Being Geek Chic is a blog for stylish geeks, sophisticated nerds and people who enjoy the musings of a complete dork. Join us as we dream of driving the TARDIS, cuddle with our eBooks and test out an iPad sleeve. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi and a team of brilliant lady nerds. Meet the team.
Many of my fellow Potter friends who didn’t get into Beta were waiting for the end of October to finally get into Pottermore. Then this was posted last night:
As part of our work to make Pottermore even better, we’ll be taking the site down for a few days on Wednesday 2 November. We’re going to use this time to make a few technical changes behind-the-scenes.
In the interim, the folks at Pottermore suggest you follow their Twitter account for more up-to-date information.
The true story of the boy wizard GoldNimbus73.
Turns out Pottermore is more fun with friends.
My boyfriend and my brother are now on Pottermore and I’m enjoying it a lot more now that they’ve joined in on the experience. While I did revel in the fact that I had “gotten my letter" and they were still waiting for a little while… I now realize that some of the best things are more enjoyable with others.
For example, comparing the questions and answers on the wand quiz and Sorting Hat quiz. My brother somehow (!!) got an Elder Wand! I don’t know if I should be jumping with joy or running with fear to be related to someone with the qualities required to posses an Elder Wand. Of course, there’s the whole business of finding out which questions he answered and how it resulted in his landing in Ravenclaw (me too!) and my boyfriend, true to form, is taking his time and hasn’t quite gotten to the Sorting Hat just yet, but we’ve been debating what his questions and answers might look like. For example, did you know that the Sorting Hat asks you 7 questions, but rarely any user get the same set of 7? I had no clue until now.
Of course, once you get a group together new gripes come out of the woodwork too. We were discussing last night how the site almost feels like it’s trying to be a game, but doesn’t quite commit. We’ll see if that theory holds true when more books are unrolled on the site.
I got my wand, I’ve been sorted and I made it through all the moments in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. This is as far as the Pottermore journey goes at this point, but based on my completion of the first book in the series, I think there are plenty of things we can talk about.
First, as always, the good.
The Sorting Hat. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, being able to take a test written by J.K. Rowling to truly know which house you belong in is a real treat. With my other Potter friends, I feel a bit smug knowing I’ve been sorted and they haven’t.
The Beta Tests. Thank goodness the crew at Pottermore decided to do such an extensive and thorough beta testing phase for the site. There are a lot of issues that not only myself, but other users have commented on, including browser and platform compatibility, confusion about responsiveness from pages during the “moments" and the occasional lack of clarity about what I’m supposed to be doing when I arrive somewhere.
The Community. Being part of the Ravenclaws on Pottermore group on Facebook has been one of the most wonderful surprises about this whole thing. For a group that has under 1,000 members, everyone is incredibly active, helpful and frankly just happy. It’s strange and so mellow dramatic to even say it, but in these difficult times, Pottermore is something I really look forward to and on top of that, I really look forward to communing with my fellow Ravenclaws too.
Of course, there’s always something to gripe about…
The lack of music. One of the things that always gets me into Potter mode is hearing the soft lead into Hedwig’s Theme. I know other users are pointing it out all the time, but music soundtracks during various moments would truly be a great addition.
If you’re one of the people who is eagerly awaiting your letter, hold tight, because it’s worth it.
I’m a Ravenclaw!
So what’s the Sorting Hat experience like?
I’ve always figured I was either a Gryffindor or a Ravenclaw, but now it’s confirmed. The quizzes that are part of the Pottermore experience have been one of the best parts so far. The quiz for getting your wand was an entirely different style from the Sorting Hat quiz, but each had their own special qualities. For example, the Sorting Hat will ask you what kind of magic you wish to learn the most, while Mr. Ollivander will ask you which path you would take if you encountered a fork in the road.
So as not to spoiler, STOP READING if you don’t want to know what JK Rowling says about Ravenclaws…
Ravenclaw house has an illustrious history. Most of the greatest wizarding inventors and innovators were in our house, including Perpetua Fancourt, the inventor of the lunascope, Laverne de Montmorency, a great pioneer of love potions, and Ignatia Wildsmith, the inventor of Floo powder. Famous Ravenclaw Ministers for Magic include Millicent Bagnold, who was in power on the night that Harry Potter survived the Dark Lord’s curse, and defended the wizarding celebrations all over Britain with the words, ‘I assert our inalienable right to party. There was also Minister Lorcan McLaird, who was a quite brilliant wizard, but preferred to communicate by puffing smoke out of the end of his wand. Well, I did say we produce eccentrics. In fact, we are also the house that gave the wizarding world Uric the Oddball, who used a jellyfish for a hat. He’s the punch line of a lot of wizarding jokes.
I wanted to update all of you on my Pottermore experience. As I said earlier this week, there are some seriously amazing qualities to this site. However, last night I was using my iPad and wanted to see how well the features functioned on the Apple device.
It appears that MANY of the features don’t work on the iPad. Articles and navigation all seem to work as they should. The images still look bright, bold and beautiful too.
The big downside to using it on the iPad is that the interactive elements in the “moments", such as collecting objects are very touch and go. Sometimes you see them, sometimes you don’t. In addition, the animation in the “moments" haven’t worked at all.
So if you were hoping to peruse Pottermore on your iPad, maybe skip it for now. The beta users are doing a great job of noting many of these issues, so I’m sure it will be more compatible in time for the October release.
However, I’m wondering… have any of you tried it on mobile devices? Or other tablets?
