User:Binksternet

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Michael 'Bink' Knowles
digital mixer is a Midas Pro 2. On the microphones at the Khosla Ventures event were Bill Gates in a "fireside chat", mentalist Lior Suchard who asked Tony Blair some questions, and beatboxer Beardyman who rocked.
Born
Michael Robert Knowles

(1961-06-08) June 8, 1961 (age 64)
San Bernardino, California
Other namesBink, Binkster (audio career)
Binksternet (on Wikipedia)
Alma materUniversity of California, San Diego
OccupationAudio engineer
Known forBink Audio Test CD
GEQ Shootout
Fixing hoaxes
Children2

I am Michael "Bink" Knowles, known as Binksternet on Wikipedia, a California-based live audio engineer and Wikipedia editor. I have edited Wikipedia since July 2007, starting 245 new articles, and I have an edit count of more than 500,000.[1]

On Wikipedia, my contributions are varied. I make most of my edits in music and audio topics, but I have an interest in architecture, civil rights, California history and military history, especially World War II. I spend a lot of time reverting vandals when I would rather be expanding articles.

Early life

My first home was in

light opera productions in the Inland Empire. Some unusual people came through our house: Turbaned Korla Pandit played for a living room full of guests, and left long, curving scratches on the Steinway piano because of his oversized rings. People tried ESP experiments, and a medium read the auras of us children. An early version of The Ungame
was tested on us.

I was an active child except when I was reading books, which was often. I read the family's World Book Encyclopedia, and I probably annoyed people by quoting facts from it. I learned to sing in harmony with others and as a soloist, and I played clarinet. In 1975, my mother moved us four children to Irvine, California; I was in the first class of students at Irvine High School. I earned a National Merit Scholarship Program grant for college.

At the University of California, San Diego, I began as a biology major but soon swapped major and minor to focus on music. I learned about the physics of sound waves, the characteristics of music perception and psychoacoustics, and about the new field of digital audio. During college, I married my high school sweetheart. The rocky marriage produced a son and a daughter but lasted only four years.

Telephony

After college, I obtained work with

1A2 business telephone systems which were being replaced by digital phones. In the aftermath of the breakup of the Bell System, I was suddenly in demand as a telephone technician for various independent phone companies all around the San Francisco Bay Area
. I honed my electronics knowledge as well as my trouble-shooting skills.

Audio

Despite some success in the telephone business, I longed for a career in the music industry. In 1987 I enrolled in Leo de Gar Kulka's College for Recording Arts, and joined the

San Quentin inmates, a special taping of Comic Strip Live in August 1990, when Paul Rodriguez
opened the show by turning his rear toward the prisoners and shouting, "You aren't getting any of this!" I thought, well now, it's on.

In 1994, I left McCune to work as an independent audio engineer; a role that has continued to the present. My focus is on corporate events and tech conventions, but I still mix musical acts. I have worked with

Bill Walsh, Larry Ellison
, and others.

I stumbled upon Dave Stevens' online

Cool Edit Pro
software; some 50 discs were mailed. In response to continuing demand, in February 2002 the audio test CD was offered online by a LAB member who had available server space. Later, other sites mirrored it. The CD proved to have a lasting effect.

In late 2003 I put together a shootout of various makes and models of

graphic equalizers, with Mike Allen/Butler analyzing them on a test bench, and other volunteers listening to them on a stage. I ran a series of test signals through the units and compared the input to the output by way of Smaart software. I published the results online, saying that an Audient product had won: the ASP231.[2]

As a member of AES, I have volunteered to lead panel discussions on various live sound topics at AES conventions. I moderated some panels on automixers, and corporate sound mixing practices, in San Francisco, New York, London, and Los Angeles beginning in 2008.[3]

Wikipedia

I participated in the first Roundtable on Editor Engagement at WMF. In the photo I am suggesting that Wikipedia editors should always be logged in, which would stop IP vandalism but not other disruption.

I started editing Wikipedia in July 2007 after seeing an incomplete list of films featuring tango dancing.

Featured Article
, showcasing Wikipedia's best work. Three of the four articles were ones that I started from scratch, on topics that I knew nothing about until I began research for the article. I find it stimulating to learn just enough about a certain topic to write a good encyclopedia article—the process of reading new books, and searching online, engages me.

In January 2013, I was named in a

Madonna (entertainer), which is in the top 500 Wikipedia articles by volume of internet traffic. The Daily Dot noted that I was the first person to question Legolas2186 about his problematic references. At User talk:Legolas2186/Fixing citation problems
, I created a page to serve as a place for the community to investigate and fix the problems.

Skeptic

WP:Boomerang result.[6]

Personal life

I live in Oakland with my second wife, a web programmer. We met in early 1996 and married in May 2001. I learned to tango with my wife and we have danced in Washington DC, Berlin, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Puerto Vallarta, Denver, and many cities along the West Coast of the US. From my previous marriage I have a son and daughter, and I have six grandchildren. I like to listen to music, to hike, and to drink

microbrews, especially ones with a pronounced hops
flavor.

Nickname

The nickname "Bink" comes from a gig I had on May 19, 1989, when I was the junior member of a McCune road crew working an event in Chicago. We flew into town the night before and I said I was going to read and get some sleep rather than go drinking and carousing with the others. They said I was doing it all wrong, that road gigs are for cutting loose. The next morning they announced that they had dubbed me "Binky", and that I must answer to that name whether I liked it or not. I did not like it, and I worked hard the next few years to get people to call me "Bink", which I thought was a better moniker, somewhat more mature-sounding. I had more success with this effort as time progressed. On the positive side, the nickname helped me stand out from all the Mikes and Michaels.

References

  1. ^ *My edits per WMF Labs counter
    *Total edits on all wikis: over 500,000
    *Top 60 at WP:List of Wikipedians by number of edits (and I don't use a bot.)
  2. ^ Baldock, Lee (January 21, 2004). "Audient wins in graphic EQ shootout". LSi Online.
  3. ^ "125th AES Convention Charts Live Sound Events – Automixing, White Space Issues, Innovations in Live Sound & More". AES Press Release: AES San Francisco 2008. Audio Engineering Society. September 12, 2008. Retrieved July 17, 2013.
  4. ^ This was my first-ever edit to Wikipedia, as an anonymous IP editor, on July 28, 2007. That same IP was used previously and subsequently by my wife who has never registered a Wikipedia username.
    My first non-IP edit was on July 28, 2007, with this announcement on my user page, 33 minutes after my anonymous edit.
  5. ^ Morris, Kevin (January 18, 2013). "How vandals are destroying Wikipedia from the inside". The Daily Dot.
  6. ^ Farley, Tim (December 11, 2013). "Quantum variations in Wikipedia rules – Deepak Chopra and conflict of interest". Skeptical Software Tools. Retrieved February 18, 2013.
Handy stuff
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