ADW #4 = Napoléon Bonaparte

there were a few people I had in mind for the first "other" dude (trying to rotate between 1/4 Persian/Arabs dudes, 1/4 Chinese dudes, 1/4 Indian dudes, and 1/4 "other" dudes). Had been kicking around the "Napoleon is responsible for the United States being awesome" theory for a while though, and this seemed like a good venue to express my extremely dubious claim. And it certainly legitimized my argument by tossing out obscure characters from the Ninja Turtles, Miss Universe stats, and unnecessarily insulting both Thomas Jefferson and Al Gore

still manage to drop some knowledge along with the ridiculousness though. Unless you grew up around there, there is absolutely no way you'd ever heard of the Pig War. Everyone knows the Cuban Missile Crisis, but this one was way closer to actually happening. And the story behind it is absolutely hilarious

best thing 'bout this one was that I got a ringer to pronounce Napoléon Bonaparte. Tired of flashing that rose by any other name pic, and this was an easy one. Couldn't quite get my over-the-top Pepé Le Peu accent right though. Recorded dozens of me exaggerating Maurice Chevalier, but then I had a stroke of genius and figured I could get a real French guy to say it. Took a surprising number of youtubes ere I found someone talking. Most of 'em were either just words flashing or music and re-enactments of battles and stuff. This was the first guy I got and the combination of his speed and those notes playing in the background were just too funny

ADW #3 = ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ ਦੇਵ

this one might offend some people as it is 'bout the creator/founder of a major religion. Totally wasn't being rude at all though, just a light-hearted introduction to Sikhism for lots of folks. I accurately depict Sikhs as athletes and super-models and taxi drivers. Translated the 3 pillars in terms to which everyone can relate and respect. Don't tell me that "love God" ain't a succinct and non-confusing way to explain Naam Japna. Kirat Karni = "do things to make your grandma proud" is slightly more controversial, but is nonetheless pretty phenomenal. And Vand Chakna as "be a good neighbor" is perfect

Lots of bonus points for me for using a picture of Sonny and Preeti Caberwal too. Coulda chosen someone easy like the prime minister of India or a thug like Udham Singh, but the intention of this was more of the Sikh next door aspect. Which is also why I chose not to perv it up

I don't think Ruth Bader Ginsburg has ever ruled on kirpans (the "swords" that #10 Guru Gobind Singh made everybody get), but for sure she'd think they were totally cool. The Canadian Supreme Court thinks kirpans are fine, but I wasn't 'bout to use a picture of the Canadian Supreme Court. You'd think a country like Canadia would have something like a Supreme Court that isn't completely pathetic and embarrassing, but never ever ever underestimate the embarrassing patheticness of Canadia. Why am I so insulting of the Canadian Supreme Court? This ain't a comedy skit or a Christmas joke, THIS IS WHAT THE SUPREME COURT OF CANADIA ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE!!!!!!. Just another reason that all their hockey teams deserve to be moved to places like Texas and Florida and Arizona

ADW #2 = 明成祖

by week two I was already finding it difficult to meet my loose quota of trying to maintain a balance between 1/4 Arab/Persian dudes, 1/4 Chinese dudes, 1/4 Indian dudes, and 1/4 other dudes. Originally had someone else in mind for the second installment, but I might've set the proverbial bar of awesomeness too high with the first one. The only other guys who seemed sufficiently cool enough to follow him were other ibns. Granted I got Euro-ibns and Afro-ibns and Arab-ibns and Central Asian ibns, but I can't make an exception and put two of 'em back-to-back this early in the game. Already have a few new youtube friends and I don't want them to get the wrong idea. There will be plenty more ADWs that will appeal to their particular interests, but I ain't limiting myself to any particular culture/religion/time period (although I gotta confess that them 10th-13th century ibns are my favorites)

had to dig deep and pull out one of the big guns for this one. Several GOAT emperor dudes from which to chose, but this guy has such an over-the-top resume of awesome feats that making a youtube for him was easy. Barely even did more than casually mention his accomplishments as well, since I didn't think there was really much need for elaboration. First 30 seconds are his name, then his dad gets the next minute or so, 45 seconds on dude himself, then it's just castration and dead hooker jokes

hadn't even realized it 'til I was already almost finished with the research, but I had written a story involving 明成祖 back in the day. When I wrote the blog 2 years ago, the Chinese wikipedia page to which I link at the end didn't have an English counterpart. It was a pretty hilarious punchline back in September '07. I assure you that when I wrote it, there was no way you could fact check it without knowing the story better than I did. Even now try asking the google keywords like "9 generations" "chinese emperor" "usurper" and hate me for not allowing you to verify my bedtime story. Dissemination of knowledge is a good thing, but the improvement of the internet does take some of the fun out of mischievous antiquated jokes

from a technical standpoint, this one was a vast improvement over last week's. Only one really sloppy sound goof, and it is only awkward for a few seconds. A coupla mistakes (whatever the oral equivalent of typos are), but no big deal. Soooooo much better than the other one as far as editing and all that. Recorded the entire thing in a single take and only cut-and-pasted in one other audio bit. This one took me a total of 2 days start-to-finish, which is a significant improvement over the month that it took me to do the first one. Lots more pictures too, although I'm still having trouble with the youtube video thumbnail thing [1]"


notes

[1] had thought that the still picture used to represent it was taken from the halfway point. Youtube gives you a choice of 3 frames, supposedly they are taken from the 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 marks of the video, but from my experience that is not the case. Of the 7 videos I've uploaded to youtube, only 2 of them take the picture from the halfway mark and only 1 uses a picture from either the 1/4 or 3/4 point. So basically of the 21 thumbnail images I have, only 3 of them are from when they should be

Awesome Dude of the Week = Avicenna

I was having a lot of fun learning 'bout la gripe porcina/Mexican pig flu/the H1N1 outbreak when I came across the word epidemiology. Clicked on the link and pretty soon had a new favorite person

I had made my first video thing a few weeks earlier and was intrigued 'bout experimenting with a new medium in which to express my creativity. The Batman picking up girls thing was originally only going to be an audio track, but I couldn't figure out how to convert it. I just set my camera to video mode and talked into it. Figured it'd be really really easy to make that into an MP3 or whatever, but the google said I needed to download some program or something. Coulda just recorded directly into my computer microphone, but the sound quality on it isn't too good. Whenever I use the skype I have to hunch over the keyboard and yell into the thing from 2 inches away. I coulda prolly rigged up the Madonna head-set I have and spoken into that, but as I had already recorded a near-perfect (fumbled the words "evil supervillains[1]" a bit) version on the camera, figured I'd just go with that. Since the video was of my feet and the floor, I just grabbed some things off of the google images and slapped 'em up over the audio. The result was way cooler and far funnier than had I just used the audio track. Thus the dawning of a new era

this first Awesome Dude of the Week video took me an embarrassingly long time to finish. Completion of the script kept getting delayed on account of laziness and lots and lots and lots of distractions while doing fact-checking. I always seem to have at least 3 dozen open link in new tab windows open, almost all of which are tangential to something and contain multiple links to other stuff. My curiosity combined with a penchant for wasting time meant that I missed lots of self-imposed deadlines. If I were making a Hollywood movie I woulda been way behind schedule and way over budget. Fortunately for me I wasn't, so I had zero budget and no schedule. I reveled in this and gleefully procrastinated for weeks (ask me sometime 'bout that state quarters blog)

as far as the technical details go, this one kinda sucks. The audio was recorded in lots of segments, but most of the transitions are pretty seamless. That whole my voice getting really really quiet all of a sudden part is the most obvious and awful exception. Shoulda delayed a few of the pictures a bit too. Still though, for a first and worst video, it ain't that bad. Plenty of lessons learned too. The details are irrelevant, but in the future I'll do like I did for the Batman one: first get inspired, then write out a script, then record it, and finally add pictures and stuff. Of course I might get ideas for different aspects in a different order, but I can always save the images or videos or audio files or whatever and add them at the appropriate time. Which is after I finished recording the audio. Discovering this was a painstaking process that I do not intend on repeating

nonetheless, I had a lot of fun researching and goofing off and making this one. Obviously the first, and perhaps most subtle joke, is in the intro: "Today's awesome dude of the week . . . " That's funny. Not this week's awesome dude of the week, but today's awesome dude of the week. Ha ha ha, betcha no one woulda ever caught that either had I not just proverbially spilled the proverbial beans[2]. Flashing the quick picture of Sushruta, Charaka, and Galen was meant to confuse as was my subtle reference and verdict on who won the debate between him and ابوریحان محمد بن احمد بیرونی. Just trying remind everyone of their ignorance and fan the flames of the necessity for plenty more ADWs to come

tossed out some controversial nationalistic stuff too. Not so much a dig at Iran as it is a shout-out to the Soviet Union and approval of China's 中華民族. I'm not gonna lie or hide or stretch the truth, but I do reserve the right to say "Dude was born and raised in what is today Uzbekistan." and refer to him as a Persian Uzbeki


notes

[1] referring to someone as an evil supervillain might seem kinda redundant, but unless you are are a pretentious aristocratic the adjective is of the utmost importance. Evil means you are a bad guy. 'Mericans thinks terrorists are evil. Terrorists think 'Merica is evil[3]. Evil is all a matter of perception, but it is important to know to whom you think it refers when throwing up gang signs

while evil denotes which team you represent, villain or villein is merely an indicator of your social class.

villein
1 : a free common villager or village peasant of any of the feudal classes lower in rank than the thane
2 : a free peasant of a feudal class higher in rank than a cotter
3 : an unfree peasant standing as the slave of a feudal lord but free in legal relations with respect to all others

not sure exactly what a thane or a cotter is, but reckon a supervillain or supervillein would fall somewhere between Toussaint L'ouverture/Spartacus (born and raised in slavery) and Fidel Castro/Kevin Costner's Robin Hood (born and raised as wealthy landowners). Good examples of a supervillein or supervillain would be the real Robin Hood or Mel Gibson's Braveheart (the real Braveheart's daddy was rich as were his brothers). Those are good supervillains. Evil supervillains would be lower-middle class people who try to take over the world (Adolf Hitler is a perfect example of an evil supervillain or evil supervillein)

[2] spill the beans = http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/329900.html

[3] some terrorists don't care 'bout 'Merica and are in the IRA or ETA or various other things, but they are stupid. Any terrorist worth their salt [4]hates on 'Merica. What kinda supervillain/supervillein versus the local school board or the county zoning commission?

[4] worth one's salt = http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/worth-ones-salt.html

simple.es.tr.wikipedia

nothing too exciting happened on the Simple English wikipedia this month. Kinda uninspired since they canceled the tournament, plus I moved to Miami and was quite occupied with boozing it up in my new locale. Created the tallest building in the USA list and filled in a few of the blanks. Did some work with the skyscraper categories too. I'm thinking that April will be an ambitious month, especially if my real estate woes mean I have to curtail one or possibly even two of my highly anticipated out-of-the-country sojourns. Up next (after I finish the last of the USA skyscrapers) are lists for Hong Kong, Shanghai, and China. Not sure if all of that will be finished ere May rolls around, but we'll see. Hopefully I'll be off gallivanting in new places and have better things to do than play on the wikipedias

someone on the Spanish wikipedia wanted to delete another of my skyscraper stubs. They said it was too short and blah blah blah. Someone added a few sentences to it and it was spared from deletion. I think it is pretty funny that my entry for Millennium Tower was deemed unacceptable, while my dozens of other stubs like Key Tower, Aon Center (Los Angeles), and Park Tower are just fine. Even a wiki as developed as the Spanish is still pretty hurting in its inconsistency.

without question the most interesting thing that happened was my receiving of the following email:

Sayın Ianm1121,

Wikipedia'daki Kullanıcı mesaj:Ianm1121 başlıklı sayfa
00:41, 29 Mart 2009 tarihinde Vikiçizer tarafından yaratıldı. Geçerli
sürüme http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kullan%C4%B1c%C4%B1_mesaj:Ianm1121
adresinden ulaşabilirsiniz.

Yeni bir sayfa.

Açıklaması: Vikipedi'ye hoş geldiniz!

Sayfayı değiştiren kullanıcının erişim bilgileri:
e-posta:
http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96zel:E-postalAt/Viki%C3%A7izer
Viki: http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kullan%C4%B1c%C4%B1:Viki%C3%A7izer

Bahsi geçen sayfayı ziyaret etmediğiniz sürece sayfayla ilgili
başka değişiklik uyarısı gönderilmeyecektir. Uyarı ayarlarını
izleme listenizdeki tüm sayfalar için değiştirebilirsiniz.

Wikipedia uyarı sistemi.

--
Ayarları değiştirmek için:
http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96zel:Watchlist/edit

Yardım ve öneriler için:
http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yard%C4%B1m:Contents

how cool is that? Turkish wikipedia wants me to do something or help them or be their friend or something. I might be a skyscraper consultant. Pretty exciting stuff in the wikipedia universe

no more 2009 Wikicup Tournament of Champions

those silly guys over at the Simple English wikipedia couldn't even keep together the 2009 Wikipedia Tournament of Champions past the first round. I was leading my pool and would have advanced to the second round, but whatever

all I really did in February (other than partying and enjoying spending winter in the Caribbean and rocking out at Carnival) was create the list of tallest buildings in Chicago and fill in the top few. Getting the hang of the list creation and will do ones for Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Dubai. I'll prolly do ones for the United States and China too. That would get me most of the way done with the top 200, which was my original goal when I started on the wikipedia a year and a half ago. Still a long way to go, but the end is in sight. A few more and the Simple English will be in the top 5 of all language wikipedias as far as skyscrapers go. Not all that phenomenal an achievement in and of itslef, but if I can single-handedly versus all the languages of the world and come in behind only English, German, and French, then I'll take it. Plus I can rank up the Spanish and Portuguese ones whenever I want too. Or Italian or prolly a few others. I'm pretty much a one-man multilingual wikipedia skyscraper juggernaut. I've never been a juggernaut before, but it seems an apt title since the word derives from the Sanskrit Jagannātha, meaning master of the world

2009 Wikicup Tournament of Champions

2009 Wikicup Tournament of Champions
took me 'til the end of the month to start, but I created alist of the tallest buildings in New York City and filled in a few blanks that were on the top 200 page I made a while ago. Added a link to the new list on the other New York skyscraper pages too and edited the Empire State Building one a lil'. Not too productive, but enough to put me in 2nd place in my group. Not sure how they're counting though, they only gave me points for minor edits when I quite obviously created stubs that were over 300kB and a new article that was nearly 5000kB. Whatever

the Simple English wikipedia is really not very good. It's mostly just stubs and dead links. They have some articles, and a few editors, but anyone hard-core is on the English one or the one in their native language. Still though, I'ma keep on plugging away. Can't really complain since I'm not even a star on a hurting wiki. Yet . . .