User:JoshsPage

My contributions to Wikipedia
I've edited this site in the past using another account (made ~50 edits), but I stopped editing, before deciding to return on a new account in May 2022. Wikipedia has been an invaluable source of knowledge for me about various things that interest me, including chemistry, computer science, biology, trains, geography and computer hardware and software. Without Wikipedia, I would be significantly worse at random general knowledge quizzes. Wikipedia has enabled me to learn a lot about things, both to satisfy my own personal curiosity and for academic purposes. I've spent hours on the site looking at things, and I don't regret it one bit. That's why I've donated on several occasions to the Wikimedia Foundation. I like that the site is a non-profit and you won't get bombarded with advertisements, and that anyone can edit it and share their knowledge about anything from a small parish in their local area to a chemical compound, meaning that it is an enormous repository of knowledge.

I mostly browse Wikipedia, but I do occasionally make edits to:


 * correct out-of-date information
 * correct spelling and grammatical errors
 * remove vandalism
 * remove information without a credible source

I tend to edit articles that I've read personally. However, I will occasionally go through the recent changes page and make minor amendments on articles there, such as correcting capitalisation and reverting bad faith edits.

About Me
I have a wide range of interests outside of Wikipedia, some of which I will expand on in subsequent paragraphs in this section. I enjoy travelling and would like to visit a wide array of countries. I've visited Florida and New York City in the United States with my family, as well as Paris and Nice in France, Monaco and Venice in Italy. On my own, I have been to Dublin in the Republic of Ireland, Berlin and Hamburg in Germany and Warsaw in Poland. I have crossed a Schengen border by road (it is a very easy process without the bureaucracy that most border crossings entail) and I am a big supporter of the European Union because of the single market, which guarantees that goods, capital, services and people can move freely between countries in the bloc. I was opposed to Brexit in the 2016 referendum, not that my opinion mattered.

I used to have a YouTube channel containing gaming and trainspotting videos which amassed almost 280,000 views and just over 700 subscribers, although I decided to close it to focus on my education in October 2020. I have been considering returning to the platform since 2022, and may actually do so towards the end of 2023. If I do, the channel will almost exclusively focus on trainspotting, with some occasional travelogues and coverage of other forms of transport, such as buses, aeroplanes and cable car systems. I'd like to also learn how to use Premiere Pro to edit my videos, as well as Photoshop to enable me to produce better thumbnails and also edit my photographs that I post elsewhere, including on Unsplash and on my social media profiles, such as my Twitter profile. I bought a Canon EOS 250D in 2023 after many years of using various camera phones with the goal of taking photography a bit more seriously, with the intention of learning how to appropriately use the aperture and shutter speed settings to take high-quality photographs chronicling my travels around the world and important events. I believe that a picture is worth 1,000 words and I look fondly on pictures chronicling memorable events in my life.

Computers have fascinated me ever since I used an extremely slow netbook when my age was in the low single digits. It's no surprise that my aspirations are to study computer science at university (my aspirational choice is the University of Cambridge, with the goal of eventually becoming a software engineer. It's likely that my love of travelling and my professional aspirations may lead to me moving abroad, either permanently or temporarily. I have also not ruled out the idea of studying abroad, although this is likely to be a very expensive endeavour because I will lose out on student finance provided by the Student Loans Company. I've always been indecisive and still haven't decided on a programming language to learn to a high standard, but I already consider myself to be relatively proficient in HTML and CSS. I have a lot of ideas for software that I would like to make in the future (which I'm not going to share publicly for obvious reasons) and I hope that I will be able to bring some of these plans to fruition in my lifetime. I started to complete Harvard University's Introduction to Computer Science in 2022 and intend to finish it in 2023. I am an ardent supporter of Creative Commons and FOSS and I believe that restrictive copyright regulations shouldn't preclude you from sharing knowledge with others (I am strongly opposed to textbook authors and publishers making considerable profits from textbooks and believe that students shouldn't be advantaged or disadvantaged due to their financial position). Things have improved - in the past, the only way to obtain information about academic topics was from books, whereas nowadays a wealth of information is available freely online under permissive licences, but a lot of information about certain topics (particularly legal topics) is still stuck behind a paywall. My interest in computing doesn't just include software, but also includes hardware. I've researched computer hardware extensively and I built my own PC in January 2021, which I use for a variety of things, including gaming and casual browsing.

I've also been learning French on Duolingo since the 2nd of July 2022. I currently have a 239 day streak and have completed all of the units up to and including Unit 22. I'm nowhere near fluent in the language, but would like to eventually attend formal language classes and speak to native speakers to boost my level of fluency up to CEFR C1 level. I'm also currently studying A levels in Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Computer Science and Biology as a self-educated student, and my intention is to take these exams in June 2024. I also taught myself GCSE Geography, achieving a grade 8 (A*) in June 2023. I love to learn, and can see myself becoming a perpetual student, although I wouldn't sacrifice my career prospects in the process.

I am also an active user of social media, including Twitter, Reddit and Mastodon. Since joining Reddit in November 2017 (here's my profile), my account has amassed almost 85,000 karma and I've probably spent thousands of hours on the site and left thousands of comments, including one-liners and informative comments that consist of thousands of characters. I am active in educational communities, personal finance communities and communities pertaining to my local area, and I lurk in many other communities, including communities hosting memes, communities containing random factoids and other communities specific to my interests, such as computer science subreddits and subreddits discussing mathematics. I became a moderator of a large community in April 2022, before resigning in February 2023 to focus on other interests of mine. The Twitter account that I'm using now is the second account that I've held, and was launched in March 2023. I've tweeted 170 times. I also run a relatively inactive blog (that currently contains articles concerning my experiences with education, but may eventually include my opinions on developments in technology, politics and other topics that pique my interest) that I plan to work on in 2023, with the plan to eventually earn money from it by displaying Google AdSense ads.

My family have three cats and one Golden Retriever. When I'm not studying, working at my part-time job (that I have held since September 2022) or travelling, I enjoy walking my dog. Dog walks have taken me to some very scenic places, including Dawlish (which is also a great place for trainspotting), Lynmouth and Bourton-on-the-Water.

Getting in touch
Whatever you have to say, I'd love to hear from you.  If you'd like to discuss something to do with the English Wikipedia, please use my talk page. If you'd like to discuss my interests with me, feel free to message me on Discord (josh.#0001), Reddit or Twitter. If you want to send me a large attachment, please send it to the email address listed above. It accepts OneDrive files.