All posts by clyde777

Referendum Boxes arrive at Ta' Qali

People in Malta and Gozo have been voting for the Referendum throughout the day of 8th March 2003, as well as for the local council elections in a number of localities including Sliema. Turnout was unofficially said to be 93% – this has been confirmed by the Electoral Commission to have been 91.13% (voted for referendum). Yesterday, the referendum boxes arrived in Xarabanks (buses) at Ta' Qali.


The above photo shows the Prime Minister of Malta Dr Eddie Fenech Adami voting on Saturday morning. It has been reported that opposition leader Dr Alfred Sant visited the voting booth but abstained from voting in the referendum.

For further updates and photos please click on 'READ MORE'.

SIGO’s First Solo Album "Perfect Existence & Recorded

For those of us older than 25 we sure remember the Maltese group Bigfoot. The band’s front-man SIGO has just recorded his first solo album “Perfect Existence”. The album with the cover designed by UK art-director Gattaldo is planned to launch at the end of November. Cheese Records have informed us that it will surely be out before Christmas so it is expected to prove a great teenage stocking filler.

di-ve have interviewed SIGO and you can listen to the single “I like it” from the album on their website. The single “I like it” is already being played on most local radio stations. Listeners have already phoned in and requested the single to be played.

The CD will be available at Exotique and on-line at di-ve.com. More information can be found on sigomusic.com while official SIGO merchandise ranging from t-shirts to posters is available from

www.cafepress.com/sigomusic

 

Maltese Spellchecker: PBS says it’s the first but is it? (UPDATED)

Sometimes I wonder how come some journalists fail to do their research. There was a news item tonight on PBS about the “FIRST” Maltese language spellcheck available from Mr Karistu Abela. He made a lot of fuss about the Akkademja tal-Malti – what he said could be misunderstood that gh and ie are now single characters in fonts because they were important from the start, which is far from the truth. The ISO standard for Maltese fonts  – as well as UTF8 – does not specify them as a single character! What’s more important, Windows fonts do not have gh or ie as single characters.

 

A press release by Ramon Casha chairman of the Malta Linux Group said “Kieku l-ministru Gatt staqsa ‘ll-impjegati tieghu stess kienu jghiidulu li fil-fatt spell-checker bil-Malti jezisti ghax huma juzawh il-hin kollu. Sfortunatament jidher li jekk ma jkollhomx “Microsoft” fuqhom l-affarijiet qishom ma jezistux.” (If Minister Gatt had asked his employees they would have told him a Maltese spellchecker existed because they use it all the time. Unfortunately it seems that if something doesn’t have “Microsoft” written on it it is as if it doesn’t exist.)

The online Maltese Linux spellchecker can be found here.