Monday, May 31, 2010

Board member candidate

There was a public call for candidates for the board of the WMF. Candidates that will be chosen by the chapters and represent them. Then the period to put in a candidacy was extended because there were only three candidates.

I have put myself forward as a candidate for a seat on the board. When people want to know what I am about, they can start by reading my blog.
  • I want investment to provide the other languages with a level playing field
  • I want better information about other cultures on the English Wikipedia
  • I want to enlarge the reach of our projects aggressively
  • I think the pendulum of private communications within the WMF should swing back in the other direction
  • I want to discuss the numbers used to base our strategy on
To make a real difference on such subjects it is good to be part of those who decide. Given the many posts on my blog, the numerous contributions on mailing lists, my involvement with the development of parts of MediaWiki, I consider to be a known quantity. This makes it easy for the chapters to understand that with me they will have a friend on the board working for their benefit.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Sunday, May 30, 2010

A shot in the arm for the Tagalog #Wikipedia

Tagalog is spoken in the Philippines, its Wikipedia is one of those projects that goes up and down in traffic like a yo-yo. The last time when it went up, there was this amazing lady translating EVERYTHING.

The Wikipe-tan is seen wearing a baro't saya and can be found on ‎AnakngAraw her user page..

She is back and, her impact is already visible at translatewiki.net. The question is how and when this will translate to the traffic numbers for the Tagalog Wikipedia. The good news is that every day LocalisationUpdate picks up what became available.


It is awesome to have people like AnakngAraw around ..
Thanks,
      GerardM

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Why #Facebook, #Plaxo, #LinkedIn ...

A Facebook friend send me an invitation for new functionality. If anything, it is the last thing I am interested in.. Maybe not, it rates with FarmVille as a time waster.

Actually Facebook itself is very much a timesink. I tried it for some time but now I wish only for some of the nice bits to improve the whole Wiki experience.

I am GerardM some 460 times in the Wikimedia projects, I am registered as GerardM in many Wikia wikis, many other wikis. I wish they all allowed for OpenID so that I could manage my password once and well. I wish for a central place where I can assemble a public profile as well as maintain my private information. Such information could consist of bits and pieces from everywhere; as it is my persona that is fractured in what Facebook, LinkedIn, Google and many others publicly state about me. They mash all this for their private use anyway, why not have me make a mash out of it?

There are also these new functionalities where it makes sense to REALLY restrict who knows or may know... where I am for instance, it is not an invite to be burgled. I do want to control access to the people I trust but I do not care what applications they use, as long as these do not leak.

This is where Facebook has a problem; it has earned its reputation that they are cavalier with other people's data. They are leeches; it is their audacity that makes them "own" the private data of their clients so that they can sell it to their customers.

I would not mind aggravating Facebook's problems by federating information and profiles and only share what needs to be shared when it needs to be shared. Consider a game like Farmville in such a network.. When it is hot, it is available.. you spend your time and money without a Facebook overhead. It is for Facebook to add value and I find it wanting.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Friday, May 28, 2010

Censoring #Wikipedia

The notion that Wikipedia is not censored is an illusion. The worst part is that it comes in different shapes, is practised by several different groups and, it is hard to observe. It may be found in how admins censure editors that write "problematic" texts. It may be that people representing one culture are refused their point of view because "everyone" knows that ... It may even be the difference in appreciating editorial control versus censorship.

Censorship is very much the kind of accusation that halts any further useful talk. The arguments for or against restrictions are often a fine line with important consequences in either direction. I was asked to write about possible censorship on the fa.wikipedia but all I can do is write that I was asked. I know all to well that the Wikimedia domain is blocked while all Wikipedias are still freely available in Iran.

The worst thing that can happen to our projects is when they are blocked. This defeats utterly what we aim to achieve; providing educational content. For me it is frustrating not to know that we have a good understanding of all the cases of censorship imposed by governments. When this is what motivates the restriction of the number of sexually specific images, I find the argument compelling.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Incubating #ASL for a new #Wikipedia in a new script

#MediaWiki is awesome; it supports some 300 languages in the many Wikipedias and in the incubator. For several hundred languages, all sign languages, there is no Wikipedia yet. Worse, MediaWiki does not support the SignWriting script that is necessary to write these languages.

There are several technical issues that need to be solved SignWriting is written in lanes; that is, they are written top down and the characters may swerve to the right or to the left. To complicate things even more, the SignWriting script is not included in Unicode. MediaWiki relies on Unicode.

It is however REALLY important to have a Wikipedia for sign languages. SignWriting is effectively a grass roots organisations that emancipates the mother tongues of millions of people who live in every country. Being able to write your language, finding your language on the Internet is something we take for granted. For SignWriting it is a school at a time, a language at a time and get to the inflection point where writing a sign language is obvious and asking for a Wikipedia is just a matter of following the procedure.


I am really happy to blog about the first encyclopaedic article in ASL; it is about Charles-Michel de l'Épée. Épée came to believe that deaf people were capable of language and concluded that they should be able to receive the sacraments and thus avoid going to hell. In a modern variation, it is the SignWriting Foundation that concluded that deaf people can write their language and should have their Unicode so that they can write on the Internet and have their Wikipedias.
Thanks,
     GerardM


Pictures of kittens

The other day I was looking for a picture of a kitten. I was well served for my need.

The illustration is of a Maine Coon 75 day old kitten called Cookie.Kittens of the many breeds are quite distinct and, as kids all over the world present in primary school about their kitty cat, it makes sense to have the pictures of those breeds with old and young cats.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Monday, May 24, 2010

A partial #wikipedia block in #Pakistan

On Twitter I learned from Kim that Wikipedia being blocked in Pakistan. He refers to Pakistan.Wikia.com, and it refers to the BBC website. In it there is one line about Wikipedia:
Some Wikipedia pages are also now being restricted, latest reports say.

I find it quite surprising that news of blocks like this are not discussed in the many platforms for discussion. There are several aspects to it; it may be that people are not interested, it may be that people are not interested in learning about the consequences or that people are not willing to consider what it takes to get those blocks removed. Last but not least, it may be possible that it is discussed in one of the many "internal" platforms.

As there is no mention of censorship, the arguments used for it, there is no discussion about the relative merits of those blocks. In the case of China and now Pakistan some articles are blocked. It would be good when these articles are known so that we could at least better understand this whole phenomena.

A partial block is much to be preferred over a complete block because in this way the students of those countries have access to the information that is not blocked. A proper understanding of those blocks and their extend are needed to engage in a dialogue with the censors and their political masters. Some Wikipedia pages are also now being restricted, latest reports say. We have a strong argument in our neutral point of view and our educational purpose but do we really know the opposing arguments?
Thanks,
        GerardM

Saturday, May 22, 2010

#Google fonts has great potential

At Google IO an API providing web font functionality and a font directory were announced. At this time this service works on all major browsers; Adroid and iPhone are not yet supported.

It is common for Google to start new projects as beta projects. The idea of Google providing font support is something I wished for, not so much for the Latin script but very much for the other scripts.

When you consider that many people in India do not have proper fonts for their languages, it is painfully obvious that it is not about making the web beautiful but that it is about making the web usable. This is where Google can make a world of a difference; they can enable the Internet for those parts of the world where the Internet is still a novelty.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Thursday, May 20, 2010

#iPad, iDodo and #Android

First there were e-readers, they were closed but cheap and did one thing well. Then there was the iPad it did took over the attention from the e-readers and is a closed, expensive but more capable tool.

Adroid is different, its website talks about "what is new". You are expected to know that it is an operating system for ... eh ... Its logo is available under a CC-by license ...This operating system is available to any manufacturer and Android phones outsell the iPhone.

Understanding the i-thingies is easy because there is little to choose from. There is only one supplier. Choosing for Android is easy but then you still have to choose the hardware that serves your need best.

I have not really been paying attention.. is there already something sizeable running Android that competes with the iPad ?? Who is manufacturing it, who is selling it in my market ? Do I have to wait like Apple has me wait ??

Did I say that it is your choice what you do with your Android, did I say that it is open source, did I say choice.. your choice?
Thanks,
     GerardM

The upload wizard is off line at #translatewiki.net

It sounds so ominous, but in reality it is extremely friendly on the translatewiki.net community. Guillaume indicated that a lot of experimentation is going on to make the English version of the upload wizard for Commons just right.

All the iterations to get the user interface right will not be internationalised and localised. When it works well in English, the next iterations will be to get the internationalisation right as well.

We are happy for the consideration shown by the developers; it saves our community from a lot of useless work.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

#Apple is said to be anti-American ....

In an editorial ZDNet government wants us to believe that when it comes to selling iPads, Apple is truly anti-American.


Apple treats the  US-Americans in a preferential manner and, to add insult to injury the rest of the world is not only below the salt they even subsidise the US-American market.

There is a need for a good title but this one is sooo wrong. The issue is not so much with Apple requiring a credit card, it is with the US banking industry not providing an adequate alternative.
Thanks,
     GerardM

A new #Wikipedia related logo just spotted in the wild

This logo was spotted quite prominently on the website of the Open Video Alliance where it is announced that Google has freed up a VP8 codec for HTML5: the WebM project. It is good news.. read all about it :)
Thanks,
      GerardM


The prodigal son

This painting by Rembrandt van Rijn can be found on #Commons.  The original can be found in the Hermitage.


I was looking for a picture of the "prodigal son" because my nephew returns home today from a world trip. His father and mother are happy to have him home and as he is vegetarian, I am sure a fatted calf will not be on the menu.

Anyway, the 35.95 MB file can be found on Commons, but there is no template for the Hermitage. As a consequence we can not even express how many page views the heritage preserved in the Hermitage generates. It would be good to be able to do so, it may open doors..
Thanks,
     GerardM

#translatewiki is not a WMF project ... duh

Every now and then projects like translatewiki.net find people who object to participating because "it is not a WMF project". In the case of translatewiki it should by now be obvious why they should; it provides an essential service to the development of MediaWiki.

Arguments like "but it does not have a privacy policy" or "how do we control its content" are coming from people who do not know or appreciate how translatewiki differs. Translatewiki means business and it does its thing without the many "carefully crafted" policies that confuse the heck out of almost everybody.

At translatewiki.net we internationalise and localise the software that is developed elsewhere. The software gets a quality check before the community starts localising and the localisations get a quality check before we commit it to the relevant source repository.

When our community does it work well, nothing changes except for the languages a message is available in. Translatewiki is part of the Wiki movement together with many project outside of the WMF that have their own niche and are worthwhile in their own right. Translatewiki is one, OmegaWiki, Wikia, Wikihow ..... the list goes on.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The amazing progress for the Gheg language

The #localisation for #OpenStreetMap is done. It has been done in a record time and, with the initial work done they are ready for the second phase of such a project; proofreading.

The good news is that as the user-interface is now ready for inclusion in the live software, it will be easier for the people in Albania and Kosovo to perfect the OSM maps that are relevant to them.


As OSM is used when disaster strikes, it will save a lot of grief when quality maps are available. This is helped when people appreciate that OSM can be localised at translatewiki.net. But it starts with providing OSM in the logical language for a location. Even when there is no localisation yet, providing the message that we welcome localisations in their language is extremely powerful.
Thanks,
      GerardM

PS Remember the boy scout motto.. "be prepared" ??

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

About porn, child porn, and #Wikipedia

Lupe Fuentes is a #porn star with four #Wikipedia articles who is known for her youthful looks. Relying on expert witnesses a man was prosecuted for the possession of child pornography because he owned a dvd featuring Lupe.

It was necessary for Lupe to come to court and convince the prosecutor that she was of a legal age to feature in a porn movie. Her age could be found in a register that exists to provide the information to prevent such mistakes. The prosecutor was informed about these facts but he persisted in bringing charges.

The prosecutor will continue to prosecute and the expert witness will continue to provide expertise even though he was off by more then five years. They lost a case.

Another way of looking at this sorry saga would be that the movie deliberately had Lupe pretend to be a teen. This would make the prosecutors case understandable and the director morally culpable.

The picture shows the David. It is probably the best known statue in the world. It is a nude of a young man. There is no clue as to the exact age of the model, we cannot ask. It is however irrelevant because we cannot study Western art and not deal with the many nudes that are an essential part of it.

When Wikipedia informs about pornography, it needs to explain what it is. This is necessary because there are aspects of it that people should know. It is for instance essential to inform that sex with children is illegal all over the world. It is equally important to explain how different sex with minors is appreciated in different jurisdictions.

The big brouhaha about images with a sexual nature in Commons is very much a cultural clash. The WMF board indicated that there are too many images of a sexual nature that harm the primary goal of the WMF projects. This is objectively true as it resulted in the Wikimedia domain being blocked from for instance Iran. Sadly Wikipedia is so big that it has its detractors, they created a lot of noise and consequently initial cleaning up actions were a bit hasty, even ill considered. The need for a clean up of images, particularly of images that would have been best kept private is necessary. Necessary because they harm our prime objective.

After some cool deliberation and a bit more of a consensus about what we need and what not, things will improve. Quality illustrations will clarify quality articles and our priority remains that we provide the rich resources students can use in all their studies.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The Javanese script

According to Ethnologue, there are 84,300,000 people in Indonesia who speak Javanese. The Wikipedia article on the Javanese script shows the positions of the characters of the script.


There are minimally 91 characters that need to be expressed in a font. It takes one person with the appropriate skills to create a font for Javanese. What they look like can be found here.

There is a request for a Javanese Wikisource but it would really make sense when the sources are expressed in the way the source are written. Is there nobody among the 84,300,000 Javanese who can create a font? Is there someone else who can help?
Thanks,
      GerardM

The #wardriving of #Google in perspective

Google is involved in another storm in a glass of water; it is privacy again. What Google wants to know is where you are connecting from. This allows them to better target their ads.

Their cars drive by, as they drive by, they record WIFI traffic. In this way they get plenty of data to extract the IP numbers from the WIFI routers. The conversations they record are too small for anything meaningful.. Remember, it is a car driving by for crying out loud !!

If you are worried about people listening in to your WIFI traffic, use appropriate settings on your router or use an ethernet cable. Do not blame Google for what can be heard in the street by anyone anyway, that is just a red herring.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Monday, May 17, 2010

Representing numbers in #Wikipedia

In a discussion on IRC the representation of numbers was discussed. It turns out that numbers are not really considered in MediaWiki. When you want to express a number it is expected that you use Arabic numerals.

When other numerals are in use for a language, the trick is to change the CSS to replace the characters. The problem is how to turn this off for the article on numerals..

OmegaWiki has a nice way of annotating the different expressions for a number.. It is defined on the number class. The only thing left is learning in how many ways a number like two can be expressed.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Sunday, May 16, 2010

New #Wikipedia logo and new #MediaWiki functionality

As a rule of thumb, you can rely on people loudly being unhappy when things change. The inclusion of the new logo together with the implementation of the vector skin is either a stroke of genius or plain good luck.

When you compare the existing logos of all Wikipedias, there is much variety. When you want to reinforce the notion of a trademark, it makes sense to harmonise.The old logo is bigger and therefore more crisp, so it is likely that the smaller version II will become bigger and more crisp when all the bitching has ended . A small price and a small improvement to get the other functionality in.

Magnus cobbled together a really nice gadget for the Commons main page. It is the kind of thing that demonstrates that Commons is about pictures. In his own words: "Hacked something" and "Feel free to alter". There were enough people who found problems and happily the tone was positive.. I hope it will find a use not only but also on the Commons main page.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Friday, May 14, 2010

A formal picture of Lombok royalty

This #Tropenmuseum picture shows Lombok royalty with a slave. The picture is relevant because from the position of the Lombok culture, there is / was nothing wrong with bare breasts; bare legs is a different thing.

This picture is tagged with Female toplessness in Indonesia. Such a category reflects Western values and it is bound to be used at some stage to censor pictures like these.

This picture of three topless women in Sain Martin are of Western women, one with a piercing through a nipple. It is their freedom to go topless but from a cultural point of view they are topless while the Lombok royal has bare breasts.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Albanian languages make the #OpenStreetMap cut

Having blogged about the flooding in Albania, it is really satisfying to learn that both the Gheg and the Tosk localisations have localised the necessary 30% of the messages at translatewiki.net. Tosk and Gheg will now become available as a language that can be selected for its interface.

These Albanian languages will become available at the next update of the OSM software when new localisations are included. Let us hope that this example of what can be done will inspire the people who can localise in Haitian.
Thanks,
     GerardM

The future of #wikipedia? Women !!

The Bebaskan Pengetahuan 2010 competition is doing outrageously well; consider:
  • the number of regular editors have more then doubled
  • over 60% of the top 6 are female
  • the quality of the articles is second to none
  • universities pit their best against each other and, it is a no holds barred competition
The students of the 10 universities  really have to work hard; they get extra points for editing every day, every sentence has to be supported by an appropriate reference even taking part in the discussions using the talk pages is valued in this competition. Not only will many new quality articles be created, as important a new generation of Wikipedians find their way into our project.


Out of 87 participants only 37 are allowed to continue in the competition. This is based on the quality of their contributions. At this time Kartika Sari Henry is the best of the best. This is certainly a project that breaks new grounds.

For the Public Policy project it will be impossible to make as much of a difference. It is even easy to argue that their project would benefit by reaching out to the Indonesian universities because they and for instance a Russian and a Dutch university are needed to prevent the inevitable bias that will be the result when only American schools take part in this project.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Picard has its statistics

The #Wikipedia statistics are now complete. Erik Zachte did the necessary debugging and learned what prevented the numbers from becoming available. Thanks Erik !!

Thanks,
     GerardM

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The Picard #Wikipedia

There is a Wikipedia in the Picard language. There are even Asterix albums in Picard. But like the ancient Gauls, Picard refuses to be counted as belonging to the Wikipedia realm.

Picard is the only language that does not  inform us about its traffic, its number of articles.. When you look at the traffic statistics for instance, they are beautiful; it features normalised months and edit statistics per language. It is awesome..

...but this little Wikipedia written by these people from the north of France. They have no part in it. They are a rule to themselves; you only learn about them by going there.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Pointers to the vector change over

The English #Wikipedia will migrate to the new vector skin on Thursday 05:00 UTC. There are no fixed plans yet, but it will take something like two more weeks before the other Wikipedias and other projects will migrate.

This indicates that it is best to to finish localising the usability software for all the other languages in the next two weeks. Please check at translatewiki.net what still needs to be done for your language.

Once the software is integrated in the MediaWiki core, it will change the content of the "most used" messages. They are essential for helping our audience make the most of our projects.

Please help us get ready so that our newbies will have an easier time learning the ropes of our beautiful projects.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Monday, May 10, 2010

Beautiful women in social media

Regularly I receive requests of beautiful women to befriend them on social media like Facebook. My experiences with such requests are not good. They typically do not have anything I am interested in. Typically it is a scam or spam.

When I received a request from a Juliana Da Costa José, I thought it was another one. So I did not look at it for a long time. I could not be more wrong.

I find it sad that I got jaded in this way. I am happy to acknowledge that Juliana is a really interesting person. That was easy to recognise when I had a good look at her Facebook profile.

I hope to meet her in Gdansk.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Saturday, May 08, 2010

It has been that time of year again

Surviving another year ends with a birthday. I had a nice day and, received several nice cards. This is one I am really happy with, it is from a community that is still small enough to care about things like birthdays.


Thank you Valerie :)
Thanks,
       GerardM

Friday, May 07, 2010

Nudity / sexual content on #Wikipedia

Maroon in Suriname,
picture #Tropenmuseum
On #Slashdot there is an article that many of the #Commons images of a sexual nature will be removed. The aim of the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation is educational and, when countries like Iran single out Commons and block access it seriously undermines what the WMF stands for and aims to achieve.

Removing many of the sexual explicit pictures that should have remained private, is a good step in the direction of addressing the real issue of finding a balance between what is necessary in the scope of our projects and the wish to clean house.

The issue is to find a balance. When a pictures like the picture of these Maroon of Suriname, is put into the category  Nudity, it becomes problematic because these gentlemen are dressed with a loincloth and, there is less to see then what you can guess in swimming trunks.


In the Vatican museums you can find many such examples of what happens when people take the consequences of their prudery too far.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Public Policy Project

The latest #Wikimedia Foundation project aims to cover the subject of Public Policy. It is an experiment on the English Wikipedia aimed to experiment with bringing subject matter experts to work effectively on Wikipedia.

It will be interesting to learn how the Neutral Point of View squares up with American experts writing about a contentious subject like public policy. The project will be run from the San Francisco office and one of the other goals is to develop a model that can be used by the chapters for other subjects.


At this time 52.9% of the traffic of the English Wikipedia is by the US public. The challenge will be to represent the view of the other 47.1% of the public.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Remembrance day

Every year on the fourth of May, we remember the people who died in wars or peacekeeping missions since the outbreak of World War II in the Netherlands.. Our queen Beatrix among other dignitaries, lays a wreath at the National Monument at Dam Square in Amsterdam.

During the two minutes silence a crazy guy started to cry out loud, a panic broke out as someone lost his briefcase and this was thought to be a bomb. A mounted police officer took the briefcase and took it from the scene. People got injured, several people broke bones..

The whole incident did not take long, the Queen who was ushered away was quickly to return, once the ceremony was finished. The royal family went to see the victims of the panic to show their concern and their care.

I am happy to be Dutch, yesterdays sad situation was handled well and the crazy guy will get psychiatric treatment. Today we celebrate our liberation day. All the festivities are progressing as normal; my town is festive, the sun is shining. There are several concerts in town. I am glad to find that we are this immune from crazies and terrorists.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

A special offer from #Wikia for the Gheg localisation community

When 750 new core messages are localised at #translatewiki.net , Wikia will import them into their system. There is more to this story. There has been major flooding in Albania, and as a consequence many open source applications are in use to provide disaster relief.

MediaWiki is used for disaster relief. There is a Wikia Wiki that will benefit from support for the Gheg language so we hope that this will entice people to work on the MediaWiki core messages.

This is a great and welcome offer, however the biggest need at this moment in time is localising OpenStreetMap when it is ready, it will stimulate even more people to put their place, their streets, their infrastructure on the map. This will help the people of Albania most at this time.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Monday, May 03, 2010

Language statistics received a facelift

The statistics at #translatewiki.net for languages are one of the more popular ways of starting with a localisation session. One of the comments we received was that it would be nice to recognise those entries that includes the messages of associated messages (eg Usability Initiative, extensions used by Wikia etc).

hovering over the OSM website group

In addition to this, you will learn what a particular message group is about when you hover over the name of a group.
Thanks,
     GerardM

The 2010 #flooding of #Albania

The January flooding in Albania was massive. Torrential rains, melting snow and overflowing artificial lakes resulted in a disaster for a country that is the poorest of Europe.


This map shows the extend of the disaster, the text explains that the road infrastructure is not complete as data from OpenStreetMap has been used. This lack of available information did hamper the relief effort. Maps were made available for the relief effort in Haiti, not in Albania. This has probably everything to do that the Albanian flooding did not get major news attention; even Wikipedia does not know about it.

I had a word with someone involved in the OSM project for Albanian relief, I informed him about translatewiki.net and I am happy with the first localisations in the Gheg Albanian language. It seems so obvious that maps are useful and needed and available when everything is back to normal. The people for whom these maps are important do not necessarily speak English..
Thanks,
      GerardM

Sunday, May 02, 2010

#CC-by-sa and #MPEG and #Facebook

When a video is available at #Wikipedia, it is available in the format of a free codec. It is also available under a free license, a license that insists that whatever you do to the video, it has to remain available under the same conditions.

I am not a lawyer but my understanding is that the consequence is that a conversion to a codec that does not allow for commercial use like the MPEG does, is not allowed under the CC-by-sa license.

Facebook intends to host Wikipedia content and consequently it will have to deal with this. It will be interesting to learn how they will twist and turn in order to deal with this issue.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Saturday, May 01, 2010

Standing on the shoulders of giants

When art is in the public domain, it is legal to quote it. It is legal to take it as a start and morph it into something else.

stick figure nachtwacht by ~fracyle

I was actually looking for the "Nachtwacht" on a tin can when I found this. The point that I wanted to make is that many well known pictures can be found in all kinds of odd places.

The Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum
Wherever you find it, it is a great picture but the impact of seeing the original is quite different. You think you know these masterpieces but the original is so different. Different enough to go and visit and experience it for yourself.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Happy birthday little Balinese girl

The #Tropenmuseum object for the month of May is a 1925 wooden statue of a birthday girl. The Balinese or Pawukon calendar has 210 days so it is likely her second birthday as she can already stand.

Newborns are always carried and only at their first birthday they get to touch the earth. For the first birthdays, a child is hung with jewellery. The golden disc around the pluck of hair protects the fontanelle, a place where evil spirits can easily enter. What is missing on the girl is the "gene-gene", this is a little box that Balinese children used to wear around their neck. In it is the dried end of the umbilical chord, there for their protection.

The Tropenmuseum is interested in learning about rituals around the first year of children.. Do you keep the first cut hair of your child for instance ?
Thanks,
      GerardM

#IE9 has inbuild irrelevance

#Microsoft announced on its blog that it will only support H264. As a consequence it does not support video as provided by the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation notably Wikipedia.

Video is technically about to get to the stage for Wikipedia where it will become more and more visible. There are contacts with GLAM that will provide us with relevant material, material that will not be provided in H264.

So there is this stand off not unlike the Apple and Adobe situation. The difference is that Microsoft has no control over the platform. In Europe Microsoft has to offer the choice of an alternative browser. It is quite easy to bypass IE elsewhere as well.

Given that Facebook is to provide Wikipedia content, two of the most popular websites will be suboptimal supported by the "new, mega, wonderful (insert your marketing adjective)" offering of Microsoft. As you are the customer and as you can, you can vote with your feet.
Thanks,
       GerardM