Today Sun announced that it joined the OpenOffice.org porting project for Mac Aqua. Cool. That's good news. I am a determined non-user of any and all Microsoft products and so I always use Appleworks or NeoOffice or  - very occasionally - OO.

But OO has never been a good solution for me before because it required an X-window (an annoyance) and the interface was old fashioned and cut and paste had issues, etc.   Why, I would ask, does OO not simply use the NeoOffice look?  Well, now it looks as though OO will get that look. Eventually. Of course what this means for NeoOffice, not sure. I am a devoted user of NO, so I hope the best for them. I understand the reasoning behind Sun's support of OO and not NO (it's all about a single community and licensing model) but still, the NO folks have kept the light burning for us in the darkness of MS world and I really appreciate that.

 

Book of the Week -

The Terror by Dan Simmons. Takes a true tale - the Franklin Expedition in 1847  - and makes  great speculative fiction out of it.  The Franklin Expedition  was seeking the Northwest Passage  (soon it will exist for real, but that's another story). Consisted of two ships, "Terror" and "Erebus". Headed out into the ice seas west of Greenland and was never seen again. A couple of graves were found in the 1980's (maybe you saw the Nova special)  and some artifacts showed up with the local indigenous tribes, but final fate of the ships and crew remained a mystery. Big thick book, great characters, you really feel the misery of being stuck in ice-bound ships for 2 years while slowly starving, freezing, going mad and ...oh yeah...being attacked by a mysterious supernatural white creature  - "The Terror". Great read.

 

 

 

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger
you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.
-- Epictetus (55-135 AD) Roman Philosopher

Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
-- Henry Ford (1863-1947) American Industrialist

Coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous.

Decay is inherent in all compound things.  Work out your salvation with diligence.  Enjoy the Nutella.

Science: "a candle in a demon haunted world"
--Carl Sagan

People do not change, they unmask themselves.
--Madame de Stael

You don't have favorites among your children, but you do have allies.

My son's guinea pig "Miss Pigs" passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly on Weds night.  Very sad - poor thing went into convulsions and had to be euthanized. I suspect renal failure. Son was inconsolable. Told him that the piggie was at the vets being cared for. In fact she was in the freezer awaiting internment.

*sigh*.

Feeling sorry for the lad, and for the pig, I went online to Petfinder.com (it's in my right nav bar just over there --->) and found out that March is Nat'l  Guinea Pig Adoption  month. I took that as a sign, and went looking (online) for adoptable piggies. Through "La Honda Cavy Rescue" I found a pair of "bonded males" up in Kensington - at RabbitEars pet supply. After verifying that the pigs were still  available - went up and adopted them.

Son was surprised and happy and we told him that while "Miss Pigs" had passed, these guys were here to cheer him up. Renamed the pigs "Oreo" and "Cookies". The fat one is Oreo.

Thank goodness for Petfinder.  A great online resource for homeless pets.

 

Keeping on with the theme from the last post - there is a "trebuchet simulator" available for the Mac. MacTrebX

 

 

 

Son has a science project - science fair actually - he is almost 9 and picked "why do boats float" based on experiments done in the bathtub. Why indeed. Attempting to explain displacement, buoyancy and density were getting me nothing but glazed stares and worse- so I googled "why do boats float" and got lots of good simple explanations - including our favorite involving equal pieces of aluminum foil formed into different shapes (compressed ball - doesn't float, "boat" - does) . So I think we may be OK here, although when I described what a "hypothesis" was, I got "but thats just a guess!?" -  Yes, exactly, just a guess - an educated guess perhaps, but thats it! A Guess. He was not really buying this, so I had to "google" that as well ( you know because if its on "Wikipedia" it may be more believable than if mom says it. Whatever. It's all about Archimedes in the bathtub.

Trebuchets - for some reason, I really like these - probably ever since that episode of Northern Exposure where they were throwing pianos and coffins, etc.  A few years back, I bought my husband a "table top" version (good for launching things at your cubicle mates - although we are in hard offices) and he wanted to know "where on earth did you find this" - why - at "Trebuchet.com" (Dedicated to the art of hurling) Got to love that.  

 They sell the "Warwolf"  - which is a "backyard"  Trebuchet . At 1/10 scale, This is a working model capable of tossing 1/4 lb up to 1 pound** missiles over 100 feet! Good for getting the neighbors noisy dog. (stop, I love dogs, really, I do. ) 

 

Speaking of Trebuchets and Pirates.....We go to a great winery  - "Twisted Oak" in Murphy's (Gold Country of California) which hosts an annual party that involves pirates, wine and trebuchets.

 

 

 

So, do you have too many meetings -bored, sitting there thinking  "Man, I wish I could be outside doing something more fun rather than listening to this".....well, have I found a solution for you!  It's the Conference Bike!  (Is this so very "dot com" or what?)

7 people pedal along, one of them steers.

According to the site -  "It's not just a bike, it's a Party on Wheels!"....  well it certainly would make for an interesting meeting.

This is great stuff, you couldn't make it up - Pat Robertson has joined with the ACLU in defending a student's right to display the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner. Talk about strange bedfellows.

...."'I think this is heading down the wrong path,' says Kevin Snider, chief council for Sacramento's conservative Pacific Justice Institute. 'When students are enjoined in appropriate philosophical speech, we need to encourage that. I don't see where the Bill of Rights should be trumped by the schools.'

And that's where things tend to take off in unexpected directions. When the court agreed to hear the case, the assumption was that it would be an easy win for Starr, supporting the school and the rights of administrators.

But that was before a powerful collection of First Amendment advocates lined up with conservative Christian groups who oppose any attempt to limit their freedom to discuss religion in the classroom. So not only is the liberal American Civil Liberties Union fighting for Frederick, but so is the American Center for Law and Justice, which was created by ultra conservative Robertson.

'Have you seen some of the groups supporting this?' asks Snider. 'I'd be afraid to get all of them in the same room.'....."

Read more about it here: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/20/MNGJMOO6UD1.DTL

 

Well, I have been saying this for years, but finally Wired picked up on it... "Macs Save Money" send that to your Finance person when begging for a Mac at work. Now if I can just get my manager to get me a new one.....the squirrels in my current mac are getting tired.

"Bong Hits 4 Jesus" - This is the first "School Free Speech case" argued before the Supreme Court in 20 years. This case, argued before the Supremes on Monday, concerns an Alaska high school student who displayed a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" as the Olympic torch passed through his town in 2002.

After he was suspended, the student, Joseph Frederick, now 23, said his banner was a "free speech experiment" that had no religious or political message and sued - all the way to the Supremes.

Ken Starr - (remember him, the "independent special prosecutor" from the Clinton years?) represented the school (and the Bush Administration) at the Supremes and argued, "To promote drugs is utterly inconsistent with the basic educational mission of the schools."

Justice Stephen Breyer said the case poses a legal dilemma. On one side is a principal trying to run a school full of students who test authority. "It's pretty hard to run a school where kids go around at public events publicly making a joke out of drugs," he noted. But a ruling against the student "may really limit people's rights on free speech," he said. "That's what I'm struggling with."

I am having my daughter report on this for her weekly "current event"in middle school. The good news is that she didn't know what a bong was and I had to explain it to her ! The other good news is that she jumped on it and said - "that's a violation of free speech" - right on sister. Guess she is learning something after all.

 

 

The rule of Cat Proximity. Can also be applied to dogs, horses and babies.

Still in Beijing and have spent the last 24 hours sick as a dog from....hmmm "mao's revenge"?. Here for meetings, missing meetings, hiding in room with 7 up and dry toast trying not to hurl. Occasionally I drag myself to the computer and see whats going on in the world outside.

Here's a good one.

Blogging from Beijing this week.

Here for a Global Partner Engineering Operations Review. My second time to Beijing. Very cold this time, highs are 40 F and the lows are in the mid-teens. Air quality is bad. Perhaps an inversion layer. Taxi drivers are warning us about the air. Also the Avian flu is apparently spreading through Asia, seems to be a bit of concern about it now. More than the usual.

On the positive side though, the food is always good here - interesting and sometimes a challenge, but good.

We found a seafood restaurant last night where you pick the live *whatever* from the tank and have it cooked up to your specs. Huge lobsters, crabs of all sizes (from huge to small and all kinds), geoducks, scallops, prawns, abalone, oysters, whelks, big fish, little fish, flat fish, sea urchins, things I didn't recognize.... - all live of course because fresh is everything here.

Traveling with 3 Europeans - fortunately the restaurant manager knew some english and we know how to point! I actually do know the word for white rice (bi-fun) which came in handy as - unlike the US - its not assumed that you want rice and rice is kind of a southern thing and this is northern China.

So we had an interesting meal, all very good, but we were never quite sure what was coming or how, so very exciting when it showed up. A bit more pricey than we planned as those giant crabs come at a premium, but very good.

Staying at the Beijing Marriott. "Working from Home" - looking at some giant TV tower (I assume) outside my window. Lots of construction going on for the Olympics. Not sure how they are going to deal with the pollution though. More later.

Ok, so of course all the hype at Macworld is around the iPhone, lots of blog chatter on that.....I don't need to add to it.

I found something clever, cool and cheap. "Gelaskins" http://www.gelaskins.com/

Clever: Very thin (< 2mm), protective iPod covers made with a 3M vinyl product. Can be applied, removed and re-applied multiple times. The material has micro-channels in the adhesive that prevent bubbles from forming during application. Based on the same process and materials used in the automotive customization industry. Also covers the screen with a clear protection.

Cool: Available in great prints using both famous and not so famous artists from all around the world. Not at all boring.

Cheap: $15 or $13. If you buy 3 you get 1 additional for free.

Here is a photo of the new iPhone  at Mac World today. The way it was displayed, one would think it was a Moon rock. You couldn't actually touch it, only look at it in its rotating bulletproof case. It was constantly surrounded by people taking photos. Brad Pitt and George Clooney could have walked by and no one would have noticed.  It's a very cool interface - no doubt about that. Very cool. However it's $600, available only on Cingular, one wonders about the battery life and if it's as "fragile" as the ipod ( I have gone through 3!) - I would make sure its always under some kind of warranty. 
That said I sure wouldn't turn one down!