erroneous thoughts

… or not so much. The 2007 version of MS Office uses a new XML-based format named Office Open XML (OOXML).

Now I don’t care about any kind of office suite software (let alone Microsoft’s!), so why the hell am I even writing this?

Because what I do care about, is having to switch (or install!!) to Windows in order to open a file I’ve been sent. This used to be the case with Microsoft’s Office (to some degree it still is today) but the situation has been somewhat reversed since the Open Document Format came into being, which is an international standard. And then m$oft came along and said: “It’s time to get us a standard!”. And the XML-based format came.

And now you ask: but why is this guy always bashing Microsoft, like if he had nothing better to do?

Simple: I bash Microsoft’s moves that benefit no one (sometimes including their own customers) except themselves. And why does that Office standard thing fit in this category? Well, besides the problem of double-standardization, it could have been the case that they decided to do something for the community, and released it’s hitherto proprietary format. Now that would strike me as odd, but it could be possible. Except that they are not doing that. I quote from a petition that I urge who agrees with this point to sign:

“There is no provable implementation of the OOXML specification: Microsoft Office 2007 produces a special version of OOXML, not a file format which complies with the OOXML specification;”

Which means that in practice, there is no standard. OOXML stills locks users in, which makes it utterly useless as a standard.

Hence me bashing Microsoft.

Link to the petition: http://www.noooxml.org/petition

Even if you’re not really thinking of signing it, you’d better still go to the page because they present a lot more reasons to oppose this standardization process, that you should at least be aware of.

I was never a fan of blogs. Some would argue that the fact that I now have a blog does not alone change that. They’re probably right. As a matter of fact, among my group of friends some years ago a blogmania of sorts sprung into existence. Which could have been a good thing, were it not for the fact that some started to care more about that than good old fashioned hanging out. This is of course arguable, but that’s my opinion. For whom might argue against me, I remind you of the ridiculous blog wars that ensued after the said blogmania. Some of those blogs have by now been rendered into oblivion, but this is going besides the point.

And the point is what on earth could make someone lazy (in the perl programming sense) like myself to get a blog? Well here’s the short answer: I have more free time now that I’ve had in the last years. And I like to write.

As for the long answer, well there isn’t one, I just said that because it suited the text (lazy, remember?). Overall, I guess this is a hobby, a place to dump my thoughts; and I dare say, it follows logically that anyone who reads it (I’m not even going to talk about understanding it) must be a nut case.

So welcome, and join the club!

NB: I am sometimes prone to exaggeration, as the above passage should quite nicely illustrate! Of course all the rest of the homo sapiens, tech-savvy or otherwise are welcomed in this humble corner of the web.

And as a cuddly little bunny used to say: “That’s all folks!”

So it turns out that the picture you upload to your profile is not supposed to show up in the side bar. Not automatically, that is. That picture works as a comment avatar, i.e. something that appear in the side of your comment.

Usability hint: SAY that! Near the place where the picture is to be uploaded, not buried in a FAQ.

Moving on, the picture on the side bar (which as you can easily observe, I managed to put there) has to be placed as a widget. Wouldn’t have bothered me at all if it wasn’t that placing a widget in the side bar makes all of the default widgets already there to simply vanish. I happened to like those default widgets, so I had to manually rebuild the side bar. Not all that cumbersome, but easily avoidable, IMHO.

And so begins my foray into blogland… May the Post be with me!

Did not thought I would have rants this early on…. anyway:

while trying to upload a picture, a png, the file kept uploading successfull, but nothing appeared on the page. I’m using Firefox 2.0.0.4 installed through Ubuntu repositories. After enabling a webdev plugin, found what I think is the probable cause: a Javascript error! Got to love that lingo…

Here’s the offending code (part of it at least):

this.img has no properties

initialize(“upload”, Object ratioDim=Object displayOnInit=true)cropper.js (line 74)

create()prototype.js (line 37)

(no name)()avatar-upload.php (line 54)

if(this.img.complete||this.isWebKit){

Hope someone bothers enough as to solve this…

Below is the image I was trying to upload…

Before you start, it’s true, I always wanted to say that!

Now onto other issues: here I came thinking “it’s” time to write the first post!” only to get here and find out someone had already done that.

Hooray for me!

I’m still at work, and I’m getting hungry (anyone who knows me knows this is a rather serious condition for me). So time to go home. Someday I’ll change the layout, and then dump some more words in here…

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