1,076

(5 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Actually, I don't think there will need to be a limit in future.

Unicode Inc. is using two fields, given and given2, where both of them may contain one or more spaces. So, for example, a first name such as Mary Jane can be accommodated, as could indeed the 22 footballer names, one in given and 21 in given2.

Whether programmers will do other than just use the first character of given and of given2 or use the first character and each character that follows a space remains to be seen. I suppose a lot depends uopn whether an employer has a culture of wanting good software, recognizing that writing good software takes time, or whether the employer has a culture of insisting on speed speed speed and threatening. staff with no job if not done by Friday.

It is amazing how many managers do not act in accordances with the 1908 findings of Yerkes and Dodson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkes%E2%80%93Dodson_law

William

1,077

(5 replies, posted in General Discussion)

People need to design software competently.

Regarding the children with 22 names, it is their name, as registered.

I remember reading once of a woman, upon learning that her husband had registered their newly born daughter with eleven footballer names, went to her mother's house, taking the girl with her.

It was resolved by the registrar agreeing to reregister the girl with two conventional girl names.

Someone told me once that one of his relatives had had three given names and had habitually used just the first two, and that when he died intestate the application for letters of administration had to be worded as (here I am using made up names as examples) Albert Brian Charles Smith, also known as Albert Brian Smith, ...

This is because his name on his birth certificate would not be the same as on, say, his bank account, so the High Court would need to decide whether the bank account belonged to the same person as did the birth certificate.

William

1,078

(5 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Oh, people have told me that they have one name and that is sufficient, that two is enough to identify someone, that two is enough for anybody, that someone could have twenty-six given names - one for each letter of the alphabet.

("First two" is not necessarily sufficient to identify someone - for example if driving licence and insurance certificate do not have exactly the same name on them)

But those points are not the issue.

The starting issue in this thread is why some people deliberately, in replying, recording in records, and so on, do not reply to, record, or whatever, the name of someone as it was stated by someone else, but choose to reply to, record, or whatever, an edited version.

What is the mindset for someone doing that, not what reasons he or she states to try to justify their action if their error is pointed out and they are asked to correct it.

William

1,079

(5 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I have three given names.

For some things I use just the first initial, like signing for a delivery, followed by my surname.

However for anything formal, I use three initials followed by my surname. I never ever use "just the first two".

Yet I have found, over the years, that some people are unable or unwilling to copy my name from one document to another.

For example, more than once, I have written a letter, signed with three initials and my surname, with my three initials and surname below my signature in capitals for clarity, and the reply has just the first two initials and my surname.

Why?

Once, in the 1970s, I worked somewhere and, from time to time, I wrote a letter out in longhand as a draft, for it to be typed on the employer's stationery. The person doing the typing would later bring it to me for signing. The lady who normally typed letters for me had always typed all three of my initials. One day, she had had a lot on from her core work as a senior secretary, so the letter got typed by someone else.

She had omitted the initial of my third given name.

I politely mentioned this and was amazed when she said that the lecturer at her typing course at the local college had told her to only use the first two initials if someone had more than two. Fancy that being taught in a college!

It just seems strange to me that some people, but not everybody, seem to think it is reasonable or even desirable to not include more than two initials.

I am genuinely puzzled by this phenomenon.

William

1,080

(3 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I have added another post to the thread. The post is about encoding the characters so that they can be used in electronic communication.

William

1,081

(22 replies, posted in Art & Literature)

Just different ways of thinking.

Even if I was given it all "on a plate" smile up to "Please find an anagram of chief and sak" I still would not have got fishcake.

I like to think I am reasonably good at puns though.

For example, the pun-based joke about the person who asked an entomologist about the origin of the word malapropism and was surprised when the person did not know.

William

1,082

(3 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I have added a post to the Affinity forum thread, the post details my design rules that I have devised and use for designing abstract emoji-compatible characters.

William

1,083

(3 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I have posted some designs that I have produced using Affinity Publisher.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index. … haracters/

William

1,084

(22 replies, posted in Art & Literature)

Thank you, Joe. I was thinking of a cake at a 21st Birthday Party.

Is celebrating a 21st Birthday as in the Old Days gone now since the age of majority was lowered to 18?

To where has Youth vanished? Those seven years from when most left school to becoming legally an adult. Gradually eroded from both directions.

Those were were days when there were youth clubs when nobody over 21 could join but someone who was a member did not have to leave upon becoming 21. It was an era where often they would have a 21st party at the Youth Club then gradually drift away.

Do they still run or did changing the age of majority basically cause a cultural shift that people who were in the age range of 18 to 21 and legally adult thought differently from how people in the age range of 18 to 21 thought when people in the age range of 18 to 21 were not legally adults.

Are you over 21? Oh oh oh!

smile

William

1,085

(22 replies, posted in Art & Literature)

The clue from GB is clever.

Starting from knowing the answer is fishcake I get it.

But I don't think I would have got angle meaning fish. I would probably have thought of right angle, so something being upright, or something being correct.

I might have got cake from 'have and eat it'.

Even knowing the answer I don't get a route to get fishcake from the clue that Joe posted.

I like the way that Jack indicates cake, that way of thinking I follow, and I think I would have known that the answer was something cake, but I would have been thinking of angle and cake sort as if it was a portion from a cake, sort of like a ninety degree portion of a cake. But suppertime to me would have meant eating that portion of cake and having a glass of Norfolk Punch with it. I don't think of supper as being evening meal. So it would not occur to me that a fishcake would be eaten for supper.

William

1,086

(22 replies, posted in Art & Literature)

Albert Ross wrote:

I now know why I am useless when it comes to cryptic crosswords. Not a single solution to Jack's question did I begin to understand. All I can think off would be "cod, for example, plus cream for example".

Hello Albert

I can not usually solve cryptic crossword puzzle either.

Solving them seems to rely on imprecise thinking.

My suggested clue is

ghoti before celebrating at a wedding reception served with chips and peas (8)

I remembered that the word ghoti was coined so as to be pronounced the same as fish.

gh as in cough

o as in women

ti as in action

before is so that fish is before something else

So four letters in total

Eight letters needed.

served with chips and peas is intended to indicate that the eight letter word is something served with chips and peas

So we need something about celebrating at a wedding reception

So eating, drinking, community singing, playing musical chairs, um ... er ...

Is it fishmusicalchairs, no, that is more than eight letters!

Ah!

Reading out telegrams? No

Best man's speech?

First dance?

Oh,

So what could it be?

However, I am unfamiliar with rules and conventions for constructing cryptic crossword clues, so maybe my suggested clue crashes!

William

1,087

(22 replies, posted in Art & Literature)

That is very clever of you,
The clue encoded and rhyming too!

William

Thank you for providing the link.

Actually, the message was not from the French king.

William

1,089

(22 replies, posted in Art & Literature)

ghoti before celebrating at a wedding reception served with chips and peas (8)

William

1,090

(2 replies, posted in Mathematics & Science)

She sticks a rose stalk into a potato and look what happens a week later! Amazing!

https://www.tips-and-tricks.co/home-and … er-amazing

William

An interesting thing has occurred to me.

A former USA President is referred to as President Surname after not being the current president.

An American journalist addressing a former president in an interview, addresses him as Mr President, notwithstanding that the former president is not the current president.

So I wondered how a First Lady is addressed and how a former First Lady is addressed.

I have found the following.

https://www.formsofaddress.info/president_spouse-usa/

William

Who is supposed to have demanded what?

William

1,093

(3 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Well, no more downloads, no more replies by others in the Affinity thread.

Yet the number of views of the thread continues to soar.

So I have posted a transcript of the contents of the file and some notes about it.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index. … -galleries

William

This episode, from 1953, has as the celebrity guest Eleanor Roosevelt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ew82Ae_N9g

I have watched a number of episodes of the American What's My Line from that era, and usually when the people of the panel shake hands with the visitors, the males stand, and the females remain seated.

Of the episodes that I have watched, this is the only one where the females of the panel stood to shake hands, and only for Mrs Roosevelt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Roosevelt

William

1,095

(3 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Oh, I didn't realize that.

William

1,096

(3 replies, posted in General Discussion)

On 24 October 2022 I started a thread in the Serif Affinity Share your work forum.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index. … galleries/

There were some posts, most from me, one from Alfred, until 28 October 2022.

Alfred added a Follow request to the thread.

Yesterday evening, 24 November 2022, I added another post to the thread, and added an attached file.

I opened the file from the forum as a check that it had uploaded correctly, so that check was listed as a download.

I noticed that the tread had 464 views at that time. The number remembere because it reminded me of the 4-6-4 wheel arrangement of a famous locomotve.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_W1

Anyway, earlier today I looked at the Serif Affinity forum and I noticed that the number of views of the thread was 540.

Quite an increase.

Yet only a total of 2 looks at the attached file, one of which was my checking of the upload.

So I am wondering why of all of those looks at the thread, only one person has looked at the attached file.

I might be missing something that some others find obvious.

I know it might be lack of interest, but the people who have opened the thread would have been aware of its title. So maybe lots of other people saw the title and chose not to look at the thread at all.

William

An interesting edition of What's My Line. It includes the American advertisements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw90sezjgCI

Spoiler alert.

You may prefer not to click on the next link until after you have watched the link above, because it is about something mentioned in that programme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO7mtHMQ0Uo

William

With Welsh I am only on the present tense thus far.

Interestingly the word for 'black' is du, which can soft mutate to ddu.

The word for cat in Welsh is cath.

I noticed that in Welsh, cath is grammatically feminine, whereas in French, the French word for cat, namely chat, is grammatically masculine.

Alfred, do you know Gaelic?

There is a Duolingo course for Gaelic.

Here is a link to a page with the list of available courses.

https://www.duolingo.com/courses

They changed the structure recently.

I don't know how it is now, but when I started one could do the first lesson without registering, but one needed to register to continue.

But it is free. One point, there is a profile, which was, maybe still is, default public, but one can easily make it private.

William

In English, we have,

It is snowing.

So what is "it"?

French has

Il neige.

Likewise what is "il"?

Esperanto just has

Neĝas.

The circumflex above the letter g is not a problem, in fact it is helpful, because in Esperanto, a letter g is pronounced hard as in the English word 'gate' and a letter 'ĝ' is pronounced soft as in the English word 'gemstone'.

So no 'it'

I am learning Welsh, and I found that it appears that Welsh does not use a verb for snowing but has something that literally is something like, as far as I can tell as a learner, that is

is casting snow.

Or perhaps

is doing casting snow

Mae'n bwrw eira.

Welsh has a word 'yn' which is said not to translate into English, but which seems to me could be thought of as meaning 'doing', similarly to that in English we can have

I do like parsnips.

We would more often say

I like parsnips.

The Welsh,

Dw i'n hoffi pannas.

is that the yn has become 'n appended to a previous word that ends in a vowel.

It seems to me (though I am just a beginner) to mean

I am doing liking parsnips.

Interestingly, in Welsh the verb comes first.

So in

Dw i'n hoffi pannas.

the word Dw is 'am' and the i is 'I'.

It is quite fascinating.

I am brushing up my Esperanto and learning Welsh on Duolingo.com and although there are paid options, there is free use supported by advertisements, but the advertisements are not intrusive, they are not within lessons, just a small static advertisement within a page between lessons. One a few days ago was for Serif Affinity software.

The translation Mae'n bwrw eira. is listed in Google translate as having been marked as correct by Google translate users.

I find the following interesting.

In English, whatever "It" is, is actually snowing as an activity.

Whereas in Welsh, the implied "It" is casting snow. Sort of in a similar manner to a person is casting seeds to grow.

William

Alfred wrote:
William wrote:

I only recognized the first ten seconds of the music.

I believe they only used the first six bars (twelve distinct notes).

I have just listened again several times and I make it that they used the first sixteen notes. I do not know how that relates to bars.

William