User:Mendel
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I'm Rich, a geek from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I look remarkably like the handsome gentleman illustrated at right.
You can glean more info about me from my LiveJournal and its userinfo page, and my website.
For two days I was known as RichL, but ten years of being "mendel" on IRC won out.
I am engaged to the lovely Nyxie.
Toolbox
[edit]All of the following make using and contributing to Wikipedia easier for me:
- The Mozex plugin for Mozilla, which lets me edit the contents of a textbox in the text editor of my choice
- The Vim text editor with Wikipedia syntax mode
- The Wikipedia link script in XChat on #wikipedia and #enrc.wikipedia
- CryptoDerk's Vandal Fighter, a Java recent changes ticker
Areas of Interest
[edit]In which I describe in a barely-organized manner the sorts of things I expect I might be contributing to based on my interests and history.
Computing
[edit]I'm a Unix system administrator and Perl programmer by trade, and while I only briefly studied formal computer science I expect I'll touch on that area here and there.
Sociology and Economics
[edit]I have an undergraduate degree in sociology which at times started looking like I might end up studying Economics instead. My areas of concentration at the time included deviance, labor theory, queer theory, and medical sociology.
Music
[edit]I studied jazz performance and computer music at the undergrad level for three years before switching into sociology. I play rock and jazz bass guitar, jazz and a bit of classic double bass, Irish traditional music on the flute and tinwhistle, and a bit of bodhrán and guitar.
Much of my listening time is filled with indie rock. The first article I wrote from scratch was on Canadian indie rock band Hot Hot Heat.
Aviation
[edit]I possess (but have not used for some time — in fact it expires any day now) a student pilot permit, and am predictably a bit of an aviation nut, although I'm certainly not an aviation historian. Nonetheless I expect I will be dabbling in some general aviation articles.
Physics
[edit]I have no formal training in physics whatsoever, but I might have enough understanding thereof to tweak articles toward the layman level.
Motorcycling
[edit]I am a neophyte motorcyclist, having picked up a license and a 1981 GS250T this summer and will find my way around relevant articles soon enough.
Articles for which I take some blame
[edit]Full or nearly-full blame
[edit]- Exploding sheep
- Hot Hot Heat
- Chieftains
- Emily Stowe
- Loyalist College
- Banana bread (and the recipe that Nyxie uses)
- Little Italy, Ottawa
Partial blame
[edit]- Bodhrán
- Mitel
- Gentlemen's Quarterly
- Tin whistle
- Bagel (Montreal vs New York)
- Folk etymology versus fake etymology, especially on pages that link to folk etymology
- Sorting out what the heck pomelos are, and if they're different from pummelos (they aren't)
Photos
[edit]- Bodhrán in Bodhrán
- Betta splendens in Siamese fighting fish
- Tugboats in Tugboat
- Freshwater angelfish in Freshwater angelfish
- Tin whistles in Tin whistle
To-do list
[edit]- Fantastic Plastic Machine — Japanese lounge-pop "band" of dj Tomoyuki Tanaka
- Private Copying — Peculiarities of Canadian music media tariffs
- Marcel Breuer — Bauhaus architect and designer
- Village Vanguard — seminal New York jazz club
- Expand DLT — mechanics of drive and cartridge, stripes, DECtape history
- Clamato — start with http://www.cincypost.com/2004/05/19/clam051904.html
- Check performance numbers at Cessna 150 (>100 kt cruise?) and format like Cessna 152