• BSL multi-channel signs
  A collection of BSL multi-channel signs from Redditch Deaf Club
  (tags: bsl sign language multi-channel)

some recommendations | Comments

As we had a half term escape from my sign language course this week, we were given a monster homework. Translate an entire story from English to BSL. Here is my attempt - see if you can work out what the story is about

sign language | Comments

• Splashtop Instant-On Desktop from DeviceVM
  Linux embedded on a motherboard so you can surf the web (and other things) almost immediately from turning on your machine. Can have your ‘main’ OS start up in the backround if needed.
  (tags: linux boot quick os)

some recommendations | Comments

A really common way of differentiating things like speed, weight, size, etc in BSL is using non-manual features (NMF) such as modifiers and intensifiers. For example, when expressing the speed of someone cycling, I would use a single sign to represent both the fact they were cycling and the speed at which they were going (rather that a sign for ‘cycling’ and one for ‘fast’). This is achieved by both the speed of your signing and also your facial expression - e.g. for ‘cycling quickly’ you might sign ‘cycling’, moving your hands very quickly and clenching your teeth.

Some common uses of facial features for such differentiation are as follows:

• Pursed lips: taking your time
• Clenched teeth: in a rush
• Puffed cheeks: doing hard work, talking about something large/heavy
• Closed lips (MM): as normal, steadily
• TH: carelessly/messily, boring
• Pouted lips: small, few, cheap

P.S. I didn’t do a signed version of this post as I wasn’t quite sure where to start! Apologies but I’m just not good enough

sign language | Comments

I’ve mentioned compound signs in a previous post but I’ve studied them recently on my BSL course so I thought I’d go into a little more detail. A compound sign is one that is created by combining two (or more) other signs. For example, the sign for ‘believe’ is a combination of the signs for ‘think’ and ‘true’. Note that the lip pattern you use when a compound sign is the sign itself (e.g. ‘believe’) and not the words for the individual component signs (e.g. ‘think’ and ‘true’).

In general this make it easier to remember a few signs as they are made up of logical component signs but it can get a little confusing in some situations. An example that I always forget are the signs for ‘lifeguard’ and ‘lifeboat’. The ‘lifeguard’ sign is made up of the signs for ‘life’ then ‘rescue’, whereas the sign for ‘lifeboat’ is made up of the signs ‘rescue’ then ‘boat’.

A few other common examples are:

• Deadline - date + cut-off
• Stranger - person + who?
• Answer - ask + response
• Repeat - say + again

sign language | Comments

• OnOneMap
  Property search engine with a difference
  (tags: googlemaps map property house)
• Geek And Poke
  Web2.0 related cartoons
  (tags: humor humour web2.0 cartoon funny)

some recommendations | Comments

I got my BCS membership renewal yesterday and went through checking my details. It was quite interesting to see my phone numbers represented in the form 4.42E+11. Wow, that would be embarrasing if it was a computing-related society. Oh, hang on…

making me smile | Comments

• How To select fastest mirror in Ubuntu
  Ubuntu has an automated way to help you pick the fastest mirror. From ubuntugeek.com.
  (tags: ubuntu linux mirror howto)

some recommendations | Comments

Lately I’ve been doing some work (I promise it is real work) with Battlefield 2. The server part of the game has a cut-down version of Python built in so that you can interact with it, modifying aspects of the game and reacting to events etc. More details on this can be found on this wiki.

Anyway, the Python version it uses is pretty old (2.3.4, current version is 2.5.2) and it’s had functionality cut, e.g. no threading support. For the work I’m doing I needed threading support and a few other things so wanted to swap out the version of Python for another - turns out this wasn’t obvious so here are the steps:

1. Replace the Battlefield 2 Python library (e.g. ‘bf2/bin/ia-32/libdice_py.so’) with the version of your choice. I just linked to my locally installed version ‘/usr/lib/libpython2.5.so’.
2. Replace the Python library path at runtime to use the new libraries, e.g. edit ‘bf2/python/bf2/__init__.py’ and putting the equivalent of ’sys.path = ['/usr/lib/python2.5/', '/usr/lib/python2.5/lib-dynload/', 'python', 'mods/bf2/python', 'admin']‘ after the ‘import sys’ line.

I do get the following warning at runtime: ’sys:1: RuntimeWarning: Python C API version mismatch for module host: This Python has API version 1013, module host has version 1012.’ but it doesn’t seem to cause any problems (so far!).

techy solutions | Comments

The one thing that really frustrates me about most online tools is that I can’t use them for work - confidentiality and other boring reasons stand in the way of me using twitter to talk about confidential IBM things, Remember The Milk for managing TODO lists (I do anyway but keep any confidential stuff elsewhere), Google Reader for reading internal blogs etc etc. This means we end up creating copies of these tools internally, e.g. BlueTwit (like twitter), Beehive (like Facebook et al), Dogear (like del.icio.us), Spectacular! (like Google Reader)… the list goes on.

Now I understand we need these tools so we can keep certain information out of the public space but it’s frustrating that I have to use two different tools for the same job. A suggestion - why don’t we write the backend stuff to store information privately and a load of Greasemonkey scripts for each of the different apps to integrate both into the same user interface? Just a thought.

Having said all that, maybe it’s a good thing - maybe it keeps me in the right mindset for not disclosing things accidentally. When I’m using an internal tool I know what I can and should say and vice-versa for the external tools.

techy solutions | Comments