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Basically, I want more exactness in my writing. Any ideas of how I can improve?

I have read quite a lot of scientific papers lately and I have come to appreciate that certain exactness in they have. When you have to sum up your year's research in 4 pages, you have to be very brief and to the point. I have also witnessed the revising process and it is amazing to see how much shorter the text can be made without losing any relevant content.

I wouldn't necessarily advice you to start reading scientific papers to "improve" your writing, though. That kind of style has its place but it is not for every situation or nor for everyone. Nevertheless, I have found it to be quite an interesting counterbalance to prose. I have also been more satisfied with my writing* now that I have taken some cues from those texts.

* In my studies; not here.

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Basically, I want more exactness in my writing. Any ideas of how I can improve?

Personally, and I say this is probably true for most people, I'd have to say that my exactness of writing only really improves with constant revisions. Altering the structure of a sentence usually helps too, because you can still get the same message across, but with fewer words.

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Constantly revising what you've written is the best method. Sentence structure alteration is helpful too.

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Constant revision and altering your sentences' structures are the best way.

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Thank you all, both for your input and for your kind complements.

I guess the only way to do it is for people to let you know what sounds right and wrong. That'll be a long term process.

I would feel weird with that here, but if I post something obtuse you should definitively ask for clarification.

I wouldn't necessarily advice you to start reading scientific papers to "improve" your writing, though. That kind of style has its place but it is not for every situation or nor for everyone.

I don't really have that as a point of reference, I'm thinking more about the non-fiction of David Foster Wallace. He bends words and metaphors which allows him to reach almost perfect clarity while maintaining an enjoyable tone and style.

Constantly revising what you've written is the best method. Sentence structure alteration is helpful too.

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Constant revision and altering your sentences' structures are the best way.

To be fair, these two paragraphs will probably be interpreted differently and the changes are mostly arbitrary, I think I get your point though.

Thing is, I don't really want to revise my posts too much. If I was writing an essay or article for school or publication, then certainly. But when posting on a forum I just want to get my thoughts out while being clear and comprehensive.

Again thanks for your advice, all of you!

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More stuff to do with the lady was uncovered today. I did not feel good.

Not feeling entirely devastated though, which is positive! :D

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You show devastation what it's made of, Speedy!*

*I'm saying punch it until it bleeds profusely and then leave it bleeding in a dumpster.

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At first I thought you meant more things one could do with the lady. I was imagining you had just discovered an illuminating pamphlet.

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Hah, if only. No, I found out some stuff as to what she's doing right now and it made me sad.

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Ahh, but it's funny. You'd want a girl who finds that funny, surely? :P

If we're giving anecdotes from our days though, here's one from yesterday.

Walking back to town with a girl from my lecture (not one I'm sexually interested in, hurrah for me!) and she said something along the lines of "You could always buy me some chocolate." (joke)

I reply: "Well, there's a large range of things I COULD do, but there are an awful lot of them I don't plan on doing."

"Like what?"

"Well, killing you for example."

Her face went white and shocked.

"Oh, that's not that bad. My first thought was worse, be glad I didn't say that one out loud."

"What could be worse than killing?"

"I don't know,

rape?

"

Yeah, I don't know why I allow myself to talk sometimes.

Ok, I'm sorry, but I'm going to throw my hat into the ring here and say... WTF?

How is this acceptable behaviour? If you spoke to someone on the forum like that, we'd all tell you to stop acting like a complete tit. If you spoke to my sister or mother like that, I'd never speak to you again.

How is being obnoxious and threatening in any way amusing?

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Tone doesn't come across in text, I guess. She knew I was joking and laughed. We still talk every day. She wasn't threatened in the slightest.

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Tone doesn't come across in text, I guess. She knew I was joking and laughed. We still talk every day. She wasn't threatened in the slightest.

Yeah, I guess the bit where "she laughed and got my sense of humour" was lost when you wrote "Her face went white and shocked."

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Yeah, I guess the bit where "she laughed and got my sense of humour" was lost when you wrote "Her face went white and shocked."

Yeah, that was more a dramatic retelling of the story. She feigned shock in actuality.

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It wasn't actually a girl, was it? It was a broom, and you were sweeping the street. Admit it.

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It wasn't actually a girl, was it? It was a broom, and you were sweeping the street. Admit it.

Every time I see a post of yours I think it's Marek. :shifty:

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Every time I see a post of yours I think it's Marek. :shifty:

Why? Do we have a similar avatar?

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Why? Do we have a similar avatar?

Yup. He is somehow the only other person I notice with a Jake avatar. His is on Twitter.

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My car has brain damage.

The only solution for this, beyond fitting my car with a padded helmet and a mouthguard, is a new brain. The new brain can only be installed by the dealer (the company that made my car no longer exists, but other GM brand dealerships can do "dealer" work) because the brain's ROM needs to be flashed with a very specific set of firmware or something.

The new brain costs $900, and it will take some time (and cost in labour) to install, flash, tests etc.

My car's blue book value is probably about equal to the (estimated and probably low-balled) total cost of this repair.

curse-you-octopus1.jpg

I'm not sure I'm ready to replace my car though. She's the only car I've ever owned, and beyond the obvious sentimental attachments and money issue (Cash for Clunkers took ALL the inexpensive used cars out of the market, so cheap used cars don't really exist these days) I have never bought a car and have absolutely no idea how that sort of thing works.

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Funny, my Xbox 360 just had a stroke as well. I thought I was pretty safe with a later version, but today a red ringed dawn finally arrived. I'm of two minds whether to purchase the new model or just wait until the sequel to the console arrives. Who am I kidding - that will take a year and half at least!

Can I import all my savegames and cheevos onto a new console, could I even use the existing hard drive?

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Can I import all my savegames and cheevos onto a new console, could I even use the existing hard drive?

You can use the existing hard drive with a non-slim console. With a slim it becomes a bit harder but you can use the existing hard drive with some screwdrivers and effort.

Alternatively if you get a hard drive transfer cable you can pull stuff off the HDD and put it on a new 360. You can also do that if you can put your current HDD in someone else's 360 and use a USB stick, though obviously that may take longer depending on the size of the stick.

Achievements and such you'll keep no matter what if you have an Xbox Live account, and have recently signed into Live (doesn't have to be a Gold account). If you only have a local profile, you'll need to take care to transfer that too.

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Tomorrow is moving day. It's 0:42 now and I finally finished packing all my stuff. Holy hell am I tired. I'm gonna sleep like a baby! In any case, because of ISP fuckery, I will be without PC interwebs for at least 20 days! The horror! Luckily my phone still works.

I'm sooo ready to be done. The amount of relief when I'm done will be huuuge.

Anyway, NIGHT. :tup:

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Thanks Gwardinen. Encouraging to know I won't have to lose all my stuff - though frankly I don't find it that important. When I replay games I want to start at the beginning anyway and achievements aren't important to me. I like them while I play, but apart from that I couldn't care less.

Pirate, good luck with being done with moving!

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The ease with which one can transfer data between 360s is the reason I upgraded to a fancy new one when my old one broke. The inability to recover data from a bricked PS3's drive is a large portion of the reason I never replaced mine when it got a YLoD, even though that happened about a year earlier. My old saves don't really matter that much, but I refuse to reward Sony for making things awkward for me.

PS3 owners, back up your data!

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PS3 owners, back up your data!

What? How? Also: I get that saved games are worth keeping, but is there anything else you'd want to back up?

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Well it's mainly games, but the inconvenience of having to track down and re-download all your games and SWEET WALLPAPERZ is also pretty annoying, and I believe stuff is occasionally removed from the PSN Store (although I'm not sure whether that includes being removed or made inaccessible from account history). I also had one of those PlayTV things, with a bunch of films waiting to be watched.

Like I said, it's more a matter of principle than anything else.

Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think you can actually restore PS3 backups on a different system, so your only option is to subscribe to PlayStation Plus and copy all your saves to the cloud.

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