Keys Corner

NeoOffice can now print at higher resolutions than 300 dpi. This makes a big difference if you want to print graphics, and if you want to print text documents which include fine lines (e.g. tables). Quoting from the release note:

Due to some restrictions in NeoOffice’s underlying OpenOffice.org code, printing resolution has always been limited to 300 DPI in NeoOffice. While many older printers only support 300 DPI, this restriction caused many newer printers to print high resolution images at a reduced resolution.

Fortunately, after much effort, we have been able to remove these restrictions and we are pleased to announce that NeoOffice 2.2.1 Early Access can now print high resolution images at the resolution supported by your printer

Get the patch here. (And get NeoOffice 2.2.1 Early Access, which includes support for the Mac OS X Spellchecker and Address Book and experimental support for Office 2007 Excel and PowerPoint files, here)

Well, I was right – it’s got a faster processor. No more details at the moment.

Apple COO Tim Cook, also on stage with Jobs for the Q&A along with Apple’s head of marketing Phil Schiller, also noted that today Apple refreshed the Mac mini with a faster processor.

(See my orignal entry below).

But take a look at the new iMac and keyboard – what a looker!

Do I want one? I’m not sure – my office desk has a window right behind it and the new iMacs only come with “glossy” (= highly reflecting, cheap to produce) wide-screens. Depending on the details of the refreshed Mac mini, I might well stick with that and keep my nice old fashioned non-reflecting, non-wide-format (how many movies do I watch on my Mac? None.) Dell 19” screen which suits me fine.

We just got asked by a good friend whether we’d kept a copy of this joke (voted the best e-mail of 1997) – well we hadn’t, but thanks to Google it was easy enough to find.

It is worth another read (and your English had better be near native-level or you’ll not understand it!).

Here it is. ... enjoy!

General Petraeus, the commander of the American forces in Iraq, is probably going to have some explaining to do in the next few days – he was responsible in 2004 – 2005 for distributing a large chunk of the weapons that the Americans have given to the Iraqi government. Unfortunately, about a third of them can no longer be accounted for and are probably in the hands of the opposition forces. In other words:

• 110,000 AK-47s
• 80,000 pistols
• 135,000 bits of armour

seem to be absent without leave.

And where does Fred Karno come into this? Well, he was a slap-stick comedian at the same time as Laurel and Hardy were so popular, and one of his acts was about a completely chaotic army described in the ditty below:

We are Fred Karno’s army,
Fred Karno’s infantry;
We cannot fight, we cannot shoot,
So what damn good are we?
But when we get to Berlin
The Kaiser he will say
Hoch, hoch, mein Gott
Vot a bloody fine lot
Fred Karno’s infantry.

Given the US forces’ record in Iraq so far – not able to stop looting of hospitals and museums, unable to secure Iraqi arms dumps, can’t keep records of what they’ve done with money or arms, can’t keep the country under control – they seem to be on a par with Fred Karno’s Army, don’t they?

Over the weekend, having nothing else much to do since we finished the renovation, I reworked the CSS styles for Ruth’s sewing blog, Sew2Speak.

We got rid of the blue/grey background and lightened it up with a white one and since it’s a hobby-oriented blog we also gave it a look like a scrapbook. (The template is loosely based on the Iowa Winter Theme, but in the end I only ended up using the jpg’s for the background.) I also updated the gallery with a similar, but not identical look (the scrapbook idea doesn’t work there without a massive effort changing the standard style sheets).

For years we have used remote control units that allow you to control more than one device in the TV/hi-fi rack, thus avoiding the need to have 4 or more controllers in the lounge.

I probably don’t read the right magazines, because it was pure chance that we recently bought the Logitech Harmony 525 unit you can see above. It was only when I got it home that I realised there has been a major advance in controllers while I’ve not been looking. The Harmony unit doesn’t just allow you to control the TV or the DVD-player, it groups the devices by the “task” you want it to perform (watch TV, listen to radio, use AppleTV, etc.) and switches all the necessary bits of equipment on – sat tuner, TV, amplifier, for example. When you set up the controller, you specify in this case whether you want to control the volume using the TV or the amplifier.

When you use the controller, you first tell it on it’s built in menu what activity you want to do, it switches the various bits of equipment on, and then you don’t need to think about which device you are controlling, you just hit the volume up/down, channel scan or whatever button and the controller figures out which device should get the command and sends it the signal.

I don’t have any brand loyalty – each of our hi-fi and TV components comes from a different manufacturer – and the Logitech unit controls them all. The set up of the unit is done on a PC or Mac using a USB cable and software which comes with the device, and Logitech provides frequent updates to cover new hi-fi components as they are released.

After a couple of months using it, there is no way I’d consider going back to an unintelligent remote control.