@Jolenealaska Happy Birthday! And have a great new year!
@ElendilTheTall: Don't you have better plans on a Saturday morning than answering newbie questions about chickpeas? I have a trip to the garden centre and home improvement store scheduled today - wouldn't that be the stereotypical place for a Brit too? ;-)))
@FaheemMitha If I'm on my iPad, I can't - or haven't found the button yet. So just consider me reply-challenged. Switched to my laptop just to please you ;-)
@Stephie A general comment. Not specially directed at you. And you can use that extension I mentioned earlier. Which just requires the up arrow. Do you want me to find out what it is?
BTW, don't know how to find out SE extensions. Anyone?
@FaheemMitha Nah, I don't really want to mess with the system. I'm rather reluctant with that. And - there is no 'up-arrow', unless you mean the 'capital letters' thingy.
@Stephie ^^ I use this extension all the time. It's harmless, though a bit buggy. Though it's Chrome specific, so you will need to be using Google Chrome or Chromium.
There is probably something similar for Firefox.
@Stephie And there is no up arrow where? On a mobile phone?
@FaheemMitha iPad Mini. But I found it. Firefox goes in kind of a 'mobile mode' but I can switch to 'full site', then I get the standard view including the 'context menu' on the left of each message. But it's kind of tiny and hard to touch. And no, I have no fat fingers - rather small hands, in fact. Promise: I will try and be good to use the reply if there is more than one conversation going at a time and especially if you are here ;-)
@FaheemMitha just for the sake of completeness (although somewhat moot now): by 'up arrow' you mean one of a set of four arrows (up, down, left right) or the shift key used to type capital letters?
Personally, for me, using anything other than a regular sized keyboard for any length of time is pure torture, so I don't even try. But my hands are probably on the large side.
@Stephie I said "standard US keyboard". I should probably have added "PC". Full size keyboard, in other words.
But you get used to it. I originally bought it as a "sort of kindle but without the Amazon ties".
Now i use it when I don't want to drag my laptop with me but need it for short notes or the occasional e-mail. A bit redundant as I have a smartphone,too, but still...
I decided to be somewhat impartial - love my mac for many things but use the PC for programming.
Haven't decided yet what I'm going for next, but my MacBook won't last forever. But the Widows laptops hubby gets fom teh office all hae their quirks and drawbacks, too. Sigh. Hope I won't have to decide too soon.
I use mine for shopping lists etc. Because that's the thing I always have with me. And doing all that scheduling stuff that comes with two kids and their activities.
@Stephie On the iPad if you go to the left end of a message and tap, you will see a down arrow. Tap on that and you can select 'reply to this message'. I am almost always on the iPad when I'm here.
> It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree o…
"The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home." A very famous book in its day. I'm not sure how many people read it these days.
@AnubianNoob I'm disappointed. I thought I'd finally met someone who hadn't read Harry Potter. Alas, alack.
" It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips."
> If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
no, not the "avatar notification" but the "you have a @(name) message. I use the app and it's really delayed. Sometimes I'm here (browser) and talk and a while later the app realizes that I was mentioned. Then I get all the messages I already read as "new message". Can be annoying.
@FaheemMitha Mhm, can't help you... I guess you have to be really young or really old for that. Oh, so perhaps my godson would qualify. But he's only one year old...
Gut feeling: For HP you shouldn't be much younger than Harry is in the respective book. And once you start, you'll want to read all of them, somehow. So we'll keep ours on the top shelf for a bit until son can cope with the somewhat darker subjects. (Or at least restrict access to the later volumes.)
Ok, trying to stick to abstract keywords... Deaths, some of them quite off-handed, almost like side-effects, ignorant politicians that prefer to not only deny danger but accuse those who point it out, treacery, being subjected to people with power and only very limited means of resistance, if any, Trusted figured who follow their own hidden agenda and, in some cases, a general sense and atmosphere of bleak dispair.
Not bad, to be honest, but at least vol. 4++ are more like for elder teens or adults than for 11yo.
@FaheemMitha Are you refering to kids literature or stuff for adults?
@FaheemMitha Disagreed on the "no division" part. But perhaps biased. My daughter has been reading fluently (or is that term reserved for writing?) since before she was five. I have to check her reading material because she can't emotionally handle all subjects.
Example: While she could technically manage to read The Hobbit, she probably wouldn't get past the trolls right at the onset of the journey - too scary.
@Stephie Hmm I don't know. I remember reading Seul Dans Le Monde and hating it for the ubiquitous death and despair. I put it away. I was young, but I don't remember how young.
@Cerberus What did you think of it? That one, I must admit I didn't particularly take to at the time. I think some of elements that JRR puts in there are a bit hard for children to appreciate.
Actually, school is a good place to read Nineteen Eighty-Four. Being trapped in a hopeless hell with authority figures that didn't care about you one bit? That was my school. I totally identified.
@Cerberus Well, some places are nicer than others. And some people cope with life better than others. As a small child I was thin-skinned, precocious intellectual who wasn't physically very fit. Not in a good position to cope well with a school anywhere, probably.
@Cerberus Yes, it depends a lot on personality types. I've always been the kind of person who takes things too seriously. You're better off just shrugging stuff off. Up to a point, anyway.
@Cerberus No, I haven't. But it's a well known place? Actually, my school is also (relatively) well-known. Its best known alumnus is probably Salman Rushdie.
He briefly refers to it in Midnight's Children, actually.
I'm sure nobody has heard of it in other countries. Just as I have not heard of any good schools in different countries (except Eton, from some famous stories).
