Just...................whatever

{{ Learn something new instead of using the tried and tested old ways? Very unhobbit like if you ask me, only trouble will come of it mark my crabbit words! (Is there no such thing as a basic keyboard you can plug into a tablet? ) }}

Tablet keyboards are a thing, yeah, though they're more commonly Bluetooth (and battery-powered) than plug-in. I've never owned one myself, though I know some people who have. Given the huge range in prices that come up from quick Amazon and Google Shopping searches, I'd imagine there's also significant variation in quality (presumably not a strictly linear relationship), but I can't really speak to that.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{ Learn something new instead of using the tried and tested old ways? Very unhobbit like if you ask me, only trouble will come of it mark my crabbit words!   }}

That would be me. I still pull out my old mechanical typewriter from time to time. I love the clatter of all those mechanical bits, the Ding of the bell and slamming the carriage return home to start the next line. If they could make a smart phone like that, with a rotary dial of course, I might be interested....

At some point I should buy an electric piano.  Within a month of moving into my current apartment my neighbor unloaded a small upright piano on me.  I thought I'd be playing it, but something about being surrounded by neighbors makes me shy and it's been largely untouched.  An electric piano would solve that problem: plug in headphones and nobody knows what you're up to.

But when you hit the key of an electric piano, there's no lever making a hammer swing against a string.  I just can't get excited by that, no matter how good they are.  I see professional musicians playing their hearts out on electric pianos, but I just can't make myself do it.

My nephew feels the same about his electric violin. Great for practice with headphones but doesn't speak to you in all those subtle and complex tactile/auditory ways that make it personal and fun.
Speaking of pianos, while freeloading on high speed wifi and looking for something totally different I stumbled on this by accident. Now I want to try it SO BADLY, but I just can't think of an appropriate venue out here in Bogland...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI8sc_D86sg&t=2s&ab_channel=DavidBerglas

How'd he make the chandeliers shake?

I'm guessing a fine black silk thread that led over to a wall and down to where one of the "waiters" could start things trembling and swinging. Plenty strong and nearly invisible...

You think like a magician.

Oh! Can I be a mathemagician?

You can't imagine how much force I had to apply to get autocorrect to let me make that joke

Auto-correct was a mistake.

just donated to this bookshop in Gaza totally destroyed by an airstrike. Stories about bookshops always get me but this one is very poignant and sad. I hope it gets rebuilt and restocked very soon.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/21/donations-flood-in-to-restore-gaza-bookshop-destroyed-by-israeli-airstrikes

A bookshop is one of the few things that can make life bearable under such conditions. I'll look into donating.

thanks Halfy you are right, bookshops in a place like that are a haven of normality and hope. It must have been heart breaking for that poor man. Glad to see that international donations are flooding in to help.

I just found some of my work on one of those essay mills, where people pay to use already written essays, I was really shocked and angry so I emailed the website and told them I would take legal action if they didn't delete it. Thankfully they replied and asked for the URL so they could delete it, I have no idea how they got hold of my work but it could have been something like Grammarly or Plagscan I guess. Although Grammarly seems a legit company. But still it could have caused problems with my uni, so I let them know. How very dare they!

{{ Cheeky buggers indeed- but suppose you can see it as a compliment they thought your work to be good, good enough to nick. }}

Oh, it gets worse. There's a pay-for website called chegg, in which students can pose questions and "experts" will answer. They will fully work out questions that are obviously test or homework questions. Totally destroyed the beauty of a take-home test and homework, where you supposedly find if students can do something when not under the false time pressure of a test.

But what really gets me is the "experts" don't know the more arcane fields, so you can trip students up...sweet to know they can pay to fail. Our university looked into doing a lawsuit against them, but decided more would spring up if that one was taken down - a decision I totally disagree with. I want to nail the bastards.

wow! that sucks.
What I want to know is how they got my work in the first place. The only way would be when I used the grammar checkers and they stored it. That teaches me.

That's pretty fucked up that a grammar checker is copying and selling your work. Now we know how these things can afford to operate "for free".

I wont be using them again that's for sure. I doubt if it is Grammarly though, it probably one of the dodgy ones.

Ah, but Figgs, did you read the terms of service? [lawyer joke]

May not be a joke in this case. They could CYA with some vague verbiage knowing that nothing can be hidden on the internet.

Basically it was my fault for being naive. I shouldn't have used the grammar/spelling/plag checkers in the first place, but my grammar is terrible so.....I did use them.

Most word processors have simple grammar checkers, but they seem to spend all their energy telling you that you're using passive voice. Of COURSE we are, it's an academic paper!