After having a propagator for Christmas (and then ordering another one - I now have both the 'self-watering' and heated versions of Garland windowsill propagators) I have started my tomatoes, chillis and sweet peppers for 2018 on the windowsill.

The first to be sown were the cherry tomatoes which went in on 1st Jan:

Three cherry tomato seedlings inside a propagator tray, towered over by chilli plant 1602, which is overwintering indoors and already showing signs of new growth after being pruned. This was actually one of the first chillis I grew in 2016, and was the smallest of all the seedlings in the tray of the 'grow you own chilli kit' someone gave me as a gift. I didn't think it would even survive planting out and it remained very small through the 2016 season, but after coming inside for the winter, and grew much larger in 2017 and produced well. It is some kind of habanero variety not sure exactly what.

I also have kept some of the seeds from my own chilli plants I grew from seed in 2016 and 2017, and ordered a mix of sweet pepper seeds online.

Two trays of seeds from 1602, and a tray of seeds from 1701. In 2016 most of my chilli plants died in the greenhouse after going mouldy in November, although I did bring in 4 indoors before then that survived the winter. None of them produced a lot of chillis in the first season. However the 4 that did survive have grown back well this year and some of them have produced a lot of hot, red habenero chillis. I also bought a mixed pack of chilli seeds. 1701 is a yellow chilli, possibly Yellow Cayenne. I also had some seeds of 1708 and 1715 mixed up sown but not pictured here. I think 1708 is another yellow Cayenne, and 1715 is probably Garden Salsa. I also have a couple of green Jalapeno plants but haven't saved seeds from these. There were also a few more habanero in the 2017 batch but their fruits contained very few seeds.

After eating some mini sweet peppers in a Christmas Antipasti selection that I got reduced from the Co-op, I looked online and it looks like they were Biquinhos. In the end ordered a set of 4 batches of pepper seeds from eBay, of which 3 can be seen here. The 4 varieties were Chocolate Cherry, Peppadew, Biquinho Red and Trinidad Perfume.

These came from Greece courtesy of vonbondies on eBay.

YOUR COMPLAINT:
Complaint Summary: Radio 4 confuse Cornish dialect with the language

Full Complaint:

The webpage http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4ptVCHhsT5CDKS2dKXPJnKp/poldark-parlance-14-cornish-phrases-and-what-they-mean which is titled "Poldark parlance: 14 Cornish phrases and what they mean" claims to give a list of 14 words or phrases in Cornish. However except for one they are the English dialect spoken in Cornwall rather than the actual Cornish language. I would have thought Radio 4 would know better than to confuse the Anglo-Cornish dialect with the actual Cornish language, which is distinct from English.

This is the somewhat confused fob-off I got in response:

Thanks for getting in touch regarding BBC Online.
I understand you feel that the Radio 4 page 'Poldark parlance: 14 Cornish phrases and what they mean', confuses the Anglo-Cornish dialect with the Cornish language.
The article doesn't claim to be translating from the Cornish language Kernewek into English.
The introduction explains that the English and Cornish languages intermingled to create a dialect, or what words and phrases which are unique to that specific region.
So in this context, the article is clarifying the meaning of words and phrases used in the English dialect of Cornwall.
That said, we do value your feedback about this issue. All complaints are sent to senior management and online editors every morning and I included your points in this overnight report.
These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback in the BBC and ensures that your complaint has been seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform their decisions about current and future programmes.

Once again, thank you for contacting us.

 Kind regards

BBC Complaints Team

Note however that the article has been edited. I have reproduced below the article as it was at the time I made my complaint. Note that the introductory paragraphs are not the same as the current version on the website.

In my previous post about filling in the gap in Bewnans Ke at the Cornish language weekend, I noticed that the Cornish word 'vyajya' (to travel) is not understood in full by the syllable segmentation module of taklow-kernewek, if the reverse segmentation mode is used starting from the end and working backwards, since it assumes the penultimate syllable is 'yaj' starting with a semivocalic y rather than a vowel y. This leaves 'v' on its own which is not matched by the regular expression as a syllable.

This can be compounded if accented or non-alphabetic characters are included. A warning can now be given in cases where not all of the input word is matched, using the command-line syllabenn_ranna_kw.py with the --warn option, or by checkboxes in sylrannakwGUI.py and sylrannacyGUI.py

The window in my netbook. If the box is ticked, a warning is given. One of my next things to do is to make the output box a little cleverer to avoid splitting lines in the middle of words.

The interface language is a bit confused, since the explanatory text here remains in Cornish, although the warning message is in Welsh this was done in not a very rational way, since this is hard-coded at the moment to appear in Cornish only in short or line mode, and bilingually Cornish/English in long mode, except if the CYmode flag is set this gets overridden and it displays the Welsh version. It probably needs a bit of an overhaul to change the language in a similar way to the corpus statistics module.

Back in April I attended the Pennseythun Gernewek, the annual Cornish language weekend run by Kowethas an Yeth Kernewek where Cornish speakers from around Cornwall, and beyond gather to speak the language, and participate in lessons and activities. There is something for every level of previous knowledge of the language, from Dallethoryon Lan (complete beginners) to Bagas Freth (the fluent speakers group). I definitely recommend it.
A couple of things that Bagas Freth did this year was a talk by Ken George on translating song lyrics into Cornish, and a workshop on composing a part of the lost part of Bewnans Ke (events taking place during the missing part of the manuscript before the portion that was preserved).

Bewnans Ke an Blydhynnyow Kellys

We divided into groups and composed several stanzas covering Ke in his time in Brittany before his coming to Cornwall. I partly composed this:

7 My a'th pys Duw pyth yw res     A
4 dhymm gul ragos     B
7 A wre'ta ow dannvonn mes A
4 A'n benneglos B
4 Ny wrav govynn      C
7 bywnans fethus yn palas    D
7 Argheskop gans boes a vlas     D
7 gwell yw genev rewlys tynn     C

7 Vyajya a wre'ta'n skon A
4 Bys Rosewa B
7 War an mor y glywydh son A
4 Klogh y'n le na B
4 Vydh ow seni C
7 Grasek ov bos yn ayr fresk  D
7 Y'n le skrifa orth ow desk D
7 Dhe Gernow mos a wren ni C

The numbers at the left are the number of syllables, and the letters at the right mark the rhymes.
There are two formats used in Bewnans Ke that we followed in composing these stanzas. This had a structure of 7, 4, 7, 4, 4, 7, 7,7 syllables per line. The other possible structure was 7,7,7,7,4,7,7,7. With either of these structures either one person was speaking for all 8 lines, or person 1 for 5 lines and person 2 for 3. In the first of the stanzas above, it is all Ke speaking, and the second has 5 lines of God in reply and 3 with Ke again.
A broad translation is as follows:

I pray God what must I do for thee. Will you send me away from the cathedral?
I do not ask for a luxurious life in an archbishops palace with fine food. I prefer a strict rule.
You will voyage soon, to Rosewa (placename, meaning the Roseland?) On the sea you will hear a sound of a bell ringing there.
I am grateful to be in fresh air rather than writing at my desk. To Cornwall we will go.

Output of taklow-kernewek syllable segmentation tool.

Output of taklow-kernewek syllable segmentation tool. I changed to forward segmentation due to an issue with the word 'vyajya' see below.

Detailed output for 'Vyajya' - forward segmentation. The regular expression starts at the beginning of the word and works forwards.

Detailed output for 'Vyajya' - forward segmentation. The regular expression starts at the end of the word and works backwards. Here we see the '-ya' at the end is matched first, then 'yaj' is matched with a semi-vocalic y which leaves the 'V' unmatched

The issue with the word vyajya shows that perhaps more work is needed on the syllable segmentation program, perhaps to warn the user if not all of the input is consumed by the segmentation, and also to perhaps return multiple segmentations where they exist.

Song lyrics

In another of the sessions, Ken George covered some aspects of translating a song, including observing its metre and rhyme, and the different styles of rhyme in songs. After the talk, we divided into smaller groups and tried translating a song each.
One group got a song in French "Charles Trenet - La Mer" which I think was quite a difficult challenge for them. I don't have a copy here of what they came up with.
I was part of a group working on Moon River (Louis Armstrong).
With a bit of artistic licence and adaptation:

Original

Noting rhymes

Translation/Adaptation

I am happy to report that my computer is working again, after a reformat, Windows 7 installation, then a long delay while Ubuntu partition resizer stalled, then fixed that with a GParted iso, and then reinstalled Ubuntu 17.04 and I am part way through restoring data from backups.
QGIS is working with version 2.18.

Although I have used Python csv, matplotlib and numpy libraries to read data from files and plot I hadn't used the pandas library for anything much, so I thought I'd do so. I have in previous code often built up a list manually by setting data = [] and then using append to build up the list, which can be slow for large datasets.

First I need some data, and I will use the general election results for the 6 parliamentary constituencies for the House of Commons in Cornwall:

Constituency,Surname,Forenames,Description,Votes,Turnout
Camborne and Redruth,EUSTICE,Charles George,Conservative Party,23001,70.96
Camborne and Redruth,WINTER,Graham Robert,Labour Party,21424,70.96
Camborne and Redruth,WILLIAMS,Geoffrey,Liberal Democrats,2979,70.96
Camborne and Redruth,GARBETT,Geoffrey George,Green Party,1052,70.96
North Cornwall,MANN,Scott Leslie,Conservative Party,25835,74.2
North Cornwall,ROGERSON,Daniel John,Liberal Democrats,18635,74.2
North Cornwall,BASSETT,Joy,Labour Party,6151,74.2
North Cornwall,ALLMAN,John William,Christian Peoples Alliance,185,74.2
North Cornwall,HAWKINS,Robert James,Socialist Labour Party,138,74.2
South East Cornwall,MURRAY,Sheryll,Conservative Party,29493,74.2
South East Cornwall,DERRICK,Gareth Gwyn James,Labour Party,12050,74.2
South East Cornwall,HUTTY,Philip Andrew,Liberal Democrats,10346,74.2
South East Cornwall,CORNEY,Martin Charles Stewart,Green Party,1335,74.2
St Austell and Newquay,DOUBLE,Stephen Daniel,Conservative Party,26856,69.3
St Austell and Newquay,NEIL,Kevin Michael,Labour Party,15714,69.3
St Austell and Newquay,GILBERT ,Stephen David John ,Liberal Democrats,11642,69.3
St Ives,THOMAS,Derek,Conservative Party,22120,76.1
St Ives,GEORGE,Andrew Henry,Liberal Democrats,21808,76.1
St Ives,DREW,Christopher John,Labour Party,7298,76.1
Truro and Falmouth,NEWTON,Sarah Louise,Conservative Party,25123,75.9
Truro and Falmouth,KIRKHAM,Jayne Susannah,Labour Party,21331,75.9
Truro and Falmouth,NOLAN,Robert Anthony,Liberal Democrat,8465,75.9
Truro and Falmouth,ODGERS,Duncan Charles,UK Independence Party,897,75.9
Truro and Falmouth,PENNINGTON,Amanda Alice,Green Party,831,75.9

Here is the Python code, which expects the above data in a file called electionresults2017.csv which it reads using csv.DictReader which produces an iterator which I convert to a list and create a pandas data frame object.
The code is also available in the dataviz-sandbox repository at my Bitbucket account.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import csv

def chooseColour(desc):
    if desc == "Labour Party":
        return "red"
    elif "Liberal" in desc:
        return "yellow"
    elif "Green" in desc:
        return "green"
    elif "Conservative" in desc:
        return "blue"
    else:
        return "magenta"
    
with open('electionresults2017.csv', 'r') as spamreader:
    dframe = pd.DataFrame(list(csv.DictReader(spamreader)))

consts = set(dframe['Constituency'])
print(consts)
fig = plt.figure()
plt.suptitle("Distribution of Votes in Cornwall\nGeneral Election 8th June 2017")
plt.axis('equal')
plt.xticks([])
plt.yticks([])
for p, c in enumerate(consts):
    # print("Constituency of {}".format(c))
    surnames = dframe.loc[dframe.Constituency == c, ['Surname']].values
    forenames = dframe.loc[dframe.Constituency == c, ['Forenames']].values
    descs = [d[0] for d in dframe.loc[dframe.Constituency == c, ['Description']].values]
    plotcolours = [chooseColour(d) for d in descs]
    forenames = [f for f in forenames]
    forename = [f[0].split()[0] for f in forenames]
    names = [f+" "+s for f,s in zip(forename, surnames)]
    names = [n[0] for n in names]
    votes = dframe.loc[dframe.Constituency == c, ['Votes']].values
    votes1 = [v[0] for v in votes]
    namedescsvotes = [n+"\n"+d+"\n"+v for n,d,v in zip(names, descs, votes1)]

    totalvotes = np.sum(votes, dtype=np.int)
    # print(totalvotes)
    ax = fig.add_subplot(2, 3, p+1)
    ax.axis('equal')
    ax.set_title("{C}: {t} votes cast".format(C=c, t=totalvotes))
    ax.set_xticks([])
    ax.set_yticks([])
    ax.pie(votes, radius = np.sqrt(totalvotes/50000.0), labels=namedescsvotes, colors=plotcolours, autopct='%1.1f%%')

                          
fig2 = plt.figure()
plt.suptitle("Representation of Cornwall in the House of Commons")
plt.axis('equal')
plt.xticks([])
plt.yticks([])
for p, c in enumerate(consts):
    descs = dframe.loc[dframe.Constituency == c, ['Description']].values
    descs = descs[0]
    plotcolours = [chooseColour(d) for d in descs]
    print(descs)
    ax = fig2.add_subplot(2, 3, p+1)
    ax.axis('equal')
    ax.set_title(c)
    ax.set_xticks([])
    ax.set_yticks([])
    ax.pie([1], labels=descs, colors=plotcolours)

plt.show()

And the results:

The votes cast for the various candidates and parties in each of the 6 constituencies covering Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. George Eustice MP uses his middle name rather than his first name Charles.

In comparison to votes cast, here are the parties represented in the House of Commons for constituencies in Cornwall.

I have also tried out matplotlib_venn. It takes as arguments the keyword subsets, which for the function venn2 expects A and (not B), (not A) and B, and (A and B). Below, voteothers is the number who voted for non-elected candidates, the second is by definition an empty set (those who didn't vote and cast a vote for the winner), and votewinner is those who voted for the winner.

Since Cornwall is a one-party state, the colours can be hard-coded.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib_venn as venn
...
    # subsets = (Ab, aB, AB)
    v = venn.venn2(subsets=(voteothers, 0, votewinner), set_colors =('lightgray', 'navy'), set_labels=('Other candidates', winnername))
...

The function venn3 expects a 7 element tuple as below. In this case, A is the electorate, B is those who voted for the winner, and C is those who voted for other candidates.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib_venn as venn
...
    # subsets=(Abc, aBc, ABc, abC, AbC, aBC, ABC)
    v = venn.venn3(subsets=(novote, 0, votewinner, 0, voteothers, 0, 0), set_colors =('lightgray', 'blue', 'red'), set_labels=('electoral register', winnername,'Other candidates'))
...

It would be nice to make the zero sets disappear, maybe there is a way to do this in the documentation somewhere.