User talk:Nkr20

Welcome to the Conworlds Wiki, Nkr20!

I don't know how much experience you have with conworlding, but I hope you will continue to write about New Cambria or any other projects you work on.

Conworlding isn't easy. I know, because I've done it before and am still at it. So... If you need any help with any aspect of your project, just tell me and I'll see what I can do.

Have you been looking at the other conworlds on this site? If so, what do you think of them?

--Tel Loiryn 16:00, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey, Nkr, your New Cambria is looking good! Tel Loiryn 00:44, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Nkr20. Please take a look at the new Forum and vote on featured world. Also, please check there every once in a while for any chat posts. Thanks! Tel Loiryn 21:32, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Calculating map area
"I've always wondered how to calculate area based on the number of pixels in a map"

--Right, so you go to menu:Image >> item:Image Size and you can easily see the current size of the picture in pixels. Then open up Excel (or get out a calculator) and do length x width x ratio to get the area of the world shown in the map. Of course if you're doing Mercatur projection like most people do with maps, you'll want to get the width, set that as the circumference and get surface area that way. Circumference is 2 x PI x r and surface area is 4 x PI x r2. You can do the math.

Tel Loiryn 02:56, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Calculating Map Area in Photoshop
I have Adobe Photoshop CS2, and I am not sure if this method would work in earlier versions.

1. Select the area to be measured with Magic Wand Tool (W) (make sure that the Anti-alias option is switched off). (Note: the selected area shouldn't be white; fill it (Shift+F5) with another color if it is.)

2. Copy the selected area (Ctrl+C).

3. Create new image (Ctrl+N). In the dialog window make sure that Preset is switched to "Clipboard", the Color Mode is "RGB Color", and the Background Contents is "White". Remember the WIDTH and HEIGHT values.

4. Paste (Ctrl+V) the area to be measured into the new document window.

5. Choose Image > Adjustment > Threshold, and shift the lever into the rightmost position (Threshold level 255). What you see now has to be the area to be measured in black upon white background.

6. Choose Layer > Flatten image.

7. Invert the picture (Ctrl+I).

8. Choose Filter > Blur > Average. Now all the picture has to become solid gray.

9. Click any pixel of the picture with the Eyedropper Tool (I). Look at the Color window (F6) (switch it to RGB mode if necessary), all the three values (R, G, B) have to be the same. This value is the FACTOR, remember it.

10. The formula is AREA = WIDTH × HEIGHT × FACTOR / 255. The accuracity is ± WIDTH × HEIGHT / 510, i.e. about ± 0.2% of the rectangle area. The units of the area are the same you used for the width and height.

Sounds too difficult, but when you're skillful enough the process doesn't take more than 20 seconds. — Hellerick 12:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Calculating Map Area in ACDSee (version 8.0)
1. Right-click the picture that contains the area to be measured, and select Edit or Edit > Edit Mode (it depends on where have you been before).

2. Chose the Exposure and go to Levels panel.

3. You have three triangle levers: black, gray and white. When you shift the black and the white levers, the two Clipped figures change: the left figure says how much pixels are darker than your "black point", and the right figure says how many pixels are lighter than your "white point". The peaks at the histogram show the most used colors (that most likely correspond to country/province fill of your map). Try to encompass the desired peak with black and white levels. Substract the Clipped figures from 100%, and you get the fraction of the picture covered with the measured area. If it's difficult in Luminance channel, try doing it in Red, Green, or Blue channels.

This method is handly when you have to measure several areas. Hold one lever in extreme postion, and, shifting other one, pass all the peaks of the histograms. One of the Clipped values would be 0, and the difference between another figure values would correspond to the measured areas.

Of course it's ideal if you make a special map for area measuring, in which there would be no boundaries and captions, and all the colors used would be as different as possible. — Hellerick 12:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Nkr20,

Please write a detailed synopsis (summary) of your world on the List of Conworlds under your projects' sections, for all your projects. This will make the list of conworlds much more useful. Also, in the event that one of your works gets nominated for feature fiction we will have something ready to present immediately. If you haven't posted a world of yours onto the list, then please do so :)

Thanks! Tel Loiryn 16:48, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Project: Category Major Overhaul
Hi,

Please help out with an ambitious new project (NOT a conworld) I've started on this site. Check out the debriefing page here: Forum:Category Major Overhaul. I would appreciate it if you could lend a hand to this effort. Thanks!

Tel Loiryn 01:17, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Nkr20,

You've been very productive and diligent with New Cambria. It's starting to look good. Congrats, and keep up the good work! :)

Tel Loiryn 18:23, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Constitution
Hi Nkr20. I have written the Constitution of New Cambria... Please look at Constitution of New Cambria and Constitution of New Cambria/Full text. It is not very good, and definitely requires serious proofreading, but it's okay for the first aproach I guess. The Constitution is mostly based on the constitutions of Abkhazia, FYRO Macedonia, Iceland, with some statements taken from the constitutions of Finland, the Argentina, and Poland. (Plus something is written by your humble servant of course.) Alas the sources I used weren't written in very good English and now have to be checked and made uniform. — Hellerick 12:50, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

BTW, if you're gonna make significant changes, please do it "noticeably". E.g. if you remove an article, then leave its title and replace its text with something like (Repealed in 1987). If you change the text then add something like (Amended in 1972) below the text. If you add new article, then give it a title like "Article 118-a", with a respective note below. This way it will look more believable. All the major changes should be mentioned in the article about the Constitution. — Hellerick 13:04, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

To tell the truth I don't understand what are you doing with the Constitution, your changes seem so random... What's wrong with citizenship provisions in the Article 25? Why you removed the right of the self-governing units to recognise regional languages? Why you think the Parliament shouldn't have the right to dissolve itself? What "the Instant Run-Off" is supposed to mean? If the President is not the Commander-in-Chief, then who is? You removed the jury trials (Article 100), what's wrong with them? Why you removed the right of the Supreme Court to supervise the court system and propose legislation (in the field of judiciary, and to apply the recent judicial dicisions)?

And about San Lorenzo... I don't think it will be a big project. It's just I like to hang out in Hey Arnold! fanfiction community, and this fictional country is pretty often mentioned there (San Lorenzo is the country where the main protagonist's parents have disappeared). I thought it would be cool to have this country described somewhere. On the other hand it would be interesting to have something thing different than new clone of New Zealand in the Nearly Real World. (Actually now I'm sure that New Zealand does not exist; obviously it's nothing more than yet one mystification by Peter Jackson.) Not much may be said about San Lorenzo, e.g. I can't desribe its constitution because they don't have one (after the last revolution the costitution was discarded as a symbol of authoritarianism). — Hellerick 08:53, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * First about the language. The only language I speak is Russian. I have studied German and Latin, but I don't think I know them well enough. Somehow (not intentionally) I managed to learn English and Spanish (at least I can read in them very well), I guess I can "communicate" in them, and I can write some simple texts in English, but nothing more. Also I have read some fiction in Portuguese and Czech... I guess every text written in a Slavic, Germanic, or Romance language is more or less understandable to me.


 * New Cambria is a unitary state, not a federal one. County and municipal governments aren't autonomous to the degree of a state in the United States or a federal subject of Russia. Very few distinct powers are granted to the counties. They function more as demographic boundaries than political ones.

Uh... When I was writing/designing the constitution I thought about the counties and municipalities as independent units. Note that "independence" as I see it has nothing to do with federalism. The republic "does not know" what the counties are doing, and the counties don't care about the federation (while in a federation, the federal level and regional level bodies can influence on each other). The Article 38 states: Every citizen [...] and every foreigner permanently resident in New Cambria [...] has the right to vote in municipal elections... In other words the counties are so much independent, that they have the right to grant their "citizenship" to a non-New Cambrian.

Anyway, I liked the paragraphs as they were because they mentioned the "regional languages", without mentioning what languages are regional — I like this framework model, that still will be valid even when the linguistic situation will be different. You still left in the constitution:

The Republic shall provide for the cultural and societal needs of the English-speaking and other recognized language communities of the country on an equal basis.

You could at least give a hint who has the right to recognise a "language community". The French and Keva are "regional languages", i.e. they are official in some territories. Do you imply that the Parliament has drawn a map that shows "officiality" of languages in different regions? It does not sound like a good idea. It would be much easier if you gave the municipalities the right to decide in such issues. BTW, stop using US spelling.

Instant run-off looks like an interesting idea. A bit complicated I am afraid though. And not as fair as the two-round system. In the two-round system the third candidate has time to negotiate the terms on which he would agree to give their support to one of the leading candidates. We had this situation in 1996 when the president Yeltsin had to conclude an agreement with General Lebed (who won the third place) and appoint him the head of the Security Council, i.e. Lebed's voters did affect the next presidency's policy even though he did not win — it would not happen if Yeltsin got their votes "instantly". If I were inventing a voting system, I guess I would allow "vote trading" — candidates should be able to give the votes they received to other candidates (and get some guarantees in return of course). — Hellerick 14:00, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

License plates
I have written the article Vehicle registration plates of New Cambria, take a look — Hellerick 13:48, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

From where do you get the pictures of these people?

Tel Loiryn 13:14, 14 October 2008 (UTC)