View source for User:Maury Markowitz

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| style="width: 45px; height: 45px; background: #dda0dd; text-align: center; font-size: {{{5|{{{id-s|10}}}}}}pt; color: {{{id-fc|black}}};" | '''2002'''<br /><small>UID&nbsp;2175</small>
| style="font-size: {{{info-s|8}}}pt; padding: 4pt; text-align: center; line-height: 1.25em; color: {{{info-fc|black}}};" |[[User:Maury Markowitz |I]] have been editing [[Wikipedia]] since '''2002-05-31''',{{For year month day|year=2002|month=1|day=2}} ago<span style="font-size:0.9em;" class="plainlinks"> ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&dir=prev&target=verify])</span>
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{{Master Editor II}}
{{User Twenty Year Society}}
[[Image:Barnstar.jpg|right|thumb|I award you the ''Aviation Barnstar'' in recognition of your knowledgeable contribution to aviation articles. -[[User:Bzuk|Bzuk]]]]

I can't decide, am I a [[Wikipedia:WikiSloth]] or a [[Wikipedia:WikiDragon]]?

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Leela: Hmmm. I've been looking for a way to serve the community that incorporates my violence. Let's do it!

Fry: You'll barely regret this.

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The quick-n-dirty description of me is "coding physicist" - I took physics in U, and like so many others of my era, today I'm a programmer. Eh, I don't mind that too much. I'm also a pilot, so unsurprisingly most of my edits are on science, tech or aircraft.

I hail from [[Toronto]], specifically the [[Christie Pits]] area close to downtown. I have what used to be a "right sized" house until the girlfriend and I broke up, and now it's just plain too big. Still, I got it for a great price, so the cheapie in me won't let me sell it. Of course that leads to other problems, like the neverending upgrades you always forget about when you buy a place.

I work at a medium-sized (for Canada) [[hedge fund]] during the day, primarily writing the program they use to enter and track orders. I'm formerly a [[Apple Macintosh|Mac]] guy, but holding a day job pretty much means you've got to work on the PC, and so I do. I can't say I really mind it though, and I have to admit that [[Microsoft Access]] does the job well.

I got into programming in a roundabout way, originally working in tech support for [[FirstClass]]. That was one odd company; there were the programmers, and then "everyone else", the peons. I never managed to break into programming there, the barrier to entry was just too high. Then back in '97 [[Apple Computer]] announced it was buying [[NeXT]] and using [[OpenStep]] as the next [[Mac OS X]]. So I started looking into OS and got completely hooked, posting about it a lot on the [[UseNet]]. Then one day I got a email from a developer in Toronto who wanted to hire me to help him write a program on OpenStep, but I declined, saying I liked my job and didn't really have that much experience anyway. The next day I got laid off. The day after that I worked for him. The rest, so it goes, is history.

I'm an avid [[bicycle|cyclist]] and do about 200k a week on average, at least during the warmer months, which takes up my afternoons and any free weekends. I've started doing some longer distance day ride this year, 100-120 typically and a century ride every so often. Right now I'm gearing up for the [[Toronto Donut Ride|Donut Ride]], which I hope to try this weekend.

I have a fairly wide group of friends, some of whom have even ended up here on the wiki, like [[User:Pandora]] and my buddy Nick (missing in action).

== Me and the Wiki ==

I've been a wikipedian for a while now, my first edits go back to the March 2002 time-frame. I guess that makes me one of the old-timers. Since then I've made a little under 10,000 edits, and created or rewritten perhaps 1,000. Before registering for this account I made a number of edits using [[User:216.94.11.2]]. As of April 2007 I have over 12,500 mainspace edits, and over 15,000 in total.

Some of these turned out to be really interesting when the people I was writing about would later see the article and write me. For instance I got a really nice letter from the author of the [[GRASS programming language|ZGRASS]], who was impressed that I managed to piece together so much of the history. Admittedly I did a lot of legwork on that one, photoblasting a couple of articles at the Toronto Reference Library for background. I also came across a mention of the [[Lotus Improv]] article on someone's blog. He was convinced that I worked at Lotus because of all the "insider history" I gathered, but I have to admit I got most of it from an old NeXTWorld article.

I have only one "wikiwhine". In May I spent about a week trying to get several pictures of the [[IBM 1360]] from Berkeley, only to succeed and then find they were summarily deleted because I uploaded just after the May 19th cutoff. This was particularly frustrating because there was no notice on the wiki about this cutoff, I only noticed it when I went ''back'' to the page and noticed a deletion tag. Poorly handled, IMHO. It's doubly frustrating in this case because the machines in question were all destroyed.

== Something new ==

One of my pet peeves in the software industry is good ideas that simply disappear into the ether. I'm always annoyed when I try out some new package and it's missing some painfully obvious feature they could have just lifted directly out of another older package. That's why a lot of my writing is on older software, like [[Lotus Improv]], [[FullWrite Professional]].

And following that line of thought, I've decided to try a little experiment. I have started a new collaborative effort I call the [[User:Maury Markowitz/Manifesto for a Better Word Processor|Manifesto for a Better Word Processor]], in which I hope to collect up ideas from all and sundry on the features they would like to see in the ideal [[word processor]].

And a new one too: [[User:Maury Markowitz/ObjC wishlist|ObjC wishlist]]

== My favourites ==

Here's a few of my articles I'm particularly proud of.

*[[National Ignition Facility]]
*[[Project Alpha]]
*[[SAGE]]
*[[Wop May]]
*[[Unisys ICON]]
*[[CDC 8600]]

== Article lists ==

Everyone seems to do this, but it got so long I had to break it up.

*[[User:Maury Markowitz/History, business, etc.]]
*[[User:Maury Markowitz/Aircraft, engines, etc.]]
*[[User:Maury Markowitz/Physics, engineering, other tech, etc.]]
*[[User:Maury Markowitz/Computers, etc.]]
*[[User:Maury Markowitz/Sandbox]]

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