Seren yr Wythnos | Star of the Week

I can only reiterate what others have said, and add that Ifan is also an accomplished Esperanto speaker - a language that he learnt in a matter of months, then attended a world celebration in Lille in July 2015. We travelled back to Cardiff together, speaking Esperanto all the way on the train, then forced our brains back into Welsh from Cardiff to Meifod to dive straight into the National Eisteddfod.

Hope to catch up again soon, Ifan!

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I know.

It would translate the same or with ā€œÅ”ā€ sound written like ā€œpŔŔŔtā€ but ā€œEnglishā€ version is more common even in our country. Some linguistic thingys are just universal. :slight_smile:

I know.

Sorry, @tatjana. I was thrown when you said ā€œDonā€™t psst, Huwā€ :smile:

Yah, sorry. I wanted to emphasize for more to be told. :slight_smile:

I can prety much imagine @Kinetic as a virtuose on the piano ā€¦

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Yah, sorry. I wanted to emphasize for more to be told. :slight_smile:

Thatā€™s what I guessed :smile: which is why I made the feeble ā€œfake newsā€ joke.

To be honest, if I said that kinetic was NOT an accomplished pianist, I would be guilty of spreading ā€œfake newsā€, But, to reveal a little more, I believe he can play Chopinā€™s ā€œMinute Waltzā€ in 59 seconds. :open_mouth:

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:joy::joy::joy:

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My idea of a proper pioneer. Technically, he leads a team of pioneers. Thereā€™s an ambiguity there I know will not be missedā€¦ And you are such a genuinely lovely person. I salute you, Sir Ifan of Baines!!

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Just to add my own word of thanks to a great friend of SSIW.

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Exactly! But Aran mostly pronounces it exactly like ā€œcyborgā€. :slight_smile: I can tell even when weā€™re typing, because I always write ā€œyr SSiborgā€ and he always writes ā€œy SSiBorgā€ :wink:

Oh yes, that was fun wasnā€™t it! There was more than a little confused blending of languages for the first little while after we switched, wasnā€™t there. :laughing: Thanks again for the generous lift to Meifod that day by the way!

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Wwwwā€¦ I want to be Ifan when I grow up :wink:

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I admire you as a ā€œtechā€ person @Kinetic. Maybe because I have one of such in my family. You all are so special people, somehow unique and a bit hard to understand and tricky to approach sometimes ā€¦ :slight_smile:

Yes @lewie, Iā€™d like to be (like) Ifan when I grow up too. :slight_smile: He is obviously tallented in everything I like - music, languages and techy stuff. :slight_smile: ā€¦

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Seren yr Wythnos #8

:star: :star2: Kev Smith :star2: :star:

Language learning is my thing - I never expected to have anything to do with any kind of software development.

So when Ifan decided bravely to come on board with us because it had turned out that the only way to build the kind of courses I wanted us to build was to develop our own piece of software, we had an interesting combination.

Ifan had never worked as a frontline developer before - heā€™d been a sysadmin who loved coding - and I had never tried to manage a software project.

Two things saved us from the inevitable ā€˜Oh-my-God-itā€™s-all-going-up-in-flamesā€™ scenarioā€¦

One was the fact that Ifan and I were friends who both cared hugely about making SSiW a success.

The other was Kev.

Kev, you see, is an actual software manager - a coder used to managing other coders - and from the very beginning he could see that Ifan and I were going to have a struggle on our plates to make the project work.

So he basically started coaching me - spending serious time in our Slack chat channel and telling me stuff about software development. You know, the kind of career development stuff that would usually cost tens of thousands of poundsā€¦ Heā€™s also been a brilliant sounding board any time weā€™ve needed to talk through technical decisions - and heā€™s ridden to the rescue in very practical terms on a number of occasions when the website has decided to explode while Ifan is asleep/in a different timezone/both of the aboveā€¦

I canā€™t really begin to tell you how much Iā€™ve learnt from Kev. Iā€™m far, far better now at knowing what is most difficult for coders, what helps them, what hinders them (and I hope Ifan has seen the difference in our work!).

Iā€™ll never forget Kev telling me at one point, in his inimitably dry way, that it might be helpful for me to understand that I was essentially asking Ifan to do something that was somewhere between phenomenally difficult and straightforwardly impossibleā€¦:wink:

Oh, and in the meantime, Kevā€™s turned himself into a Welsh speaker, survived two Bootcamps with his catchphrase ā€˜But I canā€™t speak Welshā€™ (in Welsh, of course), been an incredibly caring and supportive and thoughtful moderator of the forum, and (perhaps most lovely of all) introduced us to Cathā€¦ :star: :star2:

Ladies and gentlemen, please doff your hats in the general direction of Kev - without whom there is a very real chance the SSiBorg would have died in infancy.

Diolch o galon i ti, Kev! :star: :star2: :dizzy:


Seren yr Wythnos #1

:star: :star2: Iestyn ap Dafydd :star2: :star:


Seren yr Wythnos #2

:star: :star2: Catrin Lliar Jones :star2: :star:


Seren yr Wythnos #3

:star: :star2: Cat Dafydd :star2: :star:


Seren yr Wythnos #4

:star: :star2: Dee McCarney :star2: :star:


Seren yr Wythnos #5

:star: :star2: Spenny :star2: :star:


Seren yr Wythnos #6

:star: :star2: Jeff Lewis :star2: :star:


Seren yr Wythnos #7

:star: :star2: Ifan Baines :star2: :star:


Seren yr Wythnos #8

:star: :star2: Kev Smith :star2: :star:

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If Kev is who I think he is, I thoroughly endorse this nomination and add my thanks to him.

(I wonder rather sheepishly if we are deliberately separating forum names from actual names in this thread?)

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oh ho ho hoā€¦ Huw you sneaky ā€¦

Do SSiBorgs dream of wonder sheep ā€¦?

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Yes, huge hatā€™s off to Kev for all the valuable counsel he as given!

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I have to say that software seems like some kind of wizardry and I am very unmagical! So thank you for your massive contributions casting your spells Kev!

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Indeed, thanks to Kev for all the work behind the scenes.

Iā€™ve shared two bootcamps with Kev and Cath (or Cav as I like to call the inseparable pair) and apart from Kevā€™s loud screeches and wailing it was an absolute pleasure. :blush:

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@wondersheep

The ā€œquietā€ moderator with warm face and attitude (as much as I could establish from ā€œmeetingā€ him on here). The man who actually taught me (through edits of my posts) how this forum actually works. The first thing I remember was his edit of category of my topic which made me aware thereā€™s something more then just writing the post and starting the topic with it. I started to organize the topics Iā€™ve created into right categories and started to pay much more attention to everything what this software on which this forum is based has to offerā€¦

Only later on, when I was invited to Slack as a Video team member, I became aware of heā€™s much more then just moderator on the forum and for this reason I respect him even more.

Since I never met Kev in person and actually never ā€œspokeā€ to him through the forum or Slack either (unless in some forum thread occassionally, I donā€™t know him but I know (somehow) what significent role in SSiW he plays even now.

Thank you Kev for everything youā€™ve done and still doing for SSi and all of us with this.

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Thanks, Kev, for all you do and have done for SSiW! :star2:

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Oh, gosh, no, just my general forgetfulness. Of which Iā€™m now rather proud, since it gave us your wondering sheepishlyā€¦ :star: :star2:

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