User:Diceman/Archive

D.O.B.: 1980

Registered on 17 Sept. 2004

I am currently doing a Civil Engineering course at TAFE as part of an effort to avoid being an unemployed suburban hermit with social phobia, depression and bad sleeping hours the rest of my potentially shortened life.

Some interesting articles:

World's tallest structures

Latitude

Element articles eg. Technetium

Domestic AC power plugs & sockets I'm biased but Australian/Chinese plugs have to be the best design in terms of simplicity and aesthetics.

Soda can stove I've made three of these (two regular and one sideburner), camping trips are few and far between for me though.

Sealand - gets my vote for most hilarious article on a country.

American and British English differences

Tsar Bomba - not that nuclear detonations make for light reading. Also worth mentioning Castle Bravo, which was detonated far away from U.S. soil.

History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991)

Extrasolar planet

A B5 movie would be more of an artistic venture than a money-making proposition. It would take some real B5 fans to make an "indie" B5 film. If worst comes to worst a novelised version of the script might come out so we can experience what might have been.

(post submitted here due to error on Movie Blog) Diceman 15:55, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

One problem with broadband: you can be blocked because of some vandal who also happens to use the same ISP. - Diceman 13:59, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I mostly take back my earlier comments about privitised utilities, I rang Telstra's "Outreach" service who said I wouldn't have to pay the A$300 connection fee which was a relief. After about a (refreshing) 6 week break from the internet I'm finally on broadband. - Diceman 11:26, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Archive

Picture gallery:

User:Diceman/Gallery

Open tasks:

National Park of Australia tables.

My Bookmarks:

Pet hates developed since contributing to wikipedia (in the capacity of doing something slightly more useful with my spare time):

People who:

spend a lot of time on wikipedia and consider everyone except themselves and a few associates, in the words of Arnold Rimmer (I think), to "have more teeth than brain cells".

consider themselves to be in charge of wikipedia (and are not associated in any way with the people "behind the scenes"). I thank everyone on this list who hasn't adopted a "my way or the highway" approach with their newfound status.

err on the side of extreme paranoia when it comes to any hint of something that can't be conclusively proven to be public domain or used with permission.

(circa nov 2004)

A lot of conflict seems to come from wikipedia's possible use as an actual paper encyclopedia. My opinion of people who spend their time having other people's contributions deleted will be slightly less low if I see wikipedia in bookstores (which may never eventuate). - Diceman 16:35, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oversaturation of wikipedia. This is an issue that has been dogging me for a while. The wave I was riding after first discovering wikipedia petered out a while back and as far as the contributing goes, it's been more orientated toward others than my own satisfaction of "building" something. There's tons of things still to do, eg. put a table on all 530-odd national parks of Australia, but that's drudgery essentially. It is something I could chip away at over the next year or two, or I could try to get other people to help out. There needs to be a balance between simply reading wikipedia and being a contributor (if you find you can't read an article without scrutinising it for errors you'll know what I mean). And status is not a reason to be a regular contributor (not for me anyway). It comes down to having a decent resource on the internet, and improving the articles that lie within your area of expertise or interest. I've been over-contributing, so in the course of this waffling I've realised that I need to schedule days or weeks possibly away from wikipedia and not worry about what other people will think of me. The alternative would be burning out and never contributing to wikipedia again (which has happened to some people). - Diceman 14:14, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

So how did I discover wikipedia? I was on an Australian Amiga newsgroup which had an Amiga vs ST thread and I wanted to know which was the better selling system. I found quite a good article on worldhistory.com, and found a copy of it on a different site, fact-index.com I think. I noticed the word "wiki" in one or both of the addresses and wondered if this "wiki" had more. I ran a google search and discovered the "Wikipedia" with the ST article, which looked to be the original. I found great articles on the Amiga also and the History of the graphical user interface, and there began my journey with wikipedia. - Diceman 14:14, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Confessions: I am unemployed, suffer from Avoidant personality disorder (another name for Social Anxiety) basically I have a phobia of being evaluated by people, I give a damn about what other people think of me, and I really measure up short. Coupled with self-awareness's evil twin, self-consciousness and public spaces become a nightmare. I go to sleep around 8am and wake up around 4pm. And I live in a house (with my older brother who I've never gotten along with and stopped recognising as family years ago) where the front and backyard could be considered public space due to lack of privacy. I was neglected during the second half of my childhood, which combined with losing my self-esteem at age 12 due to two years in a class where the teacher had a personal vendetta against me and classmembers could openly say derisive things against me, really messed up my mind, I am still working things out to this day. I've believed I was a potential genius (which may have been true but it was never constantly thought about before all this happened) I wanted to be a well-known scientist in the field of astronomy or physics that kids would read about in history books for years to come and/or a formula one driver. When it came to study I was a chronic procrastinator and I never had the motivation (neglect tends to suck that out of you, what's the difference when nobody has any interest in what you do or hope to achieve) to spend $3000 buying my own go-kart and trailer and drive myself up to Bolivar (an hours drive north) once a weekend to get me started.

Also I've managed to not have any real friends (mostly people who might say hi to me but wouldn't invite me around their house) or contact with the opposite sex (low self-esteem, you see). And having never played the social game at school it never occurred to me to try to make friends myself or the value that knowing (decent) people has. And I've only realised a lot of this stuff in my mid 20's. That's the problem with being intellectually orientated, God(/nature) gives with one hand and takes away with the other.

So I contribute with this stuff and other minor matters going on. I have time to kill and why not kill that time on wikipedia (damn, my name won't go into the history books by being a contributor). I think I do pretty well even though my mind is in a pretty bad state of repair and I'm on here generally between the hours of 11pm and 5am. I hate negative judgements of me (I'm working on not being tied to what other people think), people who don't realise how good they've got things and/or lord it over the less fortunate, not acknowledging the good environment they were raised in. So don't revert or delete my contributions with prejudice, view people less fortunate than yourself as inferior (I'm looking at you, conservative types), or put minimal thought/effort into edits and we'll get along fine.

Here is a picture of me (it was taken in late 2003 but I haven't gained or lost any weight and still have the same haircut). This was a shot intended for use on dating or similar sites so I summoned up a genuine-looking smile (couldn't hold it for long) so I didn't look miserable. I will never be a fake smiler (i.e. pulling one's face into the approximation of a smile).

I'm coming out of the closet - I'm not doing very well in life! (had you fooled for a microsecond there) - Diceman 16:01, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I've had it up to here with reverting newbie vandalism eg. people inserting "Hello" or "fuck you" somewhere in the text or blanking sections. I've started doing some vandalism reversion lately and I'm sick of it already. It reminds me of when I did taxi driving, I'd always get asked the same set of questions no matter how many different people got in the car, towards the end it got really annoying.

6 April 2006

I think one pitfall of wikipedia is people who aren't good writers. And who don't have an accurate estimate of their writing abilities. There's a low percentage of this kind of contributor but what to do when a tightly-written piece is turned into a long-winded one with some valid extra stuff added at random, and they "improve" the article on a regular basis? Is it worth sifting through the additions so as not to be a asshole and do a straight out reversion? Or is it best just to take the article off your watchlist and come back in six months when they're gone?

29 March 2006

Some interesting articles:

Articles I have made more than a minor contribution to:

Articles I have created:

Opinion column:

Picture gallery:

Open tasks:

My Bookmarks: