Users/PhilipNeustrom

Beer, friends, and computers.

I'm a recent graduate of UC Davis with a BS in Mathematics. I love photography, programming and learning.

I have a LiveJournal which is at http://livejournal.com/~codetoad. I don't seem to update it as much as I should, though. I've also got a flickr (photo-sharing site) account at http://flickr.com/photos/philipn. My personal website is at mathburritos.org. I also have a twitter account: @philipn.

My email address is <philipn AT gmail DOT com>. My Jabber (Google Talk) name is philip@jabber.org, and I'm on that fairly often if you want to chat. For davis wiki-centric stuff, please email <daviswiki AT gmail DOT com> (for now).

I'm happy to respond to emails, but please take a look at the welcome to the wiki pages — especially the business owner page. If you have a general question, you should probably ask it on the general wiki community page.

Also see my home on the Wiki Spot hub.

If you'd like to help out with anything related to the back-end of the wiki please let me know. There's a whole lot of work to be done!

I really like Choice Voting because it's one of those ideas that, once you spend some time and think about it, makes a lot of sense.

"Our minds are finite, and yet even in those circumstances of finitude,
we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite,
and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude."
-Alfred North Whitehead

Some Favorite Pages

Night Time - Find out what's open late at night! Literally the most important resource in Davis :P
Davis Map - Too awesome to leave off this list.
Cleanest Bathrooms - An idea whose time has come.
Payphone Project - 2600 31337 factor.
Wikivangelists - I was lost and now I have found the path.
Lost Pets
Random Page - Good place to get ideas for pages to edit.

What do I do on the Wiki?

I make a lot of edits. What do I usually edit? These are my most common edits:

I link phrases and terms to pages in order to add more structure.
I remove comments and try to integrate them into the page's body if possible. Or I move things so they complement each other more. "Bob, I couldn't agree more.." could be changed to "I couldn't agree more.." and moved under Bob's comment, improving readability.
I take differing viewpoints or arguments and attempt to find a common ground. Nearly any argument or difference of opinion can be solved by merely expanding the writeup to be larger, more general, and less specific. Students for an Orwellian Society is a great example (check out the revision history).
Don't reply to someone more than once: revise your original point.

Deleting is very important, but should be done with care.

Note to self

Davis from the Inside Out by William D. Diemer. National housing register, 216 F Street, PMB 17. This is an interesting compilation of a ton of Davis related information that can be purchased for $15 at Newsbeat. Somebody ought to buy it to help out with facts/info.

I own it. I don't have the time to spend posting all the information in it, and it does have a copyright (which I presume belongs to Bill Diemer. I guess if you have a "top 5" questions for me to look up, I could get that done with reasonable celerity. DougWalter

Thanks Doug! I just remember looking through it a while back and being surprised by the amount of potentially interesting information in it. Moreso as a starting-point for investigation..

Messages to me!

Note: You must be logged in to add comments

2011-03-23 18:39:07 One thing that occurs to me, since so many seem to misunderstand what the Wiki is for... a small disclaimer on the front page, top or bottom... "This site is for information and entertainment purposes only" It may prove to be very helpful.

Also, in all the discussions we have here with business owners wishing to modify "their" site for promotional purposes, a link that gives everyone access to the IRS agreement that keeps the wiki a true non-profit... I have heard of this agreement, but when it comes up and discussions with business owners, no one ever seems able to find the information so it becomes more hearsay. —Wes-P

2011-04-06 11:15:48 Sorry, bad timing on my revert; I think it's worth keeping the proposal as something for people to kick around... including alternatives, like the less formal, rigid option you suggest. —TomGarberson

2011-04-22 19:09:05 Philip, If you see my e-mail, please feel free to call my cell phone, or write to me on the cell (rbmiller1@me.com). Thanks very much! Bob Miller —AdvancedValleyEye

2011-04-26 12:21:08 LOL! —TomGarberson

2011-04-26 12:27:18 Oh, also, if there's anything that can be done to set up JW's Chrome plugin for Racemosa, that'd be really nice. I've been looking forward to giving it a spin for months. —TomGarberson

2011-05-07 18:28:35 Err.... Is there any way to nuke a bunch of spam changes across tons of wiki pages without going through the trouble of logging into each one? —WesHardaker

Yeah, there's a way on the backend..but that's not enough to be worth it :) Thankfully they were all reverted, as far as I can tell. —PhilipNeustrom

2011-05-10 15:52:27 for some reason that whole episode that just occurred reminded me of outfoxed where the guy who invented the fox news alert talked about how they made the music fast and the graphics very bright and alarming, it was for when they broke into news and delivered serious stuff! It's kinda like the community alerts page... Not detracting from Davis state of mind, and getting it votes but having it on community alert just didn't feel right ¬_¬ hence the ire —StevenDaubert

2011-05-10 15:55:00 I was pretty enthralled by the discovery that when you preview a page your are about to edit you can still use the comment bar in the previewed version... It doesn't give you the edit but it puts the comment down...

^__^ —StevenDaubert

2011-05-12 15:49:59 Outside links? —TomGarberson

2011-05-12 21:08:40 To be fair, UCDLJ doesn't really count... but point well taken! :) —TomGarberson

2011-05-20 13:58:43 I touched up the Choice Voting page per your objections on the talk page. I agree that it's still tangential, but at least it's more relevant as a direct comparison to choice voting. If it looks satisfactory, do you want to kill the /Talk page? —TomGarberson

2011-05-20 16:32:11 Hey Philip, would you be willing to throw together some Davis-specific info for the LocalWiki page? It blows my mind that didn't already exist. It seems like there's a lot of Davis and Wiki-focused stuff that could go in there. People involved (you and Mike), WikiSpot history, what it means for Davis Wiki (and a general idea of when), and some links, to name a few. —TomGarberson

Yeah, will add when I get a chance. There's also not a Davis Wiki page :)

I think Davis Wiki is pretty comprehensive. A 1:1 scale map of the subject. :-° (whistling innocently)

Haha. I made a /Talk for Davis Wiki a while back to try and brainstorm some ideas, but didn't really get any bites. It seems like it'd be an interesting project, looking at what Davis Wiki means to the community. Could turn it into an outreach thing, talking to various people, getting quotes, etc., to put there along with just basic info about history, statistics, etc. —TomGarberson

2011-05-20 20:40:56 Yay! Thanks! —TomGarberson

2011-05-21 00:01:01 Philip, you've made it clear from my earliest days on the wiki that you don't like me. I don't know why that is, so I can't change it. But I do think I deserve a direct answer to my question; others appreciate my contributions to the wiki even if you don't. The answer that you've given is not direct. —CovertProfessor

I really have no idea what you're talking about re: not liking you. Really, at all. I've never not-liked you or had any problem with you. But I am sorry you feel that way. I think you may be reading my responses to you in a tone where I dislike you (at least that's the impression I get from your comment here).

I added a bit to my response. If it doesn't answer your question then please let me know what's lacking. —PhilipNeustrom

I am sorry if I have misread your interactions with me, and glad to hear that you do value my contribution to the wiki. I will continue to try to clarify my question. —CovertProfessor

2011-05-24 16:07:53 Phil-we're having our RocWiki quarterly meeting soon (6/19), if you have anything you want me to mention, let me know pls. Thx —PeterBoulay

2011-05-27 12:05:57 Ahh, thanks, I'll get that back in there. —TomGarberson

2011-06-07 12:36:51 It loads fine for me. —TomGarberson

Scratch that, after I refreshed it took its leave. Too bad. —tg

2011-06-07 13:05:08 As an update, I asked for permission to use the photo and one other I found. —JabberWokky

2011-06-24 17:45:51 that isn't a weird comment that is some sort of bot or something doing some sort of harvesting

someone was deleting a ton of messages like that, the username and some other stuff varies —StevenDaubert

2011-07-09 11:42:05 Hello- I'm not very familiar with the Wiki but just want to post an announcement. I don't see any appropriate places. I have 3 loved pet cats that need a home. Where can I post this or find help in placing them? Thank you. -Lynn Gerner —LynnGerner

2011-07-13 10:55:11 I tried to shut off the alert the other day but was unable to do so. The police have done everything they could for my friend's shop, although the insurance has proven to be useless... Anyway, thanks for updating the front page. —Wes-P

2011-07-23 16:34:10 that page loaded really really slowly for me

=X —StevenDaubert

2011-07-23 20:28:52 I wandered over to the macros page on WikiSpot and was realizing that an awful lot of those macros result in extremely slow-loading pages. Naturally, I wondered what would happen if they were all on one page :) —TomGarberson

2011-08-16 20:00:01 Aww. And here I thought making all of Davis's People "town characters" was the perfect solution! —TomGarberson

2011-08-18 15:33:28 an edit collision would seem very scary for a person new to the format, any way to phase that out with 2.0 ?

also in navigating to your page I've noticed that the search seems odd, it won't give me you unless it's perfect. I can't just do Philip N in search box and find you quickly... what gives? —StevenDaubert

2011-08-19 01:06:39 you can't just make some sort of server side time that edits come in in hundreths/thousands and then get sorted by time etc etc

you would earn seeing an edit conflict then! —StevenDaubert

Hah, well that's what would happen if we turned off edit conflicts / edit merging — whoever saved last would have their save go through. But the problem is that the person who saved most recently sometimes started by editing an old version of the page. —PhilipNeustrom

2011-09-20 16:50:51 Yo Pip! When's the expected release date on the new shit? —ScottMeehleib

2011-10-02 01:51:21 good call on the photo reverts —StevenDaubert

2011-10-31 04:42:40 Hell yeah! It's Philbo! You are AWESOME! —AshleyHamidi

2011-11-11 14:01:42 My Daviswiki account can't be used on Denton thru the wikispot hub? Cause this is localwiki project and is different? —StevenDaubert

2011-11-11 16:26:43 cooool —StevenDaubert

2011-11-12 04:38:10 buddy is stuck in SF right now, and I can't edit the SF wiki to add tow trucks cause it's localwiki now -___-

where is Arlen when you need him —StevenDaubert

2011-12-06 14:07:45 Done. —IDoNotExist

2011-12-09 18:21:26 The downtime did have the positive effect of getting me to check out the Sacwiki Test for a while. Glad you're back up though. —jefftolentino

2011-12-11 20:18:58 Nice. Took me a half a bottle of wine to finish that thing! :) Do you mind if I continue to futz around over there? Taxi wars are hurting my eyes. —jefftolentino

2011-12-12 14:19:58 Hey, sorry, I didn't realize the test Sacwiki page wasn't really supposed to be passed around yet. My apologies! I thought based on our conversation about getting edit parties together (including, potentially, in Davis), it was something I should be getting people into. Sorry...Should I take down mentions of the site until it's officially up? —NicholasBarry

2011-12-30 13:45:34 Ok, will do. In this case, I didn't actually realize it was a bug — I thought I might be doing something wrong. But I will be more attuned to possible buggy behavior in the future. —CovertProfessor

2012-01-11 00:26:09 would it be plausible to make a shoutbox style functionality that sits in the big black space between the logo and the user name? Like 4-6 lines of text big? Maybe functionality for PMing active users?

could be neat for chatting with whomever is also looking at recent changes, and could become a more friendly/readily available DWiki IRC! —StevenDaubert

2012-01-26 13:11:53 Thanks for getting the spammer —TomGarberson