Indian song

All music from India is produced basically by Bollywood. This I learned from an acquaintance today.

As for the Bollywood song, this Wikipedia article provides more information:

• "Bollywood is the Indian Hindi-language film industry, based in the city of Mumbai[;]


• "Bollywood represents 43% of Indian net box office revenue, while Telugu and Tamil cinema represent 36%, and the rest of the regional cinema constitute 21%[;]


• "Linguistically, Bollywood films tend to use a colloquial dialect of Hindi-Urdu, [called] Hindustani, [which is] mutually intelligible to both Hindi and Urdu speakers[.]"

Regarding the Gujarati, Tamil and Telegu film industries, for example, I found some Wikipedia pages, but they didn't say much about the songs.

However, Wikipedia has a list of Indian "playback singers" (whose performances we actually hear in the films) categorized by language.

These two interesting articles explain the fact that Hindi and Urdu are closely related.

Of course, Bollywood didn't create its music out of whole cloth.

Instead, I suppose that Bollywood merely pasted a relatively thin layer atop an already rich, multifarious, living musical culture—multifarious, because it arose from multiple locations and traditions in India.

My favorite album of Indian music is perhaps "In Concert Vol. 1 (Live)" by Ghulam Ali, who sings accompanied by harmonium.

Most of its numbers can be streamed in full with Amazon Prime.

Copyright (c) 2018 Mark D. Blackwell.

Greek language history

Some time ago, I took notes on an interesting book about the history of Greek: The Greek Language, B.F.C. Atkinson, 1931.

My notes touch on:

• Greek's linguistic sources in other cultures.
• A history of pitch accents in Greek.
• The Septuagint translation (into Greek)'s impact on (Greek) vocabulary and modes of expression.
• Linguistic and stylistic currents (from the Septuagint and Aramaic) in the New Testament.
• A comparison of Plato with the (Greek) New Testament, regarding each's linguistic impact.
• Greek and English linguistic histories compared.
• Linguistic change depends upon political and social development.

The notes: page 1, page 2, page 3.

Copyright (c) 2015 Mark D. Blackwell.

Use file extension ".yml" for YAML

Generally, YAML files should be referred to by extension ".yml" (instead of ".yaml", if they have one).

Currently, any remaining use of the extension ".yaml" seems (in my view) slightly silly.

Commonly, the letter X is used for a great variety of meanings including "cross", "extensible", "variable", etc. (e.g. in XML). On the other hand, Y (e.g. in YML or YAML) carries no such extra baggage.

Relatively speaking, Y's use is rather uncommon. The acronym YACC comes to mind (for "Yet another compiler compiler"—BTW, its extension is simply ".y" when generating C language files). Actually, YACC assists more than it conflicts, because historically (as you may know) YAML was an acronym for the similar phrase, "Yet another markup language".

Linguistically speaking, therefore, the acronym "XML" has (in a way) only two informative letters. By contrast, all three of the letters of "YML" are fully informative. Indeed, the existing set of acronyms beginning with Y seems extremely small.

Per Wikipedia's article on information theory, "Abstractly, information can be thought of as the resolution of uncertainty." By implication, this is why a four letter YAML file extension feels greatly overspecified.

For the sake of completeness (though less important), this Ansible project comment (regarding their choice of extension) exemplifies other motivations:

> Three letter extensions owe historical relevance from DOS.
> They also save typing.

But these last two aren't the important reasons—instead, see above.

This comment (from March, 2014 in the Symphony project) also seems relevant:

> Once you have two of the biggest industry players doing ".yml" as the extension, it is the standard.

Information from the YAML.org website dates the organization's most recent activity to 2009 (approximately). Evidence of this comes from:

1. > © 2001-2006 YAML.org All Rights Reserved

2. > [The latest] News:
> 20-NOV-2011 -- JS-YAML, a JavaScript YAML parser by Alexey Zapparov and Vitaly Puzrin.

3. > [The latest] YAML Resources:
> YAML 1.2 (3rd Edition): http://yaml.org/spec/1.2/spec.html

Their latest specification (1.2 above) is from 2009, presumably before much of YAML's worldwide adoption:

> YAML Ain’t Markup Language (YAML™) Version 1.2
> 3rd Edition, Patched at 2009-10-01

Even their latest news item, the above-referenced JS-YAML, uses BTW the extension '.yml":

> var doc = require('/home/ixti/example.yml');

Therefore the staleness of YAML.org's information should greatly lessen the impact today from the recommendation in their FAQ:

> Is there an official extension for YAML files?
> FAQ
> 1. Please use ".yaml" when possible.

Here is a URL for web-searching the usage of the two YAML data file extensions (.yml and .yaml). I found time-wasting discussions of which extension to use here, here and here. Apparently these discussions are a result of the official organization exerting its influence uphill, against prevailing practice.

Maybe the public should complain. Maybe YAML.org would listen!

Here are merely some (of the many existing) usage examples of the shorter extension ".yml" in common use:

Per http://php-mysql-mvc.gajdaw.pl/instalacja/download/DoctrineExport.grt.lua:

> -- NOTES:
> -- 1. The YAML file extension usually is ".yml"

Per http://wiki.catalystframework.org/wiki/howtos/forms/formfu.view:

> NOTES:
> If you want a YAML file extension of .yaml (instead of .yml), you have to configure that.

Per https://code.google.com/p/javabuilders/issues/detail?id=114:

> The default YAML for most projects seems to be .yml, instead of .yaml.
> In NetBeans in particular, the YAML wizard only allows creating a file with a .yml extension

Per http://docs.doctrine-project.org/en/latest/reference/yaml-mapping.html:

> All mapping documents should get the extension ”.dcm.yml” to identify it as a Doctrine mapping file.
> $driver->setFileExtension('.yml');
> The Symfony project sponsored a driver that simplifies usage of the YAML Driver. The changes between the original driver are:
> File Extension is .orm.yml
> Filenames are shortened, “MyProject\Entities\User” will become User.orm.yml
> $driver->setGlobalBasename('global'); // global.orm.yml
> As a quick start, here is a small example document that makes use of several common elements:
> # Doctrine.Tests.ORM.Mapping.User.dcm.yml

Per http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/yaml:

> NOTE: YAML files more often use the .YML extension.

Per https://github.com/jasedit/rypple/issues/3:

> Configuration files should end in .yml, not .yaml
> That's the standard file ending, and should be consistent with expectations.

Per https://drupal.org/node/1935708:

> Posted by cweagans on March 6, 2013
> .info files are now .info.yml files

The only counterexample I have found (using ".yaml") comes from cPanel (in their EasyApache interface, apparently a cPanel product). Generally, cPanel seems somewhat "stuffy" and old-fashioned (i.e., likely to prefer the recommendation of an official organization over common usage). Per cPanel's EasyApacheHowToMoveProfiles:

> Profile are located in the /var/cpanel/easy/apache/profile/custom directory. The filename will be identical to the name you save it with, plus the .yaml file extension.

EDIT: The above reference is from the Wayback machine. However, as of August, 2016, we can still see cPanel using only extension ".yaml".

Copyright (c) 2013 Mark D. Blackwell.

Meantone tuning systems

As you may know, interestingly, the tuning systems called quarter (1/4) and sixth (1/6) comma meantone differ, not only in their fractions, but also because their two commas (from which they calculate the fractions) are of different sizes (albeit somewhat close). To wit:

The comma in 1/6-comma meantone has one size (the well-known difference between 12 pure fifths and 7 octaves: about 23.46 cents: called the Pythagorean comma), per:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pythagorean_comma&oldid=431111470

However, the comma in 1/4-comma meantone has another size (it is the difference between four pure fifths, C-G-D-A-E and two octaves, plus a pure major third, C-C-C-E: about 21.51 cents: called the syntonic comma). In other words,

'The syntonic comma... is the difference between four justly tuned perfect fifths, and two octaves plus a justly tuned major third', per:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Syntonic_comma&oldid=440411458

Interesting (linguistically, furthermore) is that 'mean-tone' is so-called, precisely because in that system, as you may remember, any major second (a 'tone') is found to be the 'mean' (the ordinary average, logarithmically) between the two notes of whatever size of major third it is we have, per p. (?) of Ross W. Duffin's _How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony_.

The interesting, following book quotation admittedly differs in meaning from the Wikipedia article, quoted next following.

'[The] ratio between the major [whole] tone [is] 9:8 and the minor [whole] tone [is] 10:9[.] In meantone temperaments, the major and minor tones are made equal. In Pythagorean tuning, the minor tone is replaced by the major tone of 9:8. In quarter-comma meantone, the major and minor tones are made equal to the square root of 5:4.

'In the previous, Pythagorean tuning, a major third was 5:4 (C3 to E3 in the harmonic series, based on the piano note, C1) and there were two whole tones. The major semitone was 9:8 (C4 to D4) and the minor semitone was 10:9 (D4 to E4). These two semitones are not the same size.

'In any mean-tone tuning, however, these two semitones are averaged. This means that the two semitones have the same size, of 1/2 * sqrt( 5). This means that equal-temperament is a mean-tone tuning. Also, at first, people were rather shocked when the irrational square root of five disrupted the mathematically pure, small-whole number world of musical consonance.'

Now, for the Wikipedia article:

'In general, because the two semitones can be viewed as the difference between major and minor thirds, and the difference between major thirds and perfect fourths, tuning systems that match these just intervals closely will also distinguish between the two types of semitones and match their just intervals closely', per:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Semitone&oldid=450607863

Another interesting and relevant Wikipedia article is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meantone_temperament

Copyright (c) 2011 Mark D. Blackwell.