[edit] Waitak - 维德 - Duy Đức

I've spent time as a professor, CTO and head of an NGO. Things I do as a Wikicitizen include:

• I keep an eye on pages on my watchlist (see here for a list). Particular areas of interest include:

• Anything to do with vegetable fats and oils. I spent a lot of time writing List of vegetable oils and was delighted when it received Featured list status
• Promising plants, including grains like grain amaranth and quinoa, plants with edible leaves etc.
• A handful of natural languages
• Some non-mainstream economic topics
• Topics related to natural disasters, including the H5N1 family of pages — particularly a couple of templates (used here and here)

• I do a lot of reference cleanup.
• I make regular use of templates, particularly on user pages of newbies and minor vandals.
• I love to see people who start off on the wrong foot turning into valued members of the community. I can't resist welcoming people to Wikipedia.

(More on my contributions below.) Things that interest me include:

[edit] Tech stuff

• Software engineering and computer programming. My current favorite language is Python, but Lua is also a contender.
• I seem to do a lot of Web applications these days. I'm a big Plone/Zope fan.
• Data visualization and knowledge discovery (more statistical than rule-based).

[edit] Fighting poverty

[edit] Via economics

Local economies, and the role of barter in developing them. Current question: How would a sabbath economy work in practice?

[edit] Via information technology

Eliminating poverty, particularly in ways involving information technology and other applications of appropriate technology. Projects like $100 laptop, Simputer and Jhai are a really good idea. Among other things we're working on an 8Mb Linux distribution. uClinux, uClibc, Lua and Buildroot are all components we're looking at.

[edit] Via engineering

I'm interested in what might be called appropriate engineering - community scale manufacturing that whose products and methods are appropriate for developing nations with very little infrastructure or capital investment. Some great examples of appropriate engineering (many agricultural):

• Jock Brandis' peanut sheller
• 1996 Rolex Award laureate Sanoussi Diakité's fonio husking machine
• 2000 Rolex Award laureate Mohammed Ba Abba's earthenware cooling system
• Low cost drip irrigation systems, by organizations like SIMI
• Forcefield's Low RPM Disk Alternator ("The cutting edge of low technology" – I like these guys)

Kevin Kelly's Street Use blog is great food for thought.

[edit] Via agriculture

• Understanding and promoting underutilized and otherwise useful crops (related to permaculture). I can hardly wait to see moringa trees cultivated in Hong Kong.
• Preserving heirloom and other plants that are in danger of being lost.

[edit] Languages and linguistics

• Natural languages. Current focus: deciding whether to learn Tagalog or Ilocano. I'd also like to work on Indonesian, Vietnamese and German. I'm working half-heartedly on Esperanto as well. Ido is probably a better language than Esperanto, but it doesn't look like it has a real chance of success.
• Systems of writing (many of which are alphabets or abugidas or other sorts of syllabaries these days - with the exception of Han). I find the Mongolian and Tibetan scripts particularly beautiful.^[1]

Languages I don't know, but would like to:

am... አማርኛ mku... Makua sw... kiSwahili [11] hi... हिन्दी [12] ... Монгол kr... 한국어 [13] haw... ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi tpi... Tok Pisin [14] tl... Tagalog [15] nl... Nederlands [16] af... Afrikaans [17] ilo... Ilokano

[edit] Geek code

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GCS/MU/LS/IT/O d(?)@ s: a+>?
C++(++++) UL++++ P L+++ E++ W+++ N+ K
w--- O M>+@ V--> PS-(---)
PE- Y+ PGP>++ t+ !5 X- R- !tv
b>+++ DI+ D-- G e++++ h---- r+++ y?
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

[edit] R&R

• I can be often be found in Hong Kong's wilder places (no, not those... the other sort of wild...)
• I play several musical instruments, some more interesting than others.
• I love jazz, contemporary Christian and many other kinds of music, and am grateful that Internet radio makes up for the lack of jazz stations in Hong Kong (Radioio Jazz is my station of choice)
• I've eaten gumbo in New Orleans, mussels in Bruges, dim sum in Hong Kong, sashimi in Tokyo, clam chowder in Boston and San Francisco, salmon in Alaska, uhu in Kona and Wiener schnitzel in Vienna. I've been to Manila and Baguio, and enjoyed the bagoong, but I drew the line at balut. Eating moringa leaves was a high point.
• I'm fond of Belgian beer, especially Grimbergen, Bush (which is not made by these guys), Delirium Tremens and Kwak.

[edit] Userboxes

Places This user is in Hong Kong. 本使用者在香港。 This user comes from the United States of America. Tech py This user is a Python programmer. prog This user is a programmer. This user hacks happily with Emacs. Personal This user has a wife. This user has a Doctor of Philosophy degree. <>< This user is a Born Again Christian. 25 This user has set foot in 25 countries of the world. Wiki Cat This user is part of WikiProject Categories, which aims to improve article categorization on Wikipedia This user is part of WikiProject Beer, which is building a comprehensive guide to beer on Wikipedia This user is a member of WikiProject International development. This user is a member of WikiProject Christianity

[edit] Contributions

[edit] Articles I've started

I tend to contribute most to Wikipedia by writing content. Some of the articles that I've started include:

• Sabbath economics and Community Oriented Mutual Economy
• List of vegetable oils and List of essential oils, Ben oil, Babassu oil, Amaranth oil and many other vegetable oil pages
• Zile (editor) and {{Emacs}}
• {{H5N1 Human Mortality}} (used in Transmission and infection of H5N1), {{|H5N1 case graph}} (used in Global spread of H5N1 and elsewhere) and a few other pages related to H5N1
• Amaranth grain, Euphorbia tirucalli and other pages on useful plants, particularly those in Category:Underutilized crops
• Gifts in kind
• Pollard script
• Chuck Pierce, Michael Harrison, Sanoussi Diakité and a few other pages on people that I'm interested in
• Xaphoon

plus a lot of redirects. Here is a list of articles that I've started.

[edit] Edit stats

• First edit: May 23, 2005, to Dairy product
• 500th edit: April 24, 2006, to Peanut oil
• 1000th edit: June 4, 2006, to List of vegetable oils
• 2000th edit: September 10, 2006, to Taishan dialect

[edit] Other contributions

• You can check on how many edits I've done here. (2,352 as of October 29, 2006)
• Here is a list of the 85 content (non-talk, non-user) pages that I've edited more than twice as of October 29, 2006.

[edit] Other communities

• Lernu
• 43 things
• last.fm
• StumbleUpon

[edit] Tests (some sillier than others)

• Political compass: 4.88 left, 1.03 libertarian
• Geek test: 39.25049% - Major Geek

1. ^ Not that I can read either one of them... I just think they're pretty.

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