Student scum

They've been back for four days, and today I found a present left for me - quarter of a pizza left wedged under my windscreen wiper. Last year, shortly after they moved back, there was the contents of a patio tub left on the roof of the car, with the broken remains left behind my wheels. The previous year, my wing mirror was pulled off and wedged under the aerial.

Naturally, the University of Glamorgan can claim no responsibility, nor liability, for their little darlings' actions.

Add to this the sudden lack of parking in Trefforest. These days, students have cars. Lots of cars. The three-bedroom flat above the pub down the street is now responsible for three cars, in an already congested area. And they'll all get their parking permits, because Rhondda Cynon Taff will hand out parking permits like Newport Council hands out publican licences. The facts that they're living 5 minutes walk from the campus, 2 minutes walk from a train station and that Tesco's internet shopping is really rather good - all this will be lost on them; they all need their cars. And their parents will come visiting next weekend with their 4x4s, blocking us up even more, and doubtless complaining about the area.

Reality check. Students pay no council tax, so contribute nothing financially to the area. The shops in the area that benefit are takeaways and letting agencies - for everything else they go to Tesco. We, the locals, are paying for their bins to be emptied, their spilt takeaways and vomit to be cleaned from the street, the police to bang on the doors to break up parties on weekdays at 2am.

My opinions, for what they're worth:

The University should either fund a whole load of police constables to patrol the area, especially between 10pm and 2am, or introduce a community patrol to stop antisocial behaviour - and clean up after their kids.

Rhondda Cynon Taff should implement a one-house-one-car scheme in Trefforest. Subsequent permits to be bought on a sliding scale - £50 for the second, £100 for the third, £200 for the fourth... Notes left in cars saying "applied for permit" with an address should be followed up on the spot to enforce this. Car owners warned that they need a permit and don't get one paid for immediately should get their vehicles clamped or impounded. Permit fees to pay for traffic warden presence.

Chemical sterilisation of students

(That one was a joke.)

Students known to be responsible for antisocial behaviour in the area to be withdrawn from courses, lectures, have qualifications withheld, etc.

University to implement a liability insurance scheme for damage caused to Trefforest and residents by their students.

I think I might write to the paper about that lot! One thing's for sure - there needs to be a change for the better, and without a radical rethink it's not going to happen.

Machine Translation

Translation software varies in quality depending on the language pair you choose, the number of people using them (more speakers=more chance of revenue=more money spent on getting it right), and the people making it (both company and employees).

Welsh<->English translation is blighted by the fact that there's probably only about half a million Welsh speakers, and a lot of them can't actually write Welsh very well, just speak it; and then there's the fact that most Welsh speakers happily mix in English words without second though; and THEN there's the fact that North Wales Welsh is different to South Wales Welsh and West Wales Welsh. Doomed to failure. Intertran has had a go, but it just couldn't cut the mustard as the screenshot shows - 2-D (as in dimensions) is translated as 2-Heartburn.

Trying Icelandic returns 2-EXTREMELY, but their Filipino translator leaves it as 2-D. Madness.

Newport

I went to Newport on Saturday, to visit my good friend and fellow geek Dr Tubb. Time spent together was spent discussing how bad chart music is, tenuous links to celebrities, the trend for cheerleaders in pop videos, exciting geek experiments, pronouncing 'Linux' correctly (I aim to educate the masses: it's Lynne-ucks, not Line-ucks), and, more than any other subject, the massive Chav population of Newport.

Newport has more white trash than any other place I've been.

Walking through the centre of Newport and virtually everyone is the same. Burberry is present on caps, handbags, hair scrunchies, shirts - virtually anything that can have a beige pseudo-tartan applied to it has it. The male occupants typically have heavy chains and sportswear, tracky bottoms often in socks. The female ones typically have a Croydon Facelift, earrings that double as hula hoops for Savannah/Storm/whatever name the unfortunate sprog in the buggy has ended up with, pink tracky bottoms with a slogan across the ass, and those shoes. You know the sort I mean. The ones they wear if they're not wearing those boots (and you know what those are like as well). There's actually a shop in the shopping centre dedicated to Chavette footwear.

Newport also has large sections of horrendous 60s, 70s and 80s architecture. You just know that some Victorian building were torn down in the name of progress, concrete and asbestos. It shows everywhere. To try and distract attention from the ugliness, the council have put up massive statues around the place, and these are not only ugly but also just plain wrong. There's a 10ft Angel of Death stood, looming forward, in the pelvis of something with crows on its arms - seriously. I'd have taken a photo but I get the impression it would've posessed my camera.

But I did take some photos - oh yes! And here they are.

This is the Riverfront Centre, a new arts centre. It's not open yet, and won't be for a little while, but back in March it was voted the second ugliest building in Wales. It's quite awful.

This vent is on the side of a Chinese restaurant that greets you as you enter Newport city centre. They recently painted over the black muck that had dribbled down from it, but you can see it developing again - and it's all over the vent covering, which seems to have melted some time ago. It looks a vent on a smoker's lung.

This is a genius piece of town planning. They've seperated the pavement on this bridge into a footpath and cyclepath. Unlike normal examples, it just suddenly stops. Why? No idea. Also brilliant is the fact that the street sign you can see on the other side of the river is right in the middle of the cycle lane. As my father might say, that takes a special kind of stupid.

Finally, the piece of graffiti that inspired the song "Your Mother's Got A Penis" by Goldie Lookin' Chain, the Chav-mocking rap collective. It also appears in the background of their video for "Half Man Half Machine".

So there you go. Newport. Making Pontypridd look like Milan.