and yeah, Facebook is down

Anyone remember Friends Reunited? Yeah, I bet you signed up once and never went back too. Well, it's had an ajaxy facelift, it's now free to send people messages and such, has pages for photos and video, and.. is a bit Facebooky. (In that you can now add family, friends, aquaintences, not just people you went to school with).

Looks good, but I think it's too little, too late. However, as long as they don't start letting you put zombies on the page, it's still a good alternative to the US-centric Facebook. Even if 80% of the people you know are on FB, and about 5% on FR.

Digsby just added Facebook Chat to its impressive list : MSN, Yahoo, AIM, Gtalk, Facebook Chat, Twitter, Myspace (although just MS updates, not MySpace chat yet)... awesomeness and freebeeness. Download it now! (Windows only for the moment though)

(Better than Trillian, Pidgin, Miranda... hell, even Adium. And thats saying something).

you can now download AVG Free 8

I hope it means an end to those "buy AVG 8 now!" popups... grrrr

I don't know because I can't afford Cysgliad. Anyhow... I wanted to try out the new e-petition scheme on the Assembly website, so I set up a petition for the Welsh Assembly Government to fund/provide the Cysgliad software (Windows version) for free. Well, how many people in Wales own Macs? Anyhow, pleeease sign it, if you too would like a Welsh dictionary/Thesaurus on your PC without paying £50 for the privilege.

https://www.assemblywales.org/gethome/e-petitions/eform-sign-petition.htm

Yeah, it may seem pointless, afterall the WAG isn't a software company. However, Cysgliad was partly funded (or, in the case of the Mac version, totally funded) by the Welsh Language Board, so the WAG will have some influence there.

If you live in Wales, or maybe the wider UK, you may be familiar with this story from earlier this week:

It was covered by the BBC, The Daily Mail, etc Shocking and sensless racist attack on property and animal. Made all the more ironic by the fact that the "English" people being attacked were actually Welsh, from Cardiff. "This is a Welsh-speaking area and they might have mistaken our Cardiff accents for English, that is all I can think," said the victim.

Everyone reports that the grafitti daubed on the farm reads "English out". Hence the racism.

Except it doesn't. The grafitti "Cai Maes Sais" is practically gibberish. Apparently, it SHOULD read "Cer Mas Sais". So where does the "Cai Maes Sais" come from?

Well... if you go to Intertrans, the translation software, and type in "Get Out Englishman", it comes back as "Cai Maes Sais". Incorrect, BUT it implies that the person who wrote the graffiti wasn't a Welsh-speaker at all. It was someone who used translation software to make up a Welsh slogan. Why would people in a Welsh speaking area use translation software? It also implies that no-one from the news services bothered to check up, they just reported it as they were told.

Translating Welsh by machine isn't a straightforward matter, so it's not all InterTrans fault Infact, machine translation is a common problem. If I was Dyfed-Powys police I would be looking at local computers, to see if any of them had used a translation website or similar in the day or two before the attack. this thread is illuminating.

The Royal Mint has unveiled the new British coins... as I said yesterday, the Royal Coat Of Arms. Meaning England, Scotland, and Ireland. NO WALES.

And get this... they were designed by a Welshman! Matthew Dent, from Bangor. Unbelievable.

 

And they want us to swear allegiance to this Royalty, who doesn't even acknowledge we exist. Erm... no.

Firefox 3 beta 5 is out now.

I think I'm ready to switch to 3 full-time now. Thing is, there are hundreds of articles around on how to install FF3 so you don't lose FF2, to run them both together. But I can't find anywhere that tells you how to install FF3 OVER FF2. To upgrade, in the traditional sense. Any ideas?

I've started a new blog, since this one is mainly techy-geeky stuff. My other blog is here:

Pobyl Y Cerrig

and deals with my other interests, archaeology, Welsh history, paganism, myths & legends. Particularly the area of the old "Silures" tribe, Gwent, Glamorgan, into Herefordshire. Feel free to add it to your feedreaders.

It's not on Vox, because I wanted to try out Windows Live Writer, and that works well with Blogger/Picasa. So yeah..

I've been looking around for the cheapest place to buy Cysgliad, which is a Welsh dictionary/thesaurus/spellchecker for Word and OpenOffice.org. But it's the same price everywhere, £50ish. Wow, that's expensive for what it is. And it's far more expensive for home or business users that it is for government-ish users, which is arse-backwards if you ask me. If you work for the council, Cysgliad will be on your machine. College, voluntary organisations etc can all get it in bulk, and encourage all their employees to use it. Which is fine, and the software is widely used.

BUT... what about the kids at home? The small business? The blogger?

IMO, and no-one will pay attention but I'll say it anyway, Cysgliad should be a kind of shareware model: free for home/non-commercial use, a minimal fee for commercial use. Come on Bangor Uni, let's get this software into every house in Wales. I know you have to make your money back, but considering it was partly funded by the Welsh Language Board, lets not be greedy here. Afterall, they claim "The Board's main aim is to make it easier for everyone to use Welsh in all walks of life." As long as you can afford it, it seems. A paper dictionary and a paper thesaurus will cost me what.. £6 each? Sell Cysgliad for £20 and THEN you'll see a profit, simply because of the increase in sales volume.

Of course, the users could rebel, and say you don't actually NEED Cysgliad. Spot the odd one out:

The Welsh spell checker for Office 2007 is a free download from Microsoft. They also have Office 2003, XP and Vista packs for download. For FREE.

The latest version of OpenOffice.org, Welsh Version, is also free.

Cysgliad, the Welsh spell checker, dictionary and thesaurus developed by a University and funded by government is.... £50. Doh! But wait... the OSX version of Cysgliad, from the same people, is.. FREE! What the hell...?

Of course, if the Cysgliad people would like to send me a copy, I'll stop ranting about the cost lol

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update: hmmm... the OSX version is just a bunch of Python scripts. I wonder....... ;)