colinian
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Posts posted by colinian
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The Google toolbar has a spell checker that's free and fantastic. It works in any web form (like this one I'm typing in right now). With your cursor in the form, click on the ABC Check icon on the Google toolbar. It highlights any word it doesn't understand in red. If you click on one of these red words you get a list of suggested spellings a lot like MS Word's speller, plus Edit, Ignore, and Add to Dictionary choices. If you click on one of the suggested words, it replaces what was in red. If you click on Edit, it lets you type a replacement. When you're done, just click in any empty space in the web form and then from the pop-up menu select Stop spell checking. If there are no misspelled words, clicking on the ABC Check icon displays No spelling errors were identified.
Very cool! Very free! Give it a try. I think you'll like it.
Colin
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I've just heard that John Tucker, also known as JET, passed away on the weekend. He was on vacation and apparently happy. I had received an email from him only a couple of days ago.
JET was the author of Alan and Bryan, Ron and Bryan, Ron and Matt, Empire, Super Jeff and (with Cody), Ciao.
Oh, man, that's really sad. I've read a couple of his stories and liked them a lot.
Colin
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Colin, If you cut it, it grows back. Honestly
Yes, if I have my hair cut, it will grow back. However, if it's cut too short then my mom would force me to have it cut again when it's way too short to be cut. After a few months I'd end up looking sheared. Like a sheep. Somewhere in Australia. No, Colin and barbers don't get along when my mom's along. I go alone, and I don't tell her which barber I use so she can't call them and conspire about how much should be cut off. The barber I go to understands exactly how little I want cut off. I like my hair. I like it longish. No changes are wanted or necessary.
Colin
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Colin, if you look like Spike with auburn hair, well, your boyfriend's a lucky young man. Brains and looks, hubba-hubba. ...Of course, you're welcome to remind him how lucky he is. ;)
Actually, I'm the one who's lucky. My BF is Chinese, has the most fantastic eyes that I fall into when I look at him, and this sexy spiky hair, and the greatest smile ever.
Colin
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You don't even know who that is? It's Spike Spiegel, the badass bounty hunter from Coybow Beebop. Your avatar is one of the coolest anime characters ever and you don't even know it.
I was going to give you props for taste, but you don't get props for random chance.
Nope, I never heard of Spike Spiegel or Cowboy Beebop. I'm not into anime. Lots of kids at my HS are, we even have an Anime club. I'm more into weird off-the-wall kinds of comix like Pearls Before Swine. I think I deserve props for taste just for that!
Anyway, my avatar looks a LOT like me. If someone sat down to draw me, my avatar is what their drawing would look like. Except my hair would ba auburn. Like it is in real life.
Colin
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Well, if you insist....
WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!?!
Anyway, that avatar has WAY too much hair. Please cut some off and send it to me
-- we're coming into Summer here and I hate the top of my head getting sunburnt. Graeme
Hey, Graeme, has my mom been talking to you? Cut my hair? My beeootiful hair? That I've been nurturing and developing and training for like over 15 years? NFW! It stays! All of it! Right on my head!
NOI, but f you want some, you'll have to find it elsewhere! 
Colin
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A friend of mine sent me an email tonight. This part of the email makes perfcet sense to him and to me:
I was watching a black comedienne on HBO tonight and she did a bit about gay marriage. She said if you're against it, then simply don't do it. She said the way to save marriage isn't to deny it to gays, it's to ban divorce. Gays getting married doesn't destroy marriage, divorce does. Makes perfect sense to me.Colin
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I know that Graeme is going to freak and yell at me when I say that my avatar looks a lot like me, except for the hair color. Mine isn't black, it's auburn (red-brown). When I have the time I'll edit the avatar to change the hair color. I originally found it on Awesomedude, I think, or maybe somewhere else. Anyway, because it looks like me and doesn't seem to be copyrighted, I've appropriated it!!
Colin
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To some extent, yes. Depends on the "City" or the area generally. I travel quite a bit so I do see this some. Metro areas Like Atlanta and all of Florida are losing the accent. In fact, in most areas of Florida, you would think you were talking to someone in Cali. The most unique accent was in pre-Katrina New Orleans. Natives there have an accent almost identical to a Brooklyn accent but a little less nasal and not as fast. Mississippi really doesn't have any large cities. But even in Jackson area you can see a bit of the drawl fade. But, we got guys that really talk like Larry the Cable Guy too. And some women who still sound like Scarlot O'Hara. I think the more rural the area, the more prominent the drawl. City dwellers tend to be clustered around more people who have moved to the South from other areas like northern and western states, and the melting pot effect seems to dissolve the drawl. I also think in the age of mass communication, cable tv, etc etc. the more we hear "normal" speech the more the coloquial speech disappears. Hope that answers that.
Rick
Rick, Thank you, that's a great answer.
Colin
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BTW, I have no idea what IEDs are. InExplicableDumbShits?
I looked up IED and the most common definition is: "Improvised explosive device, an explosive device often used in unconventional warfare" (from Wikipedia).
THANK GOD for IEDs??? WTF is THAT? Sounds like a threat to me. Someone should get a bunch of lawers to go after these spawn of the devil "christian nazis" before they do what they promise on their signs!
And look how they've appropriated the rainbow for their hate posters!
If you think I'm pissed, you're right! I'M PISSED!
Colin
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And Colin, I'll thank you to not say American/Canadian accent as that's just about like saying Australian/New Zealand accent, or more closely to home, New York/Texas accent. I do think that there is a 'mellowing' of accents within the English language though, primarily due to TV and film. Eventually we may all speak Californian. (Let me go kill myself now, before it happens to me!)
Let me just add as a true child of the South, that my southern drawl is completely intact, thank y'all very much.
Rick
My teacher talked about the blending of accents in the U.S. in my Communications Studies class. She said that in large cities in Southern states the southern drawl is disappearing. Do you agree?
Colin
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I don't think it's even quite that simple Graeme. Many 'foreign' singers sing beautifully in English, yet cannot speak a word of it. Quite simply, they are making music with their voices, and as such, do so without any accent, if that's the sound they're trying to achieve. If the major market is the US English sound, that's what their voice coaches have them sing like.
And Colin, I'll thank you to not say American/Canadian accent as that's just about like saying Australian/New Zealand accent, or more closely to home, New York/Texas accent. I do think that there is a 'mellowing' of accents within the English language though, primarily due to TV and film. Eventually we may all speak Californian. (Let me go kill myself now, before it happens to me!)
Yeah, I guess I should have said "Northern Calfiornia/British Columbia" accent.
There's a girl at my HS who moved here from Vancouver BC this year, and IMO she "has no accent" -- except when she says "schedule" which she pronounces "shed-yule" while we pronounce it "sked-jewel".
Colin
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Yanks have more of an accent than anybody. I mean, the British invented the darn language. Well...William the Conqueror did after he invaded in 1066. English was Germanic, but Will's French influence changed it to the language we know today. Modern English is the bastard child of Old English and Norman.
So?that was?pointless. Um, I guess I was saying something about accents. Americans have them more than Britains. But I?ve been told that Oregonians have the subtlest accents in the English-speaking community and it is hard to distinguish their nuances.
I have a question. I'm real curious about something me and my friends notice listening to music. Why do British, Australian, and New Zealand singers seem to lose their native accent and sound like they have an American/Canadian accent when they sing, but their native accent when they speak?
Colin
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I love Leave Myself Behind. After the first time I read it, I wrote to Bart Yates to tell him how much I like his novel, and asked where he got the title. It's from a line in one of the poems in the story. I was embarrassed; I should have discovered that, but I'm not into poetry so I kind of just glanced at each of the poems without actually reading them. So, duly chagrined, the next time I read it I actually read each of the poems. I was amazed. they really help the plot line of the story.
......But don't you end up just loving him to death?I want to actually meet Noah and be his friend. I wish I had a friend, just a friend, not a BF, exactly like Noah. I think there's a little bit of Noah in me, but just a little bit.
A warning, sort of. Since I loved LMB so much, I bought Bart Yate's other novel The Brothers Bishop. It creeped me out, and I didn't like it. It's as dark as LMB is bright. If you like dark novels with bad people doing bad things to each other, then you might enjoy reading TBB.
Colin
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This is both funny, and tragic. It's from the Opus Funny mailing list. You can subscribe to this list by sending a blank email to:
maiser@zz9-za.com?body=sub%20funny%0D%0AEXIT
If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.The firearm death rate in Washington, D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 for the same period.
That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.
Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington, D.C. immediately.
Colin
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My test results:
Economic Left/Right: -4.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.15
I'm almost spot-on with the Dalai Lama. At first I was surprised at my result, but then, thinking about it, it's pretty much the way I do think socially and politically. But, hey, I'm only 16-going-on-17, so what do I know?
This was fun! I'm going to have Chris and Doug take it tonight, and I'll bring the URL to school tomorrow and give it to my Psych teacher. That should be fun!
Colin
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TR, Great comment, I had forgotten most of that.
You left out Cicero was also a politician.
That explains it all.
Of course, Cicero was outed when the scrolls containing lascivious messages that he kept sending to the boy pages who apprenticed at the Roman Senate were discovered by Antony and sent to Caesar.
Colin
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That was my 1,842nd cousin Cedric
He was always the adventurous bird, and the family thought he'd end up in trouble one day...
Thank you for your concern
Sorry, Camy, but that wasn't Cedric. Cedric's has been seen wandering around the Cosumnes River Preserve near Galt, California, which is in the Central Valley south of Elk Grove and Sacramento. I think the Emu who was shot had stolen Cedric's identity. You know how Cedric was, to put it mildly, unconcerned about what email he answered and what information he provided. Fortunately, he won't have to worry about being shot (except by cameras) where he is now.
I suggest you try and contact him on his cell phone (assuming he hasn't let the batteries run down, as usual!) and tell him that he should stay right there and enjoy himself. And stay away from email!
Colin
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I'm just lurking here, I don't know enough to add anything that others are saying much better anyway, but I'm sure learning a lot! Thank you, guys!
Colin
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Colin
You can skip the notepad step and dump the results directly into word. It will retain the formatting that the text had on the web page.
I've got an HP Mediacenter running XP/mediacenter edition and it rocks.
JS
JS,
I've found some web pages that, when the text is copied directly into Word, it results in a real mess. I've also tried Paste Special and pick Unformatted. But, again, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, especially the font and line spacing. I found Notepad as a work-around always works for me. Even though it's an extra step, I never have to go back and redo the paste. I HATE to have to redo anything, and I'm willing to take extra steps to avoid redos. Yeah, I know, that's dumb, but that's me!!
Colin
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Looks like we all have different ways of saving a story.
From the webpage, I do a save as to the folder I want the story in.
I open Word, then open the file.
I change the format from the webpage to that of a word doc by clicking one of the buttons in the lower left hand corner.
And since the font is usually white on the webpage, I change the font color.
I then change the margins, add the header to include the page numbers, save it as a word doc and I'm done.
How do you handle multiple chapters? One Word doc per chapter, or do you merge them?
Colin
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I like to read stories once all chapters have been posted. I like to have them on my local disk drive to go back to without having to search the internet for them. I have the same formatting problems so here's what I do (WinXP Media Center Edition 2005):
Open MS Word 2003
Open Notepad
Open the web page
Highlight the story
Right-click on one of the highlighted lines and select Copy
Switch to Notepad
Right-click in the Notepad window and select Paste (or do Edit - Paste from the menu)
Press Ctrl+A (or do Edit - Select All from the menu)
Right-click on one of the highlighted lines and select Copy
Switch to Word
Right-click in the Word new blank document window and select Paste (or do Edit - Paste from the menu)
Save the document naming it the title of the story in my Other's Stories folder
As new chapters are posted, use this way to copy them into the same Word document
I know this sounds messy, but it's really pretty fast to do, and it eleiminates all of the strange formatting problems when copying from a web page to MS Word. Then I can go back and read the entire story whenever I want to. I don't bother printing the stories, I read them on my screen. No trees cut down and ground up to make paper, no cheimcals dumped into the environment, nothing to shred.
Colin
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Hey, BeatWrit,
Wow, Seeing is going to be an interesting story on an interesting topic. I can imagine all kinds of different ways it could go from here. Keep writing and post it post haste!
Anyway, are you planning to change your life and dedicate it to finishing this story? I sure hope so!
Colin
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There should be no place in society for their brand of hate mongering or total lack of acceptance that we, humankind, are all different in one way or another. It wouldn't surprise me if they began to say that left handed people are the spawn of the Devil next.
IMO, this unnamed "preacher" is the spawn of the devil. Like they taught me when I went to Catholic elementary school: God = love. Devil = hate.
Colin
-- we're coming into Summer here and I hate the top of my head getting sunburnt. 
Scan to donate
10 wounded in gunfight at Halloween Castro street party
in News & Views
Posted
The latest news (from kcbs.com) on the shooting:
There was heavy security, with police checking for weapons, but with such a huge section of the city of San Francisco hosting the Halloween festivities, with many ways to enter, and a crowd estimate by police to be over 150,000, it's basically impossible to stop someone who wanted to carry a gun into the area.
Colin