Search options (Page 120 of 152)

Sol, here's an example of how the highlight-capture problem works:

I tried to capture everything from "In this city" to and through "price of his bones."  The capture was extended to the beginning of the paragraph, and to the space after 'bone.'.  Whether the problem lies in Windows, IE, or your web page, it prevents me from writing the comment I want on the text to which the comment appertains.

Maybe the surest solution would be to allow comments to overlap.  That would complicate both the capture and selection mechanism, but (especially with X-line format) I can see solutions.

This is a regular source of frustration to me as a reviewer.  Nor can it help the writer reviewed that I have to explain in the comment that the comment applies to text other than than highlighted.

Postscript:  The problem occurs even if I only extend the capture to the end of the paragraph.  I have to stop it after the penultimate word, whereup on the capture is extended to the last word--but not to the period ending the sentence.

This is a recurring pain in tender places.

No.  I read the piece in full before I comment.  Otherwise I'm commenting without knowing the work or chapter in full.  I don't want to call anything out until I'm immersed in the author's voice.  I want to be able to recognize foreshadowing.  I want to place comments that fit the whole work.

And sometimes I want to speak first about how I'm having trouble with a character's voice throughout, or about continuity from previous chapters, or about the limits of my expertise.  These and many other comments are best placed up front, not on the first word of the text.

You can edit the comment, but you can't edit the text it captures.  And that is what the interactive environment insists on oh-so-helpfully botching.

It would also be nice to have a leading comment are as well as a final comment area.  Some things are best said up front.

William Safire was known to write "Meet my pet, Peeve."  I guess it was rubbing his ankles, too.

The longer something hangs on by a thread, the stronger that thread appears.

If I understand correctly, if the Pilot Wave theory is true we are back to extreme sensitivity to initial conditions and chaos rules at the quantum level as well as the macro level.  The (severly stunted) poet in me likes that.

But poetry is not physics.

There's an alternative to the Copenhagen Interpretation called the Pilot Wave Theory.  It is said to explain the observed events at least as well, and an article that showed up in, I tnink, phys.org, says that it might better explain the wave function collapse.

See also http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/What_is_fate.html .

In  The Great Divorce, C.S.Lewis had George MacDonald say, "They are both right, maybe.  Do not fash yourself over it."  And another gent has a dog tell us, "And Goodness only knowses/The noselessness of man."

I like that last line more and more as time goes by.

Some of you know that I have been on a deathbed vigil for my mother.  The vigil is over.

I will be active here, in the spirit of throwing myself into my work.  But it won't be steady over the next few days.

Martin went three quarters of the way around the block to turn an encounter into an unnecessary confrontation.  He smashed a man's head repeatedly against the pavement without justification, for which he could have been charged with assault with a deadly weapon, had he lived.  These facts were presented to the jury.

George Zimmerman had a history of tutoring youths, white and black alike.  He ran a public campaign to prosecute a boy--the son of a white cop--who had attacked a black neighbor youth, and who was apparently being protected by the blue shield.  (The campaign was successful.)  He left his truck to carry out the directions of the police dispatcher, and he was returning to his truck, also under instructions of the dispatcher, when he was attacked.

Bill Whittle presents the case here:
http://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DEbu6Yv … Y8_gCxLnlg .  You can say that the liver damage does not prove drug abuse, and you'd be right.  But it's consistant with it, and Martin's own web posts strongly indicate that he was a user.

Reports of Martin's character indicate that it changed greatly in the previous few years.  The changes are consistant with (again, not proving) the drug cocktail which he himself said he (mis)used.  The personality changes that are reported to follow from abuse of that drug are also consistant with his behavior on the night he attempted to kill a witness, and lost his life in the attempt.

Blame his environment if you must; there's no doubt he was failed by a school system more concerned with hiding its failures than protecting its charges.  But he attempted to kill a witness to his presence, and lost his life in the attempt.

There's already one deadline, but another, by which Alina is sure to find out, might not hurt.  If Alina is away ... and Kat responds anyway to the thought that Alina might know it might make her a greater specter.

And that would eliminate the need for the suicide, and put the fear of the carpet back in Kat.

If it was generally know that Alina was away, the blackmailers might not fear her ... and they might be terrorized by her apparent return.

It would also be very, very good to remember what each member has read and use that info in deciding what to present as a 'new' item on each forum thread.

Decoupling the presentation of threads from forums (soft or hard links, in file system parlance) would be a help, along with a 'forum' that gathers the new threads from all forums.  Giving the thread creator a list of topical 'forums' in which the thread might also appear would help.  And giving users the ability to create their own 'forums' that gather threads of interest would also be nice.

Of course, allowing groups and forums to be hierarchical would be nice, too, as long as we are hanging out wishlists.

The difficulty of all of this depends on the clarity and form of the 'data model' on which all of this is based.  Refactoring is always easiest when it's done as the code is designed.