User talk:JaGa

Proctorville

Good work on changing the wording. I'm always excited to see Tri State/Kyova articles get improved. If you ever have any questions or need any help, feel free to drop me a line. Cheers. youngamerican (wtf?) 20:47, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Huntington

Good job catching that vandalism. I had overlooked it when keeping an eye on an anon vandal who thought they were cute. Keep up the good work. youngamerican (wtf?) 02:24, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Your first barnstar

		The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
		For spending so much time, adding all those links to Ohio villages manually, as if you were a bot. Nyttend 15:41, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Such a thing can be done with a bot: look at the article history of virtually any US place, and you'll see that most of the earliest edits were done by usernames of "____bot". I don't know about you, but I know nothing about running a bot. If you do, by all means write one and seek to get approval (look here for the bot policy): it will help us all, I'm sure. Nyttend 11:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Noise Reduction

Hi there. I use Neatimage which does a much better job than photoshop in my opinion. I've heard Noise Ninja is also good but I haven't really investigated it much to be honest. Hope that helps. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 21:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Downsampling

Hi again. Well, downsampling by definition should increase the sharpness, not decrease it. There isn't any real secret to how I do it. I downsample it using Photoshop CS3 using the default settings (but Elements should do just as good a job) and then, if it needs it, sharpen it with around 50% strength and a radius of about 0.7 which generally gives it a good sharpening without creating too much of a halo around the edges. Do you have any examples of where it has decreased the sharpness by downsampling? Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 19:30, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Munsell-system.svg

I was going to nominate your Munsell-system.svg image as a Featured Picture when I saw it had already been nominated - and was turned down. I was surprised they complained that one couldn't understand it at a glance - I DID understand it at a glance, and was so happy with its effectiveness I wanted to nominate it. Oh well, just wanted to let you know it's an excellent illustration and thanks. JaGa 06:07, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Still a ways to go for Munsell color system to be a good article—I tracked down several articles about its history, etc., but never got around to incorporating them—but it's sure vastly better than it was a year ago. --jacobolus (t) 10:01, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, this is unrelated, but w.r.t. color theory, "lightness" and "value" mean basically the same thing, so your change to that article doesn't really affect its accuracy. :) --jacobolus (t) 10:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Fra Angelico

I shrank the image because it is: 1. grainy and looks better at a smaller size, 2. Is out of proportion with the other images on the page. (I mean specifically the internal proportions, not the size of the pic itself, ie. the face is very much larger than those in the nearest large-scale pics.) 3. Has much denser tonality than the artists own pictures, which combined with its proportion, makes it dominate.

These things are more important to a layout-artist than the average wiki-contributor, but they are the sort of reason why some articles, books and web-pages look infinitely better than others.

Also, It isn't as significant as that artists own works, because it is only a conjectural portrait. Moreover, it is rather smug and beefy-faced, and bears only a very superficial resemblance to the lean aescetic-looking face at San Marco which is supposed to be a self portrait.

I would prefer to leave it out altogether, along with the beastly box. All the info is in the article. Amandajm (talk) 10:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi JaGa! It's taken me a while to work this out, but I suddenly realised who that Dominican friar in the Signorelli painting is. I knew the face was familiar. It's Thomas Aquinas.

The process that takes place with these portraits of long-dead people is that certain features of their face become formalised and repeated, in a more-or-less lifelike way depending on the skills of the painter, for centuries.

With Jesus images for example, (they are nearly all based on the Shroud of Turin), one eye is more open than the other, there is a specific pattern of furrows between the eyebrows, the beard growth has a very specific form with a tuft below the lip but bare bits on either side of the chin, etc. These characteristics, particularly the beard, have been repeated for at least 1600 years, although most modern artists who depict Jesus have lost track of the furrows between the eyebrows, and the more-open eye, not knowing that these were once considered essential (like part of an identi-kit picture....How did he look? Well, he had a curious furrow between his brows...and a bruise below one eye...) Icon painters of the Orthodox tradition continue to meticulously reproduce these features.

St Peter is similarly defined by a set of details, the earliest image I know of that complies being in the catacombs.

What defines Thomas Aquinas is a small very curvy mouth, wide jaw, beefy lower cheeks, arched eyebrows, a wide, triangular bridge coming down to a large well-shaped nose, penetrating dark eyes. Nearly every portrayal has these characteristics. Sometimes he is fatter and older, and in one image by Fra Angelico, he is shown very young. He was one of the most famous of the order that Fra Angelico belonged to.

• 
  Thomas Aquinas by Crivelli
• 
  by Benozzo Gozzoli
• 
  on the right by Fra Angelico
• 
  as an old man by Fra Angelico

If the information that this is Fra Angelico came from a source like a cathedral guide-book, then FYI those produced in Italy are notoriously inaccurate. They say whatever will please the crowd. It's a bit like the continued attribution of the Assissi Upper Church paintings to Giotto.

Amandajm (talk) 03:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean when you say that you "looked into it"? What is the source that says that it is Fra Angelico? While it does seem possible that Signorelli might have put in a portrayal of Fra Angelico, if he were the designer of the scheme, it seems more probable that Signorelli carried out the iconographic scheme to Fra Angelico's plan. (I don't mean by this that Fra Angelico designed all the pics, but that he planned the content.) It is very likely that Fra Angelico would have put in Thomas Aquinas as a "Witness", because of the esteeem in which he was held among the Dominicans.

If Signorelli chose to depict Fra Angelico, then he was painting someone for whom no tradition of portrayal existed. If Signorelli had looked at the pic at San Marco which is said to be a self portrait, then he would never have painted Fra Angelico in the way that this figure appears. It is almost certainly intended to depict Thomas Aquinas, and it is really inappropriate to put it up as a portrait of Fra Angelico. I've given you the reasons.

Amandajm (talk) 07:46, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I just looked for the Signorelli pic on line, and found it, as a portrait of Fra Angelico, in an article that showed one of the statues outside the Uffizi as Donatello, and a late painted copy of the disputed drawing of Leonardo.

Here is the URL to one of the possible self-portraits of Fra Angelico. There is yet another tradition that the old bearded man in the "Deposition" is Fra Angelico, and this pic has been used as the basis for a modern icon of him. I think that the St Dominic pictures are by far the most likely candidates as self-portraits, in part because in several of the St Dominic paintings, he is looking at the viewer. [1] and [2].

I get rather upset about the ease with which suspect information and errors are spread on the internet. For example, there is a large painting showing the Medici boys with their teacher, and a 4th boy of about the same age, standing not with the boys, but with the men. The identity of the 3 boys is continually muddled, even though their ages and appearance are well known. Moreover, the 4th boy, who stands with the men does so because he has a man's status, ie he has no father. However, he is continually misinterpreted as being the relatively insignificant son of one of the men, rather than who he is, the son of the murdered Giuliano, standing with his uncle, as his father's heir.

If we put up this very dubious and unlikely picture of this Dominican as Fra Angelico, we will give further support to something which is almost certainly erroneous. I don't want to do that. I would much rather have no pic of him at all, than one that almost certainly represents someone else entirely. Amandajm (talk) 08:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Hey, check this out! [3] This is the bearded man from the crucifixion that is the other claimant as Fra Angelico. It's the same man as the St Dominic, older and with a beard. Same little frown marks, same delicate features, same lack of earlobes. And in the pic of the Madonna with Saints, [4] he's shown himself as St Dominic, with the book. How is you Latin? What word is he pointing at? I wonder if by some chance he just happened to resemble the descriptions of Dominic, and so used himself as the model. Amandajm (talk) 10:02, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, all things considered, having compared the crucifixion man with the others, I'd be really happy to go with that one, because there is a strong tradition in support of it, and it's the basis for the recent icon to celebrate his beatification. Amandajm (talk) 10:08, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The icon is at [5]. The artist is Fr. William McNichols. This is the image that I think is probably best. It's large and clear and by the man himself. Amandajm (talk) 10:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The identification of that figure as Fra Angelico seems to have first been made by Creighton E. Gilbert in "How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw the End of the World" (2002)[6]. I don't think that it was previously identified as him, but I'm not sure. Gilbert appears to have been the ifrst person to seriously study the works. It is very interesting that there is a statement made here that he was the first to relate the series to Dante's "Divine Comedy".... I find this claim/fact quite extraordinary, because the connection between the two is so glaringly obvious!! But Signorelli has never been the most fashionable of artists, so perhaps they have simply been overlooked!

It would appear that this is the definitive book on that cycle. This would mean that Creighton's opinions would be quoted with authority by absolutely anyone who had no reason to question them. If Creighton says that it is Fra Angelico, then the avaerage writer on Christian, and even art subjects, is likely to take it as fact, and simply repeat it.

However, I have reason to question the identification. I think it is wrong, even if a 100 websites have reproduced the information.

I haven't read the book. I'll see if I can get hold of it. In the meantime, that grey-bearded man is traditionally said to be him, so I would much prefer that picture. Amandajm (talk) 07:11, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi JaGa! I just want to comment on something that you wrote earlier- you offered the opinion that my hesitation to use the particular image had "more to do with my dislike of info boxes than anything". I want to assure you that this is not the case. You little know me! I am far far more interested in the academic question of whether this is really a likeness of Fra Angelico,, than whether someone puts a blasted info box down the side of the page. The fact is, lots of people like those info boxes and even if I don't, one has to try to be tolerant. The one that bugs me is the large one about the world's tallest building... it comes with a qualifier that renders it completely ridiculous, but people love it... ! anyway, if you really don't mind, we'll use the other pic. Amandajm (talk) 11:04, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Citizenship and nationality

Thanks for supporting the Citizenship and nationality guideline that I have proposed. I have responded to your comments. I would appreciate it if you would indicate your support in the 'Request for comment' section as well. The original title of your contribution, "This is exactly what we need!", indicated your support, but SMcCandlish changed it to "What about ethnicity?". – SJL 20:05, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Malaysia

Hi, can you please let me know why you reverted my revert of the actions of an anon who removed the whole Education section in Malaysia ? Without edit summaries it is extremely hard to know why you did what you did. Thanks. --Ubardak (talk) 07:57, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Shoot, my bad

Looks like I missed an undead entry in Philipsburg, Montana. I'm not a vandal, I swear! Casull (talk) 09:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh yeah, remember to CTRL+F "undead" in the reverts! I'm currently copy/pasting the correct dialog and just pasting that in, it beats undo in times like these. Casull (talk) 09:57, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:RFPP.

Yeah, an RFPP was the best way to go; two users reported it, actually. I wonder what incited that vandalism... probably a youtube video or something. :/ · AndonicO ^Hail! 10:16, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks...

...for cleaning up my talk page. At least "Troll" is better than some of the things I have been called! JohnCD (talk) 18:10, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

World Tourism rankings

Thanks for fix the vandlism on the World Tourism Organization article. If you have time, could you expand the contents in the World Tourism rankings? Like expanding the top ten into the a top twenty and adding a separate chart for the ranking of international tourism receipts base on the 2007 issue.--Balthazarduju (talk) 23:16, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to VandalProof!

Thank you for your interest in VandalProof, JaGa! You have now been added to the list of authorized users, so if you haven't already, simply download and install VandalProof from our main page.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or any other moderator, or you can post a message on the discussion page.

Finally, I'd like to appologise for any delay, and wish you luck with VandalProof! Ale_Jrb^talk 19:27, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

AIV

Thank you for making a report about 209.175.58.2 (talk · contribs · block log) on Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. Reporting and removing vandalism is vital to the functioning of Wikipedia and all users are encouraged to revert, warn, and report vandalism. However, administrators are generally only able to block users if they have received a recent final warning (one that mentions that the user may be blocked) and they have recently vandalized after that warning was given. The reported user has not yet been blocked because it appears this has not occurred yet. If this user continues to vandalize even after their final warning, please report them to the AIV noticeboard again. Thank you! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:RFPP templates

In response to this, the template for user talk vandalism is {{lut}}. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Random Wiki Smile!

WarthogDemon has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Cheers, and Happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

-WarthogDemon 03:49, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

better take a hike

... or else