The Dementors of Azkaban
Or Microsoft Marketing as they are usually known.
Hey kids, fancy an all-inclusive break to the magical Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida? Well, you're in luck. All students between the age of 13-22 are eligible for the once-in-a-lifetime trip. There is, however, just one catch. In order to get their hands on the top prize, they must first complete a series of soul- …
I suffered for my music, and now it's your turn. Neil Innes, Rutland Weekend Television
Hmm, WordPerfect on the other hand....
Fellow students were so impressed by Reveal codes to help remove the fractal and seemingly infinite embedded chaos that was sending their formatting haywire - the fact that it was a recognised IT course was depressing....
"They're not interested in HP any more..."
It's not been the same since Fiorina left...
I have boys so they always preferred to dress up as Mark Hurd on World HP CEO Day at school though maybe their motivation was as much scatological* than gender conforming if I know nine-year-olds
*penultimate paragraph
Harry who?
I have found that a short introduction to Corwin and Grayswandir at the approximate age of 12-14 cures the HP malaise in about a week. It can also be followed by a Ursula Le Guin refresher a few years after that just to make sure.
There is no recurrences and no reinfections. Ever.
Quoting junior on the subject of HP (a few years after that): "What? Harry? There is no depth and no ideas in this. It is a toddler book".
Ursula Le Guin. Read that at the age of 10 - the intro said 11.
I am surprised you groked it. The depth and breadth in Earthsea or god forbid the Hainish cycle is not something I would recommend to young ones.
While I do not limit what my kids read, if I see them grabbing a book from that shelf I would recommend them to wait for a few years.
"Quoting junior on the subject of HP (a few years after that): "What? Harry? There is no depth and no ideas in this. It is a toddler book". "
That's a tad harsh, but taking the source is a young'un it's pretty fair :)
The first three HP books are solid young adult fiction. Tightly written but immersive universe building, managing to do a spot of subtle discussion about class and privilege without going overboard, plus a number of the usual YA adult themes.
After the success of those, JK's publishers seem to have said "stop editing for brevity and story telling, go full Tolkien* please" and while there's still an OK story in there, it's so bloated to make it almost pointless. Can't really blame her for it either, although I think she'd have been better off writing half the length books and then releasing massive appendices with all the back guff in it.
Whatever your opinion of HP, I would hope most people would still prefer it to the other popular series at the time, Twilight. At least HP has a somewhat typical hero story, overcomes struggles, gathers allies, confronts their demons and eventually triumphs. His "super power" being part of his tragic backstory is pretty good for such things. The majority of the minor characters in HP are better realized than the protagonists in Twiglet. And so on.
As far as theme parks go in Orlando, when I was a wee lad (1995) Disneyworld wan't even in my top five things I liked in Florida. Waterparks with terrifying slides (and I've been to French waterparks) and themeparks with more focus on rides than cute pictures and queing. Roller coasters >> Mickey
* never go full Tolkien
The series is great for non-native speakers to learn/improve upon their English. Especially if you combine the printed books with the audio books* - read it and hear a good pronounciation at the same time. It starts at an easy level and advances step by step.
The story is quite enjoyable as well, although the last book has a vibe of "just get it done and get it over with". YMMV.
Anyway, I plan to use the method for learning Italian next year (as addition to a proper language course). Harry Potter e la pietra filosofale. I know the story, so I won't get lost, and I don't mind reading it again.
* With all due respect to Jim Dale - it's got to be the Stephen Fry version.
"This can be followed up with a half blood prince 2 qualification."
Now this sounds like Microsoft Licensing.
To achieve this you need half the blood from a prince.
Opps fell for the gotcha.... half blood prince 2.
That'll be all the blood of a prince....
Pricey I know, but how can you put a a value to such quality kit.
<ahh god must post before my before my prefrontal cortex kills me for the b#^^$hit above>
Learning Office Software (no matter what vendor) is a rather pointless excercise, as the GUI and many of the concepts will change rather quickly, and office products typically aren't very good at what they are advertising. Word sucks for printed documents, Excel sucks for calculations, etc... There's usually far better alternatives outside the whole "Office" space.
Learning Dothraki or Navi, however, will get you fame and fortune and you meet interresting people who in turn will dedicate words in their conlangs to you.
Toyed with the idea a few years back. But at $120 for 1 day just to wonder around a Diagone alley replica https://www.universalorlando.com/web/en/us/theme-parks/universal-studios-florida/the-wizarding-world-of-harry-potter-diagon-alley/index.html#subnav-a that has a few roller coaster rides didn't seem to be the best way to spend a Florida afternoon. Went hunting the Dali Museum http://thedali.org/ in Tampa instead. Didn't regret that one tiny bit.
Well indeed.
You can do the studio tour just outside Watford, near to that London in the UK,and see / walk on / through the actual stuff that they used to film the films, for about £40 as an adult (I think - the cost, rather than the adulting), as well as various junior entertainments like green screen wand flying and a 'magical' broom levitating experience ("Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"). Then you don't need to go through the horror of an office experience, or flying to Florida to use office more (never heard of teleworking?)
(Mine's the one with the "Ravrnclaw" badge thanks)
Florida yes, Disney World, etc. NO. There some interesting things to do in Florida besides the overgrown tourist traps around Orlando. And it is not too far away (from Atlanta) at least to the 'Redneck Riviera' (Panama City). Though the history buff would rather go to Mobile, AL (Farragut's 'Damn the torpedoes...').
I find the whole concept of this fascinating. You still cant escape it. The child actors are now approaching their thirties. Theme parks in several places. Merchandise still everywhere, from Griffindor scarves to Slitherin pants. And a 'Fantastic Beasts' film franchise, likely to be 5 films.
When does Ms Rowling come to the conclusion that she's got enough money? Is she burning stacks of £50's to heat her mansion. Rest it JK, rest it.
Well, if people want to watch/read it, then why not...
I think Ms Rowling (officially the richest woman in the UK?) actually gives much of her excess money away to worthy charities. Certainly a greater fraction than the majority of people in the 1% do, so good luck to her.
So much bitterness in the comments from people who, despite years of trying, clearly haven't managed to learn Word yet. The formatting isn't magic, it can be learned by anyone.
I learned Word...three times! After that I said, "Fuck this!" and moved to AbiWord for personal use.
I just can't be arsed to keep relearning the damn thing every time they break change things to "Enhance my user experience"!
"You must have learned on very early versions. It hasn't really changed in over 20 years other than moving buttons to more accessible places."
I'll bite. Early versions the Mac was where it was at, but you had to withe down the full version of office on the disks. Cause each one was different 6.05 6.05a 6.05z etc kinda like windows builds. Most were unstable on mass, the select few you could install in a lab and not have problems. The macro language looked great until you tried to do anything complex. Then it became bizarre. (a find function operating slower than matching every cell in the column looking for the presence or otherwise of a value in a column iteratively)
PC versions were next, it worked better on windows, but limited. Through the 90's and 00's the fun was large documents. Oh and the roughly 12 years of manually putting a registry entry to fix the Australian English dictionary. (Gave up on ever expecting that to be fixed, err recognized as a fault) Locking up machines and crashing, only to be fixed by a cut and paste of all text into a new document. Haven't had to deal too much with it since the ribbon, I know the functions are there, just have to find them, same sort of stuff. Help became more useful (don't mention clippy) Oh and of course each damned version formatting documents subtly differently.
But the bane of my existence in recent years. Outlook and imap..... (the first microsoft mail with the exchange backend or pop was actually quite good).
Linux may be a right royal pain in the arse with a few things, when you try something new or get away from the mainstream. But once you have it working, its rock solid.
Office hasn't really changed all that much over the years, its still has delusions of adequacy.
It hasn't really changed in over 20 years other than moving buttons to more accessible places.
So the whole ribbon fiasco is just a fever dream I'm suffering from?
More accessible!? It's like having a toddler in the house, running off with your car keys the instant you set them down!
If the buttons are so damned 'accessible' now, why'd MS have to release an interactive program just to help you figure out where they are?
I agree they should lay off Ms Rowling; if I had a job that paid that well and I enjoyed I wouldn't quit either. And, she does give money to good causes, and, she doesn't like the Donald so she must be a good person at heart.
However, your defense of Word is simply indefensible. The current version of Word is still not as good as Word Perfect 6, which is pretty damn old. Formatting in Word still is not nearly as good, or intuitive as in WP. But, then again, Active Directory didn't become even close to NetWare 4 until a few years ago and still does not have some of the features NW did at the turn of the century. Unfortunately, the better technology doesn't always win out. Both Word and AD are ok and functional, but not the best in class.
PS, The only Harry book I thought too long was the last one; the others are still a good read. Going to Florida and spending that much money on anything is not happening, especially in July. I was in Orlando during the World Cup in '94 and it was awful.