User:Bubba73

I'm a freelance software developer in Brunswick, Georgia. Actually I live several miles outside of Brunswick, on the mainland in Glynn County, not on any of the Golden Isles, but part of the Colonial Coast. I live off U.S. Route 17, near FLETC of the Glynco area, not too far from Interstate 95, not too far from the Altamaha River, and not quite close enough to the Atlantic Ocean (our yard is 13 feet above sea level) - but pretty close to a saltmarsh, with all of the live oak trees, deer flies, mosquitos, sand gnats, and a few alligators. I live in a half-way house on a one-way street. I was born on the outskirts of the Okefenokee Swamp. My great great grandfather lived in nearby Darien, Georgia and died here in Brunswick, when he (as a doctor) went to help a ship quarantined with Yellow fever. Both of my grandfathers worked in the shipyards here for a while.

My interests are mainly in math, computer science, chess, bridge, music, the history of computing, physical science, and scientific skepticism. I have BS degrees in math and physics (emphasis in astronomy), a master's degree in applied math, and a MS in computer science. I program in Pascal and Delphi. I am a US Chess Federation local-level director, working at scholastic chess tournaments. I've been contributing to chess articles (primarily articles about endgames, chess theory, and articles about the rules of chess), early computers, some math topics, scientific skepticism & related topics, articles on nearby places & local history, and a few other things. Lately I've been more interested in photographing things, mainly of a historical nature, especially thing on the National Registry of Historic Places. My first edit was March 15, 2005, as an IP user.



Historic places
From WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress.
 * Georgia county data
 * Wiki Loves Monuments, Sept 2018 map
 * User:Bubba93/GeoGroupTemplate

Quick links

 * Wiki-map
 * NRHP data
 * National Register of Historic Places listings in Georgia
 * List of National Historic Landmarks in Georgia (U.S. state)
 * List of National Natural Landmarks in Georgia
 * WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress
 * List of counties in Georgia (U.S. state) - includes map
 * Direct link to NRHP forms
 * Reference desk/Computing
 * Reference_desk/Mathematics
 * Reference_desk/Science
 * Convert coordinates
 * Better coordinate conversion
 * Georgia historical markers
 * Create an info box
 * Commons special upload
 * Convert coordinates
 * Convert coordinates, more
 * Georgia monuments


 * Manual of Style
 * Manual of Style/Dates and numbers


 * USGS topo maps
 * Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Georgia (U.S. state)

Userboxes


Wikipedia
I got interested in Wikipedia when it kept turning up in my Google searches. As soon as I realized how comprehensive Wikipedia is, I was hooked.

In the Fall of 2005 I started using Harvard referencing on practically everything. Harvard referencing "is one of three citation styles recommended by Wikipedia" (see Wikipedia:Harvard referencing and Wikipedia:Citing sources). The system has some pros and cons, see Harvard referencing. The only real "con" is that it takes up more space, but "Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia", so space matters little. In addition to the pros listed there,
 * 1) it is better for readers since he can see who said this and when, without having to go to the footnotes.
 * 2) it is better for editors since the bulk of the information is down in the reference section rather than embedded in the text.

I use reliable sources. I try to adhere to "One of the keys to writing good encyclopedia articles is to understand that they should refer only to facts, assertions, theories, ideas, claims, opinions, and arguments that have already been published by a reputable publisher.", from Wikipedia:Verifiability. (I violated that slightly in stalemate, Chess endgame, and king and pawn versus king endgame, now at least partially rectified.) In accordance with WP:NPOVUW, I am against giving undue weight to the opinions of crackpots.

I am in favor of the Chicago Manual of Style guideline for spelling out exact numbers (things you count rather than things you measure) up to one hundred and all round numbers that can be expressed in two words. At least spell out any number no larger than one hundred that doesn't require a hyphen. . I like Harvard Referencing.

For the first six months of 2006, I've spent more of my free time improving Wikipedia than anything else. I'm having to cut down.

My spelling is terrible. I make typing errors and my grammar isn't up to par.

I make a lot of typos. For fifteen years I typed with my keyboard in my lap, but that seemed to be bringing on Carpal tunnel syndrome. Since somewhere around 2000 I started typing normally, and my CTS symptoms went away, but for some reason I started making a lot of typos (usually off by one key).


 * There is only one problem with the "anyone can edit" policy, and that is that anyone can edit.


 * Wikipedia is not a blog, not text messaging, and not Twitter (WP:NOT), Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.


 * Reality is not a "point of view".

Wikipedia as a reference
At my daughter's school, when they do reports they can use two types of references: encyclopedias and internet sources. So which does Wikipedia count as? Or does it count as both? Actually, it counts as neither. What does that tell you?

Why I like Parenthetical referencing (also known as the author-date system and Harvard Referencing)
Parenthetical referencing uses the author and year. The next number is an optional page number. In the references, items are listed in order by author's last name, and then by date if there are more than one by the same author. The author-date system is part of APA style and is the one recommended by the British Standards Institution and the Modern Language Association. It is one of the systems recommended by the Chicago Manual of Style and the Council of Science Editors. It is also one of the methods recommended for Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Citing sources/example style, Wikipedia:Harvard referencing, Wikipedia:Citing sources, and Wikipedia:Inline citation which says "Harvard reference, i.e. (author, date), is the simplest way to cite sources not in the World Wide Web, by quoting these after the sentence."

This is the best method for the reader because it tells you - right there - who said it and when, which is often important. Also, if there are several references, the reader can immediately tell if this is from the same source as previous references. Also, this immediately shows that it is a citation rather than an informative note. (With a footnote, you can't tell if the footnote is a citation or contains other information without going to the footnote. This is irritating for the reader.)  And if the reader is familiar with the literature, you often know what it is without looking. For instance, if you are a chess player and see (de Firmian 1999) you automatically know what that is.

This method is better for the editors too. It cuts down on redundancy if the same work is referenced often. It is easier for an editor to edit the references if they are in the reference section rather than scattered throughout the text of the article. It is easier for editors to edit the text of articles because you don't have the full text of the reference interrupting the flow of the article. It is better than the footnote method for a dynamic text such as these articles because if you use an Ibid footnote, and then insert another reference, that invalidates the Ibid, and that either makes more work for the editor or makes the reference wrong.


 * * Wikipedia:Citing sources/example style
 * * Templates: Template:Harvard citation
 * * Template:Ref

Forever

 * Knowledge forever
 * Ad-free forever
 * Wikipedia forever
 * Vandalism forever

Admin?
They want me to be an admin User:Scottywong/Admin scoring tool results? Oh, I hope not. (With apologies to dialog from The Right Stuff.)

The end

 * The end of Wikipedia

Miscellaneous

 * Favorite car I ever had: 1973 Pontiac LeMans Sport Coupe (the original Bubba '73). It has a 400 in³ V8 with a two-barrel carburetor and dual exhausts. The color is ascot silver and maroon; it has the slots on the small rear window, and has extremely rare body stripes.


 * My favorite guitar: a left-handed Martin D-28 (see List of musicians who play left handed).


 * Favorite ball-point pen: Papermate Powerpoint. I don't like to use anything else.  Unfortunately these are no longer made.


 * Favorite pencil: Futura Try-rex Richard Best.


 * Favorite stapler: Ace Cadet #302 by Ace Fastener. A close second: Ace Liner # 502.


 * Favorite computer keyboard: Unicomp Customizer 101, based on the good old IBM buckling spring Model M Keyboard. I don't like to use anything else.


 * Favorite lip balm: Vaseline Constant Care, no longer made, but Avon is very close.


 * Favorite calculators: Texas Instruments SR-50 and HP 20S. I think this is the only HP scientific calculator that doesn't use RPN (which I can't stand).


 * Favorite probability distributionuser:Bubba73/links Poisson distribution.


 * Favorite time signatureuser:Bubba73/users12/8.


 * Favorite morning DJs: Boomer and the Nudge.


 * Favorite composer: Arthur 'Two Sheds' Jackson


 * Favorite toy: Happy Fun Ball


 * Favorite singing group: Boys Who Cry


 * Favorite folk singer: Bob Roberts


 * Favorite race car driver: Ricky Bobby


 * Favorite church: Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption


 * Favorite Talk radio host: Tuck Buckford


 * Most inspiring singer: Dewey Cox


 * Favorite meal:
 * sea bass (sautéed)
 * potatoes au gratin
 * asparagus
 * Barry and Ira's Rum Raisin ice cream


 * Things I fawn over: good chess sets, SLR lenses, open reel tape recorders, and microphones (I don't know why)


 * Likes:
 * Air conditioning
 * Soft water—it shouldn't hurt to take a bath.


 * Turn-offs: fake Southern accents

I like both kinds of music: Country and Western. My favorite songs:
 * 1) Westbound and Down, by Jerry Reed
 * 2) Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses, by Kathy Mattea
 * 3) Eastbound and Down, by Jerry Reed

Saddest moments in movies:
 * 1) when Goose dies in Top Gun
 * 2) when Mickey dies in Rocky III

Things I never thought would happen (I wasn't holding my breath on any of these):
 * 1) A revised edition of Reuben Fine's 1941 classic Basic Chess Endings.  Well it happened in 2003!
 * 2) A reunion of The Beatles.  Of course, it wasn't the same.
 * 3) Return of Bobby Fischer to chess.  Of course, it was a disappointment.
 * 4) Non Phil Spector produced Let It Be.  Let It Be... Naked came out.
 * 5) Volume four of The Art of Computer Programming.  Volumes 1 through 3 of the planned seven-volume set came out in 1968, 1969, and 1973 (resp).  In 1980 Donald Knuth said that volume 4 would be out in a year or two. Volume 4A came out in January 2011.


 * I am vice president of the Brunswick Solipists.

Most of everything above is true, but some things may be half-truths.

Erdős Number and Morphy Number
My Erdős Number is 3.

My Morphy Number is 4. That means that I played chess with someone (Norman T. Whitaker) who played with someone (Jackson Showalter) who played with someone (Henry Bird) who played with Paul Morphy.

My Fischer Number is 2. I played Norman Whitaker, who played Bobby Fischer.(Frank Brady, Endgame, p. 47)

(My Bacon Number is infinite.)

Quotations
Appropriate quotes. I like this one:
 * Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts?  — in the Bermuda triangle?  — in life after death? No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no. One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?" "Yes", I said.  "I believe in evidence.  I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers.  I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it.  The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be."

Here is another quote I like to remember: "The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder." – David Hume

And An argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition. - The Argument Sketch

And "Spongebob, make sure you wrap up that patty – I'm not finished with it yet." - Eugene H. Krabs (after eating part of a tainted Crabby Patty and having to go to the hospital)

My Wikipedia story
After I had been editing Wikipedia for several months, I was wearing my Wikipedia t-shirt at the grocery store. The teenage kid bagging groceries noticed my shirt and we started chatting about Wikipedia. He said that he used it, but he hasn't edited yet, but he was going to. After we left, my wife said "He's allowed to edit - just as you are?" I grudgingly had to admit that yes, he is.

"The encyclopedia where you can be an authority, even if you don't know what the hell you are talking about." — Stephen Colbert, Jan. 29, 2007

Bubba as my user name
I've been asked about my user name. Above I mentioned my 1973 car named Bubba. I loved the car so much that I couldn't part with it when I got a new car. Then when my sister had no car, I let her use it. It had some age on it by this time. Her roommate said that it was the type of car that someone named "Bubba" would drive. The name stuck to the car.

Secondly, we live in what used to be the shrimp capital of the world. I think we should take advantage of that and have them for dinner frequently, but my family isn't so positive about it. I'll ask them what they want to have for dinner: boiled shrimp, broiled shrimp, deep fried shrimp, pan fried shrimp, stir fried shrimp, shrimp et tu fe, Cajun shrimp, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo, shrimp jambalaya, shrimp scampi, shrimp with lobster sauce, ... And that's about it. There is a resemblance between me and the character of "Bubba" in the movie Forrest Gump: "Shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, sauté it. Dey's uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo, pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried, there's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. Th-that's about it."

A white guy with a camera
Shortly after I got my first digital camera, I went to take a photo of a historic African-American church in a nearby small city. This was one of the first photos I uploaded to Wikipedia. I didn't know exactly where it was, so I stopped in city hall, since it was within a block of two of where the church is. I asked the white person there where it was. They said that they didn't know but they would call someone. They carried on a conversation with someone who was probably black. One of the things the person in city hall said was "a white guy with a camera". Then they told me where it was. So I'm a "white guy with a camera" (well mostly).

My cameras

 * List of Nikon F-mount lenses with integrated autofocus motor


 * Film SLRs
 * Yashica FR (1977 - broke it when I fell into a ditch at night with it on a tripod)
 * Yashica FRI (1978 - used for 24 years, damaged when I fell off the Johnson rocks on St. Simons Island)
 * Nikon FM3A (ca. 2002 - used for 5 years - a film camera engineering masterpiece, hand-made in Japan)
 * Pentax K1000 (my wife gave me her old camera)
 * Digital SLRs
 * Nikon D40 (ca. 2007 - used for 5 years)
 * Nikon D3300 (ca. 2013 - used for a short time, then used as a backup)
 * Nikon D7100 (2013 or 2014-2022)
 * Nikon D600 (2018-2022)
 * Nikon Z 5 (2022-)
 * Nikon Z 50 (2022-)

Access panels

 * WikiProject Skepticism/List
 * Chess changes

Edit count
Wikipedia:WikiProject edit counters


 * my edit count (when it works, faster than the one below)


 * my edit count (slow!)


 * General edit count


 * List of Wikipedians by number of edits
 * List of Wikipedians by number of recent edits

Article traffic

 * Article stats by User:Henrik

Places I've been
Born: Waycross, Georgia

I've lived in:
 * Willacoochee, Georgia
 * Valdosta, Georgia
 * Athens, Georgia
 * Champaign, Illinois
 * Norcross, Georgia (Atlanta)
 * Lawrenceville, Georgia (Atlanta)
 * Arlen, Texas
 * Brunswick, Georgia

I've been to:


 * 🇺🇸 United States
 * Georgia
 * Florida
 * South Carolina
 * North Carolina
 * Virginia
 * West Virginia
 * D.C.
 * Maryland
 * Delaware
 * New Jersey
 * New York
 * Pennsylvania
 * Ohio
 * Indiana
 * Illinois
 * Kentucky
 * Missouri
 * Arkansas
 * Texas
 * Louisiana
 * Mississippi
 * Alabama
 * Tennessee
 * New Mexico
 * Arizona
 * Utah
 * Colorado
 * Massachusetts
 * New Hampshire
 * Connecticut
 * Maine
 * Kansas
 * Nebraska
 * Wyoming
 * South Dakota
 * Iowa
 * 🇨🇦 Canada
 * Ontario
 * 🇲🇽 Mexico
 * Yucatán

Eclipses

 * Solar eclipse of March 7, 1970 I was in the path of totality, but it was completely overcast.
 * Solar eclipse of May 30, 1984 I saw this one, an 11-second annular eclipse..
 * Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 I saw this one clearly.
 * Solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 I saw this one clearly

I hope to see:
 * Solar eclipse of August 12, 2045

Some computers I used in the old days

 * CDC 6400
 * IBM 360/65
 * IBM 370/158
 * CDC Cyber 70/74
 * CDC Cyber 170/175
 * CDC Cyber 18

Chess books
Given that information, I'd recommend the "Winning Chess" series by Yasser Seirawan, a seven-book series. Start with "Play Winning Chess" (you can probably skip or skim the first chapter). If that goes OK then both "Winning Chess Tactics" and "Winning Chess Strategies". To go beyond that "Winning Chess Openings" and "Winning Chess Endings". I haven't seen "Winning Chess Combinations", but maybe it could be the sixth one. "Winning Chess Briliancies" would be optional at the end. See Yasser Seirawan. I think that is appropriate for a teenager on up. For a bit younger, probably A World Champion's Guide to Chess, by Susan Polgar. Also, there is a lot of chess information on Wikipedia.

Requested photos in Georgia

 * Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Georgia (U.S. state)

Number style
Some style issues, where I usually follow Turabian (A Manual for Writers):

2:23 All measurements are expressed in figures. The general rule is to spell out all [exact] numbers through one hundred (e.g. thirty-five) and all round numbers that can be expressed as two words (e. g. five thousand). Exact numbers over one hundred are written as figures.

2:24 When numbers of the same thing which are above and below one hundred appear in a group, write as figures.

2:25 A sentence should never begin with a figure.

2:26 Several round numbers occurring together are usually expressed in figures.

2:27 Very large round numbers are usually expressed in figures and in units of millions or billions.

2:28 Figures should be used to express decimals and percentages. The word percent should be written out, except in scientific writing, where the symbol % may be used.

2:52 continued numbers
 * From Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers): As a general rule, in the body of an article, single-digit whole numbers from zero to nine are spelled out in words; numbers greater than nine are commonly rendered in numerals, or may be rendered in words if they are expressed in one or two words (16 or sixteen, 84 or eighty-four, 200 or two hundred, but 3.75, 544, 21 million). This applies to ordinal numbers as well as cardinal numbers. However there are frequent exceptions to these rules.


 * See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)


 * Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 46

Astronomical proper nouns
The name of the big satellite that orbits the Earth is the Moon. From Astronomy Magazine, March 2011, p. 51.

From proper nouns:
 * The common noun moon denotes any natural planet-like satellite of a planet, whereas the proper noun Moon references a specific moon, that is, the Earth's moon. Dictionaries descriptively reflect that the latter sense is "often" capitalized (by which they imply "often [or usually] capitalized in educated writers' published writing".
 * The same status described above for moon/Moon also describes sun/Sun.

Order of ending sections
From Wikipedia:Layout, the ending sections should be:


 * See also
 * Notes
 * References (or combined with Notes into Notes and references)
 * Further Reading (or Bibliography)
 * External Links

Footnote columns
From WP:FN: "Three-column lists (and larger) are inaccessible to users with smaller/laptop monitors and should be avoided unless they are supporting shortened footnotes."

Glossaries

 * From Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary "Some articles are encyclopedic glossaries...".
 * Wikipedia:Lists

Default sort

 * Wikipedia:Categorization of people

See also section
Wikipedia:Guide to layout - use editorial judgment and common sense as to whether or not links are duplicated in the "see also" section.

Equals in template caption

 * Use = when writing = in templates.

Note to self
In tempo (chess), check reference for game

For Modern Chess:
 * rook and pawn versus rook endgame vs. Kramnik 2000
 * three-fold repetition vs. Deep Blue 1997

Commons Helper

 * Commons Helper

Articles

 * Comparison of TeX editors
 * Cobian Backup
 * Outfoxed
 * List of Nikon F-mount lenses with integrated autofocus motor
 * Template:Nikon_DSLR_cameras
 * HTTrack
 * Elsevier ScienceDirect

Essay

 * Editing scientific articles

Reference columns

 * Template:Reflist - see the three bullet points
 * Expeed - good use of two columns
 * Ain't Nobody's Business - good use of one column

Resource request

 * WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request