User talk:Arpingstone/ArchiveMar3-2003

Hello, welcome to wikipedia, and please don't be put off by my comments! Many people paste in material from other web pages, which we can't allow, so we're always on the watch for that. Your Tillandsia made me think of care guides in gardening books, hence my suspicion. -- Tarquin 23:55 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)

BTW, the talk system works like this: click on a user's name to go to their home page. Next click on the "discuss" link. This takes you to their User talk page -- like this one. Edit this to leave a message. I'll add something about this to the FAQ tomorrow -- did you look for an answer to this question, and if so, where (so I can put it where people will look) -- Tarquin

If you need help resizing or otherwise manipulating images, just post a note at the village pump asking for help. One of the best users for help with images is User:Lee Daniel Crocker, but he hasn't been around much since about October -- says he'll be back when he gets done settling into his new house (in California, U.S.) and the company he works for gets done with the first-of-the year tax info forms they send out (by the end of January). I can help with images in BMP, JPG, and sometimes PNG. Some of the users who post the most images use ones that are too big and/or otherwise unacceptable to a lot of us, and we spend a lot of our time fixing those (and then listening to them bitch about it), so I really appreciate your trying to find out how to do it right the first time. -- isis 08:50 Jan 21, 2003 (UTC)

Hi. Can you have a quick look at talk:jumbo jet please. Mintguy 16:41 Feb 11, 2003 (UTC)

Nice Severn Bridge photos!! Well done. Nevilley


 * Nevilley, you are a gentleman! This is the first time anyone has written to me about my photos. There's quite a lot of work in preparing and uploading each pair of pics so your comment means a lot to me. I use an Olympus 3 megapixel digital camera and my graphics program is Photoshop version 6. If you would like to see some more of my pics have a look at Boeing 747 Lapis lazuli Tillandsia Paris Opal Amber Gemstone and Boeing 737. Thanks again. Arpingstone 11:31 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)


 * you're welcome. And I will look forward to having a look at those other pictures! Nevilley 01:51 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

(re Talk:Airbus A320) My pleasure, Adrian. That's an excellent A320 photograph. Yup, Avalon, just outside Melbourne, about 100 kilometres away from me. I'd have liked to spend a good deal longer there but was with friends who had had enough for one day and wanted to get home in time to watch the cricket. :) I must get a decent general-purpose camera one day. My Sony is excellent for macro work (I bought it to take pictures of hard drives and CPUs) but a poor tool for birds (my real love) or aircraft. Cheers, Tony (Tannin)

I don't know if you're sympathetic to this cause, but I need support in trying to keep football at football. They want to move it to soccer, please see talk:list of footballers. Mintguy 10:24 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC) - Could you perhaps compress Image:Stamp.gb.diana.1981.250pix.jpg a bit? It is nearly 100,000 bytes in size but an image that size shouldn't be more than 1/10 as big. Having images that big makes it very difficult for people with slower modems to use Wikipedia. --mav

image:Stamp.barbados.250pix.jpg is way too big too. Please downsize and set your scanner to make lower resolution images. --mav

Per your message on my talk page: OK that's cool. I'm sorry I got pissy. :-) --mav

Don't happen to have a DC-8 in your collection, do you? Tannin


 * No matter then. I had a secret idea that you'd say "Yes, which do you want - a short fuselage early model? Or a Super Seventy?" And (of course) I'd say "Both, please!" Cheers -- Tony


 * PS - hang on to that MD-88 picture - I'll get around to doing a DC-9/MD-80/MD-90 entry before too long. - T

- You now have a brand new history. --mav

Hi Arpingstone. I just wanted to thank you for all the great photos you've added to Wikipedia! -- Stephen Gilbert

Adrian, slip over to User talk:Snoyes for a discussion of image resizing. Maybe it will be helpful. Best - Tannin

Hi there: How are you? I see you have a passion for aviation. I share that passion. I am from Puerto Rico, I used to live near Luis Munoz Marin International Airport and I used to see British Caledonian DC-10's landing there, as well as Viasa, Iberia, Avianca, Delta Air Lines, Mexicana, etc etc.

My two passions are actually boxing and airplanes. I wanted to be a boxer when I was a kid, that way I could combine both everytime I had to travel for a fight..lol!

Anyways I wanted to tell you that I have a collection of 69 plastic commercial jetliners, including a couple British Airways, the SST Concorde and Boeing 747 South Africa models. I really enjoyed your photos of the Japan Airlines 747 and British Midland Airbus A320 and others. Keep up the excellent work!

God bless!

Sincerely yours Antonio Catch me if You Can Martin

Hi Adrian

I've been following the Great Thumbnail Debate with much interest. I'm sorry that you were initially upset by it but it looks like it is settling down well now. It made me pretty nervous about *my* thumbnails - as I am very far from an expert - but I did some experiments (using Photoshop!) and I think I'm OK.

I was wondering about the caption to the SSC photograph. It seems to me it has two problems, both minor - (1) it's getting a bit long and maybe some of its text would be better in the article body and (2) the bit about the viaduct on rock is (to me) slightly confusing - for a moment I thought you were saying it's a viaduct OF solid rock, when presumably the intention is that that's what its foundations are on - is that right? And if so is there any way it can be made clearer for even thick people like me?? What do you think? Keep up the good work, Nevilley 11:06 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)


 * Thanks very much for the response regarding this. Neville.

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This may be an impossible task, but do you think you could explain to someone who knows practically nothing about using a scanner and other technical things (i.e. me) how to put photos onto Wikipedia? It may require a few hundred pages of instructions, in which case don't worry, but thanks anyway.Olivia Curtis 18:25 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)
 * Hi Olivia, welcome. Yes, I'll do an outline of how I prepare and upload my pics but it won't be lengthy because I don't know your expertise (if any!) or your equipment. Watch this space (could be a day or two). Adrian 20:35 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

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Hi Adrian. I looked at your resizing of the larger Kaprun pic. It looks excellent - I tried resizing the large one to the same dimensions as you had done and had basically identical results. I was going to ask you how you got such high quality images, but you gave yourself away in your post: a digital camera. What resolution and zooms (optical & digital) does this camera have? --snoyes 23:11 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

Olivia, here's what you asked for above. I am not any kind of expert so the more knowledgeable can probably tear what follows to bits. Do so, by all means, but be gentle with me! I do know that my method produce a neat looking result on the page. This stuff is only about inserting pics with JPG extensions i.e. photographs.

HOW TO PUT A JPG ON A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE PAGE If you want to see examples of my work: For a scanned object look at the Lapis lazuli article, the blue elephant was laid on the scanner plate, this is NOT a photograph, it's a scan! For photos from my digital camera see Severn Bridge. For a scanned colour print see Kaprun disaster.

These instructions give a good appearance on my 1024 by 768 screen. Ideally I would check the appearance at the other common screen sizes but I can’t because changing screen size puts all my desktop icons into a heap in the corner and it takes too long to restore their positions when I return to 1024 by 768! Perhaps a peculiarity of my OS (Windows ME).

PREPARE THE PICTURES Pictures come off my digital camera at 2048 by 1536 pixels at 700K, far too big size-wise and memory-wise for Wikipedia. The output of my Epson flat-bed scanner (if I want to scan objects or colour prints) is often even bigger than that. Those of us with 56K modems won’t wait to upload such large pics so the size has to be reduced without sacrificing too much quality. There are dozens of graphics programs for resizing and quality reduction, I happen to have the big one – Photoshop - but the power of that program isn’t usually needed for Wikipedia illustrations. My standard pic sizes are a big pic at 750 pixels wide and a little pic (a thumbnail) exactly one third of that size, at 250 pixels wide. I used 800 pixels until recently but the re-sizing produced poor quality thumbnails, the one third cut-down seems to produce better quality. If the pic is portrait format, then use a lot less width for the big pic (say, 500 pixels) or the pic may be taller than the screen. Then the reader will have to scroll down to see it all (very irritating!). The big pic should be created at a quality producing a size not bigger than 100K and the little pic not bigger than 20K (15K would be better). Make the pic name descriptive – for example: old.severn.bridge.250pix.jpg and old.severn.bridge.750pix.jpg

UPLOAD THE PICS TO WIKIPEDIA The two pics are now ready for upload to Wikipedia. The little pic will go on the article page and big pic can be seen by clicking on a link called “Click here for larger version” (which I put below the caption). Now upload the two prepared pics to Wikipedia by going to this URL: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload. This screen requires three actions: . browse to one of the two files, say the 750 pixel one, . promise that you own the copyright by ticking a box, . put in a simple title such as “Pic of Severn Bridge”.

Then click UPLOAD FILE and wait awhile.

Your pic will be uploaded (with an on-screen complaint if it’s over 100K) and the screen will ask you to “Please follow this link”. This will take you to a screen carrying the famous slogan “EDIT THIS PAGE”. Click on that and then enter your description text in the Edit box, such as who took it, where and when, and if it’s public domain. Don’t forget to fill in the summary box with, for example, “Picture of the Severn Bridge”. A typical pic description would be: “The Severn Bridge seen from the English side of the river.Photographed by Adrian Pingstone in April 2002 and released to the public domain.” (you can see this message for anyones pic by clicking on the pic). PREVIEW until happy. To keep your description text for use with the second pic, select the text and do EDIT COPY. Finally, SAVE. Now go back to the upload page URL you used earlier and do exactly the same for the 250 pixel pic.

INSERT THE PICTURE CODE INTO THE ARTICLE Go to the article and note the area where the pic can best go, and if best on left or right of the page. Steal my picture code, here’s how: Go to Severn Bridge, click on EDIT THIS PAGE, copy the coding by selecting it with the mouse and choose EDIT COPY. You need the stuff between (and including) the words TABLE. In the code I know that “width=270” looks odd but it gives a better clearance between the pic and the text. Then paste it down into the articles Edit Page with EDIT PASTE. Modify the left or right instruction and the file names, type in your own caption and PREVIEW. Don’t forget the Summary. Modify as often as you like, finally SAVE.

If you have only a small pic and no large one then you probably just delete the “Click here” line in the coding (I haven’t tried this).

FOOTNOTE: I have a copy of this picture code pasted on to a Microsoft Word page and saved, then I do EDIT COPY/EDIT PASTE. I think that’s easier than going off to an article to steal it.

Done!! Enlightened, Olivia? Best Wishes -- Adrian 20:48 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)(previously known as Arpingstone)


 * Thank you so much! It will take me a while to read this a few hundred times and fathom it all out, but I'm sure I'll be enlightened in the end.  Thanks again for taking the time to share your expertise (which is certainly what you have, compared to me!)

Olivia Curtis 21:37 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Adrian

Brought to you live and direct, courtesy of Cut'n'Paste (TM), from Talk:Bristol:


 * "Does the article need more on Concorde and Filton? The runway extension (for the Brabazon I think)? Nevilley 08:05 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)


 * Arpingstone seems to be our resident expert on Filton. Obviously I wouldn't presume to speak for him, but you could drop a note on his talk in case he's not watching this page. --rbrwr (who is within sight of the Filton runway at the moment)."

Over to you Adrian!



Nevilley 16:21 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)

Oh and by the way, congratulations on your very clear picture instructions above. I did something similar with the code business - wrote a "nowikified" version of it for my user page and just copy it straight off there now, without having to put a page into edit. Lazy or what? I see you are suggesting 270 width for 250px wide graphics, something I had not thought of (in fact if you had asked me I would probably have guessed it would mess the picture up or something - duh, as they say), so I am going to look again at your stuff and mine and copy your idea if I like it! Anyway, nice one! -- Nevilley