Un-impaired Vistas

Spring Time in Appalachia

2011-05-02T17:40:00.000-07:00

First - my lawn, un-mowed in the year 2011, shameful - for springtime has most certainly sprung here in the mountains of Western Maryland. (no pictures, it is truly shameful)

Meanstwhile, within the trappings of human civility - my home, in the upper relm thereof, seated, hunched, hands held in the causual position of one that has pushed many keys over the years - another beginning.

Washington DC, a hundred miles from the current castle has bloomed and those blooms have gone - in a swirl when they do, like snow. I grew up going to the blossoms, many times with my parents - my mother was the one that really enjoyed the time, I remember her sitting with the blossoms swirlinig around, for a long time watching out over the tidal basin and breathing the mix of frangrances, as the basin aquatic scents rise this time of year also, she truly enjoyed the event.

For Climate Change the battle ground is clear

2009-12-26T10:03:00.000-08:00

From a Mark Lynas article in the Guardian:

Shifting the blame

To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China's representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. "Why can't we even mention our own targets?" demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil's representative too pointed out the illogicality of China's position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point. Now we know why – because China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord's lack of ambition.

Secretary Clinton made it perfectly clear that the US was ready and willing to support the global effort to control, and mitigate, the effects of human technological growth. It was widely reported that China's primary reason for eschewing any real commitment here was simply this - Transparency of process.

The US and Europe along with, albeit to a lesser degree, Japan and South Korea have proved over the last decades a willingness to take action on a national and regional scale. Why - because quite frankly there is enough openness in these societies that the common sense of 'the people' does exert pressure and over time form policies.

Why would China, the government of China, be so fearful of openness, of transparency to be willing to flout their nose to the people of the world? Why would India be so willing an accomplice?

Does anyone really wonder why the last great communist totalitarian government on our planet would fear openness? I doubt it. India? Well, guess they are just hedging their economics bets.

A lack of an international treaty does not release individual governments from their responsibilities to be good stewards of the ecology, of course. What this summit should do however is to be a clarion call to those in the developed world, interested in actually affecting a change, to focus on China and India as the true battle grounds.

Tis the season....to shovel

2009-12-19T15:24:00.000-08:00

Snow across the Allegheneys today... over .5 meter fell today.

This town and county is pretty much small enough to just shot down for the day - and they did.

Sarah Palin: Love her or hate her...she gets em talking...

2009-12-08T14:26:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin: What she said at Gridiron dinner | csmonitor.com: "“Sometimes you’ve got to trust your instincts, and when you don’t you end up in a place like this,” she said. Palin also tweaked journalists for buying books and turning immediately to the index to see if they are mentioned. Her book does not have an index but she made up index entries during her speech including: “A. Alaska, media not understanding it, page 1 to 432.”"

Sarah Palin's brand of populism is dangerous and deceptive. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine: "Sarah Palin's brand of populism is dangerous and deceptive."

@Chis - still don't trust the common citizen, do you?

Surfing Safari

2009-10-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

ok - I might be the only one, likely to read this, old enough to remember that song - not just having heard it, but hearing it over the air waves, new.

Perhaps anyway - catching a wave, hanging ten or just being part of the 'boob tube' generation..this reminded me of the song..

although this guy really needs to pick up the pace..*smile*

Down to the bare knuckles…

2009-10-14T22:20:00.001-07:00

cut the blarney, raw competition.

FOSS projects can build products that deliver value to the user on par with, or better then, closed commercial – old school – businesses!

First time I heard a remark with the above sentiment I was doubtful….and I went along my merry way in life.

At some point round or about five years ago, hearing it again (and not the second time) I took a bit more notice. Actually a good bit more notice.

What got me to stop and consider? Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org

The first because it installed and ran on my PC, easy.

The second because it installed and ran on my PC easy, twice :>)

hmmm – actually that isn’t exactly correct – Ubuntu installed easily and ran acceptably on a friends PC.

OpenOffice.org installed easily and ran acceptably on my PC under Windows and Ubuntu, allowing me to help my friend transition from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org in her daily computer usage needs.

She, was happy and I was happy that she was happy.

Well, it seems that a lot of folks are starting to feel the same – a recent estimate put 13% of Windows PC users as having OpenOffice.org, and even the, IMO, conservative OO.o PR Chief has claimed 10% of computer desktops overall.

Nothing however speaks to the successes of the FOSS projects, large and small, then the reactions of the predominant commercial player.

Whether in speeches to their resellers or this latest marketing campaign –

TEN BUCKS - if your employer has a site license..

they say one thing….the US market is in play.

Drew

2009-10-13T17:34:00.000-07:00

Today (10-13-2009)

(10-13-2000)
StarOffice Code Released in Largest Open Source Project

Phipps has his own thoughts on the future of OpenOffice.org. He sees this project as a way to leverage the open source model onto the desktop for not just Linux, but other platforms as well, including Windows and PDAs. The latter may not be so far-fetched, as the first topic of discussion on the OpenOffice.org Whiteboard is "Personal Digital Assistants and OpenOffice."
(Brian Proffitt)

'So they say it's your Birthday...life is a gas...'

Nine Years and a few days ago...

The Story of the GNOME project

The GNOME Foundation
.....
..... After the foundation was announced, a number of initiatives from the founding members was announced:
Sun Microsystems adopts GNOME technologies for their user environment in the Solaris OS.
Hewlett-Packard adopts GNOME for their user environment in the HP-UX operating system.
Sun will port their recently OpenSourced StarOffice suite to the Gtk+ toolkit and will integrate with the GNOME Bonobo component architecture.
IBM contributed the SashXB rapid development environment to GNOME.
GNOME would adopt and integrate Mozilla as part of its desktop strategy.
The GNOME project would adopt OpenOffice technologies.
.....
.....

Next...( ? )

Android and ODF ( Take Two )....not so bleak

2009-10-12T18:18:00.000-07:00

Well this is going to make you laugh - did me anyway.

The other day I did a search for "Android ODF" using Google(tm)

Being a normal person I only did a quick scan and found a review / links to packages supporting the reading or reading/writing of MSO formatted files, but not ODF.

Now today I did something similar....but before I say what..

Android and Google have a close relationship... :>/
Google has a document package...duh!
It saves in ODF format....

Alright, so today I did that same search using bing ... Laughing Here ...and I stumble upon:
AndroOffice. How to get a copy... guess one's gotta ask. Of course one might want to actually own a phone first... more laughing.

Dj

Android and ODF

2009-10-11T20:07:00.000-07:00

The other day, on the OpenOffice.org blog planet I read Eric Bachard's post regarding a port of the office suite to the Android platform.

The first thought that came to my mind was, cws_odficons.

Ahhh - why that you might ask..read on.

Today did a google for 'Android ODF'...looks bleak.

Which led me to think about the need to expand the ODF ecosystem, which is actually, IMO, what cws_odficons is really all about, and on the need to expand ODF usage I could not agree more. Which in turn brings me back to ...looks bleak.... and that brings me all the way back to Android.

In the update to Eric's post he mentions that one can't really port all of OO.o because of it's C++ nature - ok, so that gets me thinking about this recent blog, Create an OpenOffice.org Java client in a few seconds.

All of which has me thinking - ok, so leave OO.o on the server/ I mean desktop..silly me/ and just think about what a viewer would look like on Android. Later a trimmed down version of an editor.

The education project at OO.o is certainly on this track with OOo4Kids, so Android is perhaps just another step in feature pruning. I say pruning 'cause if, and assuming, I understand this correctly Android will run only a pure java application, no libraries created in C++ at all?

Now there must be some pure Java implementation that can display an ODF file - surely there is - isn't that what the odf toolkit is all about? So there might be a great student sized project here - porting the odf toolkit viewer to Android, making it assesible from the Android emial reader for attached ODF files.

It is not insignifigant, I believe, that in the above paragraph the word OpenOffice.org is not present. That fact is what makes my, sometimes quirky, mind associate blogs about cws_odficons and Android.

A project within the education project such as this would benefit OO.o for sure and would be benefited by association with the OO.o developers, it also benefits users of any ODF compliant application, that includes users of MSO and we need that because in the end real competition in the desktop office suite market will not happen until the percentage of ODF formatted files being created approaches parity.

Well, enough for now...hmm, something new to add to the mix JopenDocument.

Till next time,

Dj

Changing perspectives

2009-09-21T01:47:00.001-07:00

A rising tide lifts all boats.

Rob Weir - From ODF pre-1.2 to ODF 1.2 from Newwws on Vimeo.

ODF Document Icons - as proposed to OpenOffice.org ESC March 2009

ODF Document Icons - proposed to OASIS - used by OO.o and Staroffice.

The full blog entry - GullFOSS Unified odf icons

At least that is what I take away as the abbreviated version of the argument.

Seems I’ve read the term ’times are changing’’ or something similar while reading the email traffic about this icon issue and branding..yes they are.

Looking at the first screen in the follwoing Impress file one would think, OH Yeah change those Icons – it means quite a bit.

Do we really care that much about icons?

Then again if you looked at the other screens – the MS Windows 7 file manager has indeed changed things. Kind of hard to miss the file types – no matter what the icon, when there is an icon displayed anyways.

One pass please

2008-09-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

Requirements come in all forms and styles - a typical style for a business report is for the consumer of the report to give you a mock up of the report. (usually created with their word processor)

A requirement passed to me in the form of a Writer file of course:

**********************************************************************************

History of Services Summary

as of 10/05/2007 (date the report was created)

Name: Registry:

Therapist:

Date of services:

Date: Status: Value:

08/12/2007 No Show $35

08/19/2007 Patient Canceled $0.0

08/26/2007 Performed $35

09/03/2007 Performed $35

09/10/2007 Performed $35

09/17/2007 Therapist Canceled $0.0

09/24/2007 Performed $35

09/30/2007 Performed $35

______

Total: $210

______________________________________________________________________________

Payment History

Name: Registry:

as of 10/05/2007

Payments Received on: Amount:

08/26/2007-13:30:22 $35

09/03/2007-13:34:53 $35

09/07/2007-11:12:33 $35

09/10/2007-13:32:41 $35

09/24/2007-13:37:12 $10

09/30/2007-13:29:34 $55

_____

Total Payments: $205

______________________________________________________________________________

Balance Summary

total services amount: $210 - total payments: $205 = -$5

______________________________________________________________________________

End of History of Services Summary

This report is built using the patient ID and all sessions scheduled, in the top half, and all payments made, in the bottom, and up to a specified date (highlighted) usually the date the query is run. The amounts are added. Then a balance is calculated. Patient and date information are repeated to simplify lecture (maybe this gets to be along list).

**********************************************************************************

Now that is a mock up if ever you've seen one.

First thing that pops into one's head upon looking at this with regards to using the Sun Report Builder extension for OpenOffice.org is that there are two separate detail sections in that single report mockup.

Can we do that?

Base form wizard colors - Why?

2008-09-12T20:19:00.001-07:00

Now how come; the control background and form background color choices, available in the New Form Wizard, do not match any colors available with the default installation?

Chandler does mail? Well, DUH!

2008-09-01T12:51:00.001-07:00

OK - I have Thunderbird and Gmail...so that works with Chandler, right?

Another way to think

2008-09-01T11:38:00.001-07:00

Hyponyms of noun vista ( From )

http://poets.notredame.ac.jp/cgi-bin/wn?cmd=wn&word=vista

Sense 1

view, aspect, prospect, scene, vista, panorama -- (the visual percept of a region; ``the most desirable feature of the park are the beautiful views'' )

* background, ground -- (the part of a scene (or picture) that lies behind objects in the foreground; ``he posed her against a background of rolling hills'' )

* coast -- (the area within view; ``the coast is clear'' )

* exposure -- (aspect resulting from the direction a building or window faces; ``the studio had a northern exposure'' )

* foreground -- (the part of a scene that is near the viewer)

* glimpse -- (a brief or incomplete view; ``from the window he could catch a glimpse of the lake'' )

* middle distance -- (the part of a scene between the foreground and the background)

* side view -- (a view from the side of something)

* tableau -- (any dramatic scene)

Kick off

2008-09-01T11:32:00.001-07:00

Monday Sep 1, 2008

Vista

( Cambridge Dict. )

- http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=88472&dict=CALD

noun [C]

1 LITERARY a view, especially a splendid view from a high position:

After a hard climb, we were rewarded by a picture-postcard vista of rolling hills under a deep blue summer sky.

2 a possible future action or event that you can imagine:

As leader, he opened up exciting vistas of global co-operation.