Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Tag: Wikipedia

  • Stump Wikipedia

    I think we should start a new game: “What Can’t You Find on Wikipedia?”, or, alternatively, “Stump Wikipedia”. Seriously, they have over 1.4 million articles now, and it keeps going up. Is there a ceiling?

    Although you have to stick to real subjects… you can’t punch something in like “nitrate waffles” and expect a legitimate response. (See Googlewhacking if that’s the game you want to play.)

    Of course, the irony here is even if someone were to find such a subject, that person or another could immediately create a new article for it… thereby negating the point.

    So how soon before Wikipedia becomes sentient?

  • Wikipedia’s unusual articles

    One of my new favorite Wikipedia pages is the Unusual articles list. You gotta love that. Where else could you learn about such things as Heribert Illig, a German historian crank who claims the Dark Ages didn’t exist and the years 614 to 911 AD are invented? Or that some guy legally changed his name to Optimus Prime, after the Transformers character? Or that the smallest park in the world is in Portland, Oregon?

  • Wikipedia amusement

    I love Wikipedia and all, but sometimes I really have to shake my head in amusement/amazement when you compare the amount of content in something like the Doctor Who article (and supporting articles) to the amount in the esotropia article. One of those things that really highlights the weird imbalance of content that critics are always going on about.

  • Wikipedia’s New Look

    Just a quick note here… I saw Wikipedia‘s new look this evening and I have to say, I like it.

  • More random things

    While in Portland for Kaitlyn’s surgery, we found a little bit of time to go to Goodwill to accomodate my wife’s eBay habit. Browsing through the science fiction section of their used books, I happened across a paperback Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson that was in pretty good shape. I’d been wanting this book, and for the super-low Goodwill price of $1.99 I couldn’t pass it up. So it was just icing on the cake to find out the book was also signed by the author!

    I’ve been playing with Wikipedia a lot lately, even contributing some articles and editing others. I’ve mentioned Wikipedia before, but I’ve been becoming addicted to it and had to slip in a mention again. Go check it out. You’ll be glad that you did.

    We got a new computer a little over a week ago, an eMachines from Costco. Cheap, and far better than the other computers in the house. Unfortunately, I’m still not completely caught up with installing all my old software to it, so my Palm eBook “project” has been delayed. Rest assured, it will be continued again. Soon, I hope.

    PHP rocks. Yeah, I just had to slip that in there.

  • Beer & Wiki

    I just finished up making a batch of beer, an English Old Ale that I’ll be giving to my Dad for his birthday this year. This is the second beer in as many months that I’ve brewed, and I’ve already got plans for at least two, maybe three more: a Pumpkin Ale (I used to brew this every year around Halloween), a wheat beer for my Mom’s birthday (perhaps a blackberry wheat), and I’ve been thinking about a barleywine in December. Though I’ve been thinking about experimenting with the style and using wheat malt instead of barley malt— a “weizenwine” or something.

    Here is an extremely cool site: Wikipedia.org. It uses the (relatively) new concept/technology of the “wiki web,” and is essentially an online, freely editable encyclopedia. And by “freely editable” I really mean freely editable— anyone (anyone!) “can edit any article right now, without even having to log in” (in their words). It’s true. I had edited their Beer page and added an entry for Barleywine, then added and edited the very page for Barleywine myself, just today.

    And, it’s collaborative. Within three hours of my creating the Barleywine article, someone else had edited it and added links. What more can I say? Check it out.

    Random Web Link: BookCrossing – I just love this concept. Right along the lines of Where’s George?