I assume that all chat rooms ebb and flow somewhat; sometimes it's lively in here and sometimes it's empty. I imagine that some places are completely dead tonight, but for a reason that doesn't much concern us here. :-)
Most of my (close) family is in the same metro area, and it's easy to forget how spoiled I am. And when I was growing up, both sets of grandparents were within two hours.
so very true, shocks my students when I can go from teaching them maths and physics, to teaching about History, and even languages such as French and Japanese
I'm a software person (mix of interface design, past programming, and tech writing), and I co-authored a (vanity press, but still) book on 15th-century dance, and I study talmud for fun, and... :-)
The dance thing was really to solve a practical problem. My co-author wanted to dance the dances but didn't know how to reconstruct the music; I wanted to reconstruct and arrange the music but didn't have dancers to test with... a good match.
Yes. I first heard of Stack Overflow years ago when Joel wrote about it, but it was too advanced for what I was doing so I tracked it only very loosely. Later Joel wrote about this site in Area 51 called Mi Yodeya and I said "SE does non-programming sites?" and "I've got to get me some of that", and, well, here I am. And once I was here I naturally started to look around and saw that there was a huge SE world out there.
One thing I figured out only in the last year or so: the weekly newsletters are a good way to get regular, albeit small, pings from sites you don't have time to stay current with.
I have got tired of the nonsense that is prevalent on forums - I used to own one and it got insane. it took e a little while to settle in, but I have found my 'niche', the 7 sites I belong to and the 3 proposals I am supporting
Forums (and mailing lists) are frustrating; too often, too many people are intent on being heard instead of listening, learning, and actually engaging each other. I've found most of the SE sites I participate on to work well.
Which doesn't mean I'm not still on some mailing lists (mostly not forums), but I know what I'm getting. :-)
Well, I know it's mid-afternoon where you are, but it's nearly midnight here so I"m going to have to drop off.
Nice chatting with you, and please do feel free to look around our site if you like! If text is your thing, we have tags for each of the parshiyot (weekly torah portions) that you can use as starting points.
