• Touting for trade

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    Some time ago in a meeting with Bristol Waste, the council-owned company responsible for cleaning the city’s streets and emptying residents’ bins, it was revealed that the company wanted to try and find commercial customers for its services.

    Evidence has emerged that the company has now started seeking business customers for its collection services.

    Bristol Waste employees have started handing out flyers like the one below to local shops, businesses, voluntary and community sector organisations in the Easton area of the city, all of which are responsible for making their own waste disposal arrangements (and which can be fined by the city council if these are found not be exist or be suitable. Ed.).

    Bristol Waste trade flyer

    My informant from whom I acquired the flyer told me that Bristol Waste is trialling this scheme in Easton. This presumably follows the same line of thinking as that for the Stapleton Road waste trial (posts passim), which is generally along the lines of “if it works in Easton, we can get it to work anywhere in the city“. 🙂

    Update: Bristol Waste was contacted for a comment and replied as follows:

    We are speaking to businesses in a number of locations across the city including Stapleton Road, Bedminster & Avonmouth in this first phase of our commercial roll-out. The service will be available city-wide.

    In addition, the Bristol Waste website has a dedicated commercial page.

  • Hail to(o) the Chief?

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Besides his less endearing qualities of bullying, sexism and xenophobia, the 45th President of the United States of America is believed by some not to be very bright either, an opinion which is reinforced by the presence of a glaring typographical error in the text on his official inauguration portrait, which must at some time have passed across his desk for approval (or even been written by him. Ed.).

    Trump official inauguration photo

    Proof readers and the eagle-eyed will no doubt spot it immediately, unlike POTUS did.

    However, orthography and proof reading may be the least of President Typo’s worries at present. 🙂

  • After fake news, fake translation

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Politics

    Fake news (also called misinformation or lies. Ed.) is a term that has come to prominence recently, even though its dissemination is a far older phenomenon.

    The goods and services which could be classed as fake have now been joined by another – “fake translation“. Kenya’s Nairobi News reports that a tour guide at the Serengeti National Park in neighbouring Tanzania has been arrested after incorrectly translating a tourist’s comments about the country and its people from English into Swahili.

    The guide is said to have been arrested on unspecified charges on Thursday on the orders of Tanzanian Tourism Minister Jumanne Mghembe.

    Still from videoIn an undated video clip, the tour guide translates what an English-speaking woman is saying and instead of conveying the original message’s meaning, decides to skew the visitor’s kind remarks about country completely.

    An example is given below.

    Visitor: “Hi. My visit to Tanzania has been beautiful and gorgeous. The people are fabulously wonderful and friendly. Greetings are always jambo. I am happy to be here. The land is beautiful, the animals are wonderful.

    Tour guide: You Tanzanians complain/cry a lot about hunger. Everyday you cry about hunger when you have flowers at home. Why don’t you boil the flowers and drink [them]. It is not good to cry/complain about hunger.

    The minister may have ordered the unnamed guide’s arrest as he felt the guide was either mocking the tourist or mimicking President John Magufuli, as some of the guide’s remarks echoed those used by the president at a rally last month when he called on people to stop complaining about hunger.

    Tanzania is popular with tourists due to its wildlife and stunning scenery and markets itself as “The Soul of Africa“.

  • LibreOffice 5.3 released

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    Yesterday The Document Foundation announced the release of LibreOffice 5.3 for Windows, macOS and Linux, as well as for the private cloud for the first time.

    LibreOffice 5.3 represents a significant step forward in the evolution of this free and open source office suite: it introduces new features such as online collaborative editing and at the same time provides incremental improvements to make the program more reliable, interoperable and user-friendly.

    New features

    LibreOffice 5.3 offers a number of interesting new features in every area including:

    • a new cross-platform text layout engine that uses HarfBuzz for consistent text layout on all platforms, with significant advantages across languages and alphabets;
    • a revised Help menu, with new quick links to user guides and community support forums; and

      • better import/export filters for new and legacy MS Office documents.

    New features in Writer include:

    • Table Styles, for applying formatting to a table which is preserved when edited; and
    • new Go to Page Box (activated by keystrokes Ctrl+G) makes it possible to jump to another page in the document with fewer keystrokes.
    LibreOffice 5.3 Writer in action
    LibreOffice 5.3 Writer in action

    Turning to spreadsheets, Calc provides a new set of default cell styles, with greater variety and better names than in previous releases, whilst in fresh installations, “Enable wildcards in formulas” is now the default option, rather than regular expressions, to improve compatibility with other spreadsheet software.

    Impress, LibreOffice’s presentation package, now opens with a template selector to get the user off to a quick start. In addition, a new Slide Properties Deck is now available in the sidebar while in slide master mode.

    A list of the most significant new features is available in a separate document, in addition to which a series of short presentation videos has been produced.

    Experimental UI features

    As of this release, the LibreOffice UI has been extended with the addition of an experimental Notebookbar, which offers another UI option in addition to the Default UI (with two toolbars), the Single Toolbar UI and the Sidebar with a Single Toolbar. Each UI layout has been thought to serve a different cluster of LibreOffice users.

    LibreOffice Online

    LibreOffice 5.3 features the first source release of LibreOffice Online, a cloud office suite enabling basic collaborative editing of documents in a browser by re-using the LibreOffice “core engine”.

    LibreOffice Online is fundamentally a server service and should be installed and configured by adding a cloud storage and a SSL certificate, which are not included in the package.

    Builds of the latest LibreOffice Online source code are available as Docker images.

    Availability

    LibreOffice 5.3 is available for immediate download (your correspondent has already moved onto an as yet unreleased development version. Ed.).

    However, for large scale and commercial deployments, The Document Foundation recommends the more mature 5.2.5 version (posts passim), preferably with professional support.

  • The shortest suicide note in history?

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Labour MP Gerald Kaufman is credited with coining the phrase “the longest suicide note in history” to describe his party’s 1983 election manifesto.

    Entitled “The New Hope for Britain“, the manifesto called amongst other things for unilateral nuclear disarmament, higher personal taxation for the rich, abolition of the House of Lords and the re-nationalisation of recently privatised industries such as British Telecom and British Aerospace.

    In that election, Labour’s vote fell by more than 3 million compared with 1979, with the party’s representation in the House of Commons declined from 261 to 209, whilst Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government enjoyed a 4% swing, buoyed up a wave of jingoistic fervour engendered by the conflict in the Falklands/Malvinas.

    Yesterday, the House of Commons started consideration of what could be termed “the shortest suicide note in history“. Commonly known as the “Brexit Bill“, its full title is the “European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill 2017“. Its purpose is grant the Prime Minister power to notify the European Union of the UK’s intention to withdraw from the EU following last year’s disastrous and divisive referendum called by the then Prime Minister David Cameron, who foolishly put the interests of his divided party above those of the country.

    The full text of the Bill as presented is set out below.

    A BILL TO

    Confer power on the Prime Minister to notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU.

    Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

    Power to notify withdrawal from the EU
    (1)The Prime Minister may notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU.

    (2)This section has effect despite any provision made by or under the European Communities Act 1972 or any other enactment.

    The Bill’s progress through both houses of Parliament promises to be interesting, as both major parties are still riven by pro- and anti-EU divisions, as the country still is.

    Finally, let’s not forget that those critical of the EEC/EC/EU, who came to be called “Eurosceptics“, were complaining even before the ink was dry on the Treaty of Accession, so it would be most unfair – and sense of fairness is allegedly an essential part of the British character – not to allow pro-Europeans (now being termed “Remoaners”. Ed.) an equally long period to express their views, however abhorrent those opposed to the EU, who are now termed “Brexiters“.

  • Stapleton Road waste trial

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    On Wednesday, Bristol Waste held a drop-in session at the Newton Hall for residents to get some (more) feedback on trial removal of communal waste bins along the Stapleton Road corridor.

    Projected onto a wall was a presentation giving some facts, figures and information about the trial removal of the area’s 164 communal bins and their replacement with regular wheelie bins and bag collections (for those with no off-street storage space. Ed.).

    Since the start of the trial at the end of October/beginning of November, it seems the trial has had a drastic effect, as the following figures reveal.

    • Recyling: up 16.7%
    • Refuse: down by 40.9%
    • Street cleansing requirement: down by 35.8%

    In addition, fly-tipping enforcement in the area has been increased, with 62 notices served on individuals on how to present waste and 16 Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) served on individuals. Moreover, there are currently 35 active investigations into fly-tipping from domestic properties, whilst 8 local businesses have been served FPNs and another 8 are being investigated.

    The most encouraging news came at the end of the presentation, as follows:

    Due to the success of the scheme in terms of reduced waste, bulky fly-tipping and increased recycling levels we are proposing that we will continue the trial until March in order to gather more data and feedback.

    In March, we anticipate recommending to the Neighbourhood Partnership that the service changes we have introduced remain in place for the area.

    So it looks like scenes like the one below, taken in April 2016, will finally be a thing of the past along the Stapleton Road corridor. 😀

    communal bin in Milsom Street buried under a pile of fly-tipped furniture
    Somewhere under that pile of furniture is a communal bin.

  • LibreOffice 5.2.5 released. 5.3 coming soon

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    The Document Foundation (TDF) blog has today announced the release of LibreOffice 5.2.5 “still”, the fifth minor release of the LibreOffice 5.2 family and is inviting all users to update to this latest release from LibreOffice 5.1.6 or previous versions.

    LibreOffice 5 splash screen

    This latest release comes with over 70 bug fixes and improvements compared with the previous version.

    As usual, TDF recommends professional support for large-scale deployments of LibreOffice in major companies and public sector organisations.

    Besides this latest release, LibreOffice 5.3, the next version of the more cutting edge LibreOffice “fresh” line, is due out on 1st February.

    Download LibreOffice

    LibreOffice 5.2.5 is available for immediate download, whilst the latest release candidate (RC) for LibreOffice 5.3 is available for download from the pre-release server.

    Donate to LibreOffice

    As is customary with every new release, free software advocates and community members are invited to support the work of The Document Foundation with a donation.

  • “Th” sound to disappear from English in coming decades?

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

    The “th” sound, which had its own letter – thorn (Þ, Ăž) in Old and Middle English – could disappear from spoken British English, today’s Daily Telegraph reports.

    By 2066, linguists are predicting that the “th” sound will vanish completely in london because there are so many foreigners who struggle to pronounce interdental consonants – the term for a sound created by pushing the tongue against the upper teeth.

    In the wider South East of England Estuary English – a hybrid of Cockney and received pronunciation (RP)– is already being replaced by Multicultural London English (MLE), which is heavily influenced by Caribbean, West African and Asian Communities.

    The Telegraph is reporting on the release of the Sounds of The Future report produced by Dr. Dominic Watt and Dr. Brendan Gunn from the University of York.

    Other predictions from the authors include:

    • Sound softening – hardly anyone says ‘syoot’ for ‘suit’ any more and this trend will continue with the sharp corners knocked off words;
    • Yod dropping – words like ‘cute’ or ‘beauty’ will become ‘coot’ and ‘booty’;
    • Consonant smushing – ‘w’ and ‘r’ are already similar for many southern English speakers, but the letters could completely collapse into one sound, whilst Words with ‘ch’ and ‘j’ could also become indistinguishable;
    • Glottal stop – the slight linguistic trip which turns ‘butter’ into ‘bu’er’ in dialects like Cockney could become more widespread around the country.

    Commenting on the same report, the Newcastle Chronicle leads with the headline “The Geordie accent is on the way out say language experts“, remarking that language experts say that by 2066 the distinctive Geordie accent will sound like a southern one.

    The Sound of 2016 report was commissioned by bankers HSBC, to mark the “voice biometric” technology which the bank is rolling out to 15 million customers, so perhaps it’s worth mentioning here the usual disclaimer about not trusting information from someone trying to sell you something. 😀

  • LibreOffice 5.2.2 now available for download

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    Yesterday the LibreOffice project celebrated its sixth anniversary since the project forked from OpenOffice.org.

    Just one day later The Document Foundation (TDF) has announced on its blog the release of LibreOffice 5.2.2, the second minor release of the 5.2 series.

    LibreOffice 6th anniversary banner

    LibreOffice 5.2.2 is targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users and features a number of fixes over the major release announced in August. Those interested in release’s technical details about the release can consult the change log to discover the bugs fixed in RC1 and those fixed in RC2.

    For more conservative users and enterprise deployments, TDF recommends using LibreOffice 5.1.5 “still”, complete with the back-up of certified professional support.

    A summary of the most significant new features of the LibreOffice 5.2 family is also available on the LibreOffice website.

    Download LibreOffice

    LibreOffice 5.2.2 is available for immediate download.

    LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can also support The Document Foundation with a donation.

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