to hel p wanted. –– Constafrequent ^{(talk page)} 09:33, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How do I rename the UMD image?

Thank you for your message reguarding the UMD image. I hadn't noticed the image name until after I uploaded it. I've tried moving it, but it tells me that I'm unable to do that. Should I just upload a new file with the appropriate file name? --The Archivist 04:21, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hex

Hex_(fictional computer) has moved to Hex_(Discworld). Far from it that I change your sub-user gallery page without permission, I thought I'd just drop a line here. Nice picture, by the way! hfool/Roast me 00:32, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Template:City-stub

Aloha. I'm not sure how to use this stub. Do you recommend using it for articles that don't quite fit into the geo stubs? --Viriditas | Talk 07:39, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Category:Circuit diagrams

I'd like to rename Circuit diagrams to Electrical diagrams, which is more accurate. Objections? I've already started uploading things to the Electrical diagrams category of wikimedia commons. - Omegatron 18:14, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

sine waves: Moving your image to comons

Hi Kieff. I take the liberty to upload your Image:Sine waves different frequencies.png to the commons: as I had to use it in the frequency article in tamil wikipedia. I've acknowledged in commons that it was drawn by you. Hope you do not mind. Thanks. -- Sundar (talk · contribs) 16:09, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Interested in an L.A.-area Wiki meetup?

It appears as though L.A. has never had a Wiki meetup. Would you be interested in attending such an event? If so, checkout User:Eric Shalov/Wikimeetup.

- Eric 29 June 2005 01:24 (UTC)

sine waves: request

hello, wondering if you could create a high res version of Sine waves different frequencies at 1000px wide and 300 dpi. i would like to use it in my teaching materials (ppt, handout etc) but the current version is too small for my needs.

many thanks for you time

matt

Usercategorization

You were listed on the Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Brazil page as living in or being associated with Brazil. As part of the Wikipedia:User categorisation project, these lists are being replaced with user categories. If you would like to add yourself to the category that is replacing the page, please visit Category:Wikipedians in Brazil for instructions. Rmky87 06:17, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism

Don't do this again. Go buy yourself a can of spray paint and "express yourself" on the wall of a building. This isn't the right place. Ground Zero | t 20:05, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Psh, I won't. But the situation over here is indeed that bad, that's what bother me the most. ☢ Kieff | Talk 23:09, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

SchoolFolks links discussion removal

Hi Kieff. Since you seem to be involved in whatever is going on with the discussion of the SchoolFolks links on my talk page, would you mind giving me some insight into what's going on? After you removed the discussion and reverted yourself, an anonymous IP (70.209.204.62) has removed it again. I've put the discussion back pending an explanation as to why it needs to be removed. The only part that I could see being removed legitimately is the quotation from the TOU by User:Willmcw since it could be a copyright concern; the discussion itself should be left in place. Mike Dillon 17:14, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Nice work on Image:The Gunk.png

Being a pixel artist myself, I have to say, Image:The Gunk.png does a excellent job looking good and summing up pixel art in a nutshell, with its dithering and color use, and a non-isometric look for an extra bit of variety. Kudos for that. :) ╫ 25 ^ring-a-ding 19:58, 3 November 2005 (UTC) ╫

The mIRC logo is different now

It looks like the {{User mirc}} Has a different logo. See or did you change it?

m
IRCThis user uses mIRC for chatting on IRC.

--Actown 06:14, 5 November 2005 (UTC) Ah Yes i forgot about it lol. --Actown 06:14, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
I also took your Menu template. Its nice ;) --Actown 06:22, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Speedy deletion

Just a heads-up about this diff: neither POV concerns nor "non-notable manga" are criteria for speedy deletion. In the future, if you feel an article like that should be deleted, why not list it on articles for deletion?

For the time being, I redirected it to Jerry Maguire anyway. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 22:50, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Re: Just a compliment

Thanks! Unfortunately I think I might have spelled my username incorrectly... BTW, I like The_Gunk, and your Babel template intimidates/frightens me. :) I might steal a few of those computer languages from you, though... TheIncredibleEdibleOompaLoompa 09:26, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Featured Picture

I have the pleasure of informing you that your animation Image:Gospers glider gun.gif has been promoted as a featured picture. Congratulations, and thank you for creating it for us. Raven4x4x 11:32, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

VGM/Project2612

Hey Kieff, I notice you've been adding our link to the Wiki. While it's good to spread the word, just a kind reminder that the project isn't called Project YM2612 - while that is what inspired the name (in my mad stroke of genius, bahaha!) the actual name is Project2612 or Project 2612. Just a heads-up for future reference. :) --Dark Pulse 15:37, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

sine waves: Aproximation of sine function with bezier spline

Wikipedia:Reference_desk_archive/Science/November_2005#Aproximation_of_sine_function_with_bezier_spline

Interesting problem.

Brad Eckert claims that approximating the sine with 16 short, equally-spaced-in-x cubic splines (Bezier curves) per quarter-cycle "gives better than 16-bit precision" for sin(x). http://tinyboot.com/cubic.txt . I suspect that's far more precision than you need. (One would have to make the peak-to-peak size of the sine wave more than 65,000 pixels high to detect anything that wasn't pixel-perfect). Since I'm willing to live with far less precision, I will divide it into far fewer than 16 segments -- in fact, into a single segment.

A single cubic curve segment approximating the sine wave from (0,0) to (π/2, 1) must have the Bezier control points

• (0, 0), (a, a), (b, 1), (π/2, 1). (match endpoints, and match slopes).

I suspect the best values for a and b are:

• a = (sqrt(2) - 1)*4/3 = roughly 0.55
• b = π/2 - a = roughly 1.02

i.e., roughly

• (0, 0), (0.55, 0.55), (1.02, 1), (1.57, 1).

This choice forces the midpoint of the Bezier curve, B(1/2), to exactly touch the sine curve at the mid-point of the sine curve, sin(π/4). This Bezier curve touches the sine curve at 3 points, (0,0), (π/4, 2^(-1/2)), (π/2, 1).

I suspect that a short "how to" approximate an arbitrary curve using Bezier curves would be useful. Is there already such an article (or section of an article) on Wikipedia? Or is "How to do it" more appropriate for Wikibooks? (I imagine at least 2 sections. A "by eyeball" section describing how to quickly approximate it by tracing over it with SVG graphic editors such as Inkscape. Also an "exact" section describing how to quickly calculate values numerically and plug them into the SVG file with a text editor).

I don't think I can add much to what Don Lancaster has already said about cubic splines / Bezier curves, but I could help write the short "how to".

--DavidCary 10:44, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

It wasn't obvious how to calculate the "worst-case error" in the above Bezier approximation to the sine curve, so I played with a slightly worse (I think) approximation:

A less accurate (?) choice for a and b are:

• a = π/6
• b = 2*a = π/3

i.e., the Bezier control points

• (0, 0), (π/6, π/6), (π/3, 1), (π/2, 1).

This makes Bx(t) very simple: Bx(t) = t*π/2. I think the worst error for this curve is near the location t = 1/2, which gives

• B(1/2) = ( π/4, 1/2 + π/16 ) = ( π/4, 0.696 )
• sin( π/4 ) = 2^(-1/2) = 0.707

for an error of about 1/90 at that midpoint.

--DavidCary 04:06, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

What a pity...

You know those little notes you leave on the mathematics reference desk when there aren't any questions? Well...they make me smile, and brighten my day. :0) --HappyCamper 23:16, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi

Hi Kieff! Sorry, and thanks for the advice. I've only been on this for a few months, so I'm still getting the hang of things!--CCLemon 08:33, 24 January 2006 (UTC)