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I recently had notice from my VPS provider that my site was using a compromised version of PHP that contained the php2shell vulnerability, so reported on by the media lately.
Being the responsible website owner that I am, I immediately set about to upgrade my server from Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) to the next LTS version 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). Arguably I could have gone further, but as Jammy is still under long term support, and because the upgrade process is rarely smooth, I opted to only go up one version. The necessary patch for PHP 8.1 is provided by Canonical for this version, so it'll do.
And that's where the fun started. I did all the usual prep for a version upgrade, including bringing existing packages up to the latest available version within the installed Ubuntu release, and then I set the upgrade command going. It got most of the way before falling over on MySql server - the database that underpins my blog posts.
This stopped the upgrade process in its tracks, and was caused by a lack of available RAM. Sadly, my server is still surviving on just 512MB of RAM. The solution suggested by Claude (yuck...) was to use a ramdisk to overcome this shortfall. This worked. Sort of. It overcame the RAM problem, but the aborted installation from earlier left MySQL in an unupgradable position, from which I was likely to lose data.
The position I found myself in was that I still had access to the innodb files that contain the blog data but no means to access them. At this point I decided that if MySQL was going to be a resource hog on my overstretched (virtual) machine, then I'd have to do without it.
The solution I settled on was to migrate everything over to SQLite. Still a relational database and a syntax I'm familiar with, but much less resource hungry and perfect for a tiny blog with infrequent updates, only one contributor, and hardly any visitors. The question was how to extract the data from the MySQL database without running up an instance of MySQL server. The answer, not suggested by Claude, is an excellent little Python program called ibd2sql which can extract both the DDL (the code that creates the tables) and the data as a series of INSERT statements and output them as a file in MySQL syntax.
Thankfully the site only comprises a small handful of tables, as the website and database are hand-rolled rather than relying on third party software like WordPress, so a quick bash script to loop through the ibd files and create SQL output did the job, and ChatGPT (again, yuck...) converted them from MySQL syntax to SQLite syntax. The differences aren't important. This allowed me to import all my existing blog posts back into my new SQLite database. Hooray! The next step was to modify the PHP to use the new database instead of the old. There were a few data retrieval functions (mostly fetch_object()) not available, but it wasn't hard to convert these to fetchArray() to get everything up and running again.
The result is that I can now remove MySQL from the server entirely, and have a smaller resource footprint going forward.
I'm also no longer vulnerable to the php2shell bug. Imagine the damage an attacker could wreak if they access this server! :D
ibd2sql is available from here and is an invaluable piece of software if you find yourself in the same situation as me.
Being the responsible website owner that I am, I immediately set about to upgrade my server from Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) to the next LTS version 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). Arguably I could have gone further, but as Jammy is still under long term support, and because the upgrade process is rarely smooth, I opted to only go up one version. The necessary patch for PHP 8.1 is provided by Canonical for this version, so it'll do.
And that's where the fun started. I did all the usual prep for a version upgrade, including bringing existing packages up to the latest available version within the installed Ubuntu release, and then I set the upgrade command going. It got most of the way before falling over on MySql server - the database that underpins my blog posts.
This stopped the upgrade process in its tracks, and was caused by a lack of available RAM. Sadly, my server is still surviving on just 512MB of RAM. The solution suggested by Claude (yuck...) was to use a ramdisk to overcome this shortfall. This worked. Sort of. It overcame the RAM problem, but the aborted installation from earlier left MySQL in an unupgradable position, from which I was likely to lose data.
The position I found myself in was that I still had access to the innodb files that contain the blog data but no means to access them. At this point I decided that if MySQL was going to be a resource hog on my overstretched (virtual) machine, then I'd have to do without it.
The solution I settled on was to migrate everything over to SQLite. Still a relational database and a syntax I'm familiar with, but much less resource hungry and perfect for a tiny blog with infrequent updates, only one contributor, and hardly any visitors. The question was how to extract the data from the MySQL database without running up an instance of MySQL server. The answer, not suggested by Claude, is an excellent little Python program called ibd2sql which can extract both the DDL (the code that creates the tables) and the data as a series of INSERT statements and output them as a file in MySQL syntax.
Thankfully the site only comprises a small handful of tables, as the website and database are hand-rolled rather than relying on third party software like WordPress, so a quick bash script to loop through the ibd files and create SQL output did the job, and ChatGPT (again, yuck...) converted them from MySQL syntax to SQLite syntax. The differences aren't important. This allowed me to import all my existing blog posts back into my new SQLite database. Hooray! The next step was to modify the PHP to use the new database instead of the old. There were a few data retrieval functions (mostly fetch_object()) not available, but it wasn't hard to convert these to fetchArray() to get everything up and running again.
The result is that I can now remove MySQL from the server entirely, and have a smaller resource footprint going forward.
I'm also no longer vulnerable to the php2shell bug. Imagine the damage an attacker could wreak if they access this server! :D
ibd2sql is available from here and is an invaluable piece of software if you find yourself in the same situation as me.
I've just started a little C programming project in order to improve my C programming and, indeed, to see if I'm actually clever enough to write something in C. The project I've chosen is a little ID3 tag editor for MP3 files.
I've chosen this because it might be useful and because it involves something I quite enjoy, which is parsing files. It's also the sort of project that doesn't need a GUI but can later be extended to have one.
I chose C because, as stated earlier, I wanted to prove to myself that I can do it and because it's a great language for byte level manipulation of the sort required to parse a binary file like an MP3.
MP3 files support two types of ID3 tag, these being version 1 and version 2 (of which there are 4 types). ID3v1 tags reside at the end of the mp3 file and are limited in length to 128 total bytes: 3 for the keyword "TAG", 30 each for the title, artist and album, 4 for the year, and then either 28 or 30 for a comment, and, if using a 28 byte comment, 2 for the track number, and finally 1 byte for the genre.
ID3v1 tags are therefore trivial to manipulate.
ID3v2 moved the tags to the start of the file and introduced the concept of separate frames of data, each to store one tag and its value.
The ID3v2 header starts with the values "ID3" (0x49 0x44 0x43 in hex) followed by the minor version number (0x03 for ID3v2.3, 0x04 for ID3v2.4, etc) and then the build number (usually 0), a byte for flags related to the ID3 tagss, and finally four bytes for the overall ID3 header size. Thus an ID3v2 header can be identified by looking like this:
49 44 33 vv vv ff xx xx xx xx
Where vv are the version bytes, ff is the flags, and xx xx xx xx is the big-endian header size.
When I first started writing the decoding function for the ID3 header I was reading the number of bytes as dictated by the xx xx xx xx in the header, but found I was reading well beyond the end of the header itself, causing all sorts of problems. This led me to a google search where I discovered the concept of "Sync-Safe Integers".
These sync-safe integers are not a universal computing concept, but rather one created purely for MP3 encoding, it seems. And this is where sychronisation safe integers come in.
In order for those four bytes indicating header size to not be confused for later bytes that are used to synchronise data frames they cannot contain the values "FF 00" and the way to do this is to ensure that no bytes not intended for syncronisation contain the value FF unless always guaranteed to be followed by a non-zero value, such as the byte order marker FF FE.
To do this, we insert a zero at bit 8 (the left-most bit, and most-significant bit) of each byte, working from least to most significant, and shift the rest of the bytes accordingly:
Thus the value:
00000001 00000110 00010100 11000001
becomes
00001000 00011000 00101000 01000001
This has the side-effect of reducing the capacity of our integer from being 32 bits to being 28 bits, but in the context of ID3 tags that limitation is irrelevant.
For my own program, I achieved this shift by using a bit mask to take each group of bits I want to operate on in turn, applying the mask as a bitwise AND to the integer, and then shifting the requisite number of positions to the right.
I then bitwise ORed the results together:
I've chosen this because it might be useful and because it involves something I quite enjoy, which is parsing files. It's also the sort of project that doesn't need a GUI but can later be extended to have one.
I chose C because, as stated earlier, I wanted to prove to myself that I can do it and because it's a great language for byte level manipulation of the sort required to parse a binary file like an MP3.
MP3 files support two types of ID3 tag, these being version 1 and version 2 (of which there are 4 types). ID3v1 tags reside at the end of the mp3 file and are limited in length to 128 total bytes: 3 for the keyword "TAG", 30 each for the title, artist and album, 4 for the year, and then either 28 or 30 for a comment, and, if using a 28 byte comment, 2 for the track number, and finally 1 byte for the genre.
ID3v1 tags are therefore trivial to manipulate.
ID3v2 moved the tags to the start of the file and introduced the concept of separate frames of data, each to store one tag and its value.
The ID3v2 header starts with the values "ID3" (0x49 0x44 0x43 in hex) followed by the minor version number (0x03 for ID3v2.3, 0x04 for ID3v2.4, etc) and then the build number (usually 0), a byte for flags related to the ID3 tagss, and finally four bytes for the overall ID3 header size. Thus an ID3v2 header can be identified by looking like this:
49 44 33 vv vv ff xx xx xx xx
Where vv are the version bytes, ff is the flags, and xx xx xx xx is the big-endian header size.
When I first started writing the decoding function for the ID3 header I was reading the number of bytes as dictated by the xx xx xx xx in the header, but found I was reading well beyond the end of the header itself, causing all sorts of problems. This led me to a google search where I discovered the concept of "Sync-Safe Integers".
These sync-safe integers are not a universal computing concept, but rather one created purely for MP3 encoding, it seems. And this is where sychronisation safe integers come in.
In order for those four bytes indicating header size to not be confused for later bytes that are used to synchronise data frames they cannot contain the values "FF 00" and the way to do this is to ensure that no bytes not intended for syncronisation contain the value FF unless always guaranteed to be followed by a non-zero value, such as the byte order marker FF FE.
To do this, we insert a zero at bit 8 (the left-most bit, and most-significant bit) of each byte, working from least to most significant, and shift the rest of the bytes accordingly:
Thus the value:
00000001 00000110 00010100 11000001
becomes
00001000 00011000 00101000 01000001
This has the side-effect of reducing the capacity of our integer from being 32 bits to being 28 bits, but in the context of ID3 tags that limitation is irrelevant.
For my own program, I achieved this shift by using a bit mask to take each group of bits I want to operate on in turn, applying the mask as a bitwise AND to the integer, and then shifting the requisite number of positions to the right.
I then bitwise ORed the results together:
return ((in & 0x0000007F) |bit mask %00000000 00000000 00000000 01111111
((in & 0x00003F80) << 1) |bit mask %00000000 00000000 00111111 10000000
((in & 0x001FC000) << 2) |bit mask %00000000 00011111 11000000 00000000
((in & 0x0FE00000) << 3));bit mask %00001111 11100000 00000000 00000000
g a sync-safe integer from a regular integer.
The decoding sequence is just the reverse:
return ((in & 0x0000007F) | // bit mask %00000000 00000000 00000000 01111111
((in & 0x00007F00) >> 1) |bit mask %00000000 00000000 01111111 00000000
((in & 0x007F0000) >> 2) |bit mask %00000000 01111111 00000000 00000000
((in & 0x7F000000) >> 3)); // bit mask %01111111 00000000 00000000 00000000
In both cases, the ORed instructions are independent of each other in the sense that each has its bitmask applied and is shifted BEFORE all four results are ORed together.
And using this approach I was able to now correctly identify the length of the ID3 tags. Note, this value includes any padding at the end of the tags and before the audio data.
So that's sync safe integers - something you'll never encounter outside the realms of writing a decoder for ID3 tags.I've recently had the misfortune of having to integrate web-based payment software with Visa's Cybersource REST API using their Microforms integration. Unfortunately, the documentation is somewhat lacking and support is virtually non-existent.
Fortunately I'm a tenacious thing and with much trial and error managed to get it working. I'm posting this information here in the hope it saves someone else the hair-tearing it cost me.
First, let me explain what Microforms are: they are iframes hosted at Cybersource themselves but embedded on your site to collect the sensitive credit card data without you having to worry about PCI compliance. You request a "Server Side Capture Context" from the API and use this to initialise a javascript object which creates the fields on your page. When the data has been entered, a token is requested that contains the encrypted card data and then when all user processing has been completed, this can be sent on to Cybersource to confirm the payment.
The first step was to get an account on their Sandbox at https://developer.cybersource.com/hello-world/sandbox.html
Even this step was painful, as my first five attempts at registration failed to send me a confirmation email with my account credentials, so I was unable to log in. And yes, I did check spam. Eventually, though, I did get an email and was able to log in and create a Shared Key.
The next problem I had was that the instructions for how to create the authentication header for messages to the API were vague, contradictory and incomplete. The documentation says that the message data need only contains a targetOrigins property, thus:
Only this isn't the case. If you only send this you get an error back from the API. It turns out you also need to request the fields you want to display in the microform too:
So that's the payload sorted out, now for the hard part: the Authentication header.
Cybersource gives you the choice of a JWT certificate or an HTTP signature. I'm using the latter because it seemed easier to set up. The signature is a hashed copy of all the headers being included in the message and a few additional bits. Deciding exactly what to include took me ages as when it didn't work there was no indication of what part I'd got wrong: the header, the signature, the payload, or something else? For brevity, I'm going to just post the PHP code that got this working (with my login credentials replaced, of course):
The tricky part was working out which headers to include and in what order. The headers here are all necessary (in my experience) to get anything other than a 401 error back from the API.
The digest is easy: it's just a base64 encoded version of a SHA256 hash of the packet data (the JSON request).
The order of the headers in the signature is also crucial, it would seem. Once all of this is set up correctly, a call to the endpoint should return a capture context in the form of a public key:
header.payload.signature
The whole thing should be passed to the javascript side of things to initialise the Flex() object and create the microform. From there, the card number and CVV (and expiry month and year) can be collected and then either the normal, non-3D Secure, endpoint can be contacted or the Payer Authentication endpoint can be used to perform proper security checks on the card. I'll cover that in the next post.
Fortunately I'm a tenacious thing and with much trial and error managed to get it working. I'm posting this information here in the hope it saves someone else the hair-tearing it cost me.
First, let me explain what Microforms are: they are iframes hosted at Cybersource themselves but embedded on your site to collect the sensitive credit card data without you having to worry about PCI compliance. You request a "Server Side Capture Context" from the API and use this to initialise a javascript object which creates the fields on your page. When the data has been entered, a token is requested that contains the encrypted card data and then when all user processing has been completed, this can be sent on to Cybersource to confirm the payment.
The first step was to get an account on their Sandbox at https://developer.cybersource.com/hello-world/sandbox.html
Even this step was painful, as my first five attempts at registration failed to send me a confirmation email with my account credentials, so I was unable to log in. And yes, I did check spam. Eventually, though, I did get an email and was able to log in and create a Shared Key.
The next problem I had was that the instructions for how to create the authentication header for messages to the API were vague, contradictory and incomplete. The documentation says that the message data need only contains a targetOrigins property, thus:
{ "targetOrigins": &["http://localhost"&] }Only this isn't the case. If you only send this you get an error back from the API. It turns out you also need to request the fields you want to display in the microform too:
{ "fields\": {"paymentInformation": {"card": {"number": { },"securityCode": {"required": false}}}},"targetOrigins": &["https://localhost"&]}So that's the payload sorted out, now for the hard part: the Authentication header.
Cybersource gives you the choice of a JWT certificate or an HTTP signature. I'm using the latter because it seemed easier to set up. The signature is a hashed copy of all the headers being included in the message and a few additional bits. Deciding exactly what to include took me ages as when it didn't work there was no indication of what part I'd got wrong: the header, the signature, the payload, or something else? For brevity, I'm going to just post the PHP code that got this working (with my login credentials replaced, of course):
<?php$url = 'https://apitest.cybersource.com/microform/v2/sessions';$merchantId = 'testres';$keyId = '08c94330-f618-42a3-b09d-e1e43be5efda';$sharedKey = 'yBJxy6LjM2TmcPGu+GaJrHtkke25fPpUX+UY6/L/1tE=';$host = 'apitest.cybersource.com';$data = "{\"fields\": {\"paymentInformation\": {\"card\": {\"number\": { },\"securityCode\": {\"required\": false}}}},\"targetOrigins\": &[\"https://localhost\"&]}";$hash = hash("sha256", $data, true);$digest = base64_encode($hash);$date = date("D, d M Y G:i:s")." GMT";$sigstring = "host: apitest.cybersource.com\ndate: $date\n(request-target): post /microform/v2/sessions\ndigest: SHA-256=$digest\nv-c-merchant-id: $merchantId";$sigstringbytes = utf8_encode($sigstring);echo "$sigstring\n";$rawkey = base64_decode($sharedKey);$hashval = hash_hmac("sha256", $sigstringbytes, $rawkey, true);$sighash = base64_encode($hashval);
$headers = array(
"Accept-Language: en-GB,en;q=0.5",
"Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br",
"digest: SHA-256=".$digest,
"v-c-merchant-id: ".$merchantId,
"v-c-date: ".$date,
"date: ".$date,
"signature: keyid=\"".$keyId."\", algorithm=\"HmacSHA256\", headers=\"host date (request-target) digest v-c-merchant-id\", signature=\"".$sighash."\"",
"host: apitest.cybersource.com",
"Content-Type: application/json"
);
$curl = curl_init();curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $url);curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, true);curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);//curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_PROXY, "127.0.0.1:8888"); // Uncomment to see traffic in a traffic analyser like Fiddlercurl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);$resp = curl_exec($curl);curl_close($curl);echo $resp."\n";?>The tricky part was working out which headers to include and in what order. The headers here are all necessary (in my experience) to get anything other than a 401 error back from the API.
The digest is easy: it's just a base64 encoded version of a SHA256 hash of the packet data (the JSON request).
The order of the headers in the signature is also crucial, it would seem. Once all of this is set up correctly, a call to the endpoint should return a capture context in the form of a public key:
header.payload.signature
The whole thing should be passed to the javascript side of things to initialise the Flex() object and create the microform. From there, the card number and CVV (and expiry month and year) can be collected and then either the normal, non-3D Secure, endpoint can be contacted or the Payer Authentication endpoint can be used to perform proper security checks on the card. I'll cover that in the next post.
Anyone using this website since November 2020 (that must be someone, surely!?) would have noticed that after the page initially loads, when you next click on something an ad loads, replacing the current page.
This was annoying.
But I did it because I was hoping to make some small amount of money from this blog. Things didn't work out that way for one principal reason: this site does not get enough traffic.
I didn't appreciate it when I first thought of monetising the site, but in order to get Google Ads (or indeed virtually any of the better networks) you have to have a certain number of visitors or be in the top however many sites. I get very few visitors, so was inelligible for Google Ads.
This led me to try Propeller Ads as they have no such requirements. However, having had them in place since November, I have made precisely zero money from them. I think this is because, if I understand correctly, they transfer any earned funds every two weeks, so if you've earned less than a penny, you get put back to zero each time.
As the ads were annoying and brought in literally no money, I've now disabled them again. Clearly I'll have to find another way to make money, but if you're a user who's been annoyed at the pop-up ad intrusion, fear not: it won't be returning.
This was annoying.
But I did it because I was hoping to make some small amount of money from this blog. Things didn't work out that way for one principal reason: this site does not get enough traffic.
I didn't appreciate it when I first thought of monetising the site, but in order to get Google Ads (or indeed virtually any of the better networks) you have to have a certain number of visitors or be in the top however many sites. I get very few visitors, so was inelligible for Google Ads.
This led me to try Propeller Ads as they have no such requirements. However, having had them in place since November, I have made precisely zero money from them. I think this is because, if I understand correctly, they transfer any earned funds every two weeks, so if you've earned less than a penny, you get put back to zero each time.
As the ads were annoying and brought in literally no money, I've now disabled them again. Clearly I'll have to find another way to make money, but if you're a user who's been annoyed at the pop-up ad intrusion, fear not: it won't be returning.
As one would expect, YouTube has myriad resources for the Welsh learner, ranging from brief clickbait like "An American tries to speak Welsh" to full episodes of educational programmes and everything in between.
The first port of call, really before going any further, is to watch the Welsh Plus series which go into great detail about how to pronounce the letters of the Welsh alphabet, both individually and in common combinations. They also touch on the mutations. Welsh Plus's playlist can be found here.
When I started learning Welsh, and before I'd discovered the Say Something in Welsh website, I discovered a series of videos called "Learn Welsh with Will" in which Will Huw, an Englishman living in Wales, disseminates his own Welsh knowledge as he goes about learning it. I liked Will's videos as he comes across as non-judgemental and very amiable. You can see Will's playlists, which include more than just Learn Welsh With Will, here.
Another series of videos I happened upon are aimed at adult learners from the 1990s, Now You're Talking (conveniently mis-spelled as "Now Your Talking" by whomever uploaded them!). These are presented by the likeable Elin Rhys in a variety of very early 90s outfits! There are 36 full half-hour episodes covering a variety of topics and gradually building vocabulary. I enjoy these videos as they present a chance to hear simple conversations in Welsh and learn everyday vocabulary. My only criticisms are that the programmes are now quite dates, the language is in some places a little too old-fashioned, and the pace of the lessons is a little slow for my liking. There's also not a great focus on grammar, so you'll need other resources to accompany these. You can find all 36 videos here.
Much more recent, are Margaret Hall's wonderful videos. Margaret is a Welsh learner and as part of her learning process she's created a series of videos in which she explores various places in Wales. Margaret speaks very clearly and uses a great vocabulary for the upper-beginner or intermediate Welsh learner. I find I can understand a lot of what she says, but not everything. That's due to limitations in my Welsh, though, not any problems with her speaking. Margaret's channel is here.
Finally, the Easy Languages series have several videos in Welsh. These are largely conversations with Welsh speakers in towns and establishments around Wales, conducted entirely in Welsh. The videos are subtitled in both English and Welsh, which is both a blessing and a curse, as you can find yourself reading the English subtitles rather than understanding the spoken Welsh. The ease of understanding the spoken Welsh depends largely on the speaker. Some interviewees are fluent speakers, some only beginners, but the most encouraging thing I took from these videos is that, actually, Welsh is very fluid, Welsh speakers are very forgiving of mistakes and, in reality, things like mutations are not nearly as stuck-to as online guides may lead you to believe. You can find those videos here.
There are plenty more besides, but these are the video series that I've found most useful and most enjoyable while learning Welsh. Feel free to comment if you feel I've missed anything important!
Da bo am y tro!
The first port of call, really before going any further, is to watch the Welsh Plus series which go into great detail about how to pronounce the letters of the Welsh alphabet, both individually and in common combinations. They also touch on the mutations. Welsh Plus's playlist can be found here.
When I started learning Welsh, and before I'd discovered the Say Something in Welsh website, I discovered a series of videos called "Learn Welsh with Will" in which Will Huw, an Englishman living in Wales, disseminates his own Welsh knowledge as he goes about learning it. I liked Will's videos as he comes across as non-judgemental and very amiable. You can see Will's playlists, which include more than just Learn Welsh With Will, here.
Another series of videos I happened upon are aimed at adult learners from the 1990s, Now You're Talking (conveniently mis-spelled as "Now Your Talking" by whomever uploaded them!). These are presented by the likeable Elin Rhys in a variety of very early 90s outfits! There are 36 full half-hour episodes covering a variety of topics and gradually building vocabulary. I enjoy these videos as they present a chance to hear simple conversations in Welsh and learn everyday vocabulary. My only criticisms are that the programmes are now quite dates, the language is in some places a little too old-fashioned, and the pace of the lessons is a little slow for my liking. There's also not a great focus on grammar, so you'll need other resources to accompany these. You can find all 36 videos here.
Much more recent, are Margaret Hall's wonderful videos. Margaret is a Welsh learner and as part of her learning process she's created a series of videos in which she explores various places in Wales. Margaret speaks very clearly and uses a great vocabulary for the upper-beginner or intermediate Welsh learner. I find I can understand a lot of what she says, but not everything. That's due to limitations in my Welsh, though, not any problems with her speaking. Margaret's channel is here.
Finally, the Easy Languages series have several videos in Welsh. These are largely conversations with Welsh speakers in towns and establishments around Wales, conducted entirely in Welsh. The videos are subtitled in both English and Welsh, which is both a blessing and a curse, as you can find yourself reading the English subtitles rather than understanding the spoken Welsh. The ease of understanding the spoken Welsh depends largely on the speaker. Some interviewees are fluent speakers, some only beginners, but the most encouraging thing I took from these videos is that, actually, Welsh is very fluid, Welsh speakers are very forgiving of mistakes and, in reality, things like mutations are not nearly as stuck-to as online guides may lead you to believe. You can find those videos here.
There are plenty more besides, but these are the video series that I've found most useful and most enjoyable while learning Welsh. Feel free to comment if you feel I've missed anything important!
Da bo am y tro!
I admit, I've been a bit remiss in both updating this site and in learning Welsh.
The problem is finding the time.
A while ago, back in July, I lost my DuoLingo streak of more than two years and with it any incentive to keep up with my DuoLingo practice.
I suppose that's the problem with DuoLingo: once the addiction of keeping your streak going wears off, and if you've already completed the language tree, there's not much to keep you going back, as it's all just more of the same.
I could have carried on with Say Something In Welsh, but again it's finding the time. I used to do it while driving, but I generally prefer to listen to radio comedy these days, so my Welsh gets neglected.
And I know my Welsh is suffering for it, as I keep encountering words that I know I know, but of which I can suddenly no longer remember the meaning.
I need to make more of an effort. I'll keep you posted!
The problem is finding the time.
A while ago, back in July, I lost my DuoLingo streak of more than two years and with it any incentive to keep up with my DuoLingo practice.
I suppose that's the problem with DuoLingo: once the addiction of keeping your streak going wears off, and if you've already completed the language tree, there's not much to keep you going back, as it's all just more of the same.
I could have carried on with Say Something In Welsh, but again it's finding the time. I used to do it while driving, but I generally prefer to listen to radio comedy these days, so my Welsh gets neglected.
And I know my Welsh is suffering for it, as I keep encountering words that I know I know, but of which I can suddenly no longer remember the meaning.
I need to make more of an effort. I'll keep you posted!
Fags, Mags and Bags is set in a small newsagent and confectioner's in the Lenzie area of Glasgow. It follows Ramesh Mahju (Sanjeev Kohli), his best friend and soulmate Dave (Donald McLeary), and Ramesh's two sons, Alok and Sanjay. The series is written by Kohli and McLeary. It is both amazing and great.
Ramesh's newsagent is a microcosm of life frequented by all the locals of Lenzie, from the indiscreet, gossipy priest Father Henderson to single mother Keenan's Mum and everyone else from the community in between. And it is a community.
Ramesh is a widower, although not much mention is made of his late wife. We do, in one episode, meet his evil Mother-in-Law, played brilliantly by Nina Wadia.
Ramesh has two sons, teenager Sanjay and twenty-something Alok, both of whom Ramesh describes as being surly arses. Sanjay is a typical teen with catchphrases that include "OMG", "Get over yourself" and "'SAKE!". Alok sees himself as a forward-thinking entrepeneur, always looking for the next big thing and desperate to drag his father's shop into the 21st century, usually with little success.
Dave is Ramesh's best friend and only employee at Fags, Mags and Bags. They share the same, deep love of everything shop, from laying out the famous "Wall of Crisps" in the most effective way, to the best place to display greetings cards, and understanding the reassurance customers find in keeping the same Super Soaker on display for decades. Dave is also a widower, and enjoys a brief relationship with a pet psychologist called Kate in series two and with a man named Lesley in series six and seven. In series two he starts to try to popularise the exclamation "Five Alive!" with some limited success.
The other main characters, who pop up from time to time are Father Henderson, the local priest who reveals far too much of what goes on in the confessional and who has a subscription to a Doctor Who magazine; Keenan's Mum, who is unnamed besides her relationship to Keenan, a local child with a good heart but a penchant for petty theft; Bra Jeff, the owner of "Bras Etc", the local lingerie shop, who ends many of his sentences with a needless "et cetera"; Mutton Jeff, the butcher; Mrs Gibb, a cheerful Geordie who comes in to buy her Grazie magazine; and Lovely Ted, an older gentleman with a tedious and predictable sense of humour that Ramesh and Dave enjoy, none the less.
Fags, Mags and Bags is a series I first came across about five years ago, and I didn't think much of it. The lack of canned laughter left me with a funny feeling about it, as if I wasn't quite sure what it was trying to be. On recent relistenings, though, it's precisely the lack of a laugh track that I like. It just lets the comedy flow. And flow it does. There are some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments (Ramesh designating each of his sons a call sign in the first series episode "Build the Titanic" comes to mind) and a lot of more gentle laughs, and the programme has a genuine warmth that keeps me listening. There really aren't any unlikable characters, everyone is played quite sympathetically, and no one, despite their flaws, is the butt of any unkind jokes. You get a real sense of friendship between Ramesh and Dave as they talk about all things shop and share their love of the music of Barbara Dickson. If you've ever seen Open All Hours with Ronnie Barker and David Jason, Kohli's Ramesh is virtually the polar opposite of Barker's Arkwright. Where Arkwright is cynical, selfish and greedy, Ramesh is caring, considerate and has his customers' best interests at heart, even if it's sometimes to his own disadvantage.
Overall, Fags, Mags and Bags is an enjoyable programme that I will probably find myself listening to all over again when I finish it the first time. It's full of warmth, humour and intelligence and characters that you genuinely end up caring about.
UPDATE:
I've progressed from series 3, when I wrote this originally, to series 8, and Fags, Mags and Bags is just growing on me all the time. I love the little recurring gags, like the cries of "NOOOOO" when someone says something inappropriate, the "...over 29 years", "Do you mean 30 years?" joke, and the references back to earlier storylines that sometimes occur. I thought the series 6 (I think) reference back to the Lembit Opik Pita Heater was particularly good.
It also seems that Sanjay is *not* a teenager after all, as there is talk of him wasting the last 10 years pretending to enrol on different college courses. It seems he's probably around 25 with Alok a little older.
Rating: * * * *
Ramesh's newsagent is a microcosm of life frequented by all the locals of Lenzie, from the indiscreet, gossipy priest Father Henderson to single mother Keenan's Mum and everyone else from the community in between. And it is a community.
Ramesh is a widower, although not much mention is made of his late wife. We do, in one episode, meet his evil Mother-in-Law, played brilliantly by Nina Wadia.
Ramesh has two sons, teenager Sanjay and twenty-something Alok, both of whom Ramesh describes as being surly arses. Sanjay is a typical teen with catchphrases that include "OMG", "Get over yourself" and "'SAKE!". Alok sees himself as a forward-thinking entrepeneur, always looking for the next big thing and desperate to drag his father's shop into the 21st century, usually with little success.
Dave is Ramesh's best friend and only employee at Fags, Mags and Bags. They share the same, deep love of everything shop, from laying out the famous "Wall of Crisps" in the most effective way, to the best place to display greetings cards, and understanding the reassurance customers find in keeping the same Super Soaker on display for decades. Dave is also a widower, and enjoys a brief relationship with a pet psychologist called Kate in series two and with a man named Lesley in series six and seven. In series two he starts to try to popularise the exclamation "Five Alive!" with some limited success.
The other main characters, who pop up from time to time are Father Henderson, the local priest who reveals far too much of what goes on in the confessional and who has a subscription to a Doctor Who magazine; Keenan's Mum, who is unnamed besides her relationship to Keenan, a local child with a good heart but a penchant for petty theft; Bra Jeff, the owner of "Bras Etc", the local lingerie shop, who ends many of his sentences with a needless "et cetera"; Mutton Jeff, the butcher; Mrs Gibb, a cheerful Geordie who comes in to buy her Grazie magazine; and Lovely Ted, an older gentleman with a tedious and predictable sense of humour that Ramesh and Dave enjoy, none the less.
Fags, Mags and Bags is a series I first came across about five years ago, and I didn't think much of it. The lack of canned laughter left me with a funny feeling about it, as if I wasn't quite sure what it was trying to be. On recent relistenings, though, it's precisely the lack of a laugh track that I like. It just lets the comedy flow. And flow it does. There are some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments (Ramesh designating each of his sons a call sign in the first series episode "Build the Titanic" comes to mind) and a lot of more gentle laughs, and the programme has a genuine warmth that keeps me listening. There really aren't any unlikable characters, everyone is played quite sympathetically, and no one, despite their flaws, is the butt of any unkind jokes. You get a real sense of friendship between Ramesh and Dave as they talk about all things shop and share their love of the music of Barbara Dickson. If you've ever seen Open All Hours with Ronnie Barker and David Jason, Kohli's Ramesh is virtually the polar opposite of Barker's Arkwright. Where Arkwright is cynical, selfish and greedy, Ramesh is caring, considerate and has his customers' best interests at heart, even if it's sometimes to his own disadvantage.
Overall, Fags, Mags and Bags is an enjoyable programme that I will probably find myself listening to all over again when I finish it the first time. It's full of warmth, humour and intelligence and characters that you genuinely end up caring about.
UPDATE:
I've progressed from series 3, when I wrote this originally, to series 8, and Fags, Mags and Bags is just growing on me all the time. I love the little recurring gags, like the cries of "NOOOOO" when someone says something inappropriate, the "...over 29 years", "Do you mean 30 years?" joke, and the references back to earlier storylines that sometimes occur. I thought the series 6 (I think) reference back to the Lembit Opik Pita Heater was particularly good.
It also seems that Sanjay is *not* a teenager after all, as there is talk of him wasting the last 10 years pretending to enrol on different college courses. It seems he's probably around 25 with Alok a little older.
Rating: * * * *
Regular visitors (just me then) will have noticed a change to the design of RetroJunkies.co.uk.
The right-hand panel containing the recent posts, search, blurb and links has been moved to the left-hand side, and the main content is now to the right.
I've also changed the title font to Hand Drawn Objects, a free web font I found online, and the main font to the brilliantly named "Aaargh". It just makes the whole place look a little more polished.
To that end, I've also taken the opportunity to learn a bit about responsive web design. That is, making pages fit the device on which they're being viewed. In this case, I've changed the site so that when viewed on a small screen (like a mobile phone) the left panel is reduced and, as with the main panel, appears the whole width of the screen.
I've also improved my own logging-in facility for when I make posts. It turns out I'd been forgetting to actually validate the username entered at login. It's a wonder I haven't been hacked yet.
There's method to my madness. I've been attending university open days for my partner's son, and I've realised that some of my skills are absent or falling by the wayside a little. Among them my web design (css, javascript) and PHP abilities, so I'm using this site as practice for those skills.
Any comments on the look are gratefully received.
The right-hand panel containing the recent posts, search, blurb and links has been moved to the left-hand side, and the main content is now to the right.
I've also changed the title font to Hand Drawn Objects, a free web font I found online, and the main font to the brilliantly named "Aaargh". It just makes the whole place look a little more polished.
To that end, I've also taken the opportunity to learn a bit about responsive web design. That is, making pages fit the device on which they're being viewed. In this case, I've changed the site so that when viewed on a small screen (like a mobile phone) the left panel is reduced and, as with the main panel, appears the whole width of the screen.
I've also improved my own logging-in facility for when I make posts. It turns out I'd been forgetting to actually validate the username entered at login. It's a wonder I haven't been hacked yet.
There's method to my madness. I've been attending university open days for my partner's son, and I've realised that some of my skills are absent or falling by the wayside a little. Among them my web design (css, javascript) and PHP abilities, so I'm using this site as practice for those skills.
Any comments on the look are gratefully received.
Alongside Welsh, I have also been brushing up on my GCSE French and hoping to improve my German (although I've already given up on this).
These languages have highlighted two more things I like about Welsh and that I think make it an easier language for the beginner:
1. The present continuous (I am going; I am doing; We are sailing (across the sea...))
In English, we have this periphrastic construction for the continuous tense that involves using "to be" as an auxilliary verb. This construction is alien to other European languages who simply use the present tense form of whatever verb, for example "to go", to indicate all three of the following ideas:
I go
I am going
I do go
In French, all three are "je vais". On the DuoLingo forum you see beginners in non-Welsh languages ask "Where is "am" in this sentence?" or asking "Why is it not 'Je suis vais'?".
Welsh, similarly to English, also forms the present tense periphrastically with "bod" (to be), almost in the opposite way to French by including the auxilliary where in English it *wouldn't* be needed:
Dw i'n mynd (literally "Am I going")
is
I am going
I go
I do go
and I think that inclusion of "am" (dw, in this case) is a more familiar construct to the English speaker, despite the reverse word order.
2. The same pronouns are used for both the nominative and accusative case.
What I mean by this is that "he" and "him" are both the same word, as are "She" and "her" (although not "her" the possessive pronoun), and "We" and "us".
For example:
Maen nhw'n mwynhau'r ddrama (they enjoy the play) - Nominative
Uses the same pronoun as:
Paid ag anghofio nhw! (don't forget them!) - Accusative
In French, "them" can be "ils" or "elles" or even "eux" in the nominative and "les" in the accusative.
The more Welsh I learn, the more I think it's a lot easier than people give it credit for. That said, it's not without its own strange constructs!
These languages have highlighted two more things I like about Welsh and that I think make it an easier language for the beginner:
1. The present continuous (I am going; I am doing; We are sailing (across the sea...))
In English, we have this periphrastic construction for the continuous tense that involves using "to be" as an auxilliary verb. This construction is alien to other European languages who simply use the present tense form of whatever verb, for example "to go", to indicate all three of the following ideas:
I go
I am going
I do go
In French, all three are "je vais". On the DuoLingo forum you see beginners in non-Welsh languages ask "Where is "am" in this sentence?" or asking "Why is it not 'Je suis vais'?".
Welsh, similarly to English, also forms the present tense periphrastically with "bod" (to be), almost in the opposite way to French by including the auxilliary where in English it *wouldn't* be needed:
Dw i'n mynd (literally "Am I going")
is
I am going
I go
I do go
and I think that inclusion of "am" (dw, in this case) is a more familiar construct to the English speaker, despite the reverse word order.
2. The same pronouns are used for both the nominative and accusative case.
What I mean by this is that "he" and "him" are both the same word, as are "She" and "her" (although not "her" the possessive pronoun), and "We" and "us".
For example:
Maen nhw'n mwynhau'r ddrama (they enjoy the play) - Nominative
Uses the same pronoun as:
Paid ag anghofio nhw! (don't forget them!) - Accusative
In French, "them" can be "ils" or "elles" or even "eux" in the nominative and "les" in the accusative.
The more Welsh I learn, the more I think it's a lot easier than people give it credit for. That said, it's not without its own strange constructs!
I originally signed up to the SaySomethingInWelsh forums a few weeks ago when I found it quite by accident while searching for information on the use of "sydd" vs "pwy", and my use of the site didn't go beyond reading some of the forum posts.
Today I decided to start their lessons. Learning with SaySomethingInWelsh is quite unlike DuoLingo. The latter presents you with very short lessons based around short sentences you translate into English, write out in Welsh, or match to pictures. Because of its visual nature, learning the written forms of words is essential to the learning process.
SaySomethingInWelsh is quite different. They actively discourage note taking and base their lessons entirely on listening and repeating the material in a fashion a little similar to a Teach Yourself CD. The idea is that you learn by doing.
Despite having worked up to Level 16 on DuoLingo, I decided to start right at the beginning with the SaySomething course, just in case it offered vocabulary I had not come across on DuoLingo, and so that I got the most out of the course.
So far I'm liking it. It's ideal for having in the car while driving, as one might an audio CD. The only disconcerting thing at the moment is the pronunciation of the speaker, who is a native speaker from the South East. I'm familiar with pronouncing words with "ae" to sound as "eye", whereas he pronounces them more like "ah". Thus "cymraeg" to me sounds like "cum-rye-g" but to him is more "cum-raag". I'm not going to argue with him; he's a native speaker, after all, but it takes some getting used to. I can only assume my pronunciation is either more "standard" or more northern.
Even lesson one brought about some new-ish vocabulary for me, so it's looking like a promising new route for learning, with the added bonus of some forums in which to speak to some like-minded learners.
Today I decided to start their lessons. Learning with SaySomethingInWelsh is quite unlike DuoLingo. The latter presents you with very short lessons based around short sentences you translate into English, write out in Welsh, or match to pictures. Because of its visual nature, learning the written forms of words is essential to the learning process.
SaySomethingInWelsh is quite different. They actively discourage note taking and base their lessons entirely on listening and repeating the material in a fashion a little similar to a Teach Yourself CD. The idea is that you learn by doing.
Despite having worked up to Level 16 on DuoLingo, I decided to start right at the beginning with the SaySomething course, just in case it offered vocabulary I had not come across on DuoLingo, and so that I got the most out of the course.
So far I'm liking it. It's ideal for having in the car while driving, as one might an audio CD. The only disconcerting thing at the moment is the pronunciation of the speaker, who is a native speaker from the South East. I'm familiar with pronouncing words with "ae" to sound as "eye", whereas he pronounces them more like "ah". Thus "cymraeg" to me sounds like "cum-rye-g" but to him is more "cum-raag". I'm not going to argue with him; he's a native speaker, after all, but it takes some getting used to. I can only assume my pronunciation is either more "standard" or more northern.
Even lesson one brought about some new-ish vocabulary for me, so it's looking like a promising new route for learning, with the added bonus of some forums in which to speak to some like-minded learners.