Buondì.
Many thanks to John, who ruined my Thursday by writing:
I’m enjoying your site. I find the exercises very helpful. However I’m experiencing a problem with accents. They all appear like this: � This renders the exercises useless. Can you please help me with this? Thank you.
I told him that the problem was probably at his end, that he should clear his caches, check to see if the page displayed correctly on a different device, and so on. Standard, unhelpful, I.T. support stuff, basically. To be fair, I was very busy, as yesterday was pre-school day.
Fortunately, John would not be brushed off. He persisted, writing multiple emails to describe what he had tried and with what results, without ever managing to resolve the issue.
In the end I was forced to put aside my alphabet flashcards and check the club site myself. And then, to admit that the problem was actually at our end, sorry!
On this page, for example. If you can see black spots, no need to clean your glasses. There are, at the time of writing, at least twelve � symbols (press the ‘Soluzioni’ to see the ones that are hiding…)
So, with a big sigh, I got right on to the company that hosts the club website (and some of our other sites). Who completely failed to fix the problem, though it’s certain that it was something they did that caused it.
They’ve now apparently passed the issue on to whoever they solicit for help when there’s something that’s beyond their ken, the almighty ‘systems administrator’, who in turn, and befitting their status as a higher being, appears not to be in any rush to help.
Perhaps if we all pray…
Overnight Joshua wrote, too:
I have been enjoying really getting into the meat of the Italian exercises on your course. That is, up until now. In almost every exercise there now appear hundreds of black diamonds with a question mark in them. In addition to that, A capital E appears after it. It is making doing the exercises confusing and difficult.
Hundreds, Joshua? Maybe you SHOULD clean your glasses.
But life IS ‘confusing and difficult’ at times, as I can attest after what has been a trying week. Nevertheless, I hope to eventually get the accented characters issue sorted out, so please be patient.
In fact, why not take a weekend off from grammar exercises and do some reading/listening instead?
Thursday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news, for example, which is here. As you’ll read, we’ve had problems with that site, too.
Basta! I’ve had enough of websites for one week.
A lunedì, allora.
P.S.
Here’s a final reminder about the current ‘Book of the Week’ offer ‘Correre a tempo‘, which is half the usual price, but only until Sunday…
Download the free sample chapter (.pdf) to verify the level and type of material. Also, take a look at the online audio, linked to from the top of Chapter 1 in the sample chapter.
As with all of our easy readers, the entire story is available to listen to, completely free. You only need pay for the .pdf if you want to read the story as well as listen to it…
‘Correre a tempo’, half-price! | Sample chapter (.pdf) | Catalogue | Browse
