I have enjoyed several weeks fully devoted to the development of different scripts for text processing using the first branch of the Mabinogi as main corpus. All I got by now is an ordered list of the most meaningful sentences as measured by the frequency of their component units. It was too many years without writing scripts at all (my experience with computer languages is that of an user, anyway, and very much oriented towards web publishing), so I had to review, learn and test the most basics of PhP and MySQL.

I did not expect to find a construction-related job, in fact, all my work in the past months has been directed towards a change in my field of activity.

I must be a lucky man because these days of not many offers I have found a job that is going to keep me busy for several weeks in the maintenance of a factory with a company specialized in refractory materials.

After that, well, I'll keep working, of course. And I'll try to keep this blog updated.

I have very much increased my activity in social networks this year. The following text was in fact originally written for my profile page on Google +. It is a review of some of my blogs, links, and some sites I used to visit.

Here are some selected places where to find me on-line:

Current blogs

http://www.canosarodriguez.net On potatoes, construction and philology. <---- YOU ARE HERE ! :-)

http://afonsoxavier.wordpress.com On literature, music, and how do I spend my weekends. In my mother tongue, Galegan-Portuguese.

http://tudalen.blogspot.com My new page to practise Welsh. Two posts in a year, wow!


Social networks

Twitter: I follow news on astronomy and solar system exploration mainly.

Friendfeed: Nice place where I find news and articles I like.

Orkut: I subscribed to groups on botany, farming, construction, gardening and Latin.

Google +: I landed here five months ago.


Articles, pictures, links.

The travels of Mendes Pinto. A map under construction. An amazing report of explorations and description of Asian countries in the 16th century. Even if this world is not perfect, I think it is a little bit better now. And easier to travel through, too: http://goo.gl/iqc3P

A knol I wrote. It could be useful if you grow kiwis. Adapted from previous posts on this blog.

Pictures: I have adopted a more contemplative approach towards the hedges, meadows and woods around. At the very beginning specially towards the species that can be of use for cultivars of tree fruits. Now I am trying to identify at least the most common of the wild flora in the area. Rifante, a friend with no profile on any social network, likes to come with me.

Delicious: ordered links to pages I bookmarked recently.

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For all those who have been visiting this particular blog, many thanks for your attention. I apologize again for my grammar. I hope that, even if slowly, you can notice I am improving my English. That was one of my purposes when I set up this blog.

There other reasons for me to keep it updated, of course. The main one is to see you are reading these posts from so distant (and no so distant too, of course) places, regularly. It is a strange feeling. Like having an audience. I don't know who you are, but you are there.

From USA to China, Spain to Germany, Russia to Japan, wherever you are, all my best wishes for the New Year.

Good crops all around the globe, best building practices, and some more steps towards machine translation allowing universal communication and global access to knowledge!

Hello! After two weeks of non-stop work with tiles and floors I am back, resting. I got up late. I was alone at home. I greeted Rifante, spent some hours with the laundry, opening bank letters and the like and went to the town for a coffee.

I received Antye Greie's (www.poemproducer.com) latest album today, I am still listening to it. I have been at Abertal headquarters and felt a little bit of saudade of that time when I thought we could also contribute to change the world for the better. I came back home, sent some messages to say next Saturday I'll be walking close to the seashore, looking for the same places the bard sang. I switched on the iplayer tuned to my favourite program and finally surfed the web a little bit to find out this blog after a list from a friend at twitter: http://mittani.blogspot.com

I did not find an e-mail to write to the author. I would do so just to say I enjoyed the articles. Above all the one dealing with the expression methinks.

It is exactly the same in Galeg: eu parece-me. Quite common in old speakers, it is not that strange to hear it in Bergantinhos (Galizaland) even nowadays: we are dealing with an expression which has the same origin even if used in different languages: methinks, eu parece-me.

There is no sunlight. The night has arrived. However the birds are still singing: much more lively than usual. I feel the spring coming. Methinks.

I have moved to Facebook !!! I was invited to join a couple of years ago. I used it some days and quit. Now it is a month login almost daily when I come back from work !!! :-)

So, perhaps I am not going to update this blog any longer. Let's see, it has been a nice experience: quite good to improve my English! By the way, I apologize for my solecisms and jargon. I enjoyed writing the articles and I hope so did some of you reading them. That was the most important thing to me.

The CMS provider has no blog statistics so I could check only data referring to entries typing the domain name. The browsers I have used keep the link to enter the CMS straight away, thus bookmars or browsers that keep the original link to the CMS are not logged. For the domain name particular segment I noticed there are entries on DAILY basis! Although I have met people on and off-line from several parts of the world, the frequency and diversity of geography of entries, even if low, looks like a little bit bigger than my circle of relatives, friends, known colleagues.

This blog is public, so it is for anyone to read it. However its first goal was to keep in touch with those people I don't see often or I haven't seen and could not contact for years. Perhaps Facebook is more useful for that purpose, hence this blog looses its main original goal.

However, and due to the fact that there are people taking a look at the articles -a short message is welcome ! - if I feel in the mood it is possible that I come back and write a note or so from time to time.

As usual:

PHILOLOGY: if I were to go any further with Iria Flavia, I should publish an academic paper rather than disperse notes in a blog. Some key aspects: Gallaecia's epigraphs and Celtic Goedelic language show similar phenomena that could explain iria in terms of Latin rivus, no need to search for complex pre-Celtic lexemes. Secondary issues such as gender are easily explained from Galeg. May be Iria has been something more than subject of research or some sort of a Muse to me since this blog was created: I feel it is quite easy to understand now.

CONSTRUCTION: I moved to a new company. It is my second month: this is platforms, big buildings. New kinds of props, new formwork system: many new things to me. I am introduced very slowly, from time to time, not as my main task: I am the last one here, and must perform the most basic tasks first. But I must acknowledge I am quite fortunate for being allowed to work in such a place. I can not say where I am going to be in about 4 months.


POTATOES
I have been quite inactive. I just took part in some selection tasks: packaging according to size and aspect, remove damaged tubers.


For all those who have arrived to this blog and I do not know who you are, thank you for your attention. For all my good friends and colleagues, (most of you, I guess) see you ! Have a nice time you all !

Nota bene:
Für Anna: You are too good to be true! So strange! It is some sort of context at the beginning and end of that CD I was given by the ones who bear your clan name: Anthony J., I feel as if you were always there. My good teacher. I REMEMBER. See you someday, somewhere.

I have been invited to read a speech for the XIth Green Sweet (100% Never Pungent) Pepper Festival. Being my first time in such an honorific task I read a text. I felt a little bit nervous so probably the written version is easier to understand. For those of you who can read Portuguese I enclose the link. For those who do not, well, you don't miss much, as usual I talked about... oops, you guess right... construction, philology and potatoes!!! Well, and a little bit on piquant and peppers too.

I have lost my employment, I couldn't save any money to go on holidays, sometimes Tula behaves as if I weren't there, and it rains stormily, sudden gusts thrumming through the chestnuts.

Fortunately enough I still have the Mabinogi, Gibson's latest yet to be read, the avant-gardes, and a short story dealing with some sort of a time traveling paradox to be translated.

I stay at my parents' (my age! Family is indeed, at least here, the root of society). I must give something in exchange. Thus on Monday I spent most of the day cutting lumber and slashing logs! Yesterday I was plowing a piece of land for the whole day. Dad did the preliminaries, then it was my turn, alone. This is not an easy soil to plow, so apart from keeping the plough 90º to the soil plane, level of depth constant, the mind has time, row after row, to think on, for instance, the latest news on far away in the cosmos, and yet feel if loneliness is not one of the main issues. Therefore after realizing that many flowers have sprouted on the border, I was grateful to, and thus must mention, a male robin jumping over the furrows on my side for the first couple of hours. This little red one is the bird I understand the better. Sometimes I think as if almost everything were to be done. :-)

Come on Ksab! That Massey Ferguson bottom-hose plugged to the radiator costs 9.35 euros and should last more than a couple of years! After checking the engine's temperature is all right I finish another furrow.

I go on with mundane thoughts such as looking for a new job, not an easy task at present it looks like.

Meanwhile the land is too wet to go on plowing. It is time for resting a little bit, and try to accomplish those many things one has never enough time for.

It rains softly. Nothing unusual, but I feel like I prefer to stay indoors for a while. As a means of making a short break I came to the city. My favourite pub was closed in the afternoon, I'll try again tomorrow.

After a long walk by the seashore I have arrived to the flat where I am ready to cook some very basic dish, type a short story I translated this week for a local zine (metamorphosis settled in Ossianic landscapes, different topics I have been dealing with, suddenly unexpectedly related... apophenia ??? ), devote myself to something as appealing as the evolution of the close front unrounded vowel in stressed syllables and search the web for several different topics.


If I feel inspired enough... I'll try -even!- to update this blog a little bit more. :-)

I must accept that I am far from reaching my main goals for this year, I spend all the money I earn, I should practice more sport, et cetera, et cetera.

As I gave up looking for a girlfriend; as I have a regular meeting only once a week (thank you Servando, I do appreciate your common sense); as Tula is quite busy taking care of the newborns Folerpinha, Belidinha, Caretinha, Chamizinho, Tizãozinho and Rifantinho; I definitely have no excuses not to begin that course on Construction Techniques I have applied for, try to recover the article on Desnos' J'ai tant rêvé de toi I wrote a month and a half ago before my laptop crushed, take some pictures and notes on potatoes and so on.

Thus, thank you very much Mhor for your news on the Celtic dictionary; thanks Miro for your article on the explanation of an anthroponym in terms of its toponymic equivalent (I would publish it), thank you Marcial for your permanent work and keeping me updated in the field of Celtic studies. I have read your messages some minutes ago. You have encouraged me. You have brought me to the right way.

Time to turn from Epicurean towards (semi-)Spartan routine, with a touch of Stoic attitude, Ksab. :-)

I'll get up every morning again with that CD I was given as a present on my trip to the Highlands... Für Anna its strange first tune. :-)

Yes, I am still on time: to keep research, write some of my notes on Iria, the Mabinogi, or those comments on occasional, trivial topics which arrive, for instance when talking about Edinburgh -oops, at the coffee-bar, yesterday, at 13:30 ! - : the relationship between Ovid 's Pygmalion, Bernard Shaw's Eliza Doolitle and AI applications on interactive fiction. Perhaps it could be useful in the future.

On the positive side: I am happy with my job. I notice an improvement in my skills both in casting and brick-laying techniques.

May be I am still on time to take the good, right way :-)

I am going to begin just now. Well, I have to finish that Gibson's novel first. :D

I celebrated the summer solstice with the same rite I have learnt from my ancestors: jumping over a fire while shouting an old spell. It is time for resting... on weekends and blank days.

I am building a house from scratch... back at casting !!!

I have fallen in love or something like that with Iria although I must admit that I haven't dealt with the subject for quite long.

I do take a look from time to time to the potato plants although I haven't taken much part in this work until now this year.

Thus I just enjoy the spare time doing nothing, reading the press, going to bars and festivals, talking on literature, the environment, life or anything with some of my best friends -always there, thank you- and my brother -hello, my best reader -.

I must declare that this month I arrive in quite a comfortable way to the end.

Oops I have just found this picture, taken 2 days ago... so a recent one at last.

Quite a good summer, it looks like... except for the rain just the days I could go... I haven't been to the beach yet :-(

I came back. Easter has been time for walking with Tula, thinking of Iria, reading and watching films at TV. I have quit my job. I went to the employment office and began to talk with some people from the construction field. I have offered translation and test-reading services in the media field in order to get some plus I find particulary useful at the end of the month. It is time for me to look for something more "permanent".

It rains here these days. It looks like winter (that late, soft, soon-to-be-it's-just-now spring-winter) comes outdated this year. The land is wet. Probably I'll spend some days in the wood, doing some forest work.

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