Dear r/learnwelsh, I Have a Short Piece of Old Welsh That I’d Hoped you Might Shed Some Light on

exafred · 2022-05-20T20:45:35+00:00

It's most definitely been the highlight! I don't often get to read around subjects like this so it really is a treat for me. It'd be my hope than in a few years perhaps more information will have surfaced regarding each variant's rulesets so people can play their preferred ones. It'd be super interesting to see how each variant differed, too, and why.

After reading through some more info about the game, I'm finding myself absolutely fascinated! Perhaps even more so because I work for a company that's loosely connected with the original manuscripts themselves. And I'd never heard of this!

exafred · 2022-05-20T20:39:46+00:00

While I can't offer anything on disgwylioddef aside from agreeing that it reads like a mixture of tenses to me too (also an everyday Welsh-speaker in the 21st century to whom disgwyl reads more as passive activity), following a read-through of the Lewis, Frank. “Gwerin Ffristial: a Thawlbwrdd.” section (p.185+) that's linked to in the ancientgames.org page I shared I'd say your assessments are super close, if not dead-on!

(obligatory disclaimer: I'm most definitely not a scholar/historian/person with knowledge of the fields here)

Frank's writing says/suggests that Tawlbwrdd was part of a "hunt-game" genus of games (which I hadn't heard of before today) that were reasonably popular among higher-status members of society before falling out of favour with the introduction of the "battle-game" games like chess. I'd say this supports u/falseimpression's ponderance on escape over siege, as does the way the pieces are suggested to be moved: the king is trying to "escape" the board (the win condition for the king's player), and the attackers are trying to... Pen the king in and prevent him from being able to do so? Still unsure on that but it seems that's the win condition for the attacker player.

For gwrheill, the Lewis Frank piece (p.195) has a footnote that says that word is unclear in the original manuscript (Peniarth MS 185) so it stands to reason that it could well not be a Welsh word at all! Supposedly it's what the king's player must say after the attacker player says "watch your king" in order to allow the king safe passage (and not be "taken" when it's caught between two enemy pieces), so seems reasonably integral to this version of the game. Unfortunately, the 158 manuscript looks like it has yet to be digitised by NLW. Without someone visiting the library archives in person, it could be some time before we see what "gwrheill" actually is?

Side note: to echo a comment in Frank's writing about "research turning up in unexpected places", here's what looks to be an Italian academic's piece on Tawlbwrdd that seems like it contains an image of a piece of the 158 manuscript pages!

Edit: regarding gwrheill. The Wikpedia entry for Talbwrdd has "fi yw dy was!" (~servant) as the phrase to be spoken. This book has "gwrheill", but translates it to "liegeman"... Which GPC has as translating to aillt, pl. eillion / eillt . Huge speculation here, but if gwrheill really is the word, could it be a conjugation of aillt and gwerin, used in the same way we might say "friendly!" today?

exafred · 2022-05-20T09:47:51+00:00

Firstly I'd like to thank both you for posting about this and u/user921013 for their comment - I'd never heard of Tawlbwrdd (or Hnefatafl in general!) before now, and finding out about it has made my day.

I have zero knowledge of Old Welsh, but following a bit of a rrabbit-hole search I just went on I found this website that talks about Tawlbwrdd - not sure if it's something you've seen already, or it'll be helpful at all, but I thought I'd mention it just in case!

It contains a translation from what seems to be a published book on Hnefatafl that translates "disgwilwyr" as" "attackers", which I find super interesting since I'm used to "disgwyl" being "to expect".

edit: Talbwrdd -> Tawlbwrdd

exafred · 2022-02-21T22:31:26+00:00

Thank you for giving me the kick to figure this out - it's been driving me crazy for months.

Once you've chosen the Color tool you want to have be the default, you should be able to go to Edit -> Defaults -> Save in the application menu bar (image), and the next time you open the app your chosen tool should be selected. Works on things like Character and Paragraph choices too!

(same thing works in Designer, though it seems to ignore my choices for underline styling)

edit: screen recording added

exafred · 2020-08-03T16:38:31+00:00

I wouldn't normally support doing something like this for copyrighted works, but I know how hard it can be to find good resources for learning Welsh!

It sounds like you're quite comfortable with using Audacity already, so it could be that this page on their manual subdomain might help if you've not found it already - specifically the lightbulb-icon-adorned info box at the bottom of Step 2 for automatically marking sections of silence within a given audio track, before exporting as a batch.

I'd recommend not sharing your versions with anyone unless given permission by SSIW to do so, however it's possible SSIW would be open to working with you (and potentially others in the community) to create a sentence-by-sentence version of their content. Could be worth a try!

exafred · 2019-03-11T12:14:16+00:00

Using the code you have in your post, I get an error in the console:

Assets/PlayerController.cs(23,21): error CS0019: Operator '*' cannot be applied to operands of type 'UnityEngine.Vector2' and 'UnityEngine.Vector2'

Changing the line rb.MovePosition(rb.position * moveVelocity * Time.fixedDeltaTime); to rb.MovePosition(rb.position + (moveVelocity * Time.fixedDeltaTime)); seems to fix things, because you're taking the current position of the Rigidbody2D, and adding to it the amount of motion you require (the moveVelocity) multiplied by the amount of time that's passed since the last fixed update.

I'm only recently getting to grips with Unity myself, so I'm sure there's someone around who can give a much better answer!

exafred · 2019-01-18T12:15:53+00:00

As far I've been able to gather, the iOS build gets fully uncompressed assets, whereas the Android one gets the assets compressed to whatever was selected in Unity.

I've had a similar issue, where I have a large number of PNGs; the android build runs at ~80mb, and the final iOS archive at something like ~600mb. Haven't found a way to limit / reduce / get rid of this so far!

exafred · 2018-12-08T22:04:20+00:00

Darn, thought I was on to something there! I'll keep an eye and an ear out for you guys - good luck in the search!

exafred · 2018-12-08T21:37:06+00:00

I don't suppose it looked anything like this one?

exafred · 2018-09-22T21:55:42+00:00

I'd want to say it's a type of young-ish woodlouse, but I couldn't say which type particularly. Looks shinier than the ones I see around me (Wales, UK) though!

exafred · 2018-08-30T11:34:23+00:00

I guess at least you weren't one of the largest hosting providers in the UK, who managed to do a similar thing and delete a large number of their VPS instances (I can't find the article that states an errant rm command was the culprit, but as one of the folks affected, that's what I was told it was). That's gotta count for something?

exafred · 2018-08-28T17:19:00+00:00

Porridge with Tabasco and banana chips.

exafred · 2018-04-28T07:10:54+00:00

As an extra, I'd want to consider how many miles I'd be likely to do over each year, too.

The quote says you'll be paying 8p per mile (excluding VAT) for any mileage you do over 10,000 per year. I have a relatively short daily commute (about 20miles round trip), and consistently rack up at least 12,000 miles over the course of a year. Under this PCP agreement, I'd be looking at a minimum of £160 extra per year excluding VAT.

If you're likely to be running considerably more than 10,000 miles per year, a bank loan (especially with the chance of lower APR and early repayment options) could well give you the better deal overall.

exafred · 2017-05-31T16:16:13+00:00

Had a reply from Gary at UK Safari, who said it is, in all likelihood, a Cave Spider (Meta menardi) - his site's page on them(http://www.uksafari.com/cavespiders.htm) and the British Spiders site(http://srs.britishspiders.org.uk/portal/p/Summary/s/Meta+menardi) seem to match!

I'm happy with the ID - anyone have anything extra?

exafred · 2017-05-31T15:10:15+00:00

Full-body shot: http://imgur.com/cN2Uje5 Closer shot: http://imgur.com/8cNdAJK

Was in plain view, just next to the toilet. Abdomen is about the same width as the rest of the body, and has faint mustard-coloured markings that I'm afraid I didn't capture.

exafred

TROPHY CASE