About metanohi

As I didn't want to make this site into a page about me, but a page about my works, I thought of the name "metanohi" instead of "nqpz" (my nickname) to be the title of the site. I wasn't able to come up with something better. And at least, by using "metanohi" as the name of the site, I don't make people think this site is about "nqpz".

The idea of this site was founded in the middle of 2007. A site was quickly created but had a redesign in december 07/january 08. For about a year it was being updated loosely, until March 2009 when the work on the new site began. Originally it was to be called "nqpzism", but it was soon changed to "2nqpz5". In the end it was changed to "metanohi". See Why metanohi to understand the reason why I chose such a seemingly random mix of letters. For more than a year the site "nqpz" (now metanohi) was on a no-cost webhost, until June 2009 when the domain metanohi.org and a server were bought.

 

Technical specs:

Most of metanohi's magic lies in the index.php file. If you plan to check it out, beware of uncommented and unexplainable sections.

The content of the pages on metanohi are stored in (often invalid) XML files (example) named content.xml, which are read by a PHP file. When a page is requested, metanohi checks if the content of the page is either new or hasn't been updated in 24 hours, in which case the page is cached before it is served. If the page hasn't changed and if 24 hours haven't passed, metanohi simply serves the cached version of the page saved in the .page.php file of the current directory, though some pages require post processing code, saved in the extra.php files. The source code of metanohi is viewable in viyuv. If you're running a browser with no JavaScript + xmlHttpRequest support, then use this link.

metanohi uses Bazaar for versioning. I have a complete local copy of metanohi, and when i update it, both the bazaar branch and this website is updated. The raw Bazaar packs can be found at /.bzr/. I know this isn't a great way to present a Bazaar directory (you cannot easily check it out), but that's the way it is right now.

metanohi once had its own statistics page. As of June 4 2010 that service is disabled. Statistics are no longer gathered. The old statistics can still be accessed via findstats.php.


Copying

Text on metanohi is generally released under either Creative Commons Attribute-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-SA 3.0), Creative Commons Zero 1.0 (CC 0 1.0) or Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-ND 3.0). CC-BY-SA means that you're allowed to use, change and distribute the text of this site, as long as attribution is given and that you release your edits under the same license - which in turn means that others are able to edit your edits and republish them as new texts as long as attribution is given. CC 0 is basically public domain, which means that limits are non-existent. CC-BY-ND means that you're allowed to distribute the text of this site as much as you want, as long as attribution is given and no changes are made.

"Text" does in the case of metanohi not include the source code of metanohi (the XHTML, the XML, the CSS, the JavaScript and the PHP code). You're free to use and edit the source code, distribute it and not attribute me in any way. It's in the public domain. Note, however, that this isn't necessarily the case on the subsites of metanohi and other specific pages.

Pages in which source code is released under a license will clearly state so at the top of the file containing the source code.

Pictures on metanohi are generally released under either Creative Commons Attribute-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-SA 3.0) or Creative Commons Zero 1.0 (CC 0 1.0), like some of the text on the site is. If a page doesn't state the license of eventual images, the images are likely to be licensed under CC-BY-SA with Niels Serup (me) being the author. In most cases the page of a specific image will state the license of that image, but occasionally that's not aesthetically pleasing.

List of images and their respective licenses 

When attributing me, what's most important is the name "Niels Serup". Optionally you can also specify my nickname, "nqpz". I would also appreciate a link to my website very much. Though if that's not possible, then it's okay with just my name (the problem is that I'm not the only one whose name is Niels Serup). Note that I'm actually the copyright owner of the works that I release under CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-ND and similar licenses. It's just that I choose to grant people other than myself a varies of freedoms that copyright itself doesn't. Theoretically, I'm not the copyright owner of the works I put in the public domain or release under CC 0, but I'm actually not sure whether public domain is a usable alternative to copyright where I live. It shouldn't matter, anyway. Maybe the fact that the server hosting metanohi is positioned in the U.S. has a public domain positive effect? I seriously don't know.

Note: There may be exceptions in which none of the above mentioned licenses apply. In those cases, it will clearly say so on the page in question. If I've created an ingenious program, for example, there's a chance I'll release it under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Other scenarios with other licenses may occur too (though I'll try not to have a mix of too many different licenses -- the fewer, the better).

Another note: Even if there's text inside a picture, it still counts as a picture.

A third note: The above applies to all subsites on this domain, unless otherwise stated.

When I release text under CC 0, it's either because the text is nothing but a mere index, or because I don't care.

When I release text under CC-BY-SA, it's because I want everyone to be able to use and improve the information stored in the text. If I write something great, sites like Wikipedia can benefit from it, which in turn makes everyone benefit from it.

When I release text under CC BY-ND, it's because the text contains information that 1) should remain as it is, and 2) isn't something that people can learn a lot from. I rarely use this license.

It is my choice to release the source code of the main site of metanohi under no license, as the code's quite basic and really nothing worth protecting under a copyleft license. When I started learning HTML, grabbing code pieces from various websites and changing them slightly was pretty much how I learnt creating webpages (I don't do this today, though). What I mean is: If you're new to this HTML/CSS stuff and isn't the type who reads tutorials (join the club!), you're free to copy the source code of metanohi and use it for whatever experiments you're fiddling with. You shouldn't waste valuable time crediting me as the original author. Please don't.

My reason for releasing most pictures under CC-BY-SA is that I want other people to be able to edit my works without them being able to distribute their edits under a license that forbids future users from editing previous edits or allows future users to forbid editing of their edits. Sometimes, however, I don't really care about that and choose to release my pictures under CC Zero.

Most of the stuff on metanohi can be considered free content, as defined by freedomdefined.org. Not everything, though.

(I believe that in an ideal world, all this legal stuff wouldn't be neccesary. Humans would live together in harmony and war would be non-existent.)

 

 

Last updated: 4 Jun 2010