User talk:Foobar

Hi there. I couldn't help noticing those superb photographs of Gallium crystals that you've uploaded. I've listed one of them on Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates - a page where particularly good photographs on the site are recognised. Keep up the great work! - MykReeve 01:23, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yes - very nice photo! --mav 04:14, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I assume we will soon be seeing a Wikipedia article on how to grow Gallium crystals? ;) --Dante Alighieri | Talk 18:43, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

weird diff

Hi -- I did a diff for your change on Black hole (05:13, 24 Sep 2004, edit summary "rm older vandalism"), compared to the previous version, and it shows the "Interest in collapsed objects..." paragraph with a minus on the left and a plus on the right, but with no changes highlighted. If I edit the two versions and copy the entire content of the edit fields to files, the files are identical. So there doesn't seem to be any difference. I'm wondering whether this is a bug in the diff tool. Do you remember what you changed? Fpahl 09:05, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

They're not identical, actually. Look at the very end of that paragraph [1], you'll see I removed two .'s that some anon had inserted earlier here [2]. He did the same to another article. Funny you mention a bug in the diff tool -- while reverting, I couldn't access the previous diff! It gave me an error page identical to this except with the correct id number. The previous version is accessible now, though. It also contains the (in)correct data (search for "for example...").

--Foobar 02:44, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Strange. I could easily have overlooked the two dots visually, but it seems I must have also messed up copying out the content from the edit fields. I still have the two files that I diffed, and there's one dot in each of them. This together with your version retrieval problem is a bit mysterious. Let's hope it's not a hacker vandal :-) Fpahl 08:48, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's just that the spacing betwen paragraphs has changed slightly. It's not really a bug.

Gallium crystals

I'd just like to tell you that I think you did a wonderful job on your Gallium crystals photo. Good job! --Randy 02:42, 7 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 2000 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:

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:

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)

Featured picture (gallium)

Oooh, so pretty. Thanks! --fvw * 04:39, 2004 Dec 13 (UTC)

Show cats and genetic health problems

I noticed that you have edited the article show cat. There is currently a discussion on the talk page about the section that mentions health problems. The dissagreement is if the article should state that this is a problem (the position I have taken) or weather the article should state that this is a misconception which is not true. Your input would we appreciated. Dalf | Talk 23:40, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

caps bad

Huh? I just noticed that you undid an edit I did to the Palpatine entry. Because of a dispute I am currently locked out of any further editing of that entry. You changed the evil GALACTIC EMPIRE to read as the Galactic Empire. I used the capitalization to mimic the emphasizing capitalization of the name as Lucas did in the opening crawl of Return of the Jedi, The opening crawl also referred to the empire with the preposition "evil." You removed that too.

Query -- Why?

Robeykr 21:57, 8 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I realize you're using the same style as the two opening crawls, but I changed it to maintain consistency with wikipedia's link style and the content of other pages. Every other en: wikipedia page uses "Galactic Empire" alone and with that capitalization. In addition, the only instance of "evil Galactic Empire" is found in the opening crawl quoted on Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Since no one else has used "GALACTIC EMPIRE" (with or without "evil") on any other Star Wars page here, I feel it just looks better.

--Foobar 22:28, 8 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Gallium crystals

Hi! How do you grow gallium crystals - I have access to most common lab chemicals (including a few gallium salts). I'd really love to grow a few. Nippoo 12:30, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You need to obtain at least 50 grams of highly pure (99.99%+) gallium metal, as impurities rapidly destroy its ability to form large crystals. I say 50 grams because anything less cools too quickly and isn't nearly as visually impressive. Put the metal in a sealable transparent plastic container. Melt the gallium completely, then leave it to cool and solidify. Measure the amount of time required for it to completely solidify. Then, remelt it, leave it to cool, and about 3/4 through the process, tilt the container so that the liquid gallium runs out from underneath the solid gallium, hopefully revealing your crystals. Let the remainder solidify, and you're done. If it doesn't form crystals, it's being cooled too quickly, or there wasn't a good seed crystal available. To combat the former, lightly insulate the container with some cloth; to combat the latter, swirl the gallium around as it's being melted and stop melting it when there's a small amount of solid mass left inside. If you have access to a precisely temperature-controlled enclosure (around 0.1-0.5 degree precision), this becomes far easier, as you set the enclosure to just below the melting point of gallium and wait.

Where can one find Gallium?

Ever since I learned of Gallium in my university chemistry course, two decades ago now, I've wanted to obtain some. I wouldn't even know where to look. I am in San Francisco, USA - so I figure in a city of this size and diversity I should be able to find some - but where to start looking? Any suggestions would be much appreciated. I'm still curious to see a metal turn to liquid in my hand :)

OK, forget my request. It seems Gallium is as costly as Gold! (link removed -- Foobar). Is this normal?

No, it isn't normal. That company appears to be severly inflating the cost of Gallium, taking advantage of the fact that most companies that deal in high purity elements do not sell to individuals. According to this USGS document, the average price per kilogram over the past five years has been around $505; not cheap but not mind-blowingly expensive either. The fact that this particular company wants 82 times the going market value per gram is nothing short of absurd. Try checking these companies out; you'll probably have to order through a local chemical distributor or university, however. ESPI Metals, Alfa-Aeser, American Elements. Good luck!