The News in Latin

I studied French, German and Latin at school and believe that Latin helped with the other languages, as well as English. Having been through Pliny’s account of Vesuvius erupting, and Virgil’s Aeneid, I enjoyed a feature earlier this week on Radio 4′s Today programme covering the ongoing popularity of the Latin language in Finland.

To set the scene, the reporter had travelled to a quiet hotel bar in a town north of Helsinki, and his introduction was supported in the background by an Elvis impersonator singing the Latin version of “I can’t help falling in love with you”.

Under Finland’s Presidency of the EU, news bulletins are now being issued in Latin. According to the BBC report, the Latin version now has more subscribers than the French.

Setting Expectations

Welcome!

Some reasons why you may or may not want to keep reading …

This weblog is about things that I hope some of you may find interesting or useful.

I work as a software architect and developer in London (England), currently in “enterprise” Java, and spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to build reliable software more quickly. This means looking at languages (C, Java, PHP, Ruby, Perl), techniques (e.g. TDD, Agile) and tools (WebSphere, Eclipse, UML modellers, dynamic language IDEs).

Due to the amount of time I spend working with technology, that is where many of my posts will focus. But I want to throw in some other topics as well, including good or bad companies that I’ve come across, and anything else that interests, excites or annoys me which may be of value to others. My plan is to post at least twice a week for the next year.

I expect that this blog will evolve as I will figure out what works and what doesn’t, so let me know how I’m doing.

Andrew