User talk:Ro Thorpe/Archive 2

Ro Thorpe

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Archive 1, Archive 2, Archive 3

commas

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again." the Wild Oscar.... Hayford Peirce 11:35, 12 June 2008 (CDT) - i won't be emulating oscar here - Ro Thorpe 13:03, 12 June 2008 (CDT)

Archive 1

Hey, it works now! I guess I had to Save it again in order to activate the link. Oh well, hope this is OK with you Ro -- all of our dicussion pages get too long sometimes.... Hayford Peirce 11:54, 12 June 2008 (CDT)

Ah, I see -- John created "User talk:Ro Thorpe" -- I had forgotten to put "user talk" into the title of the new article. Geez. Thanks, John!

No problem. Doncha hate it when you miss the little things? John Dvorak 11:58, 12 June 2008 (CDT)

thanks for that, don't know how it was done, don't think i'll ask... Ro Thorpe 13:03, 12 June 2008 (CDT)

Asterisks

Sure, no problem. Do you want just the asterisks removed, or the words following them too? John Dvorak 15:16, 9 July 2008 (CDT)

Alright, I got it. Apparently the schwa symbol is recognized by UTF-8 encoding, but not ANSI. It sure saved a bunch of work though. John Dvorak 19:06, 9 July 2008 (CDT)

Arm trouble

I have just heard of Hayford's misadventures with a certain spinning blade, and discovered you also have some issues as well; I hope things are okay! I am 75% over my little accident (now it's mostly strength building and flex range regaining). It seems there is an epidemic. --Robert W King 14:37, 19 July 2008 (CDT)

someone who doesn't get it

Hi, Rheaux! Could you do me a favor(our) and take a look at the history of http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Bruch_Violin_Concerto_Number_1.

the guy who has made the entry keeps putting this non-CZ lede para in and I'm tired of fighting him. could you maybe write him a gentle note on his talk page to tell him (briefly) why this shouldn't be here? Many remerciements! Hayford Peirce 15:51, 27 July 2008 (CDT)

Hola!

You're back! Saw your minor edit on greenhouse--oh, much betterer, why didn't I think of that? Oh, how we missed Ro! Aleta Curry 20:03, 13 August 2008 (CDT)

Friggin' computers and double-friggin' security systems

Tell me about it!

I've just uninstalled my new (two weeks) update of Trend Micro PC-Cillin, which is supposed to be one of the best security programs, because I couldn't stop it from running all the time and disrupting me. Now I'm trying to *re*-install it but am having difficulties. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Life was sure simpler before computers, when Bobby and I were out thumpin' the ball around!

Cheers!

This dumb thing is driving me crazy! I couldn't reinstall PC-Cillin -- it keeps telling me it's already there. But it isn't. Now I've done a System Restore. It's back -- but not working. Geez! I may end up uninstalling it again and paying for another entire program. Norton is the pits. McAfee is better, but not much. That only leaves the one with the Russian name, which generally has pretty good reviews.... Grrrrrrrrrr again! Hayford Peirce 18:48, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

back atcha

Gave a (probably too long) reply at my space Ciao! Aleta Curry 03:21, 5 October 2008 (CDT)

ahem

Yup, I've been following the drama. I also have a couple of comments towards the end of this Forum argument, strongly supporting Larry: http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,2389.0.html Hayford Peirce 20:36, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

As far as em-dashes go, I didn't have enough space to write clearly in the Subject box. I meant to say that the word "Insert" was on the left of the "Special Characters" line, and that the em-dash was to the *right* of the word "Insert". Or at least such is the case on my own screen at the moment. Hayford Peirce 20:36, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

for clearing up those points. Of course you are absolutely right about Larry. Never understood the 1st thing about economics myself, though! Ro Thorpe 00:37, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Your testimony

Please let us have it! --Larry Sanger 20:59, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Sovranty

Hi, thank you for the rephrasing in Cyprus. As you can see, I'm not a native English speaker. It's not important for me, but do you really consider sovran, sovranty as incorrect spellings? They are fully accepţed in Webster's dictionary.--Domergue Sumien 11:00, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I fear Webster's has rather misled you there. I don't have a copy, but the online version introduces that spelling with 'also...', while my Oxford dictionary is more to the point: 'Var. (poet.) of 'sovereign'. So as a retired teacher of English as a foreign language I strongly advise you to save that spelling for your poetry!

Salut, à la prochaine (how do you say that in Occitan?) - Ro Thorpe 13:49, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

All right, thank you for the explanation. "Adieu, al còp que ven" :)--Domergue Sumien 14:04, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

De nada - Ro Thorpe 14:16, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

My print edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition, doesn't list sovran or sovranty even as a variant. I myself never recall having seen it that way. It must be a very old variant. Hayford Peirce 15:44, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

That's how it struck me. I don't think I'd seen it either. Ro Thorpe 16:26, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

The Oxford English Dictionary does include "sovran" and derivatives, but cites no use of them any more recently than 1887, and says that these spellings are now "chiefly poetic." (There was a "Sovran Bank" in the southeastern U.S. in the 1980s, at the beginning of the period during which banks became enamored of renaming themselves with meaningless and nonexistent words. Sovran Bank was later gobbled up by NCNB, which then merged with the Borg of America.) Bruce M.Tindall 19:40, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Greek letter articles

Ro, since you're the hardworking "letter guy" for the Roman alphabet, I wanted to ask what articles about letters in other alphabets should be called. I noticed that there is a small but potentially complicated mess involving links to "Gamma" -- some of these are intended to go to an article about the Greek letter; some to an article about "Gamma rays" (which exists); and some to an article about the Gamma programming language (which exists at plain ol' "Gamma").

I assume that we want to do something along the lines of having "Gamma" be a disambig page, with actual articles at "Gamma ray", "Gamma (letter)" or "Gamma (Greek letter)", and "Gamma (programming language)". Does this strike you as desirable? And if so, how should the "letter" articles be affixed -- with "(Greek letter)" or just "(letter)"? Template:Fact I suppose it might be a good thing to pre-empt future confusion by (1) creating stub articles with "(Greek letter)" or whatever for each letter of the Greek alphabet; (2) creating disambig pages at plain ol' "Alpha", "Beta", etc., for each letter; and (3) systematically seeing what links to "Alpha", what links to "Beta", etc., and going into each of those pages and making sure that the link goes to the correct disambiguation such as "Alpha particle" or "Gamma (programming language)" or whatever. But I don't want to undertake something like that unless I'm sure that I wouldn't have to go back and undo it and re-do it a different way if somebody came up with a better idea. So what do you think, and who else should be asked? Bruce M.Tindall 19:49, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. OK, I'll get started on that soon. Bruce M.Tindall 03:44, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Answer to why I used "(Greek letter)" instead of "(Letter)" -- hmm, because Hayford suggested it in the forum, and, uh, I'd forgotten that you'd suggested plain "(Letter)". The answer to whether anybody else has a gamma besides the Greeks is, I never heard of one, but I don't know for a fact that there isn't one, either. I'll just let this set of changes settle down for a day or so and see what other comments show up. Your point about making less work is a good one, though! Bruce M.Tindall 01:03, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

The ref

Perhaps you were after the one described here? --Daniel Mietchen 12:29, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

O apostrophe, where is thy sting?

Ro, would you mind if I renamed your "apostrophe" article to "apostrophe (punctuation mark)" or something similar, to make room for a disambig page and a new article on "apostrophe (figure of speech)"? Or if you have other ideas on how this could be done, please let me know. Thanks. Bruce M.Tindall 00:22, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Yet more punctuation: Dr(.) No

And now for something completely different: In a revision to "Dr. No" you commented, "nothing specifically American about 'Dr'". Actually, I think what the orignal author (John Stephenson) might have meant was that the period after "Dr" in the movie's title was peculiarly American. I can only assume that the British, never having gotten over the trauma of the severe punctuation-rationing situation after WWII, are still very frugal about putting periods after "Mr", "Dr", and the like, whereas we Yanks, with our infinite resources!!! and our most excellent economic situation!!!, are quite conspicuous consumers of same. (See???!!!) So perhaps "Dr. No" looks more American than "Dr No"? Now I promise to stop bugging you about punctuation. Bruce M.Tindall 00:36, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Doctor Who

(coincidence) This is the global article, covering all media, so I've restored primarily. There's only a brief mention of other media in the lead at present, but a fair amount in the body. Peter Jackson 16:35, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Natural stress relaxation meditation

As I understand, the term is trademarked, so it is a proper name and should be capitalized, just as is Transcendental Meditation. Is there a specific reason you moved it to lower case?

Howard C. Berkowitz 03:08, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Could I ask you to hold off? Matt Innis and I are working with the original author, who originally wrote something that I thought was advertising/self-promotion, but he's been very responsive to suggestions. He has asked for help in making the article more appopriate for CZ, and, since he has been agreeable, I'm hesitant to have additional people changing things while we work with him.

We are both doing enough substantive rewrites, and asking him to make changes, that I'd much rather stay focused on content now rather than what, frankly, are fairly minor issues of style. The article title may change, as may metadata, as a result of work on the article.

If you do want to make changes, could you first mention them on the article talk page? Again, we are working with a new editor, and he won't know how to follow side discussions on user pages. Howard C. Berkowitz 03:25, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Huygens

Thank you for copyediting Huygens. Prepositions are one of my weak points in English, good that you correct them. --Paul Wormer 15:12, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

More apostrophes

Here's an issue only a bored copyeditor could love. (And I do.) The apostrophe article refers to Toys'R'Us®, but at least according to the store's website, the company uses double quotes, not apostrophes, around the "R": Toys"R"Us. (And in the logo in which the "R" is reversed, there seems to be no punctuation at all.) Bruce M.Tindall 19:03, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

How could this happen? Even on a wiki???

I am sure as sure could be that you fixed some wording R Jensen had placed at [[terrier]. I would attribute my confusion to the heat, but I have evidence. I wrote:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User_talk:Ro_Thorpe/Archive_1#Fuzziness removed

and you replied at my page.

The text at terrier is back to the original, and there's no record of your edit in the history. [Hums The Twilight Zone theme.

So, for any of the tekkie legends reading this, how is the possible, and for Ro, do you remember what you changed 'fuzzy dogs' to?

Aleta Curry 23:30, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

recent move

When you moved it the first time you did not select the box for 'move all associated subpages' (which is a very useful option). I reverted it back so I could use that option rather than doing each subpage individually. Chris Day 18:16, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

The mysterious violinist

Remember back in August when you deleted the reference to "Sarah Zhang" from the article on Bruch Violin Concerto Number 1? I assume it just a typo for Sarah Chang, who is in fact a big-deal contemporary violin soloist. Not that she necessarily needs to go back into that specific article, since her name was used just as an example of who had recorded the piece, but I thought you might want to know there's a solution to the mystery. Bruce M.Tindall 23:55, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I had forgotten about it, but I do remember that there was some back and forth about this at the time. Always nice to have mysteries solved! Hayford Peirce 00:10, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed it is. Thanks, Bruce, I might as well put it back in. Ro Thorpe 00:21, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

moving retro

Diagram to illustrate the four different views used by the experimental alphabet navigation tool. A shows the view on the main article and the catalog page. B shows the view on the alphabetically sorted subsubpage. C shows the view on the retroalphabetically listed subsubpage. D shows the view on one of the letter aticle pages.

I had cut and pasted the A section in the main article to the new subsubpage. However, since it was a test page, i didn't delete it from the main page. So two A sections currently exist for A. Otherwise you did it correctly. Chris Day 22:00, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Ro, this is what it looks like on my screen. As I say the colors and look can be changed easily. What worries me is that from your description it is not working at all. Note that in the diagram the current page is indicated by the black square. Whether on a letter page, alphabetical or retroalphabetical type page is indicated by the respective row being darker. Chris Day 18:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Ro, I made a few test edits to see if i can get it working. Can you check it again. I made the changes for A-B, so that should be where you see a difference, if any. Chris Day 03:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Also how does this template look?

{{English_spellings}} gives:

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
Use in English
Alphabetical word list
Retroalphabetical list
Common misspellings

i moved this version from the namespace to the template domain. Possibly that is the reason it is not working correctly? Chris Day 04:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Some more experiments on my behalf. On the susubpages themselves I have removed most of the navigation aids it is just a static table now. I just want to see if each cell is now clickable, at least. Also, are the cells coloured now? Chris Day 17:53, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Also see the following examples:

{{English_spellings|class=alpha|name=D}} gives:

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
Use in English
Alphabetical word list
Retroalphabetical list
Common misspellings

This page lists pronunciations of English words that begin with D. To see a different letter navigate with the table above. The apostrophe is treated as the last letter of the alphabet, after Z.

For a pronunciation key, click on the blue "Catalogs" link below the article title.^[e]

{{English_spellings|class=retro|name=E}} gives:

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
Use in English
Alphabetical word list
Retroalphabetical list
Common misspellings

This page lists pronunciations of English words that end in E. The list is in retroalphabetical order, that is, alphabetically beginning with the final letter of the word (in this case E) and continuing backwards through it.

The apostrophe is treated as the last letter of the alphabet, after Z. Click on the blue "Catalogs" link below the article title for a pronunciation key.^[e]

{{English_spellings|class=letter|name=F}} gives:

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
Use in English
Alphabetical word list
Retroalphabetical list
Common misspellings

Do you see any colors? Are the cells clickable? Chris Day 19:21, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Glad it's working now. What about the "look" immediately above. Would that help with navigation? If so, I'll try and add that functionality back, hopefully with out breaking it again. Chris Day 22:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I just made another change. Is it still working for you? Chris Day 12:50, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The change is that it should have the black square to identify the current page as well as highlighting one of the three rows. Can you see that? If so we're done. Chris Day 17:30, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Great, one last question. Would you prefer the bottom row cells to be linking to the article page or the appropriate subsection? For example, E_(letter) or E_(letter)#Use_in_English. Chris Day 17:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)