Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

PasturesNew

My keyboard's got 90% of the letters rubbed off, mind you, I never look at the keyboard anyway and am usually sitting in the complete dark once it's nightfall as there's no main lightbulb in this room and there's just a corner lamp that comes on with a low wattage energy saving bulb, so I'd not be able to see anyway.

chris_m

PasturesNew wrote: »

My keyboard's got 90% of the letters rubbed off, mind you, I never look at the keyboard anyway and am usually sitting in the complete dark once it's nightfall as there's no main lightbulb in this room and there's just a corner lamp that comes on with a low wattage energy saving bulb, so I'd not be able to see anyway.

I couldn't manage like that. I need at least half the keys to be visible and clear as to what they are, especially as I do use two keyboards at times - which are of different sizes.

This discussion reminds me of a couple of, IMO, funnies;

1) the time when we swapped the keycaps around on a colleague's keyboard.

2) The time when I was staying with French friends and we wanted to look something up. They pushed the keyboard across to me, I took one look and shoved it straight back. Even my hamfisted typing can cope with a QWERTY layout, but no chance on an AZERTY one even though it's only a few letters located in different places.

LydiaJ

ivyleaf wrote: »

I joined the Forces, was posted to Germany, married a serviceman and lived there for several years

My aunt did that too. She was in the WAAF during the war, and married a navigator in the RNZAF who transferred to the RAF at some point. Which service(s) were the two of you?

zagubov wrote: »

UCL requires you to study a foreign language in every degree.

DS won't be applying there, then!

Doozergirl

SingleSue wrote: »

There wasn't a ban in our school, I did the optional science and language 'O' levels plus the office practice RSA and food and nutrition 'O' level (although you could only do that one if you were in the top sets, lower sets did home economics)

Josh chose to do cookery in his choices, they wouldn't let him as he was too bright, so they put him in business studies instead.

Which is what is wrong with schools, really. Cooking is a very real career choice. Even if you don't want to be a chef, it is an immediately useful skill to possess. Not many people are confident cooks and even less people understand what a balanced diet really consists of. We need far more food education!

It's fair enough when a choice of subject just doesn't fit into a timetable block, but persuading kids to take more intelligent options 'just because' is a bit silly. Kids won't take vocational courses as long as schools poo-poo them. Just how many of the actual subject labels we take from school are genuinely useful in later life?

ivyleaf

chris_m wrote: »

There's one on the 5 key in the right-hand numeric keypad too, if your keyboard has that.

Ooh, so there is! Thanks :T


Lydia I was a student nurse in the RAF (they trained their own nurses in those days). OH was in the Army. Most of my cohort married servicemen, not surprisingly Not all Brits, either - one married a chap who was doing his national service with the German airforce, and another married someone in the USAAF and has brought up her family in Iowa.

CKhalvashi

PasturesNew wrote: »

My keyboard's got 90% of the letters rubbed off, mind you, I never look at the keyboard anyway and am usually sitting in the complete dark once it's nightfall as there's no main lightbulb in this room and there's just a corner lamp that comes on with a low wattage energy saving bulb, so I'd not be able to see anyway.

My MacBook has similar, though the keyboard lights up, the keys are very worn. I need to bang a few hard to get them to work, especially the space bar and arrows.

It's lasted about 8 years of reasonably heavy use though, so it may be time to get a new one soon, in fact I don't think it's ever really been switched off properly in that time.

Seen someone I know tonight, was asked a fairly normal question and suddenly got very naturally defensive, so I seriously need to relax, so with what I need to do over the weekend may not be on the internet much.

It's been overall a bad few weeks and I don't want to rub it off on you guys, so have a great weekend, and sending dodgy hugs :grouphug:

vivatifosi

chris_m wrote: »

I couldn't manage like that. I need at least half the keys to be visible and clear as to what they are, especially as I do use two keyboards at times - which are of different sizes.

This discussion reminds me of a couple of, IMO, funnies;

1) the time when we swapped the keycaps around on a colleague's keyboard.

2) The time when I was staying with French friends and we wanted to look something up. They pushed the keyboard across to me, I took one look and shoved it straight back. Even my hamfisted typing can cope with a QWERTY layout, but no chance on an AZERTY one even though it's only a few letters located in different places.

Pastures and I both touch type. If you swapped the letters on our worn out keyboards we may even be able to tell by touch which ones had been swapped. This was certainly the case with my desktop keyboard, less so my laptop though.

Pyxis

chris_m wrote: »

If we wanted to do languages, Latin was the compulsory first one, French the compulsory second, then we could choose from German, Spanish or Greek. I went for German and, IIRC, it was one of my two bottom grades whilst French was one of my five top ones and Latin one of the middle ones.

Hardly used any of them in the best part of 40 years since.

Oh yes you have!
Every time you talk, or write, you are using that knowledge. Every time you try to make sense of a word you don't understand, you're using them. Every time you think about English or world history, you use them.
Every time you look at recipes and wines, you use them.

You'd be absolutely surprised at how useful they've been, probably subliminally.
(See response to next quote).

ivyleaf wrote: »

Likewise - because I was deemed "academic" it precluded me from learning typing, sewing or cookery, all of which would have been a lot more useful later than most of the other things I learned.

German turned out to be unexpectedly useful, mind you and it was my favourite subject.

I believe very, very strongly that 'education' isn't about producing factory fodder, ie. people who are being trained to do a 'useful' job of work. It's about being introduced to a wide range of subjects, which together produce some enlightenment.
From that, one might go on to specialise, and so learn how to enquire, research and self-teach.

After that, then one can be trained to do a job of work, at any level.

And anyway, I have discovered that even some very obscure things that I learned at school, be it Primary or Secondary, have actually been quite useful, as they added to the general pot of knowing stuff, and hence experience.

Besides, I was once able to answer the £1,000,000 question on "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" solely because I had done Latin! And I bet the contestant who answered it correctly wouldn't have said that Latin was useless! :rotfl:

(Gets down off soapbox and goes to make cup of Camellia sinensis).

GDB2222 wrote: »

I should add that it's highly unlikely that the head of the physics lab marked the entrance exam papers himself. So, it seems that my answer paper was copied and passed round the department to have a good laugh at.

I love reading those samples of howlers that kids make!

Will toddle off to google and find some!

Pyxis

Bless...............!






And....one for Ivyleaf! (And me! )................)

Pyxis

LydiaJ wrote: »

I do put a bit of a bite into some of my marking comments. Such as "Does this seem likely???" when the candidate has calculated the speed of the car as 0.000362 m/s or something like that.

I doubt my clutch control would allow me to go that slowly.

Yorkie1 wrote: »

You'd think that if you were going to invent a name, you wouldn't use Mavis, would you (I have a close family relative called Mavis, so feel able to make that joke!)

.

Did you know that Mavis comes from Old French and means song thrush?

I bet you like it now!

CKhalvashi wrote: »

It's been overall a bad few weeks and I don't want to rub it off on you guys, so have a great weekend, and sending dodgy hugs :grouphug:

Oh dear. Poor you. I hope you have a good relax and recharge. ((((((((CK))))))))))

vivatifosi wrote: »

Pastures and I both touch type. If you swapped the letters on our worn out keyboards we may even be able to tell by touch which ones had been swapped. .

How would you tell, if the letters don't have "braille" on them?