Dear Christopher,
Happy birthday. I’m on time for a change. 🙂
Love, Uncle Craig
“Shedule” versus “Skedule”
Having been challenged about this yet again recently and still not having much more to offer than the stunning revelation than that the English language is full of exceptions to rules — because, really, it’s not a surprise or a big deal to me that different people in or from different parts of the world pronounce things differently — I decided to do some research.
The tired old comparison is to the word “school”. “Why don’t you pronounce it ‘shool’?” goes the typical witty refrain. Really? That’s your best argument for why I’m supposedly pronouncing the word “schedule” incorrectly? Why are there two pronunciations and three meanings of the word “desert”? Why ask me? Who died and left me in charge of making the rules of the English language and ensuring that every word conforms without exception?!
Sometimes it amuses me the number of Canadians who simply don’t realise the extent to which they are influenced by American English, even when the closest thing we have to an official guide north of the border — the Gage Canadian Dictionary — goes against American wisdom and sides with British norms. It’s a sad result of our proximity to the States, Hollywood, and American dominance in certain other areas — such as the default settings for spellcheckers in software created by American companies, not the least of which is Microsoft. (Although, maddeningly, my copy of Mozilla Firefox keeps reverting to United States English unbidden!) But distance does not save even the British themselves — and others like South African, Indian and south Pacific speakers of English — from the grubby hands of “Pax Americana”.
You may or may not be aware that the English language contains a vast number of loanwords. According to a couple of impeccable sources (one an answer on the collaborative English Language & Usage “Stack Exchange” addressing a bizarre question about class in the UK, and the other a British blogger living in the US), the British “shed” pronunciation is influenced by either French or German, while the American “sked” pronunciation is influenced by the Greek origin of the word. A slightly more impeccable source is the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which lists both pronunciations with a preference for “shedule”, and indicates that the word comes to us from Greek via Latin and French. (No mention of German.) There you have it; foreign influences in our pristine, flawless, rule-bound English language! Who would have thunk it?! (Don’t tell the morons responsible for this nonsense!)
OK, now that you’ve taken in the enormity of the difficulties involved in adopting foreign words into “our” language, learn to accept that there are understandable regional differences in spelling and pronunciation. My background means that I often pronounce and spell words the British way and pepper my speech with Afrikaans loanwords, but put me in the company of people who are from the places where I grew up and they’ll tell me that I have an “American” accent and use “weird” terminology. I can’t win. And actually, I like that. I’m not one who wants to be like the rest of the crowd. I’m almost tempted to use “skedule” in their company!
Speaking of which, in my dim and distant past when I briefly worked towards a career in the aviation industry, I did actually occasionally refer to a “sked”, aviation argot (another loanword pronounced as the original French) for a “scheduled flight”. Referring to one as a “shed” would have just been weird.
Anyway, getting back to the aforementioned Gage Canadian Dictionary, it offers both “skedule” and “shedule” as correct pronunciations of the word, in that order. And in case you’re so unimaginative that “school” is the only comparable word that you can come up with, my Concise Oxford Dictionary lists 86 words that start with “sch”. Some of those are compound words and phrases, but here are a few that are unquestionably pronounced using “sh”: schist, schlep, schlock, schlub, schlump, schmaltz, schmear, schmo, schmooze, schmuck, schnapps (yum!), schnauzer (woof!), schorl and schuss.
Now, how did you learn to pronounce those in shool?
HeidiSQL and MySQL: Can’t connect to MySQL server on ‘127.0.0.1’ (10061)
HeidiSQL can’t connect to MySQL
I installed XAMPP and HeidiSQL (the latter running under Wine) on my local Xubuntu 14.04 (LTS) system sometime in the last year or two. I’d used both before when I used to use Windows, and have had no problem using HeidiSQL to connect to external MySQL servers. However, I have had no success connecting to my local installation of MySQL. Not having time to deal with the issue (what seemingly inexplicable computer issue is ever resolved in a matter of minutes?!) I just left it and used phpMyAdmin that comes bundled with XAMPP, which is up to the job but which is a pain to use once you’re used to a native application like HeidiSQL.
Well, yesterday was the day to get to the bottom of the problem, and predictably it took me several hours to figure out.
I found a number of articles that referred to user privileges, client bugs, binding MySQL to the localhost IP address, some guy who was doing it wrong, another guy who must have been using machine translation to try to get his point across (I don’t envy the poor guy), and a guy who seemed to have the same problem as me (but didn’t).
I found the clue that solved my problem in the Navicat knowledge base (“2003 – Can’t connect to MySQL server on xxx (10061)“) that linked to the MySQL reference manual (“B.5.2.2 Can’t connect to [local] MySQL server“). Looking at the default XAMPP MySQL configuration file at /opt/lampp/etc/my.cnf I noticed the following:
# commented in by xampp security #skip-networking skip-networking
I’m guessing that the XAMPP-provided script that I recall XAMPP suggesting you run after installation to plug a few security holes put that there. After I once again commented out “skip-networking” and restarted MySQL, HeidiSQL was able to connect. Considering I generally only run the local MySQL server for brief periods I don’t expect this to be a major security issue.
I am a happy camper once again. Hope this helps you too.
Charlie Hebdo se souvenait
Charia Hebdo: Keep Calm and Carry On
It’s one year on (from 7 January 2015), and I’m remembering the attack on the offices of, and the cold-blooded murder of members of the staff at, Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Also of note is the concurrent murder of the protection officers that were detailed to protect certain Charlie Hebdo staff members after a previous terror attack in 2011 and two bystanders, as well as others who were murdered — another police officer and shoppers at a grocery store in Porte de Vincennes (a suburb of Paris) — in associated attacks in the days following.
I read somewhere recently that Charlie Hebdo was on the verge of closing down when the attacks happened, and that they have experienced a renaissance since. Perhaps that is the point behind their rather graphic tank cartoon, of which I heartily approve. If you believe in a higher power — Allah, God, whatever — I would call the recovery divine intervention. Take note: Your god does not approve of you killing people, certainly not in his name, and he’s not so fucking vain and insecure as to have issues with being drawn.
Vive la presse libre!
Happy birthday Sandra!
Sandra.
16 November 2015 17:09 PST
Dear Sandra,
You would have been 57 today. Happy birthday!
Love, Craig
Android issues
Google+ has crashed, burned and died, which is terribly unfortunate
As I’ve alluded to before, my disappointment with the Android operating system created by Google is mighty. However, it reached a new low last week.
Suddenly I kept being presented with “Unfortunately, Google+ has stopped” errors that prevented me from doing anything until I tapped either “Report” or “OK”. I tapped “OK” the first few times, but then I thought, “Well, maybe I should be a good user and report this problem.” At first my reports were polite, but after being presented with this error every few seconds, sometimes one on top of the other while I was still trying to report the previous instance, I started to use four-letter words, usually two per report. Then I just gave up, and hit a few random letters before sending my report. I figured that after a few dozen reports something might be done. I am so naive!
Anyway, after a day or two of not being able to do anything on my tablet without constant interruption by the Google Plus app apparently crashing, I decided to take matters into my own hands. First of all, I don’t use Google Plus in any shape or form, but (of course) it’s a “system app” that you are forced to keep, so I rolled back the updates and disabled it. Then I went and disabled every single Google app I could identify except the six that I’m actually using:
- Chrome,
- Gmail,
- Google Play service,
- Google Play Store,
- (Google) Maps, and
- Youtube.
I have no doubt that there are more Google services on my tablet “phoning home” at every opportunity, but I probably can’t do much about those. As for the six that are left, short of “rooting” my device I probably can’t operate without the two “Play” apps, Gmail is on my list of things that I won’t need in the near future (and will disable) as I work diligently to stop using all Google services (I’ll be writing about that when I have some time), Chrome I’m keeping for now as I think it’s a good idea to have a second web browser on any machine (even if one of them is Google crap), Google Maps I will replace if or when I find something as good (in the meantime I’m fine using it with location services turned off), and Youtube … well, since it’s the world’s video sharing service, I won’t be disabling that any time soon, I suppose.
Speaking of rooting, I’m now way more inclined to do that than I was a couple of years ago when I bought this tablet. The only issue is that I don’t have the time to spend managing all of my computing resources. Technology was supposed to save us time, allowing us to frolic in fields of green with our friends and families while the computers did all the work. Instead we’re chained to them like slaves. How bloody ironic! Anyway, my tablet doesn’t seem to be on a list of supported devices for which there are instructions and software for rooting. Further digging reveals that I could probably work on it but … here we are back at the time excuse in this circular argument.
But here’s some further irony in this story: Once I had disabled all of the Google apps I could get my hands on, suddenly I could multitask again! Well, as well as you can on a tablet, I suppose. Where once I couldn’t switch to another app without it completely reloading from scratch, now I can get back to where I was mid-session with some of them. Firefox is the exception, which annoyingly reloads tabs from scratch every single time they’re re-selected.
Update, 29 November 2015: Having got on a roll and removed or (if it’s a “system app”) disabled any app that I’m not using, I was left with Samsung WatchON, which (after rolling back all of the updates) I can neither disable nor remove nor even stop. And yet, according to its Wikipedia article (as much research as I am willing to waste my time with), “App is discontinued on December 31, 2014 worldwide except US and Korea, and June 15, 2015 in those remaining two countries.” (The wording of that is not the only problem with the Wikipedia article.) When I try to run the app I’m told that it won’t run because the time on my device is wrong. Well, actually Samsung, it’s not. And so, having rolled back all of the updates so that I could disable this “system (cr)app”, I’m now running an out-of-date and possibly vulnerable app that I can neither stop, disable nor remove, and I keep being prompted to update it. Well, I guess I’d better update it then to stop the annoyance! Now when I try to run it I get an error message about not being able “to retrieve data from the server.” It helpfully suggest that I “Try again later. (1) [sic]”
Thanks, Samsung, you useless bastards.
It’s time to go live
I realised recently that this blog has been running for almost five years, and has accumulated over sixty posts. That’s not many posts by most standards (about one a month — pathetic, really, and not evenly), but actually a hell of a lot more than I expected to post. I was surprised by this realisation.
Therefore I figure it’s time to make this site live. Yes, although this blog has existed for a few months short of half a decade, it has not actually been available on the Web until now. Rather than making a decision about a hypothetical blog, I decided to set this up and treat it as if it was live, and after a while I’d see how it actually worked for me in practice. What I have learnt is that my standard for accuracy won’t allow me to post as often as I’d like. (Perhaps one day I’ll set up a Twitter account for those brief flashes of off-the-cuff genius and annoyance.) However, whether I post once a day or once a month, the fact is that the mere existence of this blog gives me an outlet. Sometimes it’s just to vent, and sometimes it’s so that I can add to the body of knowledge (that I often consult) available on the Web on a subject about which I know a little bit.
So, this post is the first one to be public from the get-go. While I have long considered running a blog and it appeals to the exhibitionist and editorialist in me, I have been very ambivalent about actually doing so. Like most things, there are pros and cons … and there are definitely some very good arguments against doing this. However, at the end of the day, I have decided that the pros (and some specific goals) outweigh the cons, and here we are. I’m not doing this for fame or fortune, that’s for sure, but hey … everyone needs a hobby, and the ones I’d like to engage in (or do more of) are more expensive than cocaine (whatever that costs).
One of the reasons it has taken me five years to get to this point is my penchant for perfectionism alluded to above … something that will greatly limit my posting as much stuff as I would like. While I realise that there are many blogs out there where all you know about the owner is that his name is Bob, I actually do want to provide enough information about myself and my biases that people might take what I say reasonably seriously, without wanting to knock on my door and donate a knuckle sandwich (or worse). A blog’s “about” page is usually my first stop after reading whatever post led me there, and it is my intention to make mine useful. However, if I wait for the day I finally craft an “about” page that meets my standards (or do the many other projects on my to-do list for this blog), this will never go live. (My notes for it already amount to two thousand words.) For now, if you visit my “about” page, you’ll see the same thing I’ve had on my static site for years, but eventually I’ll have something more comprehensive there.
Anyway, that is all. Let’s see where this leads.