When
· Naughties
· · 2004
· · · March
· · · · 12 (2 entries)
Happy · These are good times. Ten weeks of not working (three weeks in Oz) was great, ramping into a new-job honeymoon is great, plus, happiest of all, I’ve got a Big Idea and with luck, I’m going to get the cycles to build it out. For those of us with engineering bones, afflicted by insomnia and the creative itch, few things feel as good as the early days of a Big Idea, as the implications and explanations fall into place. Of course, people like me shouldn’t be allowed to drive cars at this phase, and spouses suffer unreasonably as our listening ability becomes intermittent. And of course we all know that as the Big Idea eventually morphs into actual icky buggy code running on actual icky real-world infrastructure, we’re in for a lot of pain; and not all my Big Ideas have been good ones. Still, it’s something to live by: What might be, but is not.
NeoOffice/J · I got an email with an attachment I wanted to read whose name ended in
.sxw. Clicking on it baffled OS X, so I asked around and someone pointed me at NeoOffice/J, which is part of NeoOffice. I got a hurried and entirely opaque explanation of how this is using Java/Cocoa magic to sweep the Open Office X11 under the carpet, but hey, it seems to work, despite lots of “This is a Beta!” warnings. It handled the .sxw, and then I pointed it at a .doc and a .xls and it was fine with those, too. The only downside so far is it doesn’t have the real Aqua look.
