Musha Everson, 1992-05-04 – 2008-05-07

Alas, my cat of 16 years has passed on. It really was time for Musha. I knew it, and I believe Musha knew it, and the vet was very good about it. He pointed out that Musha's thyroid gland had got very large, something I had also noticed while petting him. He had many of the signs of the final hours of Chronic Renal Failure: no urination, severe oral ulcers, inability to walk, fairly dull eyes, and hiding.

We might have tried massive antibiotics to try to heal his mouth ulcers (which were pretty acute) and an IV drip, but there'd be no guarantee of success even in the short term and eventually we would be back again for more of the same. My partner and I pet him as he went to sleep after the first injection, and then as he passed on after the second.

So at 18:00 on Wednesday 7 May, we helped him on his way. We were home by 18:30 and I stopped the clock, to symbolize that time had stopped for Musha. Then on Thursday 8 May at about the same time we brought him down to our friend and neighbour Rosey's garden. On his grave Rosey planted blue forget-me-nots and some other white flowers. Later on we will plant a tree there. At 18:35 on Thursday I started the clock again.

Musha was just over 16, his birthday being 4 May 1992. I miss him very much, and though I have no regrets about our choice, I find the early grieving to be relentless.

Oregon Democratic Primary

I filled out my Oregon absentee ballot today for the Democratic Primary. I voted for Obama, because I like him more than Clinton, though I would be happy to vote for either in November. (Why do I like him more? Because he belongs to my own generation, not to the previous one. It's time.)

Personally I hope the Super Delegates draft Gore for President and Obama for VP. Then we could have 16 years of Democrats in the White House.

But then I read a lot of science fiction.

Bottling sloe gin

We had a very good crop of sloes this year so I am laying down a number of bottles. I'm trying different proportions to see what I like. Laid down so far:

1/2 litre gin
250g sloes
200g sugar

1/2 litre gin
250g sloes
150g sugar

1/2 litre gin
250g sloes
100g sugar

1/2 litre gin
300g sloes
150g sugar

Method: Sugar is weighed and funnelled into the 75ml swing-top capped botle. Frozen berries are weighed out in a bowl, zapped 40 seconds in the microwave, and each is sliced with a scissors before putting into the bottle. Then gin (Cork Dry Gin in this case, which was cheap enough per litre in the 1.5 litre size used upside-down in pubs). I've labelled each bottle with the recipe and date of bottling.

Counting preservation in West Virginia

While it would be nice if fortune went more hand-in-hand with fame, fame sometimes brings one a nice surprise. I often get inquiries from people looking into languages and writing systems, and sometimes those queries are really very interesting. Last night, I received a very nice request from a charming person from West Virginia whose initials are V.E.L., who was born in 1927ː

Good evening to you, sir. This may sound very stupid to you but I'm willing to take that chance to ask you a question; I'm 80 years old and, as a young kid, I remember my Mother telling me and my siblings that she could count to 20 in Cherokee. We, of course, memorized that stuff and still have most of it stored in the old noggin. It went like this; teen, tain, tether, fether, fimps, matha, latha, catha, doublo, beaudix, teendix, taindix, tetherdix, fetherdix, bumpus, teenbump, tainbump, tetherbump, fetherbump, jenkus. (1 to 20)

It turns out that the numbers one to ten in Cherokee really don't have anything to do with the list which V.E.L. gave.

1	sa'wu
2	ta'li'
3	tsoː'i'
4	nvgi'
5	hiːsgi'
6	su'dali'
7	galoquoː'gi'
8	tsuneːla'
9	so'neːla'
10	sgo'hi'

So it's not Cherokee.

Is there any possibility that there was any merit at all in this, or was she simply kidding with us? I have been under the impression that dix was possibly French for 10 and that, coupled with teen for 11, makes a little bit of sense to me. The spelling is just my idea of how the words sounded and I am not a linguist at all. If you can find time to respond, it will greatly appreciated.

I think there's a good chance it's Welsh. At least some of it is. It's five and the shift after fifteen that clinch it for me.

№	W.Va.	IPA	Welsh	IPA
1	teen	tiːn	un	iːn
2	tain	tɑɪn	dau	dɑɪ
3	tether	ˈtɛðər	tri	triː
4	fether	ˈfɛðər	pedwar	ˈpɛdwɑr
5	fimps	fɪmps	pemp	pɛmp
6	matha	ˈmɑθə	chwech	xwɛx
7	latha	ˈlɑθə	saith	sɑɪθ
8	catha	ˈkɑθə	wyth	wɪθ
9	doublo	ˈduːblo	naw	nɑʊ
10	beaudix	ˈboːdɪks	deg	deg
11	teendix	ˈtiːndɪks	un ar ddeg	iːn ɑr ðeg
12	taindix	ˈtɑɪndɪks	deuddeg	deɪðeg
13	tetherdix	ˈtɛðərdɪks	tri ar ddeg	triː ɑr ðeg
14	fetherdix	ˈfɛðərdɪks	pedwar ar ddeg	ˈpɛdwɑr ɑr ðeg
15	bumpus	ˈbʌmpəs	pymtheg	ˈpɪmθeg
16	teenbump	ˈtiːnbʌmp	un ar bymtheg	iːn ɑr ˈbɪmθeg
17	tainbump	ˈtɑɪnbʌmp	dau ar bymtheg	dɑɪ ɑr ˈbɪmθeg
18	tetherbump	ˈtɛðərbʌmp	deunaw	ˈdeɪnɑʊ
19	fetherbump	ˈfɛðərbʌmp	pedwar ar bymtheg	ˈpɛdwɑr ɑr ˈbɪmθeg
20	jenkus	ˈdʒɛŋkəs	ugain	ˈigɑɪn

Internet back on in Burma

20:30, 2007-10-05: I've just spent two and a half hours talking with my friends now that the internet is (at least for now) up and running.

17:30, 2007-10-06: My friends tell me that unofficially the internet is up from 22:00 to 05:00 local time.

My experience with telecoms in Iran

2007-06-09 (Yes, I know, I wrote it four months ago and should have posted it then.)

One difference between my trip to Iran in November 2004 and June 2007 is that my phone worked! Well... sometimes.

My mobile service provider is O2, and it was a big surprise to me at Tehran airport when I turned it on for its clock and it delivered a text message. "IR-TCI" appeared and I was able to phone Roozbeh who was a bit late to meet me at the airport. Of course I sent a few text messages. Some odd loops occurred. A message sent me from a friend in California kept being delivered every half hour or so. The next day when we began our journey, coverage continued until either before Zanjan or between Zanjan and Qazvin. The error given by my Nokia E70 was "SIM card registration failed". Where was the failure? I am not sure.

Non-coverage continued in Qazvin, and in Tabriz, but in Jolfa it returned... But this time from ACell, a company in Azerbaijan. Driving along the Iranian border with Azerbaijan coverage shifted from ACell to Iran TELECOMMunication and Information. When we got to a spot near Meghri, I got a welcome message from the Armenian provider, ArmenTel I think it was. Then back to IR-TCI which later cut out again as we travelled to Kaleybar. high on the mountain pass on the way to K coverage returned. Then gone again through to Ardabil, until ACell woke the phone again in Astara. A switch there to IR-TCI, which then broke off. Whoops! IR-TCI started up again somewhere before we hit Rasht. I presume it will work from here on in to Tehran. But will there be coverage on our weekend trip to Yazd in the centre of the country? Well, we will see about that tonight but the Tehran service cut out after a metro ride this morning. Why am I so obsessed with mobile telephony? The apparent randomeness of coverage bugs me. Is it O2? Or IR-TCI? Or some middleman between the two?

Our friends in Burma

I said when I started that I'm not much of a diarist, and lots has happened that I might have blogged but haven't. Maybe later I'll file the exciting tale of My Experience with Telecoms in Iran.

But for now I am thinking of Burma and all that is happening there. One of my friends there has not been online since internet access was cut off on the 28th. He promised to stay safe... Another friend there happens to be in Bangkok right now, and another is in Chiangmai.

One source of news, translated from Burmese to English, is this blog. Read it. Share the URL. The people who are responsible for it are heroes and patriots.

Grave and acute

My friend John Cowan just asked me "Do you know the history of Gaelic grave vs. Irish acute?"

Of course Irish uses áéíóú. And Scottish Gaelic uses àèìòù. I've never thought about this. I'll have to look into it.

The earliest printed book in Irish uses the acute. To me that seems a natural choice. I don't know why people setting Scottish Gaelic chose the grave though. I'll look into it.

Tiger on my XP

I have a nice little Sony Vaio TX which I use from time to time for font development or to run Unibook. I find Windows to be unintuitive and generally icky. But the good folks at FlyAKiteOSX.com have a splendid and wonderful OS X skin which takes much of the pain and alienation away. And it really does make it easier for me to get things done under XP!

A medieval helpdesk

This Norwegian comedy sketch came as a breath of fresh air to me today. I needed a laugh! The sketch is by "KLM", Kirkevaag, Lystad, Mjøen, three very well-known Norwegian actors.

I haven't been very good about keeping up my blog, but so far this year I have been away from home for four weeks! It's hard to find time. So in the meantime, enjoy the YouTube offering. :-)

A test of music memory and tonedeafness

I ran across Jake Mandell's online test of your musical skills. I've often wondered about the relation between musical and linguistic ability. My ear must be pretty good, because I scored 89.9% when I took the test. So I'm not tone deaf and I have pretty good short term music memory. As I have a good ear for languages (and a good accent in general when speaking them) this doesn't surprise me. I've never been able to read music, though. Since I'm not good at maths either, I wonder if those skills are related.

Rehabilitating two Cyrillic characters

The other week I worked on a project to “rehabilitate” two already-encoded letters that are badly specified, and which cause problems to people using Cyrillic in the UCS. Not problems just for the end user, but problems for implementers as well. The characters in question are U+0478 CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER UK, U+0479 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UK, U+047C CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA WITH TITLO, U+047D CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH TITLO. The exciting story is found in this document.

My idea was to come up with practical solutions that will avoid ambiguity. On the other hand, theoretical perfection is something we don’t have the luxury for. We are doing damage control on bad choices made more than a decade ago! I am sure we would not have made those mistakes were we encoding Cyrillic for the first time today.

Today, I think we would have encoded a BROAD OMEGA and used diacritics for the beautiful omega or other things, and we would have encoded MONOGRAPH UK and left digraph UK to be encoded as a string of characters, Cyrillic о and у. Solution 2b and 3b in my document were attempts to achieve that situation, which would have been ideal, in my view.

The UTC was conservative on the side of stability, and more or less chose solutions 2a and 3a. (It's not done till it's published of course.) I had a concern that if they choose 2a, it will be possible to represent beautiful omega both as 047D and as BROAD OMEGA with two diacritics, and those will not be equivalent, which would cause ambiguity in text representation. (Of course, we have this now with OMEGA WITH TITLO, so the situation would not be worse than it is today.)

I thought that the case against 3a is a good deal stronger. A number of vendors are happy shipping monograph glyphs for 0479, and this poses no security issues. Looking at the Cyrillic fonts shipping with Windows XP, however, I found that all but one of them avoids encoding this character at all. My guess is that this is a question of security. So... we still have a problem here, since digraph UK can be represented by two letters, or (in principle) by this UK. I am thinking that the best solution for security's sake is to recommend that the reference glyphs for 0479 are drawn with half-width letters, to distinguish it and make it unappealing to use the character at all. This is tantamount to deprecation—if everyone does this in their fonts, it would be a real solution.

Snow on Croagh Patrick and Ben Goram

We have snow today! Here is Croagh Patrick seen from the back porch:



And here is Ben Goram, just to the west of Croagh Patrick in the same range.

A journey to Cornwall

I recently published three books by Nicholas Williams about Revived Cornish, and we discovered a small but irritating typographical error on the title page of one of them. Normally correction of typos is left for an errata sheet, but in this case we decided it would be best to print a correction on an adhesive sticker and paste it down on the title page. This gave me the chance to visit Cornwall for the first time in some years.

And what a splendid trip it was! I flew to Heathrow and took the Heathrow Express to Paddington—what a pleasure such a quick train is—and then took the train down to Truro. It was bright sunny November day, and the four-and-a-half hour journey passed very quickly. I spent some of it correcting an edition of Nicholas Boson’s story “Jowan Chy an Hor" as transcribed by Edward Lhuyd as “Dzhûan Tshei an Hɐr” in his 1707 Archaeologia Britannica. Quite a pleasure it was correcting it, too, as I recently acquired a copy of the original 1707 publication, rebound in red morocco in 1955 by “Nanquelsek”, an American bard of the Cornish Gorsedd. (I have a photo of the book's original binding and am thinking of having it rebound again in that more authentic style.)

At Truro I was met by Neil Kennedy, who has been living in Brittany for the past few years, but who is one of the people who have been using a form of Richard Gendall’s Revived Late Cornish orthography for the past 18 years or so. Neil and I spent several hours over dinner discussing the varieties of Revived Cornish orthography and our thoughts about how the current work towards a Single Written Form for Cornish is going. Later we drove to Portreath on the northwest coast to meet with Ray and Denise Chubb, proprietors of Spyrys a Gernow and members of Agan Tavas. Ray and Neil and I retired to Ray’s local for a few pints of real ale and more talk of orthography. There’s nothing like writing out comparisons of long and short vowels in different orthographies on beer mats with good company and tasty ale! Much has been written about the animosity between different factions of the Cornish Revival. The road ahead looks hopeful to me, though. Certainly seems to me to be nothing but growing mutual respect and friendly regards on the side of those who prefer authentic Cornish orthography for Revived Cornish.

Avestan, Bopomofo, Arabic

Last week I finalized the proposal to encode the Avestan script which I had a lot of fun working with Roozbeh on. I also helped put together a proposal for a Bopomofo character (with Andrew West) and a proposal for eight more Arabic characters with Roozbeh again and with his wife Elnaz.

This week, I’m wrestling with Old Cyrillic and Meitei Mayek.

Eeek! I’m in other people’s blogs!

Trying to figure out how all this blogging works, I’ve found myself to figure in other people’s blogs.... James Seng, for instance, blogged about having dinner with me in January 2005! In fairness, it was a splendid Thai dinner, and it was a pleasure to spend some time with James... and get driven a bit around Singapore in James’ rather nice car.

Nice memories, though. I’m grateful to him for putting me in touch with the UNDP about the Afghanistan project. In many ways, that opened the door to some other interesting work I’ve done.

Evertype: a blog

Some people have said I should blog. Well. Let’s see. I don't know if I am much of a diarist. But let’s see.