Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with right

Up, up, down, down...

LSK — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:58:02 -0800

Having an issue with a dance mat on PC - down button works, but left + down and right + down don't. I'm using Red Octane's Ignition 3.0 dance mat (for Dance Dance Revolution games) on Windows Vista using the USB plug. While all individual buttons operate properly, if I press left and down at the same time, or right and down at the same time, only left or right (respectively) is read by the computer. Is this an issue with the hardware itself or is it something that can be addressed within the OS?

It should be noted that this isn't the more common opposite-axes issue; left + right works properly, as does up + down.

Everything's Alright (except their spelling)

dlugoczaj — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:04:52 -0800

Looking for songs about self-reassurance. I'm trying to put together a CD with songs that have recurring lyrics that are reassuring--preferably self-reassurance, but general reassurance is OK too. (Recurring words would be "all right," "OK," "fine," etc.) Varied styles of music are great. What I'm thinking of so far:

Kenny Loggins, "I'm Alright"
Joe Cocker, "Feelin' Alright"
Fleetwood Mac, "That's Alright"
Bob Marley, "Three Little Birds" or "No Woman, No Cry"
Cracker, "Nothing to Believe In" ("I feel fine, I feel fine . . . ")
Shawn Mullins, "Rockabye"
Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack, "Everything's Alright"

I suspect that some of these are cynical (i.e., the person or circumstances are really NOT "all right" at all!) and that's just fine with me!

I need to Shift into a higher plane of typing!

brenton — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:10:43 -0800

I am looking for a typing program that will force me to use the right shift key for left hand letters, and the left shift key for right hand letters. When touch-typing, I have the bad habit of only using the left shift key. With intense focus, I can use the right shift key for letters on the left, but after trying many times to force myself to do this, I always find I am reverting back to my old ways (it's faster in the short term, slower in the long run).

I really want to correct this flaw before I go to grad school and start writing Truly Long Papers. But every typing program I can find fails to distinguish between the shift keys. Does anyone know of a program that is shift-specific?

I am not even sure if keyboards send a different key-code for the different shift keys. If this is the case, then I am determined to hack a keyboard and then hack an open-source typing program to do this... any suggested starting points?

Contextual Hell

nam3d — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:27:21 -0800

Can I reorder/remove items in contextual menus (right-click-menus) on the mac using an application/plugin/something similar? I'd like to move some things out of the "more" sub-menu.

(screen shot)

Clowns to the right of me, Jokers to the left...

prufrock — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:31:05 -0800

I cannot tell right from left. Is this normal? So, ever since I can remember I have had trouble with the concept of Right and Left. I'm good at spatial recognition and general directions, but when it comes to Right-ness of Left-ness of things, I have had, upon occasion, to look at my hands and orient my thinking based on where Left of a certain place should lie.

For instance, a few moments ago I was putting on my earphones and it took me 2 seconds to realize where the earphone marked 'R' should go.

This is a minor quirk and doesn't impede my life in any way(except being an annoying RoboRally player). I was just curious if there is a name for this condition and whether other people experience it as well.

I'm right handed, if that matters. And I'm pretty sure I'm not dyslexic.

Funnily enough, googling for this, I found an article that talks about a discussion at MeFi. But I couldn't find it.

No, the other left!

Listener — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:20:11 -0800

Need to overcome problems with opposites like right/left, before/after, above/below. My friend is hoping to overcome his maddening behaviour of making mistakes with opposites, not just left and right. It seems to be a problem with the words, whether written or spoken. He just flips them often. We've practised with body left/right hand, direction, and things in the environment, but I wonder if there are some good tips or even learning resources that would help with this. He actually probably missed out on a job because of confusing something/nothing in a written instruction, so he now realizes he has to get a grip on this thing. He even sometimes makes up an opposite where none exists, by adding or removing a negative prefix. He's not mentally or linguistically weak; in fact he's very good in more than one language and with complex abstract subjects in computing. Just lousy with basic opposites. Your suggestions appreciated.

Supermarket IOUs

andrewyakovlev — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:02:21 -0800

How do supermarket IOUs work? If something is advertised as on sale is out of stock, supermarkets can give you an IOU option to purchase the product at a later time for the same price. My question is this - is this a courtesy? are there consumer protection laws? How far does this practice/obligation extend - if it's a law does it apply to larger purchases, it advance sale tickets? Is this federal or state specific?

Help me manage my people collection.

Naberius — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:38:22 -0800

I seem to have a very particular social skills deficit. Can you suggest software that might serve as a kind of brain prosthetic for me? I like people - I really do. But I'm an introvert. And, for lack of a better word, I just lose people if they don't get in my face on a regular basis. I want to maintain relationships, but I just lose track of people and before I know it months have gone by and the friendship has atrophied. A lot of my interactions with friends are sort of "yeah, sorry I haven't been in touch, how are things going with you? I'll try to be better about that." Over and over again.

Also I'm in a field where the ability to network is quite important and because of this particular issue, I really suck at it. Basically I seem to be able to keep up with only a very small inner circle of friends - smaller than most people's - and everyone else drops off into that outer circle of contacts or acquaintances, whether I want them to or not. Sometimes they are hurt. More often they just realize they're having to put in most of the work to keep the connection running, while I'm not really holding up my end, and they let things drift off.

Its occurred to me to wonder about contact management applications like ACT. I gather salespeople use them to manage social connections with more people than our primate brains could normally deal with. But I don't really know much about them. What do they actually do? Would they be useful for me? Or perhaps there's some other kind of application that could basically keep a database of people I know, track how long it's been since I did something to keep that particular plate spinning and prod me to give so and so a call or an email or something? What would you suggest?

Will my head explode if I wear my earphones the wrong way round?

grumblebee — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 13:01:43 -0800

stupid question: why are there left and right stereo speakers? Okay, I understand (and appreciate) that there are two sets of sounds and that they're separated in space. But I don't get the specificity of left and right. On my headphones, one speaker is labeled L and the other is labeled R.

Several times a day, I start to put them on without first checking that I'm matching the speakers to the correct ears. Then I realize what I'm doing and check the labels. Part of me feels like it's a good thing I'm doing this; another part of me feels like a lemming, mindlessly following directions to march off a cliff.

Would it make any difference if I listened to L with my right ear and R with my left ear? When I've boldly (and guiltily) done this, I haven't noticed any difference. Is this because L and R are bullshit labels? Or is it because I'm not a sophisticated enough listener to appreciate L and R? Would a real audiophile exclaim, "What's going on? Why is the string section on the right?!?"

Mental health oriented right to die movements?

By The Grace of God — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:23:14 -0800

Are there any mental health oriented right to die movements?

Visitation of mentally challenged sibling

Leenie — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:27:33 -0800

How can visitation to brother occur without approval of guardian? David was the foster brother of Nick. Nick, currently 28, is about three year old mental development and seven to ten social development. David has custody/guardianship of Nick and will not let Nick's brother Ken, age 18, visit him.

Is there a legal method/right that can be used for Ken to visit his brother Nick. Foster brother David will not let the visitation take place. A change in custody is not desired, just visitation.

(Names have been changed, but the facts are accurate.) This post is for a friend. Thank you for any assistance. Internet searches were not successful.

Right of way?

mphuie — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:08:14 -0800

Traffic question- Who has the right of way? Situation - left turn onto larger streets (that have a middle turn lane).

Who has the right of way?

1. Cars that use the middle turn lane as a stepping stone to stop and wait to merge into regular traffic.

2. Cars that take the turn into the correct lane.

I almost got into an accident yesterday because I was taking a turn into the left driving lane and someone that was stopped in the turn lane decided to merge into traffic at the same time. If there was a collision, who would be at fault? (The street had a 35 mph speed limit)

Writing front to back then back to front

dcbarker — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:45:20 -0800

Is there a term for writing only on the right-hand page of notebooks then flipping the notebook over and working from back cover to front cover? I *hate* writing on the left-hand page of notebook. Maybe I have an odd pen-grip but I find the middle of the notebook seems to get in the way as a write (especially with spiral-bound notebooks!).

So I write only on the right page and once I get to the end of the notebook I close it, flip it vertically and start writing from back-cover to front-cover, again only writing on the right hand page.

Is there a term for this? Is it a popular technique and does it have any historical significance or is it actually really uncommon.

Depilation & tretinoin?

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:00:47 -0800

I've been using tretinoin for adult acne since July, and my purge phase seems like its never going to end. One thing that seems to re-aggravate my skin when it's ready to calm down is depilation. I used to wax my upper lip, but the tretinoin label specifically says not to wax. Tweezing, both lips and brows, seems to provoke more zits, as well as taking for-freaking-ever. I've been thinking about bleaching the hair on my upper lip, but am worried that this will just make everything bust out anew.
I'm hairy as a saquatch and covered in zits. Please help!

How do I convince my boss that all rag-right sucks?

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 12:39:52 -0800

Help! I'm fighting a battle about graphic design, specifically rag-right vs. perfect justification. How can I sound more convincing? I work for a magazine. I've just been told that the owner of the company wants everything to be rag-right from now on. EVERYthing - all the columns, all the articles, all the departments. He said don't perfect-justify anything. I would like to challange that, but the only argument I have is that, well, "rag right everything looks like crap!" Obviously I'd like to sound more intelligent. Can you help with some good solid reasons why it's better to use justified text as opposed to all rag right? I know it looks cleaner, but I'll need to do better than that when fighting this battle. Thanks for any help you can provide! (Question is asked anonymously because I don't want work folk to see this, or the magazine identity to be revealed)

Fair Use: Embedded video in quotation form?

Quarter Pincher — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 06:47:45 -0800

Fair Use Filter -- I want to take clips from movies and embed them in an online essay as quotation-style references. I want to write an essay to be posted online, using clips from major motion picture studios as references in a kind of quotation form, using YouTube/Metacafe/etc as the embedded bandwidth supplier for the clips. They are only pieces of scenes of movies, and used in context with a running commentary of a particular theme other than what the movies themselves are about, giving full credit of the original producers, etc, and not making any money off their reproduction (no advertisments at all).

Is this fair use?

Right Click This!

matthelm — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 13:05:06 -0800

Is there a way, when opening a file from a program, to right click within the "File Name:" dialogue box and get a list of the most frequent paths to folders available to choose from? Is there a way, when opening a file from a program, to right click within the "File Name:" dialogue box and get a list of the most frequent paths to folders available to choose from? I have included a link to a picture that shows the area of what I am talking about...thanks - mh88

This is the link: http://www.camelontheline.com/rightclick.html

Did cavemen care about geometry?

ORthey — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:28:10 -0800

Is there a way to get a perfect right angle out in the woods (for example)? This came about because I started wondering how the very first right angle was formed. If you were out in nature with no tools (other than what you found lying around), could you make or observe a perfect 90° angle somehow? Perhaps using the sun? Or some rocks maybe?

Where do I find the symphonic piece, "White Dawn"

goalyeehah — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 18:32:18 -0800

I am looking for a musical piece from the film "The Right Stuff" that is not on the musical soundtrack There is a symphonic piece in the film 'The Right Stuff" played when John Glenn begins his orbit around the planet. The end credits make me think that it is entitled 'White Dawn" performed by London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Henry Mancini, and seemingly released by RCA Records. I have checked catalogs at local Tower Records and Virgin Megastore and there is nothing to be found. Does anyone know how to go about tracking this down.

What's the Miranda warning called in countries where Miranda never happened -- or is it called anything at all?

croutonsupafreak — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:36:56 -0800

The Miranda warning is well known in the US. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law...". But are there equivalent warnings that people in other countries hear when they are arrested? What are they called? How are they worded? I ask because I'm watching a 15-year-old Canadian TV show on DVD, and when someone was arrested a few minutes ago he got read his rights, which were pretty similar to the Miranda rights. Is this just television, or does this reflect reality?

Can women tell left from right?

Masi — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 15:28:51 -0800

Do women find it more difficult to immediately distinguish left from right than men? Some of my female friends find it difficult to grasp in a fast manner which is the right side and which is the left one, and thus they usually cheat by clenching one fist or using some mental shortcut.

Has any of the feminine users around here ever had this problem, and if so, did you find out what the cause was? Was there a fix ?

I suspect this awkwardness is due to the difference rooted in our incipient stage, when men used to hunt and thus had better orientation, but still I cannot explain how something as obvious as knowing left from right can elude some of my (otherwise very intelligent) female friends.

Thanks for your help