FISH!

[Chesto]

Hi. I was shy of presenting myself here , before. :sweat: Reticence is the curse of my generation. That, and bad dental care. But , now , here I am! Having been posting a bit already, I now feel as though I have nothing to lose... all remaining self-respect having gone west.

My main interest: dropping pebbles into still pools. Tried 'Pooh Sticks', but there just wasn't the splash factor.

 

BUT I really would like some of that south Welsh fish! As long as it isn't from Haverfford West. I can get all the oil fed fish I want from the North Sea :yucky: . Please. Fish.

[samroski]

Sticks float, pebbles don't.

Pebbles (or preferably rocks) may may help to knock out some fish though- try dropping from a height. Bait not needed.

The only guarantee, though, is a large fish stick coming your way soon...

[Malchik]

Hi there.

 

I see from other posts you have an individual sense of humour. Excellent. My only advice (which I learned the hard way) is to make it very clear when you are being, or trying to be, funny. There are so many here who don't have English as a first language (and that includes those from the USA :biggrin: ) it is easy to cause accidental offense.

 

But I am very hard to offend.

 

See you around.

[Abramul]

I say try building a smallish catapult of one flavour or another. Pebbles are kind of small.

 

Some sort of disc launcher might be neat too. I've wondered before how well larger rocks skip, but it gets hard to throw them at the right angle and speed. Not sure if spin has much effect past stabilizing it.

[TheTerminator2004]

Well, you're not really new anymore, but since you asked so nicely, here you go:

 

http://www.thenexusforums.com/uploads//monthly_10_2007/post-28227-1193568599.gif

 

Welcome! :)

[Chesto]

OH JOY UNCONFINED! I HAVE AN ORIGINAL FISHY STICK! I'll stop shouting now. :whistling:

 

The Terminator- you have made this old man very happy. And I expect that is the LAST time you want to hear THAT statement.

 

Samroski- One of my oldest 'Friends'. I am deeply touched that you have come to my Debs Ball! Back in the 60's we had a saying ( well, we had millions of 'em but...) 'What if somebody gave a war and nobody came', vis a vis Vietnam. As I wrote this thread, the paraphrase of that came to mind: ...what if nobody comes to post. But here you are, first in the queue. Thanks mate. And thanks, also, for the fishing advice. The whole pebble thing just wasn't doing the job. I'd forgotten the golden rule: scaring the fish is not the point; stunning them is.

 

Good to see you too, Abramul! The secret, which I expect you know, to skipping rocks is to get as low as you can to the surface of the water. Large stones are always a problem: even the diskus (sp?) technique doesn't really work. But... as much as your enthusiastic contribution is appreciated, I do have to point out that, unless the fish are actually sticking their heads out for a looksee, the whole skipping strategy falls down. However...don't let that discourage you. Thanks again.

[Xeniorn]

A 60 year old Oblivion player. The world obviously has an inexhaustible supply of surprises...

 

I was always wondering how does exactly someone who was 40 years old when computer games came to be starts playing them. So what's your story? :D

 

Are you really 60? :)

[Chesto]

Malchik-

 

Thankyou for the sage advice vis a vis the 'faces'. My 'Friends' have expended similar energies in their , often futile, attempts at turning me aside from that cliff which I seem determined to hurl myself over- probably crying ' I regret nothing!' as I disappear from sight. Again.

 

Here's a thing. A , more or less, serious philosophical point, if you will. I know the efficacy of the 'faces' in helping to keep the 'hundreds at any one time' people who are posting one another from 'misunderstandings' of nuanced, subtly or otherwise, written speech. I know that it makes the seemingly impossible job that you moderator chaps ( -ettes?) do that much easier, though I don't suppose that 'easier' is the best word to apply to this. BTW for that sterling work, thankyou. ( yes, my nose is a bit cold and wet- flu, you know- will remove it now) But...

 

Don't know if it's a generational thing, or a cultural thing, but I find it difficult, if not impossible , to use them. To me they are like the 'stop'- 'go' people at the road works. I make what I think is a comic comment and then I :biggrin: which gives the reader permission to find it funny, or not, but never to take offence, if you see what I mean. It seems a bit patronizing, or condescending, to have to 'smiley face' to let someone know how they should feel.

 

I wonder if the use of these 'faces' doesn't actually inhibit real conversational flow. Because... misunderstandings and their solution to everyone's mutual satisfaction can be quite cathartic, leaving one feeling the real sense of ' communication ' with another human being.

 

Case in point: On another forum ( yes, I am a serial abuser) I got entangled in just such a misunderstanding. And all I had set out to do was to express gratitude to the person for their fine modding work. Well... long story short... misunderstanding- umbrage taken- umbrage returned ( all in the best possible taste ) person's Friend joined in- multidirectional umbrage, now, etc.,etc. ad whatsit.

Finally... the other person admitted that they had been off their meds that week, and that THAT had affected their judgement of what I had , in all innocence, said. I got to express appreciation of their courage in mentioning it, feel even more guilty for having set the thing off in the first place, and we all returned to dot.

Now, if I had been using 'smilies' none of that would have arisen in the first place. Admitted. But then no one on that site, or, at least, reading that thread, would have known of the difficulty that the person was having, generally, in their life. Real communication had been allowed to take place. Result: catharsis.

 

Conclusion: I accept the 'need ' for the smilies, on all fronts. Its just that, sometimes, things go better without 'em.

 

If you have been... thanks for listening.

[Chesto]

Xeniorn- I'm what you get when you mix arrested development with crypto- pre-senile- dementia. So, one could say that I'm 13 going on 78. Though it does say '60' on my birth certificate...no...that can't be right... you know what I mean.

 

Got our first PC when I was 50, for the kid of course. Didn't go online for another two years because the WWW was known as the devil's work, and number one son hadn't worked hard enough on me in the interim. First games: Chaos Island, Trepasser, Baldurs Gate, Grim Fandango, Monster Truck Madness....

Still have NEVER played online. Though would like to. Seem like a bad tempered lot, though, online gamers.

 

Expect to still be playing Oblivion until.... And will probably never finish it.

[Malchik]

Ah, Chesto, I wasn't advocating the use of smilies. If you check my posts you'll find I use them less often than we have blue moons. It was merely an example of one way to avoid accidents. I am fiendishly pedantic in both what I write and what I say - except for the odd occasions when typing at 3 am after 2 bottles of claret. I mean what I say. So I get irritated by those who effectively begin 'I know what you REALLY meant' or 'I know what you said but...' and start digging for subtext or reinterpreting words to suit themselves. In a face to face situation you can tell if a remark you made has misfired and anyone you are talking to can see your face and hear your nuances. In writing neither of those is possible and IMO it is incumbent on every poster to take more care than they ever would in speaking. Sadly I suspect that, although I am not unique on the forum, I am in the minority. Many posters fire off the first thing that comes into their heads and don't even check it over before pressing the send button.

 

So, my opinion is that we all owe a duty of care to ensure our posts are as unambiguous as possible. Those who have excellent command of the language may do it simply by wording but those who do not can use smilies or whatever.

 

Still, as I hope was made clear, this is nothing more than a personal opinion which has about as much chance of influencing the average 14 year old forum poster as a rectal emission from a tiny, bloodsucking parasite.