• Spelling or sleeping?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Social Media

    There was a great clanger in a tweet this morning from Bristol’s Western Daily Press, the sister publication of the Bristol Post (and joint occupier with it of Bristol’s Temple Way Ministry of Truth. Ed.) and likewise subject to many of the latter’s failings with the English language.

    Here’s an image of the tweet in question.

    text of tweet reads Simon Cowell's home gets burgled while he and his family spelt inside

    The morals of this tale are clear: if you run a tawdry TV talent show orthography is as dangerous as shut-eye if housebreakers are around; if you run the social media account of a mediocre regional paper, learn to proof-read before posting online*! 🙂

    * The spelling error in the tweet originally appeared in the article itself, but has since been corrected.

  • Christmas Market in St Werburghs this Friday

    Steve WoodsBristol

    A Christmas Market is taking place at St Werburghs Community Centre this coming Friday, 4th December from 5.00 to 8.00 pm.

    2015 Christmas market poster

    The Christmas Market is yet another very popular community-led event hosted by St Werburghs Community Centre.

    Join us on Friday for a festive feast of all things creative and buy original arts and crafts from the best local artists and makers. There are always plenty of wonderful stalls booked filled with personal, handmade and unique gifts for your family and friends.

    The following items will be on sale:

    • Paintings, photography, prints, stained glass, pottery & ceramics;
    • Handmade crafts, knitted baby clothing and home accessories;
    • Natural, organic and fairtrade skincare products;
    • Wooden toys and wood carvings;
    • Fairtrade gifts and jewellery;
    • Locally produced and grown food, honey, chocolate and beer;
    • Bric-a-brac; and
    • Indian and Tibetan gifts.

    If those items fail to tempt you through the door, the Christmas Market will also feature:

    • Live performance;
    • CafĂ© with home-made food and cakes;
    • Children’s activities; and
    • Massage and relaxation therapies.

      • If you need any more convincing to come along, here’s a short video from last year’s event.

      For more information, please contact the Centre on 0117 955 1351 or e-mail on office [at] stwerburghs.org.uk.

  • Bristol Post balls – rescued from the rescue services?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

    There seem to be times when confusion is rife in the Bristol Post’s headquarters on Temple Way. This was exemplified yesterday by the headline in this report, of which a screenshot follows, just in case Post hacks realise a mistake has been made.

    screenshot of headline stating Man rescued from Bristol Floating Harbour fire brigade after a night on the town

    In spite of the headline, Post reporter Emma Flanagan fails to explain in her article why anyone would need rescuing from the fire brigade after a night out.

    Furthermore, there is no explanation either for the logic behind Bristol’s City Docks having their own fire brigade.

    Perhaps kind readers could help her out and provide plausible reasons in the comments below. 🙂

  • The Document Foundation seeks boost to LibreOffice developer numbers

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

    The Document Foundation has announced a new drive to increase its developer community beyond the level of 1,000 reached in October 2015.

    The growth of the LibreOffice developer community has been extraordinary, with a monthly average of over 16 new hackers contributing to the code since September 2010. This is due in the main to mentoring by the project’s founders. After five years and 1,000 new developers, though, the complexity has changed, and the project needs to invest on mentoring a new generation of coders.

    LibreOffice has always been available on multiple operating systems – Linux, Mac OSX and Windows – and is now on the verge of being available on multiple platforms: desktop, mobile and cloud. Consequently, the project needs a wider range of developer skills, which can be achieved only with a renewed effort targeted to attract new contributors.

    graph showing growth in LibreOffice developer numbers

    “When LibreOffice started, the codebase we inherited was known for being extremely hard to contribute to, for both technical reasons and a lack of mentors reaching out to new hackers,” says Bjoern Michaelsen, a member of LibreOffice engineering steering committee and a director of The Document Foundation. “Today, the LibreOffice project is known for its welcoming atmosphere, and for the fun. We strive to continue on this path for the next 1,000 code contributors.”

  • Tidy BS5 exclusive: Hell will freeze over before BCC tackles fly-tipping

    Steve WoodsBristol, Social Media

    Yesterday, feeling frustrated with Bristol City Council’s ineptitude at tackling fly-tipping and litter in the city’s Easton and Lawrence Hill wards, despite 18 months’ vigorous campaigning by local residents and ward councillors, I decided to take advantage of Twitter’s poll facility.

    The results of the poll are shown below.

    screenshot of Twitter poll tweet

    That’s right! 90% of respondents believe Hell will freeze over before the local authority gets a grip on fly-tipping.

    If anyone spots Satan shopping for ice skates in Broadmead, the Galleries, Cabot Circus, Cribb’s Causeway or any other retail centre in the Bristol area, please provide details using the comments form below. 🙂

  • LibreOffice wins two awards

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    PortalProgramas.com has announced that LibreOffice, the leading open source office productivity suite, has won 2 prizes in its 2015 awards for free software applications.

    essential for companies free software awardgreatest potential award

    The 2 categories in which LibreOffice won were:

    1. Esencial para empresas (essential for companies), because it covers all enterprise office automation needs without adding licensing costs;
    2. Mayor potencial de crecimiento (best growth potential); this was awarded because LibreOffice is regularly updated and is open to new features and applications.

    Other winners included GNU Health (most revolutionary), WordPress (essential for communication) and CyanogenMod (best for mobile).

    Congratulations to LibreOffice, The Document Foundation and all the other winners.

  • A World Without Linux – episode 4

    Steve WoodsLinux, Media, Open Source, Tech

    The Linux Foundation has released episode 4 of its A World Without Linux video series.

    Called “Avatar Reimagined”, this latest video sees characters Sam and Annie going to the pictures (as we used to call them when I was a lad. Ed.) to watch a film with really bad special effects to make the point that the effects in many blockbuster movies are made on Linux supercomputers.

    The Linux Foundation commissioned six episodes for the series, leaving one left before the final episode featuring Mr Linux Kernel himself, Linus Torvalds.

  • A seasonal post

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language

    bare treeIt’s now that grim time of year between the end of British Summer Time (BST) in October and the winter solstice in December when periods of daylight are short, deciduous trees lose their leaves and the weather deteriorates. Indeed the United Kingdom is presently experiencing a succession of autumn storms and two evenings ago the Avonmouth area of Bristol experienced the strongest wind in the country with a blast of 79 mph as Storm Barney battered the country. In short, it’s the middle of November.

    The Victorian poet Thomas Hood (23rd May 1799 – 3rd May 1845) caught the mood of the time of year beautifully in his 1844 poem November.

    No sun – no moon!
    No morn – no noon –
    No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day.
    No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
    No comfortable feel in any member –
    No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
    No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds –
    November!

  • Trusty Tahr brought down by cat

    Steve WoodsLinux, Media, Oddities, Open Source, Tech

    Ubuntu logoLinux distribution bug reports are not a place one expects to find stuff to make one smile: they’re normally places where the faults and failings of software are described in normally boring detail.

    However, today proved an exception to the rule, courtesy of one filed a short while ago for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, codenamed “Trusty Tahr“, which has just come to prominence.

    14.04, locked screen to go to lunch, upon return from lunch cat was sitting on keyboard, login screen was frozen & unresponsive.

    To replicate: In unity hit ctrl-alt-l, place keyboard on chair. Sit on keyboard.

    Resolution: Switched to virtual terminal, restarted lightdm, lost all open windows in X session.

    What should have happened: lightdm not becoming unresponsive.

    Ubuntu fans are now trying to reproduce this bug, including some who want to try and reproduce it with other pets, as per the latest comment on the bug report page reproduced below.

    will it also work with a small dog, please some one with a small size dogs test it!

    LightDM is the display manager running in Ubuntu. According to the Ubuntu Wiki, it starts the X servers, user sessions and greeter (login screen).

    What’s a tahr? Wikipedia informs us that tahrs form a family of three species of large Asian ungulates related to the wild goat. The three species are the Himalayan tahr, Nilgiri tahr and Arabian tahr.

    Finally, there are millions of pictures of cats and kittens all over the internet. Indeed, there’s even a Firefox add-on called Kitten Block that steps in whenever the user who has it installed attempts to access the right-wing Daily Mail and Daily Express websites. However, there are far fewer pictures of tahrs. Let’s remedy that with a fine picture of a male Himalayan tahr courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    male Himalayan tahr

    Hat tip: Softpedia

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