I'm new here as of mid-December 2002, and still in the Wow! This place is amazing! stage. (I have a sneaking suspicion an absolute certainty that this is a stage from which there is no escape.)
I'm based in Ballarat, Victoria and have a varied background. My degree was in the social sciences (with majors in research methods and psychology, minor in statistics) and I work with computers, but my main areas of interest are history and biology (which is really just history writ large, if you think about it that way). I'm responsible for (or possibly irresponsible for) for a long-established site mostly to do with computer history, which can be found here, though I don't get to update it very often these days.
I am notorious for appalling spelling, and probably for leaving dozens of things lying around half-finished.
So far, I've had the most pleasure working on:
Natural History
- Australian birds
- Pardalotidae and Pardalote.
- Ratite, Emu (a quite extraordinary bird!) and Kiwi.
- Wedge-tailed eagle
- Megapodidae, and Malleefowl.
- White-winged chough and Lyrebird.
- List of Extinct Australian animals since 1788. I aim to add a matching list for those that became extinct before European settlement eventually.
- Tidied up Thylacine and Koala, added to Possum
- Wombat
- Sclerophyll forest, expanded Eucalyptus, added the most magnificent eucalypt of them all, Mountain ash. There are lots more significant Australian plants that ought to be described here and don't get a mention yet.
- Corymbia and Corymbia ficifolia
Modern history & related topics No prizes for guessing that my particular interests are the Napoleonic Wars, the Pacific Theatre in WW2, and aircraft generally. (I love anything with wings, with or without feathers.)
- Edmund Burke, Arthur Coles Lawrence Hargrave
- Congo Free State
- Described the first half of the Pacific War in World War II.
- Trench warfare, much of Hirohito
- The critical Battle of the Coral Sea & Japanese aircraft carrier Shokaku. With luck, I'll add entries for the other major Japanese carriers eventually.
- Battle of the Kokoda Track and Battle of Milne Bay soon! (Really!)
- Rachel Carson
- General Galtieri of Argentina.
Sociology is an area that Wikipedia covers very poorly at present: many major sociological issues and concepts are not present at all, and as many others have incomplete, abbreviated or downright misleading coverage. It's been a long time since I used to teach sociology but now and again I get annoyed enough about the gaps and errors to devote a few hours to covering the basics. So far, I've worked on:
- Role
- Authority
- Added a little to Auguste Comte
Aircraft and airlines
- A comprehensive list of Aircraft of the RAAF.
- I try to keep Aircraft types maintained - if you write a new entry on an aircraft, please either let me know or add it to the list!
- Military types: B-24 Liberator, CAC Boomerang, B-29 Superfortress, Macchi MB-326, Saab Viggen, and Eurofighter Typhoon.
- Civil types: Douglas DC-3, Douglas DC-8, Douglas DC-9, Airbus Beluga, Boeing 717, and Airbus A380.
- Added to Bristol Beaufort, V1 Flying Bomb & Strategic bombing
- The Roulettes, the Napier Lion aero-engine, a companion piece to Maury Markowitz's excellent article on the Napier Sabre, Wide-body aircraft.
- Trans Australia Airlines, much of Air New Zealand
Computer stuff: I try to avoid this, but now and again I give in to my professional urges and take a hand in things like:
- Cyrix, Athlon, Pentium 4, SCSI host adapter
- DR-DOS, PC-DOS, Microsoft Windows (an odd one - not often I work on an entry and it gets smaller).
- Netscape Navigator and Wintel.
General Interest
- Tidied up Australia a little, a fair bit of Australian republicanism (dunno why - it's a terribly boring subject).
- Expanded on Melbourne's wonderful W-class trams.
- Steve Bracks
- CS Forester's The General
- Culture of Australia Not really my thing these days - I rather lost interest in people as opposed to birds and plants some years ago - but anything is better than a recitation of film stars.
- Margarine and Beach cricket - just for something completely different.