The Overlook Hotel

1:24 PM

Morning.

user116848

@KitFox How are you Ms Fox?

user116848

Morning

user116848

But it's evening here :-)

user116848

Morning

user116848

@KitFox I have a question

1:32 PM

Hi.

I am distracted.

@Arrowfar What is your question?

user116848

@KitFox Yes, I want to ask that from the ELU chat room do you consider me like a douche? Just asking. An honest answer would be nice

user116848

I mean someone in some chat said that

user116848

I don't think that's the case, right?

user116848

Or may be I am wrong

I don't think you are a douche.

user116848

1:40 PM

Yay!

user116848

Then they may be mistaken

Someone in chat said I thought you were a douche? Or they just said you were a douche?

user116848

they just said....

What was the context? Were you being douche-y?

user116848

Since you were here already I thought I should ask

user116848

1:42 PM

No. Not much context. Just that in chat there are no facial experssions etc. so people sometimes get the wrong message yanno

user116848

But thanks!

Oh sure.

Happy to oblige.

user116848

What's today's topic? Can we decide?

I'm not prepared to participate in chat right now. Are you getting ready for bed or something?

user116848

Me no. It's not that late here. It's only 7 pm

1:43 PM

Oh.

does maths

Oh. It's only 9:45 am. Seems much later.

user116848

Oh that much difference in timings hehe

2:08 PM

Hello @KitFox. Is there any reason why you have been missing in the Eng room?

Yes.

OK, you can tell me if you want to.

There's nothing to tell beyond what may be obvious to you.

Oh? Hmm, what is obvious to me doesn't seem to be that big a problem that you can't go there.

I thought you were Captain Obvious.

Or did I get that confused?

2:14 PM

Yes, I am Captain Obvious. I think it's because of R that you don't go there, but I don't think R is a big problem.

Well, feel free to email me if you cannot say it here.

Rob is an ass. So are others.

I decided that rather than suspending people, I would go other places to chat and let the douchebags hang out and be douche-y.

OK, then I will look for you in other rooms in future then.

And they can continue to sneer at everyone who thinks they are jerks.

Yes, I agree that a few people in there are rather cold.

user116848

@KitFox Oh, so I am not in the douche list, right? Oh I already asked that :-)

2:22 PM

There are so many grammar books to choose from. I can't decide on which to read.

user116848

@KitFox So why are they so mean to you? I have not noticed that!

Huddleston and Pullum is too expansive and expensive.

I thought Carter and McCarthy was good but Huddleston wrote a very bad review of it.

user116848

@WillHunting Hello! Jasper

just use EL&U

@MattЭллен Of course, I have also read the answers to the question on the site on what grammar books there are.

user116848

2:23 PM

Yes, ELU is getting cold. We should do something about that

user116848

Everyone should be nice to everyone

user116848

@MattЭллен hi matty

Hi

user116848

@WillHunting By R you mean Reg?

@Arrowfar No, Ro.

user116848

2:25 PM

But Reg is a fun guy imo

user116848

Oh, I see

user116848

It's very sad to see Kit here

user116848

All alone in the dead chat room

user116848

:-)

What?

I'm not all alone.

2:28 PM

Anyone here wants to give me a personal recommendation of your favourite grammar book?

user116848

I was just kidding :)

user116848

@WillHunting CGEL is nice I hear

user116848

Cambridge Grammar of English Language

@Arrowfar Yes, but it is too difficult for me.

I just ask Cerberus or tchrist

user116848

2:29 PM

@WillHunting Why? It is simple imo

@Arrowfar Are you talking about Pullum and Huddleston?

user116848

@WillHunting Yes

@Arrowfar OMG, you read all 2000 pages?

user116848

@WillHunting No lol. But use it according to any topic that I want to know about

user116848

But still I ask guys in chat. That way it is much more easier :-)

2:32 PM

I don't trust anyone except books, lol.

user116848

Yes. But native guys can help with the basics too :)

user116848

I mean when I get stuck with some grammar issue etc. sometimes

I can be considered native too, lol.

user116848

Yes, your English is very good

user116848

How is mine?

2:33 PM

I think yours is better.

user116848

It's okay I guess.

We can come here and make this the new pseudo-English-chat-room, lol.

user116848

Yay!

user116848

But it will be the room for nice guys only :-D

I don't think the writers would like that :D

2:35 PM

There aren't many writers anyway.

user116848

Yes matt is right :-)

Also, as long as we are writing in English in this room, we are on topic.

but I suppose writing and language are intrinsically linked, so maybe it will be OK

user116848

:)

user116848

May be ELU chat is a very busy room with lots of people that's why there is often meanness there :)

user116848

2:38 PM

But it's fun sometimes at the same time

user116848

See ya!

user116848

Bye

Anyway, I promised myself to finish reading my 12 math books first before getting any other books, so I don't need to buy a grammar book now.

@KitFox Suggestion for you. You can just put all of them on ignore and return to the room.

I tried that. It's too hard to follow what's going on, and then I still have the impact of their bullshit.

Aha, you can also try to mentally ignore them, but I know that is hard. For example, I can't ignore easily all the shit in my country and still live happily here.

2:48 PM

Nah. I just choose not to expose myself to it. It's fine.

There's no reason for me to be there.

Today's writing exercise. It will be later?

Yes.

3:23 PM

@KitFox - eeeeeYello!

Hi Neil.

I keep thinking about that article I was going to write, but didn't. I'm thinking it's a technique I might use to set up my next Nano.

I forget, did I ask you if you want to contribute to banned books week?

Oh, you probably did.

And I was probably evasive.

And self-effacing, maybe? :D

Hard to say. I'm not in that phase right now.

I tend to forget.

3:33 PM

Forget what?

Hmm?

Oh, hi @Neil!

LOL

What is today's topic?

lunchtime. bbl

CU

3:41 PM

I am very sad that Kit no longer goes to English room. I think I will come here every day then.

4:27 PM

Good Morning

I'm up for writer's chat today, please ping me when there is a quorum as I will otherwise be working and not watching this tab

Hi.

Now @Matt has disappeared.

He's usually back around 1, I think.

4:42 PM

I am lurking.

I noticed.

4:56 PM

Hello.

Let the exercise begin!

Where is everyone?

I am here

I am not a regular in this chat, so I don't know what is supposed to happen, lol.

We pick a topic. Start a 10 minute counter and write until time is up. That is what happen last week at least.

But who decides on a topic?

5:07 PM

I am not a regular either unfortunately.

Everyone chooses together I think

And when do we really start?

Well you can start your own timer or I could start one and say go.

Hello.

Hello

I was waiting a bit to see if Matt was going to join in.

@Mr.Shiny You there?

OK. I'm ready if you are @Aaron.

5:10 PM

@WillHunting ready?

Hey, @Will, I heard you wrote something last time.

Are you going to do it again this time?

I will see if the topic is suitable or not this time.

You want to pick the topic?

Well, someone else can. Since I did it last time.

Oh.

@Aaron do you want to choose?

5:11 PM

Erm. I am indecisive and have not written in awhile.

OK. I'll choose. Are you all ready?

Yes.

Yup. I have a timer ready

The topic is...

...

5:12 PM

Holds Breath

The wild flute.

Go.

(Sorry, I used a random word generator)

Erm, I am looking up the meaning of flute now to see if it has another meaning.

It's an instrument.

The wild flute: I entered the concert hall excitedly. It was full. Everyone was here to see the world's best flautist. The lights dimmed and the famous man appeared. Then the sounds began to flow across the air to my ears. At first, the music was slow and haunting. Then it began to gain speed. High notes and low notes in quick succession. I had never heard such beautiful music. It was wild. His fingers moved so rapidly that they looked unreal. It ended and there was a thunderous applause.

Guys, 5 min is up and above is mine!

Oh wait, is it 10 min? Nvm, lol.

I have that time is up.

5:25 PM

Me as well.

The Wild Flute.

The Wild Flute Incomplete

So, is it supposed to be 5 or 10 min?

@WillHunting 10

@KitFox That was very good. I love your descriptions.

Oh! Thanks.

5:28 PM

I'm back. I'll have something ready in 10.

@Aaron You liked the prompt enough to keep going with it, eh?

@KitFox I am amazed you can write so much in 10 min.

@KitFox I don't like to leave something half done :)

@Aaron You should star Kit's post. I don't do stars in chat, lol.

That was fun.

5:33 PM

Woo!

waits for Mr. Shiny's

Woo!

I think I will come for every exercise, just for fun.

@Aaron Your story kind of half-reminds me of the bit I wrote for another exercise. Let me find it.

user116848

hi again peeps

user116848

:)

@Aaron Here it is.

@Arrowfar Hi.

user116848

5:36 PM

So about today's topic?

Are you going to write?

The topic is: the wild flute.

user116848

I see. So what do I write about it? I mean looks difficult

@Arrowfar You just write and see what happens.

That's the point of the lightning writes.

user116848

So it's the musical flute? Let me think :-)

user116848

@KitFox So when do i start? I have a online stop watch btw

5:42 PM

@Arrowfar OK, then go. Write. NOW!

Don't stop to think, just do it!

user116848

Yes okay

I finished it if anyone wants to see. I went for a flute that had a wisp like effect

@Aaron Oh dude.

Well, at least he saved his son from a terrible fate.

Oh yea. I forgot to edit the son having been dead in. (It was the flute drawing him closer to the cliff)

No happy ending sorry.

Don't normally write unhappy stuff like that but this one seemed to go that way.

Wait. What? When did the son go over the cliff?

5:49 PM

I blame creepy pasta. I have been reading/listening to a lot of them recently

@KitFox No the son had died years before. Vanished into the forest. I forgot to add that part.

Oh. So. Like a ghost?

Google Drive is giving me a headache today so I'm going to try posting it somewhere else

@KitFox Yea. Only it was a projection by the wild flute to draw the hunter

She paused before the ancient doorway. This building must have been here since before the Great Fire, she thought. Taking a deep breath, she pushed on the door, gently at first, but harder when it resisted. With some creaking, and the tinkling of a small iron bell dangling from the top corner, the door finally relented and admitted her into the shop. She stepped inside.

The light from the street slanted in through dirty glass squares and illuminated the dusty air in straight beams that shone, like a spotlight, on the shelf against the far wall. She stepped over to the shelf and looked at t…

hey, that worked

As always, my writing is the shortest, lol.

I am a man of few words, lol.

5:53 PM

Arrow isn't done right?

@WillHunting Well, you wrote for less time and have also practiced the least.

It gets easier when you do it more.

@KitFox You spelled practiced correctly in American English, yay!

user116848

I can't seem to paste it here

Can you use pastebin?

user116848

Which is?

user116848

5:55 PM

Once I was in the forest, a beautiful wild forest with no human soul in it. I stayed there for sometime but as soon as the darkness of the evening approached, I headed towards my camp. On the way I heard a sound of a beautiful flute, its music just rushing through the air. At first I tried to figure out who that may be, but couldn’t. Its sound was so beautiful that I had to stop to listen to it. So I did. After a while towards the river bank I saw a figure approaching me. ‘Yikes’, I thought. But yes it was the same flutist, in fact ‘she’ was a beautiful young girl who was staying not very f…

user116848

:-)

@Arrowfar "booked with someone else"... do you mean, her calendar was full of appointments or performances, so she couldn't play at your party?

user116848

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 hahaha

user116848

I meant seeing someone else

The ending made me laugh.

user116848

5:58 PM

@KitFox So I type in the Ms Word and paste it here in 10 mins. But it says "the message is too long". What can I do?

user116848

@KitFox But my story isn't cheap, right?

pastebin.com

Gives you a link to paste.

user116848

I see

Or you can Google docs, or start a writing blog.

@Arrowfar Cheap? I don't think so.

user116848

Yay!

user116848

5:59 PM

@KitFox So is Wordpress blog free? How can I write there?

Yes, it's free.

Just create an account

There are paid things if you want them.

Yeah, just create an account.

If you use gmail, just use blogger.com

Anything stand out in my writing that needs improvement? I know I need to work on my descriptions.

user116848

6:01 PM

I see. Thanks guys!

@WillHunting I can second Blogger, it's very easy to get set up with Blogger. The drawback of Google Drive is that it can expose your real identity if you're logged in to Google. Which is what wasn't working properly for me today... my account appeared to be logged into the doc even though I wasn't.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Anyway I no longer use gmail. I use outlook.com now.

@Aaron I think your descriptions were fine. I liked the story idea. There wasn't anything that I would suggest for a rough draft. You have a nice conversational, sort of storytelling voice. If you were interested in revising the story, I'd suggest you look at how you construct your sentences so that doesn't get confusing and to bring out that aspect of your writing.

@WillHunting well, you can set up a google account without gmail, I think.

Mr Shiny is a room owner here? lol

I didn't know that.

6:07 PM

Sep 2 at 16:56, by Jasper Loy

I just realised you are a room owner here.

Haha, I often forget and repeat things.

So for those of you keeping track, my flute story is a chapter in Sharla's quest to free Aelfred from the demon.

I just forgot her name and didn't have time to go look it up.

Or else it would have been in the story.

I'm a terrible ~~father~~ author. Forgetting my ~~children's~~ characters' names.

Is this story compiled anywhere?

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

@Aaron It's not really compiled nor is there a coherent plan. It just arises out of this chat's writing exercises.

Ah.

Back to work with me. See you all later

6:21 PM

cya

Cu.

Oh Sharla's still at it, huh?

I thought she'd had enough of Aelfred.

user116848

6:37 PM

@KitFox The Wild Flute Can you open it? Just checking

@Arrowfar Yes. It's very BOLD!

user116848

@KitFox Bold? So what can I change?

Eh. You could choose a different theme, or I could just read yours on mobile. It's perfect for mobile.

user116848

I mean the theme is like that

You can get free themes.

user116848

6:39 PM

Oh, I see. So which theme do you recommend for big screen?

I just flagged about 10 comments of user X. She left comments on Math for user Y. She keeps praising his answers to let him know that she upvoted him (in the hope that he will upvote her in return I think).

But I guess a mod will probably tell me to stop flagging soon, lol.

@Arrowfar Whatever you like.

Mine uses pilcrow. I've also used a couple of others as the fancy struck me.

user116848

I see. Thanks Ms Fox ;-)

I always use a blue monochromatic theme everywhere I go, lol.

user116848

Oh, and thanks for the wordpress idea

6:42 PM

Choosing a theme is one of the fun things about having a blog.

My avatar is blue, my desktop is blue and my email them is blue

Love is blue.

The sky is blue.

Choosing a colour is always fun for me, because I can choose blue, lol.

user116848

Although I have gmail I still liked it there in wordpress. It's very clean there.

I tell you why I switched to outlook.com

user116848

6:43 PM

why?

I finally decided, after changing email about 10 times, to use the username jasperloy. But I already deleted jasperloy at gmail dot com, so I had to use jasperloy at outlook dot com, lol.

@WillHunting This is why you shouldn't delete email accounts. You should hoard them.

Even if you don't use them.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Anyway I am glad I have finally stopped deleting SE and email accounts.

@WillHunting It sure confuses everyone else when you delete stuff then come back.

then delete, come back, etc.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, I think they probably think I am mad, which is true, lol.

So @KitFox will you be in this room most of the time now?

6:50 PM

No.

Oh, so there is no way to chat with you each day anymore? Of course, email is not included.

Well. Maybe. I'll be mysterious and elusive.

OK, just like me, lol.

Of course, you can find out which rooms I'm in if you look up my chat profile.

Yes, I am good at stalking. I even know Maria's boyfriend's name, lol.

6:53 PM

Oh. I don't.

But I haven't looked.

But I don't join Facebook, so I can't see her FB account.

It is painful to see pictures of someone you like with someone else.

But I think they have been together for years, and maybe they are married!

@WillHunting You know, there are other women in the world besides Maria.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes.

Oh I just want to say that Maria here is L, not S.

It's unhealthy to obsess over one.

You had a different nickname for S, didn't you?

6:56 PM

@WillHunting "Lesbian, not Straight"?

@KitFox No, I used to call them Maria 1, Maria 2, Maria 3, etc.

I prefer to obsess over at least three women at a time.

I think L is the best girl I have ever seen in my life. =)

Although I have never met her, I do know quite a bit about her from her blogs.

@WillHunting Maybe you should just get out of the house more? Try to meet real people. Take a class or something. Like cake decorating.

Cake decorating.

6:59 PM

or whatever.

Anyway, L has long left SE.

Find some place where the girls are at, and find some reason to be there. is what I'm saying.

Huh. I think I just figured something out about how to model this data.

feels pleased

yay

Be there, act shy, let them come to you.

7:01 PM

Classroom settings are good because there are forced interactions. You are expected to work together, discuss, etc, and if you don't hit it off, that's okay, it was just a class and hey, you learned something.

Dan Savage had some good advice, which was to forget about meeting people and focus on doing interesting things so that when you did meet someone, you had something to talk about.

Yes, that too

Also, I could rejoin okcupid.com

Needless to say, I deleted my account there.

Again, the classroom provides that: you're learning something interesting and the people there have a topic in common. And if there's nobody in the class, then later on when you meet someone else you can just yak about the class you took and how interesting it was.

Yes.

7:04 PM

okcupid is actually very good as they allow you to message each other for free.

There are so many classes one could take: photography, baking, cake decorating, languages, bartending, public-speaking, any kind of outdoor thing like rock climibing...

Archery, martial arts, running rooms, tai chi, surfing, sailing

wilderness survival

or join a hobby group like a linux user's group or lego fan group or maker group

the wild flute

hee hee

nice

7:23 PM

ta

I've just read y'all's

very good

So what IS the flute looking for?

I'm not sure. I was mostly stalling trying to figure it out :D

I was torn between a grand piano, an oboe and some form of string instrument

maybe end with "oh god! it's heading right for us!"

When I was talking in the Christian room about how God is evil if he created heaven and hell such that those who believe go to heaven and those who don't go to hell, someone argued that it is not God who put us in hell but we who put ourselves in hell by choosing not to believe. LOL.