This is my “Wikipedia contrail” — the list of pages in Wikipedia I’ve
been to in the last week or two, according to my browser history. There isn’t a whole lot of random
browsing around (which is what would make it a contrail, I
guess), but the breadth amused me.
- Mythology and fiction in Nethack, NetHack, Cockatrice – I noticed that everyone in the LiveJournal dungeon meme was getting killed
by a cockatrice, and was going “This is why you don’t attack a cockatrice!” to people - Neo-Citran – Would you believe that Wikipedia doesn’t have a page about Neo-Citran?
- Mister Boffo – Trying to find out if it still existed (yes)
- Love is… – Wondering how it could still exist. (Did you know that it has separate people doing the writing and the art?)
- List of
Peter Griffin’s jobs – Someone on IRC asked. Wikipedia knew. - Yap – Giant coins.
There’s one at the currency museum here in Ottawa. - Flint glass, Crown_glass_(optics), Zeiss_Tessar, F-number, Canon_Digital_IXUS, Memory_Stick – Buying a new camera tomorrow!
- Apophenia, Pareidolia, Shadow people – I can’t remember where shadow people came up. Some blog. Paraidolia, an apophenia, is one explanation.
- Fishing Cat – From this mefi post; these Russian folks have a pet fishing cat.
- Ideomotor effect – from an Ask Metafilter discussion about Ouija boards.
- Autorotation – Someone complained that this article was inaccessble. Someone else fixed it.
- Eschatology of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Legal_instruments_of_Jehovah’s_Witnesses, Jehovah’s_Witnesses – Fact-checking for an offhand joke about Insomnia being the Charles Russell of Livejournal.
- Dalmatia – Where do Dalmatians come from?
- Boeing 767, Zoom_Airlines – We head to Paris
in less than two weeks! - Sumer is Icumen In – Fact-checking for an offhand joke on IRC.
- Origin of life, Primordial_sea – Verifying that the production of organic molecules from inorganic had been reproduced in laboratory conditions.
- Zeno’s paradoxes, Proof_that_0.999…_equals_1 – Some people refuse to accept that 0.999… = 1.
- Electric Slide, Hustle_(dance) – A dumb
commercial suggested that knowing one or the other places you in a particular age group, so I checked dates. Still not sure, but I’d say “doubtful”. - Dutch people, Dutch, Netherlands, Holland – Looking up the history of all of these words about the Dutch.
- SunOS -
Fact-checking before I explain to someone that I don’t know
SunOS-specific stuff because I was still in grade school when it was
current, and would they consider upgrading to Solaris sometime soon
please? - Carbonate – Candice and I couldn’t remember what HCO3 was. Duh.
Comments 7
I’m surprised that the carbonate article doesn’t mention that HCO3 – is the “bicarbonate” ion. They do use the more current term “hydrogencarbonate”, but…I dunno, bicarbonate is so accepted especially in the names of household items.
I need to do one of these contrail jobbers, as well.
Posted 28 Jun 2006 at 9:40 pm ¶Bicarbonate — I think it must have just been on the edge of my browser history, because I remember going there. “Hydrogencarbonate” redirects to “Bicarbonate”.
Posted 28 Jun 2006 at 9:58 pm ¶Heh, it’s funny the itches that wikipedia scratches. I found myself reading up on the Peasant’s Revolt and Wat Tyler just the other day. Blame a trawl through Exploding Aardvark for that one.
And as far as Zeno’s paradoxes are concerned: Nobody who’s ever tried to shoot a tortoise with an arrow w^Hcould ever doubt that 0.999… = 1.
Posted 28 Jun 2006 at 11:55 pm ¶I’ve been recording my wikipedia patterns using Greasemonkey. Once I get time I plan to visualize them with rcairo because I am an enormous dork.
Posted 29 Jun 2006 at 3:04 pm ¶i love my EOD 20D.
and Warewolf quite likes his new 350D too :)
Posted 29 Jun 2006 at 3:12 pm ¶Yes, yes you are!
Posted 29 Jun 2006 at 3:15 pm ¶That’s the next camera.
Right now Candice has an old HP Photosmart 715 which is huge and not so great, and I’ve got an Olympus C-3040 which I love except it’s 3MP and it uses SmartMedia. So obviously both need replacing sometime.
We’re heading to Paris for our honeymoon in a week and a half, so the priority was to get something small enough to hide in a shoulder bag that we can both easily use to take snapshots that we’re not going to be able to go back and reshoot, so this one’s the replacement for the HP.
Much later when I finally get completely frustrated with either my 3MP-ness or this camera’s lack of manual settings, then I’ll start shopping around for a digital SLR.
Posted 29 Jun 2006 at 3:17 pm ¶