User:AlMac

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I"m Al Macintyre, currently residing and working in Evansville, SW corner of Indiana, USA. Traditionally, irrespective of individual communities, my interests include: Science Fiction; Simulation games; and topics from my profession, as a midrange systems computer programmer. I am also a news-junkie and book-a-holic.

:Disclaimer: any and all opinions expressed here are the opinions of AlMac (and any vandalism miscreants whose damage has not yet been repaired) and are not neccessarily endorsed nor held by the Wikipedia encyclopedia itself.

Plagarism warning: If I see an image I like anywhere on Wikipedia, and can figure out how to incorporate it on my user page, I will do so. But now I am holding off on this until the WP:AUM crisis is resolved sufficiently so that Image newbies like me have how-to instructions to fix what we've done with minimum of hassle.

I just got invited to Jury Duty, which I imagine will be a great addition to my continuing interesting life education. I do not yet know how much of that education I will be permitted to share with others ... confidentiality until case is over for example. I did not get selected. They asked really good questions, of the kind that belong here & in Yahoo Answers.

I extend my sympathies to the people of the region of the latest terrorist attacks,

Miscellaneous This user's future is so bright they have got to wear shades. √ This user enjoys Wikipedia. In the News Samantha Harvey Samantha Harvey (pictured) wins the Booker Prize for her novel Orbital. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby announces his resignation as a result of the John Smyth abuse scandal in the Church of England. In Zhuhai, China, 35 people are killed in a vehicle-ramming attack. Alliance for Change, led by Navin Ramgoolam, wins the Mauritian general election. Ongoing: Israel–Hamas war Israeli invasion of Lebanon Russian invasion of Ukraine timeline Sudanese civil war timeline Recent deaths: Vardis Vardinogiannis Frank Auerbach Bruce Degen Roy Haynes Dorothy Allison Trevor Sorbie Nominate an article 6 November 2024 From the editors: Editing Wikipedia should not be a crime News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation shares ANI lawsuit updates; first admin elections appoint eleven sysops; first admin recalls opened; temporary accounts coming soon? In the media: An old scrimmage, politics and purported libel Special report: Wikipedia editors face litigation, censorship Gallery: Why you should take more photos and upload them In focus: Questions and answers about the court case Traffic report: Twisted tricks or tempting treats? Technology report: Wikimedia tech, the Asian News International case, and the ultra-rare BLACKLOCK Humour: Man quietly slinks away from talk page argument after realizing his argument dumb, wrong Single page Front page About Subscribe Suggestions Archives

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Goals This user tries to do the right thing. If they make a mistake, please let them know. This user is happy to help new users. Leave a message here. This user wants to be your friend. This user loves ice cream and chocolate. This user eats strawberries.

If we been away from Wikipedia for too long, we may need to revisit Wikipedia:Cheatsheet.

• 2006 January 29 = 3400 edits on 340 pages,
  • 549 edits on articles, 1000 on project pages, 700 on User Talk pages, 470 on article talk pages
  • 450 pages being watched
  • most recent contributions to human extinction avoidance
• 2006 January 21 = 3050 edits on 310 pages & 400 pages watched
  • 415 edits on articles, 435 on their talk pages, or approx 1/3 of my efforts here
  • 920 edits on project pages, 220 on their talk pages, and a handful on category pages, also aggregate about 1/3 of my focus
  • 385 edits on user pages, mainly mine, 675 on user talk pages ... lots of small byte do something, save so far
• 2006 January 7 = 2600 edits on 250 pages & 300 pages watched
  • Last few days I helped out the Cyberlaw Project and posted some stuff at the Harvard Law School students wiki
• 2006 January 4 = 2500 edits on 215 pages & 250 pages watched
  • 15% Articles
  • 15% Article talk pages (seeking consensus)
  • 30% Projects (much more than I realized ... I suspect Wiki codes some stuff as Projects that I not realize as such ... how are the Help desks coded?)
  • 4% Project talk
  • 8% User (too much)
  • 25% User talk (too high ... I gotta spend higher proportion of my time here contributing to the encyclopaedia)
• 2005 December = 2000 edits Christmas Eve
  • on 180 pages and recently only 100 pages watcched
    • (12 edits / page)
  • with 60 edits been deleted.
• 2005 June 28 was wikiborn = Joined WP

This user has a ton of edits.

• May 14 US postage rates go up
  • first class up to
  • 1 ounce = 41 cents
  • 2 = 50 cents
  • 3 = 75 cents
  • 3.5 = 92 cents
• Thank God its Friday, on steroids.

Hopefully in the next year I will have time to contribute more here than I was able to do last year.

Picture of the day

The Apennine Colossus is a stone statue, approximately 11 metres (36 feet) tall, in the estate of Villa Demidoff (originally Villa di Pratolino) in Vaglia in Tuscany, Italy. A personification of the Apennine Mountains, the colossal figure was created by Giambologna, a Flemish-born Italian sculptor, in the late 1580s. The statue has the appearance of an elderly man crouched at the shore of a lake, squeezing the head of a sea monster through whose open mouth water originally emanated into the pond in front of the statue. The colossus is depicted naked, with stalactites in the thick beard and long hair to show the metamorphosis of man and mountain, blending his body with the surrounding nature. It is made of stone and plaster and the interior houses a series of chambers and caves on three levels. Initially, the back of the statue was protected by a structure resembling a cave, which was demolished around 1690 by the sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini, who built a statue of a dragon to adorn the back of the colossus. The Italian sculptor Rinaldo Barbetti renovated the statue in 1876.Sculpture credit: Giambologna; photographed by Rhododendrites

Archive – More featured pictures...

Donkey Kong Country is a 1994 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It follows the gorilla Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong as they set out to recover their stolen banana hoard from the crocodile King K. Rool and his army, the Kremlings. Nintendo commissioned Rare to revive the dormant Donkey Kong franchise as it sought a game to compete with Sega's Aladdin (1993). Donkey Kong Country was one of the first home-console games to feature pre-rendered graphics, achieved through a compression technique that converted 3D models into sprites with little loss of detail. It was released on 18 November 1994 to acclaim. Critics hailed its visuals as groundbreaking and praised its gameplay and music; it is frequently listed as one of the greatest games of all time. Donkey Kong Country re-established Donkey Kong as a popular Nintendo franchise and was followed by sequels and ports for subsequent Nintendo consoles. (Full article...)

• Take a break from giving lip service to losing weight, and just enjoy life.
  • Here's a picture of me from a few years ago.

Heavily defined with the aid of userboxes. Where I give links to various WP articles about topics of interest to me, I have also been rather involved in editing many of those articles.

• User talk:AlMac/2005 Jun-Oct
• User:AlMac/2005 Sympathies to terrorist victims

Hello This user recently discovered userboxes.   This user prefers fix attempts over complaints of various sorts.

Userbox concept technique plagiarism from User:Ali K from User:Redvers with help from Wikipedia:Userboxes, assuming I can figure out how to work this concept (I not want wrap around vs. next sub-topic, nor do I want very wide pages, and I want the colors to be very readable to my aging eyes.).

We all have a POV or bias on some topics, and need to be careful not to contaminate factual WP articles with our opinions.

This user is a mad scientist.

I identify with a collection of view points from different competing philosophies.

• I share the libertarian view that we all need to be accountable for our actions.
• I share the liberal view that we all have a responsibility to help our fellow humans with some kind of social safety net.
• I share the conservative view that a nation ought to have a strong economy to pay for a strong military to protect itself.
• I favor a variety of international efforts to make the world a better place for us all.

Geography This user is from the planet Earth. This user is a Citizen of the World (Terra, ⊕). Time CDT This user observes Daylight Saving Time. This user is from the UK but lives in the U.S.A. This user is of Scottish ancestry

• I reside and work in Evansville Indiana USA.  United States which is on Central daylight savings time ... I guess no user box yet for CDT time.
  • I have been selected for jury duty, which i expect will be an educational experience.
• I got my college education in Cincinnati Ohio and Sacramento California.
• I was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, which is part of Great Britain, or United Kingdom.  United Kingdom

This is from before joining WP. Much about me is subject to change. If I could, I would boycott death.

Identity This user is male. zodiac aquarius

• My e-mail MacWheel is a play on my surname.
• My full name is Alister William Macintyre.
• I sign my name with William shortened as Wm.
• In the work place I am generally known as Al Macintyre.
  • Except for leg pullers who insist on using MacAlister, or some other variant.

I work in the computer profession, currently programming ERP {version 405 CD of BPCS} on the IBM AS/400 operating system. At previous employers I have developed applications for: retail; wholesale; publishing; transportation. Sorry Y"all. I have been frenetically busy of late, so there has been a lapse in my contributions here.

Community Projects This user answers questions at the Help desk and Reference desk, occasionally asks some, and checks on New user needs, but is not yet good enough here for know-how competition. This user is a member of Wikipedia's Help Project. This user is involved with the Usability Wiki Project This user is a participant in WikiProject Userboxes. This user is a member of the WikiProject Television Stargate task force.

Note that I have joined some projects, and identified interests, but made significant contributions, in only a few areas, and I often manage to get over-committed.

I am interested in helping out with the Cyberlaw project. However, my cyberlaw know-how is that of spending many decades in the computer professional trenches, having had computer security responsibilities for about 40 years, and having no formal training in the law, and not a lot of academic credentials.

I've been a bit heavy with suggestions on many WP talk pages, while rather timid in actual article editing, other than where I tried to start new articles.

This is a major professional interest area, a great degree due to my career.

• Security breaches
  • I failed to find the time to rewrite to Wiki standards ... i may try again some time in the future ... see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Security breaches
• Computer security audit and Talk:Computer security audit
  • I began to rewrite this, my spare time has evaporated ... hopefully it won't go the same way.

user book-a-holic

Books disorganized This user reads between the lines. This user uses Wikipedia as a primary point of reference.

I have enjoyed reading Science Fiction since I was a pre-teenager, then branched out into other genres. My apartment has grown cluttered with many things, including looking like a section of a library. I started the Time travel in fiction article, which has exploded with numerous other contributors, and now there is a Category:Time travel in fiction.

Games This user passed GO! (…so where is my $200?) This user plays with a full deck. This user enjoys chess. This user can program in Go. This user is a Board Game Geek.

I enjoy many traditional games like Go (board game) and not so traditional, although it has been a while since I played some of them.

I have designed a few Science Fiction Games, such as Time travel in fiction "Simulation". In my later life, I hope to put this stuff in the public domain, so that people can play my designs over the Internet. I have worked on the Time travel article and Time travel in fiction, in fact I started that secondary article, to split the growing content between the main article which presents Time travel as being factually plausible, and the Science Fiction perspective.

This is how This user contributes using Internet Explorer. This user is a Wikipedian. This user scored 411.64 on the Wikipediholic test. tna This user almost tried to edit this nonexistent article.

There are several boxes I need to figure out how to revise, that are not precise mesh with my interests, just in the neighborhood.
Locate the template. For example, color combinations are hostile to my eyesight through the browser I have used. I have heard that some of my solutions are hostile to other eyes as seen by other eyes through other browsers.

Copy it to your page. Then revise it.

My interest in RPG is both Role Playing Games and the computer language Report Program Generator.

This user is addicted to the computer game, "Civilization".

Wiki places I been intermittently pretty active so far (this list is far from exhaustive), excluding those already mentioned elsewhere in this collection.

• Asteroid deflection strategies
• BPCS
• Military history and Talk:Military
• Trade article and discussion of potential improvements
  • AlMac_Talk about ideas for improving the Trade article.
• User talk:Jayant412/Userbox design kit
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability and its discussion

{{| width="30%" align="center" style="border: 1px solid #6688AA; background-color:#efefef; padding:1em;" valign="top"| Portal of the Week}}

• AlMac/Growing Expertise

Wikimood
[purge]	[edit]

Let me count the ways.

Attitude This user finds edit/revert wars disruptive. This user does not feed trolls.

There are some problems, but proportionally small compared to some other Internet sites.

• By Signal, I mean information that interests me.
• By Noise, I mean people saying or writing stuff that gets in the way of me getting at the information I want to see.

Many discussion groups have a high ratio of noise to signal.

• People misconstrue what we said (some deliberately), then attack what they say we said, which is not what we said.
• There can be a lot of Deja Vu (didn't we have this conversation already?)

• User:AlMac/Wiki Start Map explodes this so the individual details are readable, and here's the context from which I plagarized the diagram.
• Lots of people have contributed information and links of great value, but there's lots more work to be done. We all can contribute to making a great service even greater.

Al not yet figured out how to rename this as self, without copying the image.

Wiki Correct Speech takes a bit of getting used to.

• Not just be nice
  • Be Very Nice
• Be Bold
  • But also be neutral
  • and find ways to do emphasis on steroids without resorting to 4 letter words

This user assumes good faith.

High Focus on Truth, without having to cite every assertiun in rigorous academic sense. Systems for resolving disputes when different volunteers cannot reach a peaceable settlement in this community. However, there is the risk that the concensus committee approach will occasionally design a camel in place of a race horse.

• Tutorial on Wiki Commands

(see how to do this) Al Mac repaired User:AlMac|^(talk) 09:44, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

1. Since you can read this page, thank a teacher.
2. Since it is in English, and you have the freedom to get to it, thank a soldier.
3. But keep an eye on politicians trying to regulate the Internet.
4. and where some info seems to be gobbly gook, thank a spammer.