@tchrist that's nice to know. But I don't intend to abuse the chat room for every single question which pops into my mind. That's what reference works are for :)
For the second, you might do a corpus search of some sort to find the preposition that collocates with divides. Note that sometimes in is ok there, though. More of a judgement call, I’d say.
The article matter is something that’s hard for people coming from a language without them.
I'm not a native speaker, and I don't have the money for a professional proofreading service, so I'm trying to be especially vigilant when I'm unsure of my grammar.
@tchrist Indeed. My language has a definite article, but no indefinite one. Or rather, it has an indefinite article, but it is used in very few situations, mostly in cases where "some" is used in English.
@tchrist I'm not willing to pay for this either. I'm going to produce hundreds of pages, this is a Ph.D. thesis.
On the bright side, my examiners aren't native speakers either
for example, she thinks that "carry out" is not an English expression, but an incorrect attempt to literally translate the German "ausführen'. So she insists that we remove it from all texts we write.
I’ve a friend whose PhD advisor didn’t know English as well as he did, and this produced incidents which in retrospect now appear very amusing, but which then were sources of frustration for him.
@rumtscho There are few alternatives. You think you can get grammar-checker software to do the job, but no such thing exists, at least not at a high level. All it will do is confuse you.
@skillpatrol I have already learned it to the point where I can fluently write a whole dissertation in it. I am not at all willing to learn it to the point where I am qualified to be an editor or teacher.
@tchrist I wouldn't mind some light editing on my dissertation. Sometimes we get into unsatisfactory passages that only get worse when we edit them ourselves. That's where a (human) editor would help. Of course, I wouldn't want someone who merely wanted to change alter every word choice, etc.
We usually send our dissertations chapter-wise to the other PhD students of the same supervisor, who give feedback on the text. But they are supposed to mostly say things like "Section 2 didn't make sense until after I read section 4, you need to restructure". And none of them is a native English speaker.
@Robusto One of the reasons why I chose to write in English :) Although they speak English decently, basically all the literature they read and publish is in English.
@skillpatrol I doubt that they know it better. Maybe Writers will know it. But right now, I don't have the time for such idle curiosity. I have to actually produce the text instead of doing predictions about it.
@skillpatrol when you write something, do you know in advance how long it will be?
my "customer" there will gladly go on a rant how students today have no idea how to write concisely and all papers they try to write are way too long, and how nobody has the time to read all this stuff
on other occasions, she complains endlessly of how publications contain way too little information on the experiments performed and how it's basically not real science any longer, because nobody can replicate the experiments, as important details are missing from the publications
I've learned that the diplomatic thing is to sit there and nod along with her rant of the day :)
@tchrist I'm sure the world will benefit a lot from a method to get 10 pages worth of detailed knowledge in people's heads in the time required to read one page. Until somebody discovers it, a decent dissertation will be long.
@tchrist I would say your natural inclination is to gravitate toward prolix. My own is a stubborn insistence on contrariness: I leave the odd phrase or construction undigested just because I feel whoever is reading it ought to be able to work it out to his own edification.
@rumtscho Alas, the only way to do that is to have a very solid outline and a very good idea of what you want to say with each point. Then you can sample: write one whole chapter from the outline, fully fleshed before editing; then pare it down and find the delta between raw and cooked; then apply that process to the rest of the document. It will probably be wildly wrong anyway.
I never worry about writing for external readers. I write for my inner reader. It gives me the best chance for success. External readers are too many, too diverse, a whole sky full of moving targets and you there with just the one gun.
writing created with the express purpose to convince others of something is a craft. And it can be executed masterfully, and be beautiful - attributes usually associated with art. But it's still an act of engineering, of creating towards a goal and designing the output in such ways that it meets that goal.
@rumtscho There is a fine line between craft and art. You don't have to be writing Finnegans Wake to employ artistry in the pursuit of your writing. You probably think I'm talking about poetic prose; I am not. I have read many well-written science books and they've all shared a wonderful combination of voice and conflict that leads the reader along.
making art is a different thing. It's there in you, and it wants to gush out of you. It has a life of its own, and it exists for its own sake, not for fulfilling a purpose.
@Robusto OK. So I can be looking forward to developing a more mature view of art and looking back with a certain sympathy at the time when I was holding the adolescent view.
The point is that the art must come out. But too many young "artists" view the unrestricted gushing as the object, whereas that only provides the energy and the impetus, which must be managed. It is in the management and the mastery of that energy that we find art. And when we do find it, it usually sounds like it just happened.
@Robusto thanks for the compliment! Maybe I wasn't entirely clear: I can tell the difference in others' writing. It's different when I'm gushing myself.
@crl Yeah. This is why you should ice. Not for immediate benefit, but for later.
> Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold,…
but when I listen to music, I can perceive it as a whole, probably because I know nothing of octaves, harmonies, and whatever a professional musician hears in a piece of music
Yes. I do understand that. But, curiously, I don't find that my knowledge of music theory has impeded my appreciation at all. I think it may be akin to mathematicians discovering the mathematical structure of the Golden Ratio repeating in nature.
Yeah, one can get jaded with it. But I quit professional music when I realized that nobody wanted to play except for money. The amateur spirit, that love of music, seemed entirely vacant among professionals.
That sounds great. I think that if I ever decide to change my philosophy and do learn about music, I'll learn piano. I have no idea why it attracts me the most.
@crl Everyone's has bad sectors. This is because memories are superimposed over each other. I like to tell the story of trying to recall the word prosaic but couldn't, because it was hidden in my brain behind rustic and my brain would only, lazily, offer me that word and believe it was done.
@rumtscho It has by far the most solo literature written for it. And it is a complete musical experience: lead and accompaniment right there in your two hands.
I would bore myself silly if I could only play flute solos for the rest of my life.
@rumtscho Some specialize in modern, or baroque, or Renaissance or what have you. But your regular orchestral musician is like a full-stack programmer: he does what it takes to do the job at hand.
I'm doing a sort of CMS jsfiddle.net/crl/1o1c4k09/47 where users can edit there site, with React it may be easier and with no SEO problems for the sites (compared to angular)
@rumtscho Not exactly. I didn't mind doing whatever it took. It's more like this: I was playing at a very high level, but I still wanted to play music that I dearly loved. But my peers were only in it for the money, and would play anything, however bad, if it paid; and they didn't want to play just to feed the necessary angel of music.
So I quit trying to be a pro, figuring that the amateur spirit was preferable. Then I learned that most amateurs couldn't play at a high enough level for my taste. So . . .
I am watching a movie and this sentence is from the movie.
If you are gay, why were you so unchubby in the shower?
What does unchubby mean? since I did not find it in the dictionary.
@rumtscho Well, so is piano music. Which is why I play it. But I do cook a few things that I like. I bothered to learn how to make a few good sauces: Hollandaise, Bordelaise, Bearnaise, etc.
@tchrist I presume "chubby" there refers to the slang term for an erection.
There is a user who frequently visits The Frying Pan (the main room of Cooking). We don't know what exactly his job is, he wouldn't tell. But he's not a programmer. A few days ago, he made a simple web site as a side project. It was a slide show intended to teach the user to recognize constellations. The first thing I noticed is that it was cut off on my unmaximized window, and said it without further thought.
He was understandably taken aback, so I tried to explain that I judged him by the standards for professional development, and I was sorry for that. Which came across as condescending.
the reason it comes across as condescending is that he automatically assumed that I find "standards for professional development" better, and think that in general people should try to fulfill them. But that I'm willing to be "sloppier" in judging amateurs
It's hard to comment on someone else's work. I usually refrain for those reasons, and only share that sort of thing with my very best friends, and only when asked.
it is difficult, severely restricts the output, is unneeded for the purpose of most "projects of love", and takes the fun out of it
professional development of application, or professional cooking, is about creating consistent results for everybody from the pool of users. About maintaining a standard, about covering all edge cases which could go wrong.
Doing it as a hobby is about trying out something and seeing it work. About the feeling of being a creator.
@Robusto Yes, I usually know that. But when somebody shows me an application they've just written, it is usually a colleague who wants me to smoke test it and help him find bugs before he releases it to the users and they find the bugs. So in this one case, I didn't switch the context quickly enough.
Luckily I've known this hobbyist well enough that we could smooth out the accident relatively easily, despite my blunder at the apology.
youtube.com/watch?v=ihoYL-dUK1g&t=17m58s 17:58, maybe somebody could tell me what that mask is called? I know its a very famous artefact excavated on British islands and it does refer to king Arthur but I don't remember its name.
@Stacey it gets used a bit in BrE, mostly in dialects from northern England. If you're looking for evidence, try watching Emmerdale or Coronation Street, which are British soap operas. I know my mum still uses it. She's from Sheffield.
@MattE.Эллен Does your mom know Julie Andrews? I bet they do.
I heard (probably badly) that Dick van Dyke actually had a really good Cockney accent in rehearsals for Mary Poppins but the Americans on the set couldn't understand him, so they made him American it up. Maybe I heard that from Dick van Dyke himself. We haven't talked lately so it's probably an old memory.
@Mitch No. That is not descriptive of a pie slice. It is any-shaped area. Even odd, unsymmetrical shapes apply.
@Mitch Hmm, I think I take that back: Geometry. a plane figure bounded by two radii and the included arc of a circle.
Haha, dictionary.com just asked me what my favorite word is. Like I would have a "favorite" word the way I have a favorite chair or favorite bike. Or that I would give that idea any serious thought at all.
@crl Go with what @Mitch said. It appears to be exactly right.
@Robusto It is the technical word for that concept (elementary geometry terminology). But it is not what everyday people use. 'the area of a circle bounded by an angle' is probably a good what to say it. I like 'pie slice' but that's too informal. probably.
@Robusto anybody who wouldn't think it is a question too nerdy to even contemplate would have trouble choosing among their many favorites. "How about 'syzygy'? but then there's 'miasma'. I'm forgetting 'piglet'. We can't leave out ... did I mention 'shim'? 'tinkerty-tonk'?'Heterologous'? Hey, where is everybody going? I'm not finished. There's 'facetious' and 'cwm' and ..."
When a God loves a shepherdess very much, he turns into a bull/goose/golden cloud and they have a special cuddle - the result is one of God's children.
Generally you want to avoid one of these kids - they cause no end of trouble
I am watching a movie and this sentence is from the movie.
If you are gay, why were you so unchubby in the shower?
What does unchubby mean? since I did not find it in the dictionary.
When a God loves a shepherdess very much, he turns into a bull/goose/golden cloud and they have a special cuddle - the result is one of God's children.
Generally you want to avoid one of these kids - they cause no end of trouble
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…