Writing documents with OpenOffice.org Writer

Despite their obvious advantages, WYSIWIG word processors have a fundamental drawback: people get interested in the final layout of the document too soon, and concentrate less on the content, which is exactly the opposite of what one should do when writing a document

An interesting point, and a very valid one. I’ve occaisionally wondered why I don’t write articles straight into DTP software to see how it looks as I’m writing but this is of course the reason why. It’s also why I like using CMS systems for websites rather than fancy offline tools. It forces me to separate content and presentation as much as possible. I think this makes for better writing.
Just like doing a proper plan for a peice of work, holding back on design can be frustrating but is ultimatly the best way
Using the styles in OpenOffice and Word is much like the use of CSS in web articles. I don’t use it that much but always appreciate it when I do

The Dilbert Blog: Good News Day

Just because no one has ever gotten better from Spasmodic Dysphonia before doesn’t mean I can’t be the first. So every day for months and months I tried new tricks to regain my voice.

A bit off-topic but a very positive story and worth promoting with all the bad things that seem to be happening

I thought I was doing so well because my template on www.copthorne.org was working (significant help from the tutorials at www.joomlashack.com deserve a lot of credit).

And then I ran it through the W3C validator and found quite a lot of errors.

Still some were relatively minor and easy to fix, though finding the time is another matter(!), and it is good to have a review of the code. I wouldn’t want to risk boredom either, so I’ll add this to my todo list!

Grinn Productions - Blog

We have this wonderful, beautifully crafted web-based calendar program and no way to sync it with our cell phone. Thankfully, there’s a project over at SourceForge called Remote Calendars which allows us to download our Google Calendars to Outlook 2003 at the click of a button. The installation is a bit tricky, so I’ll walk you through it and show you a few tricks along the way.

As much as I like Google Calendar, the lack of any way to get it onto my PocketPC has been a real frustration. Not any more.

It’s still a little fiddly to set up but it’s been working for a little while with only minor problems and the appointments seem to go both ways with the Pocket PC

Now I can check up on my Lord of the Rings events

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Trying to solve a problem with a website back-end I remembered that FileZilla had thrown up a warning message during the original file transfer, which I had ignored and then forgotten following all best practice. As the memory surfaced I thought I might look through the log files to work out what the problem file was.

Justice being served, it appears that FileZilla has to be told to start a log file. Nursing my own wounds I would recommend everyone to turn this on.

Click on Edit, Settings, Interface Settings and then Message Log. Click the middle and bottom options and give the file a name, not forgetting to give an extension of .rtf.

The file is created in the folder where the FileZilla program can be found.

Me, I’m back to the drawing board….

Looking forward to this as I’ve missed it the last couple of years. More information can be found on the official site.

Joomla! Developer Network - Report a Bug

Anybody who has written software for public use will probably have received at least one bad bug report. Reports that say nothing (”It doesn’t work!”); reports that make no sense; reports that don’t give enough information; reports that give wrong information. Reports of problems that turn out to be user error; reports of problems that turn out to be the fault of somebody else’s program; reports of problems that turn out to be network failures.

Now I’m no developer but I do have to solve computer problems on a very regular basis, both at work and home. If you ever have to ask for help read this article. It is clear, well written and will enable you to get the answer you need far faster.

powered by performancing firefox

powered by performancing firefox

70+ tips for effective church sites
Design and build a website to reach the community
“A church is the only organization that exists primarily for the benefit of non-members”
– William Temple

There are some very useful tips on Gospel Net that will benefit anyone designing a website, whether for a church or other concerns.

The key innovation of Mandriva Linux 2007 is the spectacular AIGLX and
Xgl 3D-accelerated desktop. Mandriva is the only distribution to
provide both technologies and is particularly happy to have achieved
this major breakthrough in desktop appearance. In addition, a new
theme named Ia Ora (”hello” in French Polynesian) has been introduced.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Mandriva; it was the first distribution I ever installed and given that was over five years ago. Even then it was a relatively painless thanks to the excellent disk partition tool. I’ll be looking forward to trying this out