Thank you so much, Catrin, for your patient encouragement during those phone calls. You did put me - a very self-conscious learner - at my ease and really helped me be confident enough to ‘go wild’ :dizzy. Hope I manage to speak with you in Cymraeg at the party without getting too tongue tied. so pleased the way life is working out for you at the moment. Enjoy.
3 Likes
Oh you are so very welcome, Fran! I miss speaking to you and hope that one day soon we can fire this up again. We are without a reliable internet connection at the moment or a reliable office in which to work. But we’ll get there. I really enjoyed our chats and was so thrilled to see you improving so much with each session! Looking forward to seeing you at the party, @franhunni Bring photos of your newly renovated kitchen! 
3 Likes
Sorry I’m late to the party this week, but you’ll see why …
I can’t say much (for some on here thankfully though) as I don’t actually know you. All I can say is thank you for everything you’ve done for SSiW and for us with that. Also thank you for responding as quickly as possible to every your tag by me when help was needed. These two things count for me the most. I don’t use IOS (iTechy thingys) so I can’t possibly know how much and what work was done with the app.
I wouldn’t be me … being animator by heart (not really good one though) if I wouldn’t say my Diolch my own, for me (as I do mostly animations and graphics by my own) special way …
Diolch am y popeth Jeff! You’re real star, not just of this week but of entire life because you are one of those who made SSiW possible as it is now.
Tatjana
3 Likes
Although I haven’t met you (yet), Jeff, a huge Thank You from me too. Although you play down both their importance and the ability to create them, it is ‘right and proper’ that recognition is given to your software tweakings. Thank you for enabling enable maximum simplicity for its users and for your generosity of spirit. A (previously) unsung hero now deservedly recognised!
4 Likes
Oh, and I’m late responding, so it’s all good. Diolch yn fawr for the seren so shiny!
4 Likes
Seren yr Wythnos #7
Ifan Baines
Or, technically, if you’re being fussy, apparently - Ivan Baines.
But since we say it ‘Ifan’ and it sounds like ‘Ifan’ and he doesn’t seem particularly Russian, I’m afraid I can’t break myself out of the habit of spelling it properly…
Ifan is the man behind the @kinetic mask - and if that doesn’t clear things up for you, he is our full-time developer, charged with the monstrous challenge of building an online interface for the Spennyware->Jennyware that would be flexible enough to let us build a course for every single language - the one and only SSiBorg.
Ifan had a reasonably normal life until about 3 years ago.
He’d worked for one big internet company, and was working as a sysadmin for a smaller company run by a friend of his - oh, and he’d started learning Welsh (which was his fatal error).
He came on Bootcamp, and did excellently, and he was a friendly and supportive member of the community - and then he responded generously to our request for volunteer coders.
And then, when it became clear to us that we were going to need a full-time coder, and we thought we could by the skin of our teeth afford it, I reached out to Ifan.
I didn’t think it would be a very appealing offer.
‘Er, you know that nice, secure, well paid job you’ve got? Would you like to give it all up and come and play with a tiny little start-up who will pay you in peanuts? To do coding instead of sysadmin, and try and build something that’s never existed before, for which we have no models at all?’
I was really only hoping there wouldn’t be any swear words in his response.
Instead, with brilliant disregard for his own safety and security, Ifan jumped in with us - and we are now within a matter of months of beta testing the version of the SSiBorg which I think will probably get us to our first 100 languages.
It’s been a remarkable journey - Ifan has regularly been dragged off the project for ‘every single other even faintly technical thing that can possibly happen’ - and he’s regularly been in a bunch of startling timezones ranging from America to the Far East and Europe (when he’s in the Far East, our working hours almost overlap…;-)).
Ifan was very clear at the start - he thought the SSiBorg was a slightly mad idea and quite unlikely to work. Probably his greatest achievement so far has been to build enough of it, and solve enough of the problems, to convince himself that it might just work after all.
I’ve always been convinced, of course. But time and again, Ifan’s cautious pragmatism has helped force us to fine-tune key issues - and, along the way, he’s thrown his own ‘why don’t we…’ moments into it all, as well…
It’s taken Ifan and myself a lot of gradual adaptation to get used to working with each other - particularly in a company which wants all its employees to have a genuinely brilliant life, which means testing out new things, some of which won’t work. Ifan has ridden the waves with courage and tenacity - and one of my happiest SSiMoments was a few months back when he told me that he would be working for us for as long as we had a place for him.
We’ll always have a place for him, so as long as we don’t actually explode, he’ll be an SSiLifer.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ifan Baines. Oh, okay, Ivan Baines, just this once.
Without him, we might quite possibly have run out of steam.
With him, we’ve finally got to the point where the next couple of years should see a huge amount of new SSiLanguages - and the next few months are going to see a blossoming of L3 Welsh, too…
If you’ve, oh, ever used our website, now would be a good time to give him a vote of thanks…
Iestyn ap Dafydd
Catrin Lliar Jones
Cat Dafydd
Dee McCarney
Spenny
Jeff Lewis
Ifan Baines
12 Likes
Diolch yn fawr iawn Ifan!!
1 Like
On top of everything, he’s an accomplished pianist, too. It’s just not fair for one person to have so much talent. 
Diolch yn fawr, ychan
3 Likes
Thank you very much! You’re a !
1 Like
Diolch Ifan
1 Like
Diolch, Ifan/Ivan, for your enormous contributions to SSiW! And thanks again for that Welsh clock a la Qlocktwo, which I still enjoy using
3 Likes
Diolch, diolch i Ifan! It’s been my pleasure to work with Ifan on a number things “behind the scenes.” He’s always helpful and cheerful (when Aran gives him enough slack to have time to respond Which is pretty impressive when you consider how many moving pieces he’s juggling back there, all by himself, and all the while also developing the shiny new SSi of the future. Cheers, Ifan!
4 Likes
Y’all are too nice. Ta very much. A diolch @aran am y cyfle i rannu’r daith wallgof hon efo chi gyd.
(Also I’m delighted that someone’s still using that little clock thingy! ;-))
8 Likes
“And thank you Aran for the opportunity to share this crazy journey with all of you”
Is that about right?
1 Like
I may have missed a few weeks of this, but … Thanks to all the stars so far
3 Likes
I can’t thank enough SSiW found you and you decided to work with them. I can prety much imagine the name SSiBorg was prety much your idea which I really like.
I’ve met you at last years Eisteddfod SSiW gathering and we might say a word or two to each-other but I know you only from knowing about things and bits of what you’re doing for SSiW.
So, my humble and little thank you for everything you’ve done and you’re still doing and thank you for every response to when I tagged you with the problem(s).
Don’t say we’re too kind. It’s never too kind so you’re very welcome in deed (at least what concerns me).
Oh, and what’s about that pianist thingy @hewrop is talking about? I like that. (gee, I’m getting curious …)
Oh, I didn’t mean, but I just have to … (it’s in my blod. )
2 Likes
Oh, and what’s about that pianist thingy
It was at a SSiW birthday party in Aberystwyth that I heard his amazing ability to play solo or accompany people even without music. 
3 Likes
Nope, afraid not - as I recall, the credit for the name (which I like a lot!) goes to @aran. The only thing I’ve brought to it is my stubborn insistence on spelling it with a lowercase ‘b’ and pronouncing it “S-S-I-Borg” (with the stress on the “I”). And this doesn’t seem to have caught on with anyone else 
Psst… Huw… don’t tell anyone, but between you and me, that’s because I’m rubbish at sight-reading.
3 Likes
Don’t “psst” Huw! Tell us more!