User:Nerfer

"If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough." - Albert Einstein

I am an Embedded Software Engineer living in Chicagoland, grew up on a farm in northern MN, and have also lived in MT, TX, CT, and VA. I have a B.S. in Computer Engineering and a minor in Mathematics from the University of Minnesota, Duluth. My wife is from Bulgaria.

I have been an editor on the full English Wikipedia for years, but when my son wanted to do a report on lasers for his 7th grade class, we were both frustrated by the technical jargon used in the laser article. I asked the laser experts there to at least have the intro written in a form my son could understand (he's in gifted math, so he's no dummy). They didn't think it was technically possible, but eventually one did refer me to the Simple English Wikipedia, which I had no idea existed before that.

I feel I have an ability to present complex science and technology in a way that kids or upper management will understand, so I joined up here in Feb. 2013, and ever since then I've been looking for technical articles on the Simple English Wikipedia that are too complex and/or incomplete. Some were just copied from the full English Wikipedia with big sections removed - shorter is not simpler!

I've been reworking those articles to be more understandable to people without a technical degree. And I've been sidetracked on areas that I have an interest (alternative and renewable energy, ecology, cars, space, etc. as pretty much everything needs some work.) Fitting them in the 1500 Basic English word list appears to be wishful thinking in many cases. But I've taken the be bold directive to heart.

Articles I need to work on:

(or find the proper link)

• recumbent bicycle
• Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness
• depth of field
• mechatronics
• John Vincent Atanasoff ("inventor of the electronic digital computer")
• Oculus Rift
• electronic component
• Swift (programming language)
• antenna
• holography, hologram
• 3D printing
• photon
• National Wildlife Refuge
• Russian Federal Space Agency
• Sojourner rover, Spirit rover, Opportunity rover
• Lunokhod, Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle
• Newton's cannonball - or put on Newton's page, and relink satellite (artificial)
• rocket
• gauge - needs disambiguation (railway, micrometer, the verb...)
• geothermal energy
• Elon Musk
• device driver
• polarized light - merge in changes I made on polarization?
• micro car
• human powered vehicle, velomobile
• solar thermal, global warming gas, biodegradable
• Plovdiv, Turnovo, etc
• links for rover (space exploration)
• various links for electric vehicle
• aerodynamic
• Linear, elliptical?
• Heinz Nordhoff
• Porsche
• Lasik
• New Beetle
• Volkswagen Type 3

References for polarization, possibly LCD, expand # sections to match what's covered in the full English Wikipedia?

If I get bored, look here: All pages that need simplifying (1574 as of March 15, 2013 and 1525 on March 1, 2014), or here: Technology articles all wikis should have

Articles written or extensively revised (usually for simplification)

• Robotics - created stub article
• tricycle - still a stub
• unicycle - added significantly to it
• 433 Eros - simplified
• Virtual reality - somebody else started it while I hesitated, but I did add to it
• scripting language copied from complex English page, did a dramatic rewrite, but hard to make really simple
• Mazda improved English
• Developed country simplified, reordered things. Still not great.
• Controlled burn (new article)
• Fire ecology simplified
• Printed_circuit_board simplified (needs sources)
• driveshaft simplified (needs sources)
• iPad reorganized a bit, reworded
• Dubrovnik improved English, added references
• hypothermia re-organized, added a bit
• ventricular fibrillation simplified
• defibrillation simplified and extended, with references
• Arlington National Cemetery simplified
• Harrow (tool) new article, copied from standard English but better (re-organized, added references)
• Chevrolet Volt simplified and extended, with references. Still could use more work though
• Celsius simplified
• braille simplified
• silo, granary (new articles, granary is in list of all tech articles a language wiki should have)
• Mars simplifications, couple links
• Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (new article, still a stub)
• computer software
• computer engineering
• geostationary orbit, also created geosynchronous orbit
• lagrange point (new article)
• James Webb Space Telescope (new article) (part of all tech articles a language should have)
• Artificial Intelligence
• Rachel Carson
• savanna
• dead reckoning (new article) (part of all tech articles a language should have)
• navigation (moderate changes)
• scuba diving revised, and added redirect for scuba set (part of all tech articles a language should have)
• diving bell (new article)
• speedometer, gauge (new articles, but stubs)
• biodiesel
• altitude
• algebra
• Cassini-Huygens
• steppe
• prairie
• prairie restoration (new article)
• loppers (new article, part of recommended tech articles for all languages)
• ASCII
• Character (computing)
• satellite (artificial)
• Space Exploration Technologies (and redirect from SpaceX) - new article
• Hubble Space Telescope (moderate changes only)
• Tesla Motors (new article)
• alternative fuel vehicle (new article, still a stub)
• embedded system - I modified this one heavily, but it's still complex. But really, how many people will come here to read details of operating systems? Better to spend my time elsewhere I think.
• firmware
• renewable resource
• lightbulbs
• Bulgaria
• rover (space exploration) (still not a big article)
• solar car (new article, solar vehicle also created, redirects to the car article)
• electric vehicles (first human to touch this article in many years)
• gravity
• Ferdinand Porsche
• Volkswagen Beetle (still could use more work)
• Volkswagen
• polarization
• liquid crystal display
• light emitting diode
• diode
• Studebaker (new article)
• barcode
• SKU (new article)
• laser