This is a language of which I must confess a complete ignorance. I can get by in French, pass the time of day in Welsh, even say a few words in German, Chinese and Italian (the latter confined largely to such conversation stoppers as “Your tiny hand is frozen” and “Women are fickle”) but Portuguese of any description is a language in which I could not even do something as simple as ordering a cup of tea for me and a saucer of milk for the cat.

Speaking of which, you probably won’t be in the slightest bit interested to know that my dog has acquired a cat. But heck, this is my blog, so I’m going to tell you anyway. Actually, it’s not the dog who has acquired the cat but, rather, the other way around. The cat, who officially belongs to my next-door neighbour, has suddenly decided that what she’s really missing in life is a dog. The only dog conveniently on offer happens to be mine – a big, shaggy, ill-disciplined mutt of the Pyrenean Mountain Dog variety – all 45 kilos (99 pounds) of her. She’s never shown any interested in striking up a friendship with a cat before and, to be honest, the cat had to do a certain amount of beating into submission to make the dog see the error of her ways. It took about two days of feline fisticuffs to the Pyrenean snout before said dog came to the conclusion that living in peace with the moggy might be the most pain-free option.

But what (I hear you ask) has all this got to do with my book being translated into Brazilian Portuguese. To be honest, the connection eludes me too…

I had begun this blog entry (for such it is) with the sole intention of explaining that Rants and Raves – the rambling nonsense which you are reading even now – is a column no longer. A column is what it has been ever since I first put finger to keyboard back in 1988 when I wrote my first Rant for issue one of the UK magazine, Computer Shopper. It used to extend to over 3,000 words in those days which, while a mere bagatelle to a columnist of the stamina of Jerry Pournelle, was a test of endurance for me – not to mention my devoted readers.

Later in life, the column migrated to PC Plus magazine and later still found its way onto its own little corner of the web. Now, I have decided that the time has come for it to cease its old habit of appearing in monthly chunks. From here onwards it will trickle onto the web at its own leisurely pace.

But I see that I’ve wandered from the topic under discussion – which was, as the more sedulous among you will no doubt recall - Brazilian Portuguese translations.

Much to my surprise I received a request a couple of weeks ago to give my consent for the translation of a little eBook which I wrote about programming Ruby; I was pleased to do so and I received a copy of the translated work this very day. It looks beautiful and I only wish I could understand it. My admiration goes to the translator, Francisco de Oliveira. If you’d like the read the book in Portuguese, you can download a copy from his web site. If you’d prefer it in English, get a copy from The Sapphire In Steel site. Or, if you really couldn’t care less one way or the other, well, here’s a picture of the cat and her dog…

More blogging anon…