If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#51
|
|||
|
|||
Spelling, grammar and getting it right was OFF TOPIC funny
ellice wrote:
Haven't you looked into uploading a different dictionary? I don't know about the PC world of Word, but on the Mac side I can set my Word preferences to other dictionaries. And I try to remember to check my custom one regularly to remove words that are misspelled but were accidentally added. D'you know where I can get an Oz dictionary for Word? I'm not aware of one, but would be happy to get hold of it if I could. Don't get me wrong: Word's my all-time favourite program! It's so stylish and intuitive and easy to use. I just wish we could get an Oz-flavoured version, that's all. I bet there is something out there. Word is definitely not my favorite program, but it's certainly convenient. I use Quark when I can for setting things that will be published - but it takes work to use Quark or the Adobe graphics programs. However, once you learn them - what fun. I really, really love Illustrator. Ah, well. Word has definitely improved over the years - I did prefer WordPerfect back when, but now Word is fine for most things. Oh, I love Quark too! I started on Ready, Set Go! a zillion years ago and have always loved the interface (very similar between the two). I love the way you can 'wire' text boxes together and govern the way the text 'flows' on your page. I'm also in love with Illustrator! I've done the odd bit of graphic design work and the tracing facility of Illustrator is just yumptious! Don't you just love working with beziers? It's so absorbing and relaxing: hours pass while you tweak and smooth and the result is usually spectacularly good! I use CorelDraw these days, but your post has reminded me of the good old days on the Mac with those superlative programs at hand! D'you remember one called 'SuperPaint'? It was a real beaut: had a bit of everything. You could use the usual paint tools on one layer and ray-tracing etc on another. You could combine elements from layers at will and then print it all out in colour... or not. That was 'way back in the eighties! *Nothing* on the PC came anywhere near it. Sob! If only a brand new Mac would tumble into my lap! Snif! I so miss them! -- Trish Brown {|:-} Newcastle, NSW, Australia |
Ads |
#52
|
|||
|
|||
Spelling, grammar and getting it right was OFF TOPIC funny
ellice wrote:
On 2/23/09 8:10 AM, "Bruce Fletcher (remove dentures to reply)" wrote: anne wrote: says... Multi-Mate! All I remember is that in 1986 or thereabouts it came on an incredible number (over 40?) of 3.5 inch floppy disks. Are you sure it wasn't on the 5 1/4 disks? I'm pretty sure the littler not so floppy ones came around a bit later. You could be right, I'm not sure when we upgraded from 5.25 to 3.5 inch disks. I'm sure that it was about a year after we upgraded from tape to 5.25 inch disks (Commodore Pet). It was around 1987 that we got our first IBM PC (which ran at an incredible 8 MHz). I think the disk switches were in the mid-late 80s. But I remember the 3.5" flopppies being really pricey then, and we'd have to order boxes at work and guard them. Finally the shop at lab started carrying them, and we'd have so much fun going to shop and grab some boxes. Then the thing was being able to reformat them because they'd always get IBM formatted disks, so it would be sitting with the Mac and reformatting them. Fortuanately, the Macs have always been able to read the PC formatted ones but not vice versa. So, I'd do work for me to keep on Mac disks, but keep others that were dual formatted and save files to be PC compatible for others to use. Such fun to remember. But much better than carrying mag tapes or boxes of keypunched cards around. ellice Hee! Did you ever *drop* one of those boxes of keypunched cards? What a horror that was! My first task when I went to work for the Mac dealership was to sit and remove the labels from a hundred used 3.5" floppies, format them and apply new Apple labels. Apple disks cost $100 a box (!!!) and so they were well worth cleaning and reusing. Nearly wore the nails off my fingers, though! -- Trish Brown {|:-} Newcastle, NSW, Australia |
#53
|
|||
|
|||
Spelling, grammar and getting it right was OFF TOPIC funny
On 3/1/09 7:31 PM, "Trish Brown" wrote:
ellice wrote: On 2/22/09 4:25 PM, "Trish Brown" wrote: lucille wrote: With the peculiar spelling of so many English words, a dictionary is useless for a really poor speller. How can you look up the word laugh if you can't spell it? Even if you can't exactly spell a word, you usually can come close and skim a dictionary page- or use a thesaurus and look up a synonym. Well, I guess that's the point of reading widely: so you can be exposed to lots and lots of irregular words and have some idea of the spelling to start with. Of course, the importance of correct spelling varies with your intent. I'd die before I'd send an incorrectly spelled letter to the Queen or the Prime Minister or for a job application. Here at rctn and in letters to friends, I'm not quite so vigilant about it all. Software spellcheckers are OK as far as it goes, but the one in MSWord annoys me because it clearly has an American accent! ;-D While reading certainly helps, I often wonder how many people actually will look up the details of an unfamiliar word when coming upon it while reading. Some years ago - wow - at least 25 - I remember reading a then new Saul Bellow book called "The Dean's December." The blurbs had it as an NY Times bestseller, etc. Excellent, and interesting story (Dean of a journalism school in Chicago - thinly veiled Northwestern - married to an Eastern European woman, IIRC a doctor, and they have to go back to her former home in the Soviet block country to deal with her mother). Complicated plot of life and politics. Beautifully written. But, here's the catch. I'm a fairly literate person, with a good vocabulary - much more than the norm if you go by things such as GRE scores, etc. I had to crack the dictionary before I was through 20 pages. This was the first time in my life I ever had to have a dictionary close-by for the entire time I was reading this book. In then discussing the book with my friends at school (I was an undergrad at the time), I had to ask - how is it possible that this book is a bestseller? Do you think people just buy the book because of the famous author, and then don't read it, or just don't understand it - because if I'm really having to look up words - that what are all those others doing - given the book has had such great sales? Or do they not care. The thing to me is that as a writer, Saul Bellow's use of language was so precise, particular to what he wished to convey, that if you didn't know the words you would miss something. I just always have remembered having to use a dictionary so regularly while reading this book. It just made me think. FWIW- I do generally have a foreign language dictionary when reading in other languages as I know that even being relatively fluent, there will always be something I'm not quite sure of, or just don't know. ellice I think most of us discover the meanings of words in the contexts in which we hear them. Sometimes, that backfires, but dictionaries are there to help. Trial and error is useful too. Colloquialisms are the hardest thing to learn when embarking on a new language. I think the unwillingness of people to actually look up a word's meaning leads to a lot of garbled communication and misunderstandings. I had a deputy, well spoken, educated - going to grad school, who constantly would either misuse or misunderstand some verbal nuance. Then we'd have a discussion about what he thought something meant, which would of course be what he'd sort of assumed it meant - and argue the meaning - I came to refer to this as his "private dictionary." IME, the "private dictionary" is pretty common, unfortunately. It is true you can glean some sense of meaning from context as that's part of how we learn language. For me, when in a conversation not in my native language, especially one in which I'm only mid-fluent context is really important for me to understand - but I'll be sure to ask anything that may be confusing. I'm regularly asking how to say something or for a bit of explanation in the other language (generally asking in that language how to say some English term). WRT colloquial expressions that is so true. When I was first working in France, after a few weeks on site, my next trip to Paris I bought 2 special dictionaries - one Science/Technical English/French, and the other a dictionary of idioms English/French (couldn't find American/French - but it worked). Truly helped. Plus, I was lucky enough that the 2 head techs (who sort of spoke English - or knew it from college days) & I would make time every afternoon for a 30 min language lesson. Great break, and good for me, them and whichever of the crew wanted to participate! Ellice |
#54
|
|||
|
|||
Spelling, grammar and getting it right was OFF TOPIC funny
On 3/1/09 7:40 PM, "Trish Brown" wrote:
ellice wrote: Haven't you looked into uploading a different dictionary? I don't know about the PC world of Word, but on the Mac side I can set my Word preferences to other dictionaries. And I try to remember to check my custom one regularly to remove words that are misspelled but were accidentally added. D'you know where I can get an Oz dictionary for Word? I'm not aware of one, but would be happy to get hold of it if I could. Don't get me wrong: Word's my all-time favourite program! It's so stylish and intuitive and easy to use. I just wish we could get an Oz-flavoured version, that's all. I bet there is something out there. Word is definitely not my favorite program, but it's certainly convenient. I use Quark when I can for setting things that will be published - but it takes work to use Quark or the Adobe graphics programs. However, once you learn them - what fun. I really, really love Illustrator. Ah, well. Word has definitely improved over the years - I did prefer WordPerfect back when, but now Word is fine for most things. Oh, I love Quark too! I started on Ready, Set Go! a zillion years ago and have always loved the interface (very similar between the two). I love the way you can 'wire' text boxes together and govern the way the text 'flows' on your page. I think Quark is pretty much the publishing industry standard, though some people use InDesign. It's so much fun playing with layouts - but it's easy to kind of obsess. I'm also in love with Illustrator! I've done the odd bit of graphic design work and the tracing facility of Illustrator is just yumptious! Don't you just love working with beziers? It's so absorbing and relaxing: hours pass while you tweak and smooth and the result is usually spectacularly good! I do love most of the Illustrator tools. It does let you really refine designs. I don't know how new your version is, I'd been using 10, and then went to CS (which is 2 versions ahead) and I was ecstatic. I hadn't bothered buying the in-between upgrade - not enough of a difference. But the newer tool collection, especially for making symbols and grids are awesome. I use CorelDraw these days, but your post has reminded me of the good old days on the Mac with those superlative programs at hand! D'you remember one called 'SuperPaint'? It was a real beaut: had a bit of everything. You could use the usual paint tools on one layer and ray-tracing etc on another. You could combine elements from layers at will and then print it all out in colour... or not. That was 'way back in the eighties! *Nothing* on the PC came anywhere near it. Sob! If only a brand new Mac would tumble into my lap! Snif! I so miss them! I had MacDraw and SuperPaint, When CorelDraw came out, got to test it. The graphics dept at my lab switched to Macs in about 86, 87 because there were a handful of us with them, and we did a lot of our own graphics - and they were able to convince the powers that be to do it. Same thing, when I changed agencies in 91 - the next year, helped the graphics group make the upgrade. They had some Max, some PCs and needed a bit of an ally to coompletely upgrade. It was great when they did, as it helped me and the couple of guys from the program office to keep/upgrade our own. Even in the 80s, I had Persuasion for doing presentations on the Mac - so much better than Powerpoint at the time. Eventually, IIRC, Powerpoint subsumed (bought) Persuasion. But for a good few years that they were both around, Persuasion was well ahead in tools, capability. I enjoyed telling the guys too bad, I'm not a secretary, when people would come to me to do their briefings - cause they were in a queue with their secretary, or waiting on graphics. But, of course, a couple of us from the Mac group would end up doing "other duties" . We told the IT people we didn't care about them supporting us, we'd take care of it, just make sure that we got software we ordered. Had our own Apple (Mac) Users Group at the lab, affiliated with the Federal Group, the huge (now) DC area group - Washington Apple Pi. Now I use Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Fireworks/Flash. If I ever get a job then I'm completing my upgrade with the Adobe suite. Fun to think about. ellice |
#55
|
|||
|
|||
Spelling, grammar and getting it right was OFF TOPIC funny
On 3/1/09 7:43 PM, "Trish Brown" wrote:
ellice wrote: On 2/23/09 8:10 AM, "Bruce Fletcher (remove dentures to reply)" wrote: anne wrote: says... Multi-Mate! All I remember is that in 1986 or thereabouts it came on an incredible number (over 40?) of 3.5 inch floppy disks. Are you sure it wasn't on the 5 1/4 disks? I'm pretty sure the littler not so floppy ones came around a bit later. You could be right, I'm not sure when we upgraded from 5.25 to 3.5 inch disks. I'm sure that it was about a year after we upgraded from tape to 5.25 inch disks (Commodore Pet). It was around 1987 that we got our first IBM PC (which ran at an incredible 8 MHz). I think the disk switches were in the mid-late 80s. But I remember the 3.5" flopppies being really pricey then, and we'd have to order boxes at work and guard them. Finally the shop at lab started carrying them, and we'd have so much fun going to shop and grab some boxes. Then the thing was being able to reformat them because they'd always get IBM formatted disks, so it would be sitting with the Mac and reformatting them. Fortuanately, the Macs have always been able to read the PC formatted ones but not vice versa. So, I'd do work for me to keep on Mac disks, but keep others that were dual formatted and save files to be PC compatible for others to use. Such fun to remember. But much better than carrying mag tapes or boxes of keypunched cards around. ellice Hee! Did you ever *drop* one of those boxes of keypunched cards? What a horror that was! Never had a big drop - but certainly dropped a stack of over 100 (hence why it was important to put line numbers out in the end comment area when writing code). But, I have witnessed a friend carrying several boxes, when a lid flew open, and disaster came - dumping the contents in part of many! Uck. My first task when I went to work for the Mac dealership was to sit and remove the labels from a hundred used 3.5" floppies, format them and apply new Apple labels. Apple disks cost $100 a box (!!!) and so they were well worth cleaning and reusing. Nearly wore the nails off my fingers, though! I think the regular boxes were about $45 here. I was alwys careful to label - somehow. Which eventually became sharpie on floppy! We actually have a floppy reader on USB with this machine for reading some old stuff that hasn't been moved over, or for doing the move. Hey, the old disks make good coasters. Ellice |
#56
|
|||
|
|||
Spelling, grammar and getting it right was OFF TOPIC funny
ellice wrote:
I think Quark is pretty much the publishing industry standard, though some people use InDesign. It's so much fun playing with layouts - but it's easy to kind of obsess. It used to be Quark, but not any more....people have *flocked* to InDesign. It's much cheaper, interfaces better with other programs, and once you're over an initial hurdle, is easy to use. The most frustrating thing about the changeover was that it calls things by different names than Quark, and it was hard to look up something you didn't know the name for in help! But that didn't last long. InDesign is SO much better in text flow. I used to spend hours fiddling with Quark files to get the text "just so" (good Virgo that I am, LOL!) -- lining up columns, getting past bad line breaks, etc. etc. - that InDesign does much better from the get-go. Sue -- Susan Hartman/Dirty Linen The Magazine of Folk and World Music www.dirtylinen.com |
#57
|
|||
|
|||
Spelling, grammar and getting it right was OFF TOPIC funny
On 3/2/09 9:37 AM, "Susan Hartman" wrote:
ellice wrote: I think Quark is pretty much the publishing industry standard, though some people use InDesign. It's so much fun playing with layouts - but it's easy to kind of obsess. It used to be Quark, but not any more....people have *flocked* to InDesign. It's much cheaper, interfaces better with other programs, and once you're over an initial hurdle, is easy to use. The most frustrating thing about the changeover was that it calls things by different names than Quark, and it was hard to look up something you didn't know the name for in help! But that didn't last long. I was thinking that has a lot to do with being part of the Adobe Suite. I've been deciding which suite to do my upgrade with - as I can get the education pricing, they vary as to what comes with Illustrator - the full web stuff or just little web stuff but InDesign. InDesign is SO much better in text flow. I used to spend hours fiddling with Quark files to get the text "just so" (good Virgo that I am, LOL!) -- lining up columns, getting past bad line breaks, etc. etc. - that InDesign does much better from the get-go. Sue Nice to know. A bunch of folks I know are still using Quark. But, I think for small businesses it's about the $$ to make a change. ellice |
#58
|
|||
|
|||
Spelling, grammar and getting it right was OFF TOPIC funny
I feel like a dinosaur(!) I used Pagemaker from V3 to 6.something, for page
layout and all the word processing ever needed. It wouldn't alphabetize, though. Retired just before Indesign. "Susan Hartman" wrote in message ... ellice wrote: I think Quark is pretty much the publishing industry standard, though some people use InDesign. It's so much fun playing with layouts - but it's easy to kind of obsess. It used to be Quark, but not any more....people have *flocked* to InDesign. It's much cheaper, interfaces better with other programs, and once you're over an initial hurdle, is easy to use. The most frustrating thing about the changeover was that it calls things by different names than Quark, and it was hard to look up something you didn't know the name for in help! But that didn't last long. InDesign is SO much better in text flow. I used to spend hours fiddling with Quark files to get the text "just so" (good Virgo that I am, LOL!) -- lining up columns, getting past bad line breaks, etc. etc. - that InDesign does much better from the get-go. Sue -- Susan Hartman/Dirty Linen The Magazine of Folk and World Music www.dirtylinen.com |
#59
|
|||
|
|||
Spelling, grammar and getting it right was OFF TOPIC funny
On 3/2/09 9:14 PM, "Judy Bay" wrote:
I feel like a dinosaur(!) I used Pagemaker from V3 to 6.something, for page layout and all the word processing ever needed. It wouldn't alphabetize, though. Retired just before Indesign. Ah, I used Pagemaker in the early stages, then went to Quark Express. Don't feel like a Dinosaur. Pagemaker linked with Persuasion, both of which become overtaken/bought IIRC. Ellice "Susan Hartman" wrote in message ... ellice wrote: I think Quark is pretty much the publishing industry standard, though some people use InDesign. It's so much fun playing with layouts - but it's easy to kind of obsess. It used to be Quark, but not any more....people have *flocked* to InDesign. It's much cheaper, interfaces better with other programs, and once you're over an initial hurdle, is easy to use. The most frustrating thing about the changeover was that it calls things by different names than Quark, and it was hard to look up something you didn't know the name for in help! But that didn't last long. InDesign is SO much better in text flow. I used to spend hours fiddling with Quark files to get the text "just so" (good Virgo that I am, LOL!) -- lining up columns, getting past bad line breaks, etc. etc. - that InDesign does much better from the get-go. Sue -- Susan Hartman/Dirty Linen The Magazine of Folk and World Music www.dirtylinen.com |
#60
|
|||
|
|||
Spelling, grammar and getting it right was OFF TOPIC funny
Thanks, Ellice. It's nice to hear that, in this Microsoft world, that I
wasn't alone. "ellice" wrote in message ... On 3/2/09 9:14 PM, "Judy Bay" wrote: I feel like a dinosaur(!) I used Pagemaker from V3 to 6.something, for page layout and all the word processing ever needed. It wouldn't alphabetize, though. Retired just before Indesign. Ah, I used Pagemaker in the early stages, then went to Quark Express. Don't feel like a Dinosaur. Pagemaker linked with Persuasion, both of which become overtaken/bought IIRC. Ellice "Susan Hartman" wrote in message ... ellice wrote: I think Quark is pretty much the publishing industry standard, though some people use InDesign. It's so much fun playing with layouts - but it's easy to kind of obsess. It used to be Quark, but not any more....people have *flocked* to InDesign. It's much cheaper, interfaces better with other programs, and once you're over an initial hurdle, is easy to use. The most frustrating thing about the changeover was that it calls things by different names than Quark, and it was hard to look up something you didn't know the name for in help! But that didn't last long. InDesign is SO much better in text flow. I used to spend hours fiddling with Quark files to get the text "just so" (good Virgo that I am, LOL!) -- lining up columns, getting past bad line breaks, etc. etc. - that InDesign does much better from the get-go. Sue -- Susan Hartman/Dirty Linen The Magazine of Folk and World Music www.dirtylinen.com |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
funny, funny knit site! | myswendy | Yarn | 11 | May 20th 07 02:18 AM |
Funny on -topic cartoon | monique | Quilting | 3 | March 2nd 07 07:54 PM |
On topic - too funny | Cheryl Isaak | Needlework | 1 | October 7th 05 06:56 PM |
OT Aint it funny that the majority of the posts are off topic? | Quiltshophopper | Quilting | 13 | July 21st 05 07:44 PM |
OFF TOPIC - but very funny! | Cheryl Isaak | Needlework | 0 | July 10th 05 05:26 PM |