Koyaanis Qatsi

A few articles I've contributed to significantly: Dziga Vertov, color temperature, Schizophrenia, Dave Brubeck, Ingmar Bergman, Joel and Ethan Coen, Digital Video, The Thin Blue Line, Stephen King, and Amazing Spider-Man. Mostly I play in film, though sometimes in literature, and sometimes just "[Random Page]" and canonize names or copy-edit. I've also done a lot of cut-and-paste work in Countries of the world. All of these entries are of course completely open for revision, refactoring, removal, etc., and if you can improve them then please do so. Chat with me below or email to koyaanisqatsi at nupedia dot com if you'd like.

What Google Likes	What Nupedia Wants	Requested articles	Brilliant prose
SandBox	R P Sandbox	Wiki special characters	[edit lock?]
In progress:	[Dept of State stuff]	status here
	Joris Ivens	Dziga Vertov
	punch up	As We May Think
	eradicate non-META subpages
	Countries of the world	through :Afghanistan

/Old talk

---

Would it make sense to separate all the CIA data as subpage of each country? In the future, newer revision of the CIA data can be substituted mechanically. As it stands now, you will have a hard time doing the upgrade when other authors mixed their writings into the CIA data segment.

That's something I didn't have the foresight to consider. I don't know what's to be done about it now; currently there are several anachronisms and inaccuracies in it, including the suggestion under United States/Government that Bill Clinton is the United States president. Certainly I don't intend to update them manually; I do have two jobs and am attempting to attend school at the same time.

But I don't think it would make sense to separate parts of it, at least not for most of it. Many of the topics in the 'pedia will obsolesce sooner or later, and just require vigilance. Even the PG discussion of Algeria from 90 years ago is largely inaccurate due to changing borders, so I think it's a more general problem than the CIA bits. Perhaps something like [[Current government officials of *]] would help, or maybe we could just link to sites charging themselves with maintaining that data. I'm very interested in suggestions on this front. --KQ

---

About the France article, I think the constitution paragraph is false, constitution isn't rewritten at each changement, parliement (assemblée nationnale + séna) is asked to vote over modification, adding or removing on a article by article basis. The number of the constitution is for each complete rewrite. As a French living in France, a have only heard about rewriting a new one once, by an extremist party during the 95' presidence election.

---

Adding any information on countries on my part involves nothing more than a cut and paste job from a source in the public domain (in this case, either the CIA World Factbook or the U.S. Department of State website). In this case, though, that info was there sometime before the 25th amendment, and wasn't my addition. If it's wrong, why not change it? :-) --KQ

---

Something I just noticed... apparently, redirects don't work properly on names like "Boston, Massachusetts" and "Longmeadow, Massachusetts" - instead of an automatic redirect, it just shows a page with a link --DigitalSorceress

---

ugh. That's usually because a #REDIRECT page leads to a second one, at which point it stops. I'll change it if that's what happened here. --KQ

---

Hi KQ - I was having "one of those days" yesterday. I'm OK with the Nobel Prize stuff, and I'd like to write more about the history of the prizes, and about individual laureates... when I have some proper free time. I'll remove the discussion from my page. -- Claudine

---

Ok then. I look forward to the histories. :-) --KQ

---

Please stop removing html code from pages. Wikipedia employs HTML and if you don't like the font styles on a page, move on, thank you ! I spent 25 mins re-editing the page so it looks nicer, whether you think so or not, and how about everyone wearing black pants so it's all "standard" -BF

---

Not everyone has that font; and not every browser supports it anyway. --KQ

Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer ask you if you want to download foreign fonts, if say you are trying to look at a Chinese site and you don't have chinese fonts. If you have an older browser maybe it's time to upgrade, and yes it's free. Thanks again. Enjoy standard =) -BF

So what? I know about the fonts, thank you. Why should I care what font you want to look at it in? Change it on your machine, and leave everyone else's alone. --KQ

KQ - I'll go one step further - I don't think "font" tags EVER belong in an article. To me the talk pages are irrelevant and you can do whatever you want, they are just the "doodle pads" of the encyclopedia and will all get deleted when the revolution comes. I think BF is slowly coming to realise the curious joys of participating in an anarcho-syndicalist commune... she can do whatever she wants... and so can we! - cheers MB

Leave fonts alone on pages you contribute nothing to. Unless you want wingdings as default here. You want to complain ? I will also.

All pages on wikipedia are under public ownership, and KQ has as much of a say about any of them as do you. At the same time, holding pages ransom is callous and shows a strong lack of respect for your peers. If you were only more cooperative, I'm sure your contributions would be welcomed.

Btw: while the topic has been brought up, do we suppose that font tags might actually be appropriate for providing samples in pages about scripts - Arial?, serif?, and so forth, once they have been created? It seems a little wasteful to go to the trouble of creating an image file, but then again it doesn't presume that the user has such-and-such a font set on their computer, so it might be preferrable.

---

I would prefer the image file, since it doesn't presume any certain font (and otherwise, we'd have to say something like "the following sentence is in such-and-such a font, if you actually have that font, and if you don't, then it's not.") The question is then what to do about people using text-only browsers, or even browsing with images turned off. --KQ

If you are browsing with images turned off, you shouldn't expect to see any pictures. ;) I think you're probably right.

--Actually, the point might be moot anyway for people in text-only browsers: are different fonts an option? If not, those users would just have to see it in print, or on a different computer.

---

KQ: According to Merriam-Webster's "judgement" is an acceptable variant, not a mispelling. -- Simon J Kissane

Hm. My OAD doesn't list it, but the OED does, and doesn't make any comment on it. I've always seen it with just one e; perhaps that's a, uh, United-Statesianism. <g> --KQ

---

Through the fence I could see them hitting. --KQ You left this on Gareth Owen/Talk. Can you explain it please?

I understand! -- GWO

Oh. I didn't see your request on the Recent Changes page. Sorry, I wasn't ignoring you. :-)

---

hello KQ. Remember a few months ago you suggested i write this? Miyazaki Hayao Its a begining :) - Asa

---

Hi, thanks for your comment on my Prokofiev article. It's not a paste, it's my translation of a paper I did once in school, so I think it's safe for me to use :) I'll get back to finishing it one of these days. - jofo

---

Curious. Millions of messages and not a mention of Philip Glass. --Dave McKee

---

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner about that bad PNG. Here it is corrected:

Whatever software created your original image put information into the PNG file about the brightness and color response curves, i.e., "Gamma" and "Chromaticity", that had illegal values (in particular, a gamma of 0.0, which is an exponent of the brightness response curve, making it flat). Internet Explorer 5 was the only browser correctly interpreting that, and rendering the blank image; less sophisticated browsers generally ignore gamma and chromaticity information because you can get a decent image ignoring them. I removed that information, because without it the defaults are fine--bad information is much worse than none. It also made the file smaller. It's also a grayscale image saved with a color palette, so it could be made smaller still with a bit more work. Please let the programmer who created that software know about his mistake so it can be fixed. --LDC

Here it is with the palette removed (about 23% smaller). --Zundark, 2001 Nov 14

Thanks, both. :-) --KQ

---

Hi KQ, I had not "seen" you for a while, where were you? :-) AN And I don't think you are responsible for the problems on countries of the world, on the contrary, you worked hard on it. The problems with separatist movements would have appeared sooner or later anyway.

---

I've been in and out briefly, mostly anonymously from work. I'm back in school now--working on a Master's in mass communications--and working two jobs. So I've been pressed for time. There's a lot going on here; I'm glad to see it. We've gotten a lot of motivated people in the last few months.

I haven't noticed you around much, either. How have you been? --KQ

Busy, my daughter was born about a month and a half ago, and I still don't get back on track....not sure if I ever will :) So, I have not been working in new articles, just checking what appears, specially in my area, repairing vandalism and asking questions...more like editor that writer....and for as little time as I'm able to (just one more edit....:))--AN