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Slouching toward the end of the day...
May. 15th, 2002 02:48 pmThe upgrade of Linux on my eSlate went well. Upon rebooting, I connected to the DSL router and hit the OpenOffice.org site to download their latest release. In the course of the 67-MB download, the DSL connection attained a sustained rate of about 80 KB/sec, or a megabyte about every 13 seconds. (While this is not as fast as I had first supposed, it's still pretty impressive.)
If the story I read on NewsForge.Net can be believed, OpenOffice 1.0 is actually the same as StarOffice 6.0, the difference being about $100 to buy the latter, which brings with it the right to some support. It took me a little while to figure out how to install/setup the software, but once the task was done, it seemed to work okay.
If I understand the concept correctly, XML forms the basis for the 'native' format of data files for this system. Filters to and from MS Office are also featured, and opening a Word file, for example, is actually a pleasing experience. (I recall some application I used in the dim past - I forget which one it is - would try to "import" Word files and, if it succeeded (far from likely, ordinarily), the result would be painful to look at.)
I suspect I shall have to tweak X on the laptop to enable Cyrillic fonts. Attempts to use the GNOME keyboard switcher didn't work, and opening Word files with (in theory) Unicode-encoded Cyrillic text resulted in blanks being displayed in place of Cyrillic letters.
* * * Arriving at the telecon site this morning at the appointed time (15 min prior to the scheduled start), one of the participants helpfully offered me an agenda.
"That's funny," I thought as I took a copy, "I was faxed one page. There's two here."
And what a page!
The text went into incredible detail on at least three different subjects, said detail aided by an army of abbreviations. Normally, this kind of text is not discussed on a line-by-line basis during a telecon; no normal person in either country wants to engage in a long, mind-numbing, voice-killing marathon telecon. There are exceptions, though, and most of them seem to work at NASA. (My current personal record for telecon length was one that went over its allotted 2-hour timeslot and lasted nearly 5 hours, and the memory of that telecon comes back to haunt me every time someone seeds a telecon agenda with a document like the one I got this morning.)
In the final analysis, though, the page did not even come up in the course of the discussion, which went fairly well. The talk stressed engineering requirements and computer issues, both of which I am pretty comfortable with.
Otherwise it's been a somewhat slow day today, radiogram-wise. Only two messages came in. The first was this Saturday's Form 24 (a preliminary version); the second, the Form 24 for tomorrow (the final version). The person known as "OpsPlan" (who sits in front and to the right of the Flight Director in the blue FCR) knows about my doctor's appointment and doesn't think there'll be any problem for me to get out on time.
Anyway, time to check that all i's are dotted and all t's are crossed. Later...
Cheers...
If the story I read on NewsForge.Net can be believed, OpenOffice 1.0 is actually the same as StarOffice 6.0, the difference being about $100 to buy the latter, which brings with it the right to some support. It took me a little while to figure out how to install/setup the software, but once the task was done, it seemed to work okay.
If I understand the concept correctly, XML forms the basis for the 'native' format of data files for this system. Filters to and from MS Office are also featured, and opening a Word file, for example, is actually a pleasing experience. (I recall some application I used in the dim past - I forget which one it is - would try to "import" Word files and, if it succeeded (far from likely, ordinarily), the result would be painful to look at.)
I suspect I shall have to tweak X on the laptop to enable Cyrillic fonts. Attempts to use the GNOME keyboard switcher didn't work, and opening Word files with (in theory) Unicode-encoded Cyrillic text resulted in blanks being displayed in place of Cyrillic letters.
"That's funny," I thought as I took a copy, "I was faxed one page. There's two here."
And what a page!
The text went into incredible detail on at least three different subjects, said detail aided by an army of abbreviations. Normally, this kind of text is not discussed on a line-by-line basis during a telecon; no normal person in either country wants to engage in a long, mind-numbing, voice-killing marathon telecon. There are exceptions, though, and most of them seem to work at NASA. (My current personal record for telecon length was one that went over its allotted 2-hour timeslot and lasted nearly 5 hours, and the memory of that telecon comes back to haunt me every time someone seeds a telecon agenda with a document like the one I got this morning.)
In the final analysis, though, the page did not even come up in the course of the discussion, which went fairly well. The talk stressed engineering requirements and computer issues, both of which I am pretty comfortable with.
Otherwise it's been a somewhat slow day today, radiogram-wise. Only two messages came in. The first was this Saturday's Form 24 (a preliminary version); the second, the Form 24 for tomorrow (the final version). The person known as "OpsPlan" (who sits in front and to the right of the Flight Director in the blue FCR) knows about my doctor's appointment and doesn't think there'll be any problem for me to get out on time.
Anyway, time to check that all i's are dotted and all t's are crossed. Later...
Cheers...
