Testing Publishing using Ecto offline publishing tool

This is a test of using the Ecto offline publishing tool. I found it quite tedious to write longer articles using the blogger web interface.

So here is a small test:

Dependency Icon

Dependent Icon

And a larger screen short of Buckminster showing embedded OPML and the new Component Outline View.

Works quite well.

OS X man pages GUI

Found a useful man page user interface for OS X called ManOpen - you find it here:  http://www.clindberg.org/projects/ManOpen.html

How to get a WMV video on to a DVD on the Mac

This was really giving me problems at first. I installed Flip4Mac (free edition) to be able to play WMV files using the QuickTime Player that came with Leopard - and it worked just fine. Trying to import the WMW file into iDVD however caused iDVD to hang (perpetual multicoloured rotating ball).  I then upgraded my QuickTime to a QuickTimePro to enable being able to convert the video to QuickTime mov format. This worked as a charm, and it was possible to use this file in the iDVD project.  Only flaw is that there is big letters telling everyone that the video was converted with the free edition of Flip4Mac.  sigh So, I spent an additional 29 USD to get rid of it, and I could now create the iDVD project. I am sure there is some free version somewhere, but I was in a hurry. If anyone has any info about free versions to perform the same conversion I would be glad to hear from you.

Oh man... Thunderbird and Lightning - not an ideal combination either....

Hm, this really sucks. Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 and Lightning 0.7 and GCalDeamon isn't exactly ideal. In the couple of hours I have tried it, Thunderbird managed to list one mail item twice while missing another item in the same inbox (IMAP). When deleting the double entry, the hidden email disappeared! The multiple tags features does not work. When leaving the mailbox (for any other view), only one of the tags remain (maybe this caused the earlier problem). Lightning, and GCalDeamon seems to have different views of the correct time in my timezone - DST screwup somewhere perhaps? An email viewed in Thunderbird that contained an .ICS attachment had no functionality associated - when clicking it, nohing at all happened. (This really sucks). I am actually better of with a functioning iCal which is integrated with Leopard mail, and having a read only view of my google calendar (and going to google online for editing). Crap. I was hoping for Thunderbird and Lightning + google to provide one set up for mail, usenet news, rss, and calendar.

Working Calendar setup on OS X leopard

After much searching and looking at alternatives, I gave up trying to integrate Leopard iCal with Google Calendar. It worked fine to just read the data, but not update the calendar. Maybe a few releases away then google may support CalDav, or someone interested enough in the combination may come up with a solution... There is a GCalDeamon http://gcaldaemon.sourceforge.net/usage12.html written in java that works well with google calendar, but the Leopard version of iCal uses a different format than the Tiger version, so this particular combination does not work :(. So, I switched to Thunderbird and Lightning (Sunbird) instead, and there it was quite straight forward to install and integrate with google. You have to enter some UNIX commands when doing so, but it is quite simple. Happy for now, but the configuration to also suport offline use is a bit more complicated, and something I will continue working on... Now I also have to figure out how to start the GCalDeamon as part of the OS x start up. (I am sure that is easy, but I have not done this before)

Just found a much better version of Open Office for Mac that runs nativly (i.e. does not require X11). You find NeoOffice here http://www.neooffice.org Tip, you need to move OpenOffice to the Trash to get file associations to pick NeoOffice. I guess  Open Office can be reinstalled if you don't like NeoOffice.

Installing pgAdminIII for OS X was also easy even if the right windows did not pop up automatically - I had to go look for the pgadmin "disk" in the finder.  The pgAdminIII is available from http://www.postgresql.org/