Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Matt]

JohnT got back from England today.  We're trying to get him to post pictures.

Today he coded DVD support for the video transcoder.  This means playback of ripped DVD will work with Gizmo, and eventually with DLNA devices and from a Library Server Client.

Hopefully we can release it tomorrow

[MrC]

Did you save him some pie? ;-)

[Matt]

Keep the pie on the low down.  We didn't tell him about it

[JohnT]

Pie?  What pie?!   

[Mr ChriZ]

Which parts of England did you visit? 

[KingSparta]

I was In England for 1 hour back in 1976, It was snowing on the Tarmac

[JohnT]

We stayed in North Wales for one week, and checked out Snowdonia National Park (hiked up Mt. Snowdon), cycling on the Isle of Anglesey, castles at Caernarfon, Conwy, and Beaumaris, the seaside at Llandudno.

The second week we made a loop through northern England checking out Manchester, Hadrian's wall between Carlisle and Hexham, the city of York, then spent four days in London seeing the usual tourist sites.  Watched a football game (soccer for us Yanks) which was a lot of fun for my 14 year old son who's an avid player.

It was my first time in the UK and the first overseas trip for the rest of my family.  We all had a great time.  I think my older son took about 1,500 pictures with his new Canon T2i.  I've assigned him the task of creating a short compilation of all of our pictures and I'll post a Pix01 link when it's ready.

[MrC]

I couldn't resist sharing this since I just finished listening to it.  Just think, you could have had Pie.

[jmone]

Not that I want to defends the Poms (being an Aussie) but FYI the term "England" refers to just one part of the UK and to intimate that Wales is part of England is likely to invite an invasion from their Rugby Team....  It's a bit like calling Canadians "Americans" - lots of fun till you get stabbed have your head hewn off by a battle axe!  It is a great part of the world (we were there last year for a wedding) but this part of (north west) Wales around Caernarfon is fiercely "Welsh" (Cymraeg) and it is taught as the first language in the region over English.  

Oh well - it could be worse, you could have called the Scots "English"    



Edit: More terminology,
- United Kingdom includes Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- Great Britain (or Britain) normally refers to the combined countries of England, Scotland and Wales

[rick.ca]

It's a bit like calling Canadians "Americans" - lots of fun till you get stabbed!

It seems you know no Canadian is sissy enough to use a firearm. But a knife?!. A true Canadian will prefer an axe or chain-saw for such occasions. Except those of us with sufficient Scottish blood, who still prefer lopping heads with our mighty swords.

[jmone]

Good man - I've amended my post accordingly!

[JohnT]

We were well versed in the finer points of England vs. United Kingdom vs. Britain, etc.  You'll notice I only mentioned "England" in the context of our loop through northern England.  In fact we specifically chose to spend time in North Wales because of it's strong Welsh language association - my wife had been learning the language for fun over the last several months and she wanted to practice it a little while we were there.  We stayed in a vacation cottage which was a converted barn on a sheep farm high in the hills of Snowdonia National Park and the owners spoke only Welsh within their family.  When they spoke English, their accent was heavy enough that I think I made out about 50% of what they said.  

The Welsh language is SO different from English and all the Latin derived languages.  Along with Cornish and Gaelic it's a surviving remnant of what all people in the British Isles spoke before the successive invasions of Romans, Anglo Saxons, Vikings, and Normans.   It was funny before the trip when people would ask me where we were visiting, and I'd have to spell the names because I couldn't pronounce them, like "Betws-y-Coed", "Ysbyty Ifan", "Llanwrst".  I think I can do a half decent job of pronouncing them now.

[JohnT]

I couldn't resist sharing this since I just finished listening to it.  Just think, you could have had Pie.

[csimon]

We were well versed in the finer points of England vs. United Kingdom vs. Britain, etc.  You'll notice I only mentioned "England" in the context of our loop through northern England.  In fact we specifically chose to spend time in North Wales because of it's strong Welsh language association - my wife had been learning the language for fun over the last several months and she wanted to practice it a little while we were there.  We stayed in a vacation cottage which was a converted barn on a sheep farm high in the hills of Snowdonia National Park and the owners spoke only Welsh within their family.  When they spoke English, their accent was heavy enough that I think I made out about 50% of what they said.  

The Welsh language is SO different from English and all the Latin derived languages.  Along with Cornish and Gaelic it's a surviving remnant of what all people in the British Isles spoke before the successive invasions of Romans, Anglo Saxons, Vikings, and Normans.   It was funny before the trip when people would ask me where we were visiting, and I'd have to spell the names because I couldn't pronounce them, like "Betws-y-Coed", "Ysbyty Ifan", "Llanwrst".  I think I can do a half decent job of pronouncing them now.

Oh...you should have said you were coming, this is where I live!  I work in Bangor, near Caernarfon, and I live halfway between Caernarfon and Betws-y-Coed in the Snowdonia hills.

The beauty of the Welsh langauge is that it's all phonetic.  The words may look difficult to pronounce, but actually you just say what you see!  The only difficulty really is in sounds that don't occur in English, such as CH and LL, and also that the W and the Y are vowel sounds (oo and ee).

[Mr ChriZ]

Sounds like a good trip!  Hope you didn't have cloud at the top of Snowdon, it's an amazing view from the top.
Probably one of the best views in the UK!

I'm based in the capital of Wales - Cardiff, although I'm English.

[MrC]

You all should just be glad I didn't choose track 16. :-)

[Sandy B Ridge]

John T,

Gobeithio eich bod wedi cael croeso wrth eich bodd yng Ngogledd Cymru.

I grew up within a stone's throw from Snowdon. My parents have a great view of Snowdon from their lounge window (that is on the rare occasion that it is not covered in cloud!). I now live on the 'wrong' side of Clawdd Offa (the forum seems to think the English name for this is rude!).

I'm glad you seemed to have a good time.

SBR

[MrC]

Gobeithio eich bod wedi cael croeso wrth eich bodd yng Ngogledd Cymru.

Knew a guy who used to write documentation that looked identical.   We all thought he was having seizures on the keyboard.  Who knew!

[JohnT]

Wow! Who knew that three of the people viewing this thread would be from the region I traveled in?  Darn csimon, we probably drove by your house since we drove the road from Betws-y-Coed to Caernarfon.  What a beautiful area, and we lucked out with pretty decent weather.  We actually had blue skies for a while at the top of Mt. Snowdon - then it rained on the way down but only a drizzle.

This is the only sentence I learned:
Un cwrw os gwelwch yn dda.

[Sandy B Ridge]

Un cwrw os gwelwch yn dda.

Perfect timing! 5pm on a Friday afternoon. Must be beer o'clock!
 

SBR

[csimon]

Darn csimon, we probably drove by your house since we drove the road from Betws-y-Coed to Caernarfon.

You probably did, espesically if you went up Snowdon from the Llanberis side.[/QUOTE]

This is the only sentence I learned:
Un cwrw os gwelwch yn dda.

A very useful phrase - used quite often!

[JohnT]

Gobeithio eich bod wedi cael croeso wrth eich bodd yng Ngogledd Cymru.

I recognize "croeso" as "welcome" and "Cymru" as "Wales", so I think I get the gist of it.

[MrC]

it means... wait for it... wait for it...

http://translate.google.com/#auto|en|Gobeithio%20eich%20bod%20wedi%20cael%20croeso%20wrth%20eich%20bodd%20yng%20Ngogledd%20Cymru.

[Sandy B Ridge]

it means... wait for it... wait for it...

http://translate.google.com/#auto|en|Gobeithio%20eich%20bod%20wedi%20cael%20croeso%20wrth%20eich%20bodd%20yng%20Ngogledd%20Cymru.

Ha! That's pretty good for a machine!

What I'd like to know is why a Gal from Minneapolis has chosen to learn Welsh? Any family connections or just a cunning linguist?!

SBR

[JohnT]

Well, we were doing some genealogy lately and she does have some family lineage that traces back to Wales, but it goes way back, and I mean WAY back.  I think the language just piqued her interest and she liked the challenge.

[jmone]

It is a small world these days.  The wedding we went to was for a couple here in Sydney but as the parents of the bride (English) had retired to Pwhelli we all trekked over there.  Funny thing was the Aussies were all very happy with the idea but the Londoners thought it was an outrageous idea idea to travel so far!

JohnT:  Your post was careful on the terminology (I was having fun at some of your colleagues expense on earlier posts!)

[JohnT]

That's funny about their idea of outrageous distances.  The travel writer Bill Bryson had a good quote:

If you mention in the pub that you intend to drive from, say, Surrey to Cornwall, a distance that most Americans would happily go to get a taco, your companions will puff their cheeks, look knowingly at each other, and blow out air as if to say "Well now, that's a bit of a tall order," ...