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Snow in Bristol

19/01/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Language

A snowflake under the microscope. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
It snowed in Bristol yesterday, as it did over a large part of the UK. No more than 2-3 inches of the frozen white stuff caused complete chaos with bus services withdrawn, schools closed and similar over-reactions. A friend called me yesterday afternoon: he works in Geneva and told me that several times that amount – nearly 2 feet in fact – fell there on Tuesday afternoon and life continued as normal.

When snow settles in the Bristol area, it does something unique that’s not repeated elsewhere in the country or in the English-speaking world (to the best of my knowledge. Ed.): it pitches. When it’s snowing, Bristolians have been known to confuse people from elsewhere simply by asking, “Is it pitching?”

Chambers 21st Century Dictionary defines the verb to pitch as follows:

pitch verb (pitches, pitched, pitching) 1 to set up (a tent or camp). 2 to throw or fling. 3 tr & intr to fall or make someone or something fall heavily forward. 4 intrans said of a ship: to plunge and lift alternately at bow and stern. 5 tr & intr said of a roof: to slope • is pitched at a steep angle. 6 to give a particular musical pitch to (one’s voice or a note) in singing or playing, or to set (a song, etc.) at a higher or lower level within a possible range • The tune is pitched too high for me. 7 to choose a level, e.g. of difficulty, sophistication, etc. at which to present (a talk, etc.) • was pitched too low for this audience. 8 a cricket to bowl (the ball) so that it lands where the batsman can hit it; b golf to hit (the ball) high and gently, so that it stays where it is on landing; c tr & intr, baseball said of the pitcher (sense 1): to throw the ball overarm or underarm to the person batting. 9 to pave (a road) with stones set on end or on edge.

Out of these possible definitions, from whence could this bit of Bristolian dialect come? Sense 9 above, i.e. paving in the sense of covering something over, seems a strong possibility.

In addition, users of the WordReference Forum have also discussed what snow does when it settles, including pitching in Bristol. In this thread, one user, Loob, suggests that Bristol’s pitching could have originated from Somerset since Somerset dialect for to lie is to pitch.

Pitch itself comes from the 13th century Middle English verb picchen, meaning to throw or put up.

One final point: whatever snow does where you are – pitch, settle,lie or anything else – don’t forget to let your inner child enjoy it!
Office 2013 – time to look at alternatives?

18/01/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

Over on his Computerworld blog, Richi Jennings reports that the next release of the ubiquitous Microsoft Office suite – Office 2013 – is drawing nigh.

However, he also points out that a huge price increase is in the offing for those that decide to update to the new version.

But beware: The leaked Office 2013 pricing makes it seem that you’ll pay a lot more with the subscription model than buying the traditional, packaged software — as much as four times more!

Perhaps this would be a good time for those thinking of upgrading to change their choice of office suite instead. Why not take a look at an open source office suite, such as LibreOffice or OpenOffice – the office suite from which LibreOffice was forked? As long as you’re not heavily reliant upon MS Office macros, the change should not be too painful. I’ve been working with both LibreOffice and OpenOffice for well over 7 years and none of my clients has noticed any difference.

Both come with all the common elements of an office productivity suite – word processor, presentation package, spreadsheet, database, and the like and both can read and write MS Office formats. In addition, both work natively with the Open Document Format (ODF), an approved ISO international standard which is gaining more acceptance and wider use amongst governments and local authorities around the world as it will still be readable in years to come – unlike MS Office formats, whose useful life is purely dependent on Microsoft’s whim.
Bundestag study recommends amendment of law to promote open source

17/01/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site, reports today that a German parliament study group is recommending amendments to budgetary legislation to allow software produced by or for public sector organisations to be released as open source software. Germany’s budget law currently prevents public sector organisations from giving away software for free.

In its report (PDF, German), the Bundestag’s Interoperability, Standards and Free Software group is proposing six measures to promote the uptake of free and open source software by Federal and regional authorities, including resuming funding the currently defunct open source competence centre. This could assist public sector organisations wanting to migrate proprietary to free and open source software. The group is also calling on all public sector organisations to create new software that is “as platform-independent as possible”.

Furthermore, the group, which is chaired by FDP deputy Jimmy Schulz, also wants the Federal government actively to encourage the use of open standards. This would make access to the government easier for both citizens and companies, as well as being an incentive for software development.
Court interpreting fiasco – the Minister responds

16/01/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

At the weekend I wrote about Baroness Coussins‘ oral question in the House of Lords on the fiasco otherwise known as Capita’s contract with the Ministry of Justice for the provision of court interpreting services (posts passim).

Hansard has now published the answer from government minister Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, as well as Baroness Coussins’ supplementary question and a follow-up question from Labour Peer Lord Harrison:

Baroness Coussins: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon: My Lords, performance under the language services contract with Capita is measured by agreed indicators, including the success rate for bookings. I am pleased to report that this improved from 66.5% to 95.3% between February and August 2012. Complaints during this period also fell significantly. The National Audit Office recommended that the Ministry of Justice obtained independent advice on quality standards under the contract and I am pleased to report that the Minister has already met umbrella interpreter organisations in this respect.

Baroness Coussins: My Lords, I am delighted that constructive talks are finally taking place with the professional bodies following the damning reports from the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee. However, is the noble Lord aware that the success figure of 95% that he gives excludes the large number of short-notice requests from the courts, which would bring the fulfilment rate down to more like 56%? In any case, that figure tells us nothing about the competence of the interpreters who do turn up. Will the Government now agree to conduct a thorough, independent inspection of the service so that the quality of service can be improved and the number of properly qualified interpreters who are willing to work for Capita can be significantly increased?

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon: The noble Baroness makes a valid point about short-notice bookings. In that respect, it is true that bookings for hearings with less than 24 hours’ notice were temporarily descoped from the contract in mid-February and the courts and tribunals reverted to previous arrangements. However, I can report to the House that a pilot to return these bookings has begun in selected criminal courts across England and Wales and will be phased back across regions and jurisdictions when the project board has continued confidence in performance.

Turning to the competence and qualifications of interpreters, the new contract allows for an increased range of acceptable qualifications and experience. Under the contract, all foreign language interpreters must show evidence that they have the required qualifications before they can undertake assignments. We have a tiering facility and all courts are encouraged to ensure that interpreters are qualified to tier 1 or tier 2 for all bookings unless otherwise agreed with the court or tribunal.

Lord Harrison: My Lords, there was also a requirement by the National Audit Office to ensure evaluation of the incentives provided for professionally qualified linguists, interpreters and translators that would encourage them back to the courts to work. What is being done on that score?

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon: My Lords, all the National Audit Office recommendations have been taken on board and are being fully looked at and implemented.

It would appear that Ministry of Justice civil servants and ministers still believe against all the evidence that the system is working well, even though the Chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Select Committee, Margaret Hodge MP, recently described the affair as: “An object lesson in how not to contract out a public service” (posts passim).
Using Firefox Personas in LibreOffice 4.0

14/01/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

LibreOffice developer Jan Holesovsky writes that he has had a late patch included in the LibreOffice 4.0.0 release candidate (posts passim).

The patch in question enables support for Firefox Personas (now better known as lightweight Firefox themes. Ed.) in LibreOffice. Personas are “are easy-to-use themes” that let you personalize the look of your Firefox web browser.

Oliver Hallot, a director of the Document Foundation (the organisation behind LibreOffice. Ed.) thought it would be a good idea to reuse Personas in LibreOffice.

If you’re running LibreOffice 4, to set up Personas, go to Tools > Options > Personalisation > Select Persona. This opens a handy little dialog box, which will launch your web browser. Once you’ve found the Persona you like, you paste its URL (e.g http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/123456) into the appropriate input field, press OK, then OK again in Options and that’s it! Your LibreOffice install will then look similar to the one below.

Firefox Personas applied to LibreOffice Writer
Court interpreting fiasco rumbles on

13/01/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

The Capita/ALS court interpreting fiasco (posts passim) is a story that seems set to run for some time yet.

The crossbench (i.e. independent) peer Baroness Coussins, who is also a Vice-President of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, has tabled an oral question for the government in tomorrow’s House of Lords business.

Her oral question is:

Baroness Coussins to ask Her Majesty’s Government what quality criteria they are using to assess the performance of Capita in delivering interpreting services to the criminal justice system.

Many of us either in or associated to the language and legal professions, as well as those interested in the administration of justice will await the Government’s answer with interest.

Hat tip: Richard McCarthy
LibreOffice 4.0.0 RC1 available for download

12/01/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

Today the first release candidate for LibreOffice 4.0.0 has been made available for download for evaluation, quality assurance (QA) testing and the like.

The developers do nevertheless stress that they do not recommend the use of LibreOffice pre-release builds for “mission-critical” purposes. Information about QA testing can be found on the LibreOffice QA testers page.

The developers also suggest reading the release notes.

LibreOffice meets all your office suite needs

If you’re interested in even more bleeding-edge binaries of LibreOffice’s current development, check out the nightly builds. However, these are potentially even less suitable for productive work, provided by individual contributors and not QA-approved in any way. Caveat emptor.

To download LibreOffice 4.0.0.0 RC1 visit the pre-release page. To download the right package for your particular system, you’ll need to select the right package from the two dropdown lists on the page; there is an automatic detection system to help, but this might not work in all cases. The release candidate is available for GNU/Linux (rpm and deb-based package management systems), Mac OS X (both Intel and PowerPC versions) and Windows.
More dodgy spam comment script coding

12/01/2013 Steve WoodsTech

I’ve blogged in the past about blog comment spam (posts passim).

Today another badly coded spam comment script misfired, leaving the comment below in the moderation cue:

I Live THESE {fendi moncler bag|moncler mens clothing|moncler gamme bleu jacket|moncler paris boutique|moncler lucie jacket|moncler 2011 collection|moncler jacket women 2012|men moncler hats|moncler ski|moncler boots uk!!!

Leaving aside the abysmal English – ‘live’ instead of ‘love’ – can you spot where the coding error? That’s right! The missing curly bracket at the end. As Homer Simpson would say: “Doh!”
Greek municipality of Kalamarià installs LibreOffice

12/01/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

The free and open source advocacy organisation GreekLUG reports that the northern Greek Municipality of Kalamarià near Thessaloniki is in the process of installing the cross-platform LibreOffice productivity suite on all of the council’s 170 workstations.

According to the press release (PDF), some 120 installations have been done to date.

It is believed that this move will save the council some €38,000 in licensing fees (including VAT) compared with renewing and/or buying new licences for MS Office. As the Greek public sector is extremely short of money (and getting increasingly shorter thereof in many cases. Ed.), to say the least, this is a very smart move.

GreekLUG welcomes this move, which means that Kalamarià now joins the pioneering municipalities of Heraklion in Crete and Pilea-Hortiatis in pioneering the use of free and open source software in the Greek public sector.
Are social media destroying the rest of the internet?

11/01/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Social Media, Tech

That was one question discussed yesterday evening over a couple of pints of Cotswold Spring’s Stunner ale in Bristol’s Seven Stars pub with a couple of friends from the Easton Cowboys. More specifically, it the question could be rephrased as: are the likes of Facebook and Twitter pulling in so much traffic that they detract from everyone else’s content?

Two of us run websites, so the matter is quite pertinent and can be broken down into a couple of simple aspects.

Firstly, some people thank that if they just post on their organisation’s Facebook wall, everyone in that organisation will see it. They are, of course, mistaken. Some people avoid Facebook for privacy reasons, in addition to which Facebook’s APIs are so obscure, it’s difficult for an organisation’s webmaster to scrape content from Facebook and place it on the organisation’s website.

Turning to Twitter, is the ubiquitous 140 character tweet replacing proper debate on blogs? We noted that if one blogs and tweets a link to the post, feedback is more likely these days to come via tweets than from actual comments on the blog. One of the great aspects of blogging is that comments on posts can encourage debate. This debate has now been reduced to soundbites of no more than 140 characters. However, the situation is more complicated than that. Whereas at one time, the ability to comment was restricted to blogs, the traditional media have now started to catch up, allowing comments on articles and thus have more interaction with their readers instead of just broadcasting at them.

In answer to the question of whether social media are destroying the rest of the internet, only time will tell and the jury is still out. You can help the deliberations by commenting below.

Finally, note that this discussion took place down the pub. Don’t forget that pubs, cafés and their cultural equivalents elsewhere in the world are the original social networking sites. 🙂

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