User talk:Tamfang/Archive 2008

Added Hamilton House and amended Scottish country dance

A benevolent wish to drag numerous people from ignorance to enlightenment without it really hurting much. Kittybrewster 03:50, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to edit this, i am just correcting the link of what the above was referring to. Simply south (talk) 17:45, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Re: soil conservation

I laughed so hard at your little content-free essay, I nearly choked. (You turkey. :-) ) —Steve Summit (talk) 02:49, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

For future reference: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Science/2007 September 18#soil conservation. —Tamfang (talk) 07:56, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

districts

Here is a link to the National Library of Scotland website. http://www.nls.uk/maps/. The index on there has details of the maps on which the one of Atholl was based, rather roughly I'm afraid. There is some change in some of these as they evolved, for example there is on on there that is split into two with "older divisions" on the left which I believe is based on 1500s or earlier maps of Mormaerdoms and Lordships, that one shows some difference to some of the later ones. I have changed the caption in the Atholl picture to say "showing roughly the district of Atholl" as it is not exact and changed over time. All the maps of the earlier divisions of Scotland changed quite a bit as well, for example Moray, Galloway, Carrick and Annandale varied greatly from when they first appear in the medieval era to when some of the maps on the NLS site show them. Benson85 (talk) 03:23, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Firefly

Saw your edits on the Firefly article. They're good. Any time someone can make a sentance less wordy, its gotta be a benefit. -- saberwyn 00:02, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello

Hi Tamfang, I'm User:Keegan. Once upon a time, when I worked on the Maurice Minnifield article both as an IP and editor, you helped in its creation. Back then I was TKE.

I'm now a sysop, and I went ahead and gave you rollback privileges which are now available to editors and admins can grant. I was browsing around and thought you could use it. The function is to reduce bandwidth and server load in reverting simple vandalism and test edits. If you don't want it, I can remove the function as well.

Additionally, let me know if you are interested in adminship, if you feel it would aid in you editing of the encyclopedia. Keegan^talk 06:30, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Link Keegan^talk 06:33, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Gömböc

I have replied to your comment at Talk:Gömböc. You posted it a few month ago so I'm not sure you are still watching the talk. — Zertrin ^(blabla) 10:33, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

your My Name is Earl question at the reference desk

I found an answer and posted it at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Entertainment#Plasticine Catalina. Hope that is what you were looking for. --Gwguffey (talk) 02:29, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

British toponymy

... and thanks to you for spotting that my first attempt was a bit cryptic! Rjm at sleepers (talk) 10:13, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Convex uniform polyhedra

Hi Anton. If you're interested in peeking around (I know you have a good eye), I've made my first draft article listing convex uniform polyhedra in the tables like the Uniform polychorons. I'll be here a while: User:Tomruen/temp. There's surely some mistakes, but I think it's near complete. Tom Ruen (talk) 04:00, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

What is the correct language for...

Since you know more about the language of arms, can you tell me how to describe these arems correctly? I have been trying to find the proper language to desribe these coats of arms. Any help that you may offer would be greatly appreciated.♦Drachenfyre♦·Talk 00:07, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

The Flag of the Princely House of Aberffraw, first associated with Llywelyn the Great

File:Glyndwr2.JPG

Banner of Owain IV Glyndŵr

Thank you Very Much! But as you posted that, I had found this description too:

Quarterly Or and Gules, four Lions passant guardant counter-charged langued and armed Azur

and was wondering what 'langued and armed Azur' ment? I suspect armed Azur referenced the blue claws of the Lion.... but what does langued reference if 'passant guardant' reference the position and attitude of the lion?♦Drachenfyre♦·Talk 18:27, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I found it, but not in Wikipedia. It means toung out, exposed.

"...bare umlaut with 'strikeout' style"

Not my query, Tamfang but may I compliment you on such a nice, clever suggestion! The best workaround I've come up with lately (and not original with me, either) was to use white text on a white background to produce an empty-space appearance where a field has unwanted but obligatory content. -- Cheers, Deborahjay (talk) 14:36, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Heraldry Wilkins Arms

Hi Tamfang, I'm LightHorseman1216. I agree with your point about the differencing of those arms, but given that the Wilkins Arms image only had a small caption space, I didn't feel it was appropriate to go into a great amount of detail about how in some cases new arms are chosen based on the arms of individuals or groups whom the new armiger respects or is influenced by. When I have 5 minutes, I'll put something about that in the actual main article. But thanks for the feedback, and I hope you'll have a look at Heraldry in about 24 hours to see if the changes I make are any good.

Cheers LightHorseman1216 (talk) 08:06, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Indents in conversations

Don't feel bad about this; there is no system. As far as I can tell (and I have 3 years experience at Wikipedia, and have been an admin for a year) everyone just automatically indents one more ":" than the post before them, just to make it easier to track where one post ends and another begins. Eventually, if the conversation gets long enough, someone resets the indent. Don't try to follow indents to decide who is responding to who, its not that well organized. Or it might be. There may be other people using other conventions, but no one has told anyone else what those conventions are. You don't have to look for a "code" cuz there isn't one. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 01:56, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Moved your Stuarts page

Hello, I am doing a masters thesis on the Stuart succession issue derived from the Act of Settlement 1701 and found your article you had in your sandbox. I took it upon myself to clean up and edit the article and I posted it at Line of succession to the English throne in 1701 for both my own referential purposes and that of others who may be doing similar research. Much thanks for doing the work, I am working on obtaining the referenced book right now through an inter-library loan. I hope that it proves fruitful. If you have any other items that deal with the issue of the 1701 succession, I would very much appreciate it as I still have most of a year to actually turn in the paper. Cheers!
–Darius von Whaleyland, Great Khan of the Barbarian Horde 20:54, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Main Page redesign

The Main Page Redesign proposal is currently conducting a straw poll to select five new designs, before an RFC in which one will be proposed to replace the Main Page. The poll closes on October 31st. Your input would be hugely appreciated! Many thanks, Pretzels^Talk! 15:01, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Changing preferences

I see you use Firefox. I don't but I have now read that it may automatically fill in the "Old password" field, so when you submit the form, it thinks you want to change your password to an empty string. If this happens then clear the "Old password" field before saving preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:28, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Fibonacci - golden ratio

Re. your question, the fibonacci number page says it this way:

Limit of consecutive quotients

Johannes Kepler observed that the ratio of consecutive Fibonacci numbers converges. He wrote that "as 5 is to 8 so is 8 to 13, practically, and as 8 is to 13, so is 13 to 21 almost”, and concluded that the limit approaches the golden ratio $\varphi \,$.

$\lim _{n\to \infty }{\frac {F(n+1)}{F(n)}}=\varphi ,$

This convergence does not depend on the starting values chosen, excluding 0, 0.

Proof:

It follows from the explicit formula that for any real $a\neq 0,\,b\neq 0\,$

${\begin{aligned}\lim _{n\to \infty }{\frac {F_{a,b}(n+1)}{F_{a,b}(n)}}&=\lim _{n\to \infty }{\frac {a\varphi ^{n+1}-b(1-\varphi )^{n+1}}{a\varphi ^{n}-b(1-\varphi )^{n}}}\\&=\lim _{n\to \infty }{\frac {a\varphi -b(1-\varphi )({\frac {1-\varphi }{\varphi }})^{n}}{a-b({\frac {1-\varphi }{\varphi }})^{n}}}\\&=\varphi \end{aligned}}$

because ${\bigl |}{\tfrac {1-\varphi }{\varphi }}{\bigr |}<1$ and thus $\lim _{n\to \infty }\left({\tfrac {1-\varphi }{\varphi }}\right)^{n}=0.$

Then, of course you need to make it clear that the approximation only works higher up in the sequence. For the low numbers one could as well say the "ratio" "approaches" whatever constant one could imagine: "0.5"? "1 : e"?... approaching specifically φ only becomes clear higher up in the range of fibonacci numbers.

Then, what I'm looking for is a normal speach way to express that (without using the specific mathematical expressions involving "limit", "∞" or whatever the casual reader might not be acquainted with).

And no,

The ratios between consecutive numbers of the sequence approach the golden ratio.

doesn't convey that message, because that english sentence can be read as if each ratio of two consecutive fibonacci numbers approaches φ, which is not true. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:03, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Total Recall

Posted response to your April 2007 question at Talk:Mars_Bar#Total_Recall. Better late than never. HairyWombat (talk) 02:07, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Category redirects/mergers should be discussed

I have reverted [1] and posted to Wikipedia:Help desk#Can a Category be redirected?. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:51, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

If there are any more...

Sorry about that. We were in math class, that is when it really started. It was a joke, as Cody was the main kid causing problems, but I will stop.--NicholasHopkinzTalk! 21:44, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Language game

Good change. It must have been pretty tedious to do all that! —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 00:10, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Keenspot Template

I responded to your discussion on the Keenspot Template. Hopefully that sounds good to you as well.

-- RandorXeus. Remember to Be Bold! 19:30, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Reference desk regulars

Hello, Tamfang. I added your signature to this list. I hope that's alright. Happy Holidays! ---Sluzzelin talk 13:37, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Jokes

Hi Tamfung: Thanks for your response on the pronunciation of "Holguin". I did get the joke; it was hard to miss with the :P at the end :-). However, I find that, unless I respond "straight" on the Ref Desk, somebody will object. I should have sent a smiley back to you. I understood your answer and also Angr's; I am still not sure what lysdexia's point is, except that she seems to have missed the word "approximation" in Angr's explanation, but doubt that her jargon-filled prose affects the answer to my question. Thanks again. ៛ Bielle (talk) 21:42, 29 December 2008 (UTC)