Users/PhilipNeustrom

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I am a recent graduate of davisUC Davis with a BS in Mathematics and I'm one of the founders of the Wiki Spot effort as well as the co-founder of the Davis Wiki. I do a lot of the programming stuff, basically.

I'm interested in photography, bicycling, davischoice voting, mathematics and coffee.

If you have a general question about Wiki Spot, ask it over on the FAQ, throw something over on the Community Discussion page or email it to the mailing list (instructions for joining are on the Community discussion page). If you've got a question about a particular wiki then you should probably contact the folks involved with that wiki. Aside from that, I love to help out where I can.

My contact information: philipn@gmail.com, jabber: philip@jabber.org. You can also just leave a note below and I'll see it!

See also: davismy home on the Davis Wiki.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system,
there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless,
that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
--Noam Chomsky

[WWW]Support Net Neutrality!

Interesting fact: The average car releases 6.5 times its own weight in CO2 per year.

my to-do

Here's a wiki-related quote I like:

You have to wonder how many of the people who are righteously sucking the marrow of life from wiki entries would say they revere the writings of such literary journalist luminaries as Hunter S. Thompson or Ken Kesey. How many would say that they aspire to live bold lives and yet fear the mere existence of bold words. I'm not talking about thoughtless writing; I'll agonize over wording with the rest. But when the end result is bland boiled Walmart macaroni without even the reconstituted cheese sauce, I can't help but wonder if these people are living in and writing about a different Davis: one without the spice and art and a zeal for life that results in both the stupid and sublime. One with no sidewalk stencils or bizarrely build bicycles, no freak flag festivals or domestic domes. When the end reduction is a flavorless broth of business hours and carefully segregated reviews, one might as well just use the corporate provided yellow pages, written with the same formatted precision in any other town in America. At least you can be more confident that the phone numbers are up to date and not fear that the nutty men, women, children and emancipated dogs who actually comprise Davis might be reflected in your dry compendium of take out numbers.JabberWokky

Wikis I'm active on

Comments:

dont enter into this box:

2007-03-31 00:06:22   If you have an old laptop, ... uhm, can I buy it perhaps? mobile computing would be awesome. —DavidPoole


2007-04-07 22:29:53   Thanks for the hint. Didn't realize that "home page" setting was there. —DavidGrundler


2007-04-19 16:31:18   Hmm okay, the white space deal is indeed a problem. There probably should be padding left in addition or something like that. In any case, we should add that with the changes that I propose to fix the quick edit. I believe it was to make the paragraph divs not have a width and set the overflow to be hidden, also to make images, and content, have a max-width of 100% (it just seemed logical) and a min-width to whatever the standard min on the page is (should be 400-600px). —DavidPoole


2007-04-28 01:22:47   Hey Philip, check it out: [WWW]http://www.gtweekly.com/04-26-07/just-a-qwiki-3 Woohoo! —MaryLieth


2007-05-01 14:17:17   I think I made the bugs easier to track and cleared out all the fixed ones. By the way, I saw somebody who looked just like you on Penn State campus this morning — the clincher being the fact that they were carrying a camera bag. —JabberWokky


2007-05-02 15:08:47   Hey, a long awaited css fix for the damn unordered list, change wikipage li to be .wikipage li { margin-bottom: 0.25em;margin-left: 1em;} for it to not overlap to the left.. for some reason I only did this for the ul and ol rather than the list items. —DavidPoole


2007-05-18 15:53:08   re: gnomeBuilding Community — I really need to start checking the hub for stuff like that. :) Let me sit on it for a couple days and see if I can (in my free time, 15 days away from my wedding!) flesh out the outline so when it gets moved over it has more substance. The stuff there right now is just a mental dump from a 3x5 card I jotted some ideas onto while sitting at a cafe. After I get through the wedding and honeymoon, I promise to look both ways before I edit. I do find it amusing that the title was the same. —JabberWokky


2007-05-21 09:34:18   Checking into it, midis cannot be run using css that way, there are a few proposals that would make it work, I will wait till css3 is working, just biding my time. Also, that is indeed an awesome photo. —DavidPoole


2007-06-03 02:58:19   re: Halloween. You're funny :-P And I thought I had yet another irate CSU Chico student on my hands! —RyanMikulovsky


2007-06-06 05:31:13   I just had an amazing idea for a new mapping system that is independent of google maps, and allows for free mapping system. —DavidPoole


2007-06-13 13:28:55   A few of us are trying to set up a wiki for our town and I may need some help. Wiki spot seems to offer a lot, but I am finding it a little confusing to use. —Libby


2007-07-03 17:22:07   Thanks for the tips Philip, -gordon- (webstudio wiki) —Gord


2007-07-08 04:12:22   You were right about the preference sticking. I'll keep my eye out, but it is working as you described. —JasonAller


2007-07-08 21:41:11   Nuke that wiki if you want if off of recent wikis. Either way, I set the delete flag. —BrentLaabs


2007-07-26 22:16:07   Thanks for your advice on the CC licensing, Philip! —Steinborn


2007-08-06 00:41:06   Philip, thanks for the [[Include]] hint—which makes nested tables possible!

I see Wikispot has progressed since the ROCwiki code fork, but i cannot see where to rename pages. Nor do [wiki:wikipedia] links work. Are these being addressed? —JohnLam


2007-08-06 17:19:05   Didn't think this was one for the bug page, but a question nonetheless: is there a limit to the number of points the gmap can display? I'd been annoyed that you can't see businesses w/ the same street address (see stuff around davisFifth Street Plaza), so I got the bright idea to map in the latitude/longitudes for all of them. Hit the last one on the list (Stone's) and suddenly the map won't load. Other areas around town (but further away) still will, and take the point out and it loads again. —KevinChin


2007-08-09 02:06:28   Do you think a page for the 49 mile drive would be good for sfsf? Maybe with [WWW]this link? —JasonAller


2007-08-31 21:41:03   Hi there Thanks for your advice. The whole thing is a bit new to me
Phil —DeeDoo


2007-09-01 14:19:32   Hi I'm not sure I understand whether I need DeeDoo/users page or not. I don't think so. Unless U can explain what is the use of the userpage (personal page presentation ?), perhaps you could just cancel it (I could not myself: not gifted enough yet). Another thing: when i log in and search for my wiki (Deedoo or Weblex), I can hardly find it in the response, and I have to go to the wikidirectory: did I do smthg wrong ? How could I make it quicker ?
And finally, thanx: I love Ur stuff.
p —DeeDoo


2007-09-05 05:52:38   Hey Philip, I was thinking that a site tracking tool would be useful to track traffic from online communities. How would I go about including the javascript required for something like Google Analytics? Thanks in advance. —MasumiWatanabe


2007-09-07 04:09:19   Oh good, I wasn't sure if it got where it was supposed to go. Glad you like it, hey it's the least I can do because you spent some time coming on my show, plus, you've made it a breeze to start new wikis. So I sent the good stuff*

*It's all the good stuff. —KarlMogel


2007-09-08 04:09:41   Thanks Philip! It's still a draft version and we'll be working on cranking out a bunch of different themed ones just for fun. Also, I wanted to let you know that I'm in the process of getting a press release approved for two local newspapers in West Sacramento. We also have an article going out on a publication that will be distributed to all businesses and residents. All of which will be distributed at the end of this month. =) —MasumiWatanabe


2007-09-11 05:04:56   Hey Philip - that's kind of weird how people keep messing with the front page of wikispot! Like it's their personal playground. Perhaps the front page should be restricted to administrators or something? I can't imagine the front page being updated too often - and its a pretty important one to keep from being changed, because new people would be first visiting there most likely. —KarlMogel


2007-09-11 21:26:47   dude, you move too quickly for me! i'll get my email address up there, just gimme a sec! ;) i left a comment on nathan's wikispot page about collaborating. thanks again for the help! and thanks for co-founding daviswiki. it spoiled me for life, hence my need for a walnut creek wiki. —JennSuzuki


2007-09-14 01:30:04   Thy bidding is done. Soon our wiki takeover of the world will be complete. —KarlMogel


2007-09-14 16:25:09   Weird - someone else seemed to think that the Wikispot pages were their own. I wonder if there's something that can be done to make it more clear for people who are just joining up? —KarlMogel



2007-09-19 23:50:59   Thanks a bunch - Bug B Gone! Hey its good SO preemptively banned me from his empire because no one else seemed to notice the bug, or say anything about it. —KarlMogel


2007-09-23 22:16:43   Hi Philip,

interested in meeting with some moin devs? Details see there: [WWW]http://moinmo.in/MoinInternationalConference

Cheers,

MoinMoin:ThomasWaldmann —87.180.37.76


2007-09-28 20:16:31   Regarding the DavisWiki screen layout bug which you said you couldn't reproduce: Bug found; see bug reports page. -SteveDavison —SteveDavison


2007-10-02 16:35:51   Hah! I had already added it to the Interwiki Map page, thinking it was just a page to record relevant wikis. Thanks! (Man, this wiki system seems more and more versatile at every turn...) —KarlMogel


2007-10-03 14:06:02   Oh now that's just typical - wikispot already has the capability to make includes justify to the right! Is there any function you won't foresee? :) Next thing I'll hear is that wikispot makes a mean cup of coffee - and then my skills will be useless. Thanks, Ace! —KarlMogel


2007-10-03 19:30:48   Hey, Philip. Thanks for all you do. Amid all the "somebody should do something" chatter, you did. Cool. —JabberWokky


2007-10-05 18:19:42   Thanks again. —KarlMogel


2007-10-12 01:26:12   Yeah, I've been playing with how best handle profiles with Interwiki gnoming. I'd like to try and have a setup wherein I have a Davis profile and a Wikispot hub profile... the problem is that people on Davis get the Wikispot profile and leave a message. As I gnome the hub (slowly working my way through the Directory), I'd rather have a distinct profile for general wikispot use. I've been slowly revolving my settings and profiles trying to find the ideal setup for "heavily active on one wiki, lightly active on other wikis and (eventually) heavily active on the hub". —JabberWokky


2007-11-06 17:33:21   Thanks! I think I just figured out an issue I was having with fonts, too. Let me know if the ability to change cell styles within a table is possible in the future. —KarlMogel


2007-11-06 20:36:48   You know, you had the power to change the Madison Wiki css yourself all this time. Just click your heels, err, click edit, cuz you're an admin. Heh. —KarlMogel


2007-11-16 21:37:03   Hello there!

Our Oneonta Region wiki is going swimmingly! Now I want to share administrative rights with a couple of other peope, but don't know how to do this.

Thanks for your amazing contribution to our little community!

Yours
Jennie Williams of wikispot oneonta region
wiljennie@gmail.comoneontaregion


2007-11-17 01:52:03   .mp3? Stallman wouldn't approve. :-P —WilliamLewis


2007-11-24 12:12:05   Hi I finally got the scholarship I was expecting, so I'll shortly be able to contribute financially to wikispot
Now, I would like to ask you the following question: could I ask you for a programming service/special help in exchange for some more money maybe ?
It would be about the translation problem of my wiki (refa): so far, I use "This page in German/French" sentence, but I would find it great to systematically have a couple of flags on the toolbar in order not to have this "mirroring" device appear on the text-content itself.
Can we : not even think about it / not even mention it / talk about it / plan it / do it ?
Best —88.72.251.249


2007-11-26 08:43:53   —Yes. But where would the Macro-symbol appear ? When on the page, then it takes too much space (like here, top right: [WWW]http://refa.wikispot.org/Type_de_ressources). Could it be on the toolbar, then, next to the "talk" symbol for instance (thus easily at hand, any time)? Best
philacour


2007-12-07 05:02:54   Hey Philip, I just came across this video: [WWW]5 min - Wikis in plain English. Check it out! —KarlMogel


2007-12-16 07:43:22   Hey, I noticed your testing on default. Awhile back I created [ebg13]ebg13 for oddball testing of things where you don't want to mess with the RC or content of a useful wiki, especially testing automated tools and the like. Just tossing it out as a resource if you ever want to use it. —JabberWokky


2007-12-22 04:15:05   I always type it "wikispot" or "wiki spot" for a fairly simple reason — the logo is lowercase. :) Always use the largest example seems not to be the best choice in this case. —JabberWokky


2008-01-16 03:00:47   Thanks for your help, Philip! Obviously, I am a novice! Peggy Mayfield (Child-Development) —PeggyMayfield


2008-02-20 18:55:45   Best. Revert. Comment. Ever. —JabberWokky


2008-02-23 04:25:48   Congratulations! —JasonAller


2008-03-01 04:24:19   I am the creator of "Great Speeches and Interviews". Do you recall my question earlier this week? It was "Why isn't Great Speeches and Interview on the SacWiki All Pages"? Well I straightened the problem out by making a page on SacWiki but now it is gone. I know you mean well but its causing a problem. Are you going to return the page to SacWiki or do you have another solution? By the way was my editing today destroyed? —sgl


2008-03-05 13:44:02   Hi Mr. Neustrom, thanks for visiting the page! As I told you and Mr. Aller, who has visited my page I am brand new to wikis and would appreciate all the help you can give. Were you the one who put the comment box on my site? I haven't done a template yet so I realize you didn't know how to contact me. I am aware that I am on wikispot, I called it JamestownRI because there are other Jamestowns out there so I needed to pinpoint it geographically. Davis does the same. Can I contact you for help? Today I am breaking up my 6th grades to do research on the town, assign jobs for them, go over how to gather information, etc. In the meanwhile I intend to practice and get better at manipulating the wiki so that when the kids are ready to start I'm ready too. This is so exciting! It will be a wonderful project that I think will take off in a few months and morph into a real community asset. Thanks for visiting and my email is lccasey@mac.com. Please email me! Thanks,
Lisa —Librarian


2008-03-11 04:06:01   Would you happen to know who the admins of the Santa Cruz Wiki are? An artist has had his work put up there and wants it deleted for good. It looks entirely legitimate, but I can't figure out who the admins are for that wiki (I thought AlexDarocy was, but he isn't). (Update: Trying to get in touch with BenChaney) —JabberWokky


2008-03-25 13:53:17   what i like sandwiches too —158.123.177.2


2008-03-30 10:12:51   Thanks for the note re: camel case. I think the reason I did them like that was to distinguish (for myself at least) in thelink command between the page name and the link that appears on the page, if you get what I mean. I have changed the other as you suggested.

As for the WYSIWYG thing, everybody loves a WYSIWYG! The trouble with all the ones I tried, was that the functionality for tables worked in none of them. It was either unresponsive inside the WYSIWYG, or what I saw wasn't what I got! I will watch you developments with interest.

On a more general note, I was wondering if there is a way to include something similar to the wikipedia infobox?

cheers,

Brendan —tattrat


2008-04-04 15:18:29   thx Philip I'm enjoying your creation
looking forward to full backup capability —Develine


2008-04-08 12:05:11   hello there! Jennie from Oneonta Region. I just read your comments, (YIKES, from November, sorry) and will try to institute them within the next month, perhaps I will ask for your assistance if I have trouble. Thanks for the wonderful place, its really starting to be helpful to people.
Your friend
Jennie —oneontaregion


2008-04-14 16:47:16   I didn't know what to do about the orange flower image itself, I thought it was being left up for a reason - just wanted to change the name. —KarlMogel


2008-04-19 23:47:45   hello and thank you from Oneonta Wiki...I'm getting some help from a computer person on your advice, which believe it or not I don't quite know quite enough to implement....they don't do IQ tests when they hand out the computers. But will eventually implement and thanks!

Yours
Jennie —oneontaregion


2008-06-10 14:20:44   Wow! I have a sleeve to that chair I found here a few weeks ago, but I lack the chair itself. I used it on a trip recently to carry stuff. —JabberWokky


2008-06-13 13:47:19   Hey, could you please delete the spam image [WWW]here? —JabberWokky


2008-07-14 20:11:55   Hey Philip. Thanks for noticing me ;) I have a bunch of experience with pmwiki and mediawiki, and have to explore wikispot more. I wanted a remotely-hosted solution. There are some questions I have which i can't seem to find answers to. I have added them at the Community Discussion page —davidbessler


2008-07-29 23:34:54   hello there! yes, this is jennie of ONEONTA REGION, and SORRY that I'm not doing what I should. YES!!!

I will add your name, as requested.

THANKS!!!!!

Yours truly
Jennie —74.67.77.52


2008-08-01 14:12:46   I'm hoping it's more like Gandalf following those who might be in need, ready to assist with Great Eagles. In reality, it's more like driving along a backwoods highway, stopping at each little town and poking around. People are neat. And of course, on a practical basis, it's to make sure that no novices have their wiki swamped by spam or leave in frustration because they can't figure out how to do something. —JabberWokky


2008-08-18 19:25:22   Can you turn on ucdgsa now? —BrentLaabs


2008-08-21 19:21:50   I can't find where I posted it, but if you run across the Bug Report I made about Saves very very occasionally not occurring, I haven't seen that bug in quite awhile. I'm pretty sure it was real and not a figment of my imagination, but it seems to have been resolved somewhere down the line. —JabberWokky


2008-08-30 21:19:09   I think an illuminated "what is a wiki, what is a wiki page" entry is called for. Possibly even a video introduction. :) —JabberWokky


2008-09-04 04:19:06   Is there anything that I could look to correlate it to, or is there already an idea of what the problem is? —JabberWokky


2008-09-06 07:42:32   I pretty much never see more than around ten wikis active on the IWRC. Would that mean that only ten blobs are being loaded and sorted, or are all blobs in the last x days loaded and sorted and filtered? If the former, it's not likely bad. For the latter, I'd still guess it's less than 25 data structures that are dealt with... unless it's loading 800+ blobs, the majority of which are empty and sorting through them all... which easily could be a very questionable load. It is doing the 800+ thing. The reason why is because it's just asking for the recent changes, and the recent changes is set up so it always shows changes for the past two days. Fixing that, as a parameter or something, would probably make it faster.

On a semi-related note, have you thought about implementing captcha on non-logged comments (or preferably something more transparent)? If you don't have the time, I'll take a crack at it in the next week and also look at the IWRC code and either confirm it's okay, fix it or figure out another way to interwiki gnome. —JabberWokky


2008-09-09 19:35:45   Philip, I am an idiot. The first link, of course, right at the top, and clearly marked. I have no idea how I missed it when I went through and tried flipping all the settings. That's why I didn't bring the subject up for a couple days — I had figured it was on my end. And it was. Thanks for the help.


2008-10-11 10:55:35   uh..Phil-[WWW]http://wikispot.org/Users?action=info fixed —BlueDot


2008-10-16 16:28:27   Hey, what was the problem with Ed's account? It might be a good idea to toss it on the FAQ if it can affect people so we can all watch for it and try to assist fellow editors. —JabberWokky


2008-10-21 03:07:28   Yes, I'm still working on incorporation. Though I hit a small snag: we're doing remodeling, and I haven't had electrical power to my computer for the last two weeks. The state tax exemption is mostly done except for the budget, and I'm ready to go on the federal. I need another certified copy of the Articles (do you have it?), and we should have our first meeting before submitting the federal forms. Did PaulHarms ever talk to you about the budget or not? Let's schedule a board meeting in November when both of us will be a little more free. —BrentLaabs


2008-10-21 21:29:27   First of all, Wiki Spot is awesomely useful... thanks for all the work you're doing. Second, can I get a backup of [WWW]http://digitalhistory.wikispot.org ? Thank you. I only need the current content, not the history of revisions. - william.j.turkel —william.j.turkel


2008-11-04 17:53:36   Hi. I have been working on a page on [WWW]Bicycle Hazards in Davis, and I found a bug in WikiSpot's translation software. If a title is hyperlinked, it does not show up properly in the table of contents.


2009-02-17 07:30:21   Greetings PN, I am wondering if I have done everything that I need to do in order to get [WWW]http://www.norwalkwiki.org/ pointed in the right direction ([WWW]http://norwalk.wikispot.org.) Be well, —63.207.239.35


2009-02-23 23:48:59   We're (hslhsl) starting to get serious about doing backups. Poking around, three options appear to exist— ask you, using Joe Wells script, or JabberWokky's spotget. For starters, I'm not sure we have anyone who would know how to run a script, so unless there's another option, I guess this is a request for a manual backup. Thanks —Mwanner


2009-03-08 06:49:12   test. —PhilipNeustrom


2009-03-08 06:52:23   newwordneverseen here —PhilipNeustrom


2009-03-08 07:03:13   test —PhilipNeustrom


2009-03-08 12:54:16   Congratulations on the successful move! I notice that you restored several pages in our hslwiki during the move. Which kinda raises the issue of a backup another notch. Advice? —Mwanner


2009-03-13 18:46:55   Thank you for letting me know that some of my stuff was left in limbo during the server move ... I've restored it - william.j.turkel —william.j.turkel


2009-03-18 21:06:39   [WWW]This and [WWW]this are starting to worry me a bit. (cc: Amit and Philip) —JabberWokky


2009-04-01 07:53:04   Thanks again for granting me admin power on Irvine Wiki. I also recognized the location of the picture of the lawn chair. —Mateo


2009-04-27 20:19:57   Philip, Ant Hill would like to see our [WWW]http://Google.com/webmasters data and gain control over how Google presents results. We have never been a hostel, but we currently appear #1 in a Google search for “hostel Rochester”. As a result, residents have complained about creepy characters appearing at our door to stay. I've already addressed some misleading sites, but would like to see other top queries and remove misleading entries from the Google index.

I saw your note in the Change Log about Google Webmasters, but couldn't you let wiki admins install 011234google01234.html filenames? —JohnLam


2009-06-11 22:06:19   While I don't mind stomping the gambling spam in the short term, seems like we might finally have an autospammer locked on us. —JabberWokky


2009-07-01 03:07:50   Hello Philip. My name is Kevin Eldridge. I am the current President of Nashville Linux Users Group (2009 - 2010). You are hosting our group's web site, nlug.wikispot.org. The problem lies in that the Previous Vice-President (2007 - 2008), Matthew Craig, no longer lives in Tennessee and we are not able to reach him. How hard would it be to change him from being the owner of the site to me? That way I can delegate responsibilities to the NLUG cabinet members.

Thank you very much for your help —CRasH180


2009-07-01 21:14:33   Hi there. I am moving my wiki, and am hoping you could export the contents and history of [WWW]http://k-w.wikispot.org/ for me. Thanks for your help! —MichaelDruker


2009-09-04 19:32:31   Hi, I would like to get a backup of the current content our wiki: colbycurtis/wikispot.org Thanks! —207.236.123.229


2009-09-04 19:34:20   Oups! Forgot to login! Please send the colbycurtis wiki backup to me. —karlbourassa


2009-09-12 13:14:32   Hi Philip, could you please get me a backup of [WWW]http://spark-scheme.wikispot.org/? Just the current contents are enough. I really appreciate the nice work you are doing. Thanks, —vijaymathew



2009-09-20 22:06:32   I also added his IP. —JabberWokky


2009-09-24 01:47:47   Hi. The domain name for the Santa Cruz Wiki has expired. —AlexDarocy


2009-09-25 02:38:13   Thanks! As much as I like wikis, I'd have to admit I like babies more. —AlexDarocy


2009-09-29 20:15:17   Hi Philip, could I please get a backup of the data of the colbycurtis.wikispot.org wiki. Thanks! —karlbourassa


2009-11-01 22:50:28   Yes, that edit I'm about to make is intended to be amusing. It's cryptic enough to read into, so I didn't want to you take it otherwise. —JabberWokky

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