User talk:Rodneyeast

Welcome
Hi Rodney,

Thanks for your contributions to the AY Honors Answer Book. I noticed you took the bait and filled in the "About the Author" section. Thanks for doing that. I wanted to add your name to the Author section of the Infobox, but I was just guessing that your name was Rodney East.

While you're here, would you mind reviewing the Stars and Advanced Stars honors for accuracy? I did most of the work on them, but astronomy has only been a hobby with me - I never even took an astronomy class in college.

By the way, I had meant to wait until you were not actively editing the Physics honor to fix a few spelling errors, and then I noticed that you were right in middle of editing. Sorry about that - and I think I did it twice (last night and this morning)!

Jim Thomas 13:58, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

It was not a problem that you were working at the same time as me since it was educational for me and gave me a sense of comunity creation of resource rather than me simply working alone.

--Rodney 04:31, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Knots
Oh! You're responsible for "Why Knot"!!! Do you think you'd like to finish writing the Knot Tying answers? Gerald G (a graphics guy) had started work on the Sailing honor and was uploading knot illustrations, so I moved them into templates so we could leverage the work in the Knots honor. He was rather daunted at the thought of illustrating all of them, but as it turns out, there are already a lot of knot illustrations available on the wikimedia commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Knots

Any images there can be added to a wikibook directly. In fact, that's the preferred place for uploading images for wikibooks. I wrote something about using templates in the Talk page of the First Aid honor (that's another place with lots of overlap).

BTW, I liked the sheepshank method shown in the Why Knot DVD - very cool.

Jim Thomas 14:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm so interested in the Knot honor, and I am still trying to figure out the image part of this. As soon as I understand how to do the images, I'll add even more info. I'll read your write up soon.

Thanks

--Rodney 04:31, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Chemistry/Physics/Optics
Hi Rodney,

Thanks for your work on the Chemistry honor. I can't wait to see the finished product.

Also, are you finished working on the Physics honor? I think we need something for requirements 8-11. Perhaps some instruction that adds details to conducting the experiments, and maybe some trouble-shooting tips and the expected results (such as "use slick books and a slick tablecloth so that friction doesn't pull the books off the table").

BTW, I added the requirements to the Optics honor in hopes that you would pick that one up as well. I think you're far more qualified than I to write it. In retrospect, I thouoght that perhaps my adding the requirements might have dissuaded you from contributing to that one.

Jim Thomas 14:00, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

About the Author
It would be a good idea if you moved your "about the author" section into a template so that you could include it at the bottom of the chemistry honor. The way I do that is by editing the section that has the info and adding something like this:

Then I "show preview", follow the red link in a new tab (gotta love Firefox!) and paste the contents in the new page. Once that's done, I chop the text out of the original page, "show preview" again, and if all looks OK, save it.

Jim Thomas 14:18, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Glad to hear from you
Hi Rodney,

I'm glad to hear from you. It's OK to bounce around - I do that a lot myself. I still don't know everything there is to know about wiki's either, and that's after a little more than a year of working on this project. Thanks again for joining the fun. Jim Thomas 06:12, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Lots of Work!
Hi Rodney,

I noticed you've been been building a lot of honor "skeletons" tonight. Nice job. I have been filling in some information behind you, making heavy use of templates. I had been working on the first aid honors, and since there's a lot of overlapping requirements between them, I captured a lot of the info in templates. Adding it to the honors you outlined tonight was pretty easy, so I went ahead and did that. I also created links to some first aid templates that don't exist yet (such as ).

As you know, there is a lot of overlap in the camping/pioneeiring/backpacking/wilderness honors, so I encourage you to make use of templates whenever you recognize it. I haven't come up with a consistent naming convention yet, except that all the first aid templates begin with "First aid". I've also used "Knot" and "ay" as template prefixes, and maybe "camping". I dunno. Maybe I'm adding structure where it's not needed.

Jim Thomas 06:32, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Admin Privs
Hi Rodney,

There are a couple of guys on Wikibooks who regularly patrol the site for vandalism. They have helped our book on numerous occasions. Right now they are looking to have their rights escalated so that they may have "Checkuser" privileges. This will equip them with more powerful tools for fighting vandalism.

In order for that to happen though, they have to get 25 votes of support, and that is /very/ difficult to achieve. Their usernames are Herbythyme and SBJohnny. I would appreciate it if you would go to these URLs, click the edit link, and add this:

Support: ~

The tildes leave your username and the date. You /do/ have to be registered and logged in for the vote to count.

Here's where you can vote for them:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/WB:RFA#Herbythyme_.28talk_.7C_email_.7C_contribs_.7C_logs.29 http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/WB:RFA#SBJohnny_.28talk_.7C_email_.7C_contribs_.7C_logs.29

Thanks in advance.

Jim Thomas 15:05, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Rodney,
 * Today my user page was struck by a particularly nasty vandal, and the change was reverted by SBJohnny in under one minute. The best way I can think of to thank him is by urging my friends to vote for his request for Check user rights on the Request for Admin page.  I know you already voted for Herby, and I thank you for that as well.  I think SBJ deserves the same.  Thanks in advance! Jim Thomas 16:33, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Use of Discussion
Hi Rodney,

I think we could use the discussion area just as you suggest, and I think its a good idea. I was even thinking that it would be good to use a wiki to develop new honors, but that may be out-of-bounds for wikibooks. The "rules" exclude "research" topics. I think it'd be good if we could find another wiki somewhere to do new honor development. I think it would be even better if the NAD would offer to host it.

The form your A/C asks you to fill out at the last minute is available online now and has been for about a year (at pathfindersonline.org). I filled one out to suggest changes and was contacted by the person at the other end of the form, and we struck up an email conversation. I was excited about that, because it seemed like someone was listening. But then nothing came of it. I pointed out a few metric conversion errors (see Archery and Gardening), and suggested that the Swimming honors be renamed Swimming I-V. "Swimming Beginners Advanced" doesn't really float my boat.

That said, they may have implemented at least one of my suggestions. I asked about the requirement to light a fire with one match in one of the Camping Skills honor. Specifically, what do you do if it doesn't light on the first match? Do you have to take everything apart and start over, or wait a day, or what? It now reads "Practice lighting a fire with one match" (perhaps not an exact quote).

I had also recruited Mark West to write the answers for the Archery honors - if you don't know, he's they guy who shot through 11 balloons at Faith on Fire. If you ask me, he is THE Pathfinder archer. He had a few bones to pick with the archery requirements, so I put him in contact with the same people. But I don't think anything came of that.

If you think the Physics honor needs work, take a look at the Computer honors! They are definitely based on mid-80's DOS. That was one of the first answer sections I put together (even though I still haven't finished Advanced, because I don't do databases or finance). For that one I discussed its "legacy" problems that would make the honor difficult to complete as written. For instance, there is a requirement to make a "mirror image" of a disk. I have to think that they are talking about duplicating one floppy to another using the A: and B: drives. I haven't seen a two-floppy PC in years and finding one with even one floppy drive is becoming increasingly difficult. I noted as much in the honor and suggested alternatives.

I added every page and subpage to my watchlist before most of them even existed, so I did notice your nephew's work on Fishes. I was wondering if you and Stephanie had decided to change usernames to Lookeast and Eastoforion or if you had recruited relatives to help. Naturally, I am very excited that you recruited more help!

When the Fishes honor says "family" I don't think they meant to be using the taxonomic term. The same thing happens in other honors as well. I think they mean "major grouping" instead. Take a peek at the "official" answer book for confirmation. The Marsupials honor has the same problem (though its an SPD honor not adopted by the NAD, so complaining to the NAD would be even less effective). There are several dozen taxonomic families of marsupials, and knowing what each of them are, the differences between them, and what characteristics make each animal a member of what family is far beyond the scope of a Skill Level 1 honor.

Gotta go now... if you wanna talk more about this, it might be easier to use email. I'm jthomas at bittware dot com.

Physics
Hi Rodney,

It looks like Physics is done enough to mark it as 100%. I don't know if there are still things you want to do to it (which is fine - these things are never done). If it's OK with you, I'd like to announce it on pathfindersonline.org (or you could do it). Great job!

Jim Thomas 23:17, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

SVG
Hi Rodney,

There's a thread on this at the Staff Lounge. You might want to ask there - it's near the bottom of the page. I know that Gerald G aka Jazzmanian (he did our book cover) had some trouble too.

Jim Thomas 14:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Another possibility is that the Wikipedia files are not in the commons. The Commons was started sometime after wikipedia and is the preferred place to upload any images.  A lot of images were uploaded to wikipedia before this time, and some people still upload to wikipedia instead of to the commons.  Most of the time an image you see in wikipedia is in the commons.  Click on it to get details.  If it's in the commons, it'll have a little box that says so.  If it's not, you can down load the image to your computer and then upload it to the commons.  If you do that, use  this link, as it has tools to copy the metadata from wikipedia.  Jim Thomas 16:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Hey Rodney. If you want, just link to the images on wikipedia and I'll be happy to copy them over to the commons.  Also, I was wondering what you thought about this idea regarding the focal length picture - I think it'd be better in our book if it were horizontal instead of vertical.  If you'd like, I could try making a horizontal version of it.


 * One other thing you mighht like to know is how to force a page break. Use this markup:


 * 


 * I dunno what other options there are other than both and clear, but I do know that this will force the next bit of text to start after the bottom of an image. Jim Thomas 01:59, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Units and Species Names
Hi Rodney,

I really like your idea with the species names, and I think we should go ahead with that. I haven't made up my mind on the metric/english conversions though. I can see your points, but there are o few other things to consider as well.

First, click on the "printable version" link in the "toolbox" box on the left in the Mammals honor and take a look at how it deals with those conversion links. It's not pretty.

What if we did something a little different, such as look into how the "stage short" template displays the date? If you hover the mouse over one of the "stage" icons on an index page, it'll show you the date on which the progress was evalauted. I'd be happy if we jammed metric units in the text, and displayed english units when hovering.

OTOH, I fear that some people might come in later and edit the units to English. We could always edit them back I suppose. I wonder if there's a way for a user to express a units preference (default to metric) and have them print accordingly? Perhaps we could look at how the Table of Contents "hide" link works, I dunno.

Jim Thomas 15:05, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


 * What do you think of this template: The speed of light is

Might wanna choose some other calculator icon though.

Templates for Birds
Hi Rodney,

I have been making heavy use of templates lately, as it decouples the information from the layout. I was thinking that might be a good idea for the Birds honor too, assuming you plan to put together a section for bird identification. Kinda like a mini-field guide.

Take a look at Edible Wild Plants, Animal Tracking, or Cattle Husbandry for examples.

You might want to use the Species_id template for birds, or we could create a Bird_id template if there's something specific to birds (like their calls) we want to add. Here's how I used the Animal_sign template:

This renders as

Jim Thomas 01:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello
Hi Rodney,

Nice to see you back again. You'll probably notice before reading this, but since you are editing right now (as best I can tell), I'll point it out rather than fix it - In the Einstein section of Physics, the you need to square the m for c^2.

Energy topic
Hello, Mr. Rodney! It is really awesome find the Honor Book here in Wiki. And i've seen your contribution with some honors. Congratulations for your work! If you permit, let me make just one comment about the Phisics Honor: I was looking at it and I noted that the Energy unit is "Watt", when in fact would be "Joule". Watt is used as a power unit. Good luck with this blessed work with the Pathfinders. Regards, Paulo (teilb@yahoo.com.br).