October 04, 2008

Intervenció: reptes de futur per a Softcatalà

Al final ahir a la festa de celebració del desè aniversari vam ser unes 100 persones. Va ser força emotiu. En els propers dies a Vilaweb penjaran els vídeos amb les xerrades. Jo us deixo aquí la meva intervenció.


Reptes de futur per a Softcatalà
Un poble com el nostre, sense recolzament propi d'un estat, necessita sempre de gent compromesa amb tots els camps de la cultura i de les ciències. Gent disposada a donar el millor de si mateixos per preservar una llengua que de forma sistemàtica és amenaçada i maltractada: manifestos en contra, lleis, empreses que la menyspreen, o pitjor encara, aquells que la intenten dividir-la de forma artificial. La llista és llarga, sovint sinistra, i coneguda per tots.

Els que estem aquí avui, més enllà de celebrar el desè aniversari de Softcatalà, compartim el neguit d'aconseguir viure plenament en català. Intentem amb les nostres aportacions que això sigui possible en l'àmbit de les Noves Tecnologies. Alguns tradueixen programes informàtics, altres els hi donen difusió, altres els introduïxen a títol personal en programes de formació a escoles i universitats, altres els ajuden a instal·lar-los a amics, etc. Una teranyina de moltes persones normals, sovint anònimes, fent coses extraordinàries. Si el català gaudeix de bona salut a les noves tecnologies és perquè tots hem volgut, hem lluitat i hem treballat per això.

Softcatalà va néixer, ara fa deu anys, com una iniciativa de tres amics. Unes persones que vam pensar que podíem canviar com es feien les coses en aquells moments. Que podíem passar d'un model de reivindicació constant (campanya per l'Altavista en català, pel Netscape en català) a incidir fent feina. Que podíem passar d'un model on el català s'associava a demanar i rebre subvencions a un model autogestionat com el nostre. Que vam pensar que la societat civil havia de tenir un paper actiu en la normalització del català a les Noves Tecnologies, i no només anar a rebufo del que els Yahoo!, Microsoft o altres empreses a cop de talonari anaven fent amb l'únic interès del rèdit econòmic. En la Societat de la Informació, que és la de la nostra generació, l'important és el coneixement i tenir ganes de treballar. No calen grans quantitats de diners ni tenir padrins a enlloc. Un dels molts exemples som nosaltres.

Tots els que treballem des del voluntariat sabem que res succeïx sense sacrifici: moltes hores de feina, sovint amb tasques poc amables de fer, però que al final tenen la seva recompensa. Quan per exemple, més de 10.000 persones cada mes baixen només de Softcatalà el navegador Firefox, ara mateix amb una implantació d'un 30% al Països Catalans o quan veiem que un paquet ofimàtic com l'OpenOffice.org és usat en milers de llars cada dia, escoles, cursos de formació o empreses. Podem estar satisfets i mirar enrere i pensar que els petits grans de sorrà de moltes persones han fet això una realitat.

No deixem que els èxits del passat ens enlluernin perquè les Noves Tecnologies són un món de canvi constant, i com s'acostuma a dir, si una cosa és segura és que res no restarà sense canviar.

Els que treballem pel català a les Noves Tecnologies ens enfrontem a molts reptes. Deixeu-me dibuixar-ne alguns:

  • Recursos lingüístics computacionals. Em refereixo a traductors automàtics, correctors, sistemes de reconeixement de veu i similars. El fet de no poder disposar de totes aquestes eines, bé perquè no existeixen o bé perquè estan en mans d'universitats que no hi donen accés o empreses privades, representa establir una barrera d'accés per al català a la societat de la informació i dificultats afegides als que treballen en altres llengües perquè vulguin apostar pel català. Hi ha iniciatives que comencen a dibuixar un camí però queda força feina per fer: diccionaris de sinònims, un reconeixement òptic de caràcters que funcioni, sistemes de reconeixement de veu, etc.
  • Lideratge. Calen persones amb capacitat de prendre iniciativa i liderar projectes. I liderar vol dir simplement encetar coses noves, assumir responsabilitats i compromisos amb els del voltant. Sense anar més lluny, algú que per exemple sigui capaç de quan surti una nova versió d'un projecte de motivar a la resta per organitzar-se per arribar a temps a disposar de la localització en català. Ens cal més gent amb empenta.
  • Marc legal. Hi ha molts usuaris des de la bona voluntat que traduïxen programes al català trencant l'acord de llicència dels mateixos. La fina línia entre els interessos comercials i culturals sempre és present. Sense anar més lluny tenim empreses com Apple que han perseguit legalment als que han fet traduccions a l'euskera. Ens cal més pedologia i sobretot dissenyar estratègies per canviar aquesta realitat.
  • Unitat de la llengua. A mida que el català es va normalitzant a la Xarxa apareixen les mateixes amenaces que al món no virtual. Cada cop més ens trobem amb persones a projectes internacionals que intenten fragmentar la llengua. Calen accions fermes. Portem anys treballant per combatre això però el problema continua creixent. Cal que en siguem molt conscients, i que algun dia ens trobarem amb alguna barbaritat a algun projecte important, de fet, ja hem evitat versions blaveres a projectes amb repercussió com el Firefox o l'Abword.
  • Món comercial. Tradicionalment poc sensible al català però necessari per tenir una normalització plena del català. Les administracions, les universitats i altres institucions, utilizant programari lliure i amb el seu poder de compra, poden exercir una pressió important sobre els fabricants de programari comercial per exigir versions en la nostra llengua. De fet la Generalitat ho ha fet ja en concursos de telefonia mòbil. Empreses com Microsoft han entès que cal treballar en català a Catalunya, malgrat les traduccions encara siguin parcials i després una pressió molt forta de la societat civil. Ens important continuar treballar tots plegats en aquesta àrea.


I si em permeteu, per finalitzar, m'agradaria comentar dos reptes addicionals importants que penso que tenim que tenir presents des de Softcatalà:

  • Preservar els actius aconseguits amb els darrers anys: el nombre d'usuaris, els col·laboradors, la independència com a organització, un sistema meritocràtic o un nom en el nostre entorn.
  • Continuar desenvolupant sinergies amb altres entitats. Ara mateix a Softcatalà estem col·laborant amb la distribució LinkAt (menys del que ens agradaria cal dir), amb el TERMCAT o amb la Universitat de Lleida. Softcatalà pot aportar les seves bones relacions amb les comunitats internacionals, el coneixement en processos de localització o el nostre bagatge tècnic. Altres poden aportar coneixements en els seus àmbits o persones alliberades per fer tasques. S'han de buscar més complicitats amb agents que pensem que compartim les mateixes sensibilitats.

Ja sabeu que Softcatalà és també casa vostra. Moltes gràcies a tothom.

October 02, 2008

Entrevista a Vilaweb.tv

A Vilaweb.tv han publicat una entrevista en vídeo de 5 minuts i escaig sobre el desè aniversari de Softcatalà. Ens han entrevistat al Marc Belzunces i a mi mateix. Parlem de la situació del català, del paper de les empreses i administracions, i de programari lliure. Això de veure't per la televisió és realment estrany.

Vam estar força estona i penso que han fet una bona molta feina i bona selecció de talls. Gràcies a l'Enric Borràs i a la resta de l'equip.

Join us at the OpenOffice.org 3.0 Launch Party, 13th of October, 19h30, Paris!

More information and registration link here. To answer to the question many around are asking: No, OpenOffice.org 3.0 has not been released yet. Target date is now 13th or 14th of October, and there will be a RC 4 coming in on Monday. In the meantime, I hope to see many of you on the 13th !

flyer-ooo3-13oct3-600.jpg

Share This

September 29, 2008

Rhinoceros, Final Version

That’s official, and an interesting, sad, and probably ridiculous page of the I.T. History is about to be turned: OOXML has been published in its final version. Has it really? Well, it turns out that OOXML does have lots of tricks up its sleeve. It seems that the specification document is actually the same than the last time we saw it. Let me rephrase this: We know several versions of OOXML. Some succeeded to others, some others are concurrent; but we can roughly consider two major versions of OOXML. One is used inside Microsoft products such as MS Office 2007 and is thoroughly undocumented and not standard. Another one is the ISO standard, ISO-IEC 29500.

Today, we’ll focus on the “standard standard”, so to speak. This “standard standard” has just been officially published. But there’s a big surprise. The text seems to be exactly the same version of OOXML we once saw, the ghost version of OOXML (do you understand now why it took so many times for Microsoft to release Vista? The answer comes out clearly now: they were working on different versions of OOXML as if they were planning to shoot Pres. Kennedy on Elm Street).

Why does it matter? Because this ghost version, the “Final DIS text” is the one that was supposed to be the version to be approved by the various national standards committees after the BRM. Both the Ecma and the ITTF explained at the time (March 2008) that this text didn’t exist. But it does, and it was ready to be published ever since that time as it had been seen once on the ISO’s JTC 1’s server a while ago.

In short, national standards bodies voted on a text they never read, and the result was an astounding yes prompted by pressures of various kinds. The rest is history: The appeals that never got answered properly, the dubious voting procedure, the letter of protest sent by four countries to the ISO… Once again, this chapter is full of darkness, lack of transparence and maneuvers in dark alleys. Once again, the ISO has not hesitated once to dive in the mess and proudly follows what it believes is the reasonable way; so reasonable, in fact, that if told to define the Law of Gravity the ISO would now claim that any physical body falls on the ground if released from above not because of Gravity, but because it is reasonable.

All in all, the history of OOXML is not over. The maintenance phase is actually going to be hilariously complex, as you will see experts haggle over the countless existing issues and bugs of a standard that never got implemented ( so what? Can’t we be funny from time to time?) while probably trying to come up with a dubious workgroup on implementation conformance, if that role has not already been taken by the joint Afnor-DIN committee where nobody ever really meets but everyone receives emails from unknown superiors that preside over the work of that committee.

Yet, all the fun stuff set aside, something odd keeps coming back in my mind. Am I the only one to see that this new, final OOXML version was published -although it existed for months inside the ITTF- right at the time where the period for new appeals ended?

Call me disingenuous if you wish. But don’t call me an Ionesco; we already have similar artists in Geneva and in Redmond…


Share This

Entrevistes a Ràdio Sentmenat, Ràdio 4 i Catalunya Ràdio

Amb motiu del desè aniversari de Softcatalà estem fent algunes entrevistes a diferents radios:

  • Ràdio Sentmenat (106.4 FM). Aquest dimarts de 19:00 a 20:00 al programa El Kernel. Un espai on es parla de les tecnologies de la informació.
  • Ràdio 4. Aquest dimarts 30 de setembre a les 18.00 al programa Què està passant?. Un espai dedica a l'oci i les noves tecnologies.
  • Catalunya Ràdio. Aquest dissabte 4 d'octubre a l'Internauta. Fan un especial sobre Softcatalà on vam paricipar en Marc Belzunces, en Jordi Mallach (per telèfon) i jo mateix i des de la banda dels entrevistadors hi havia en Xavi Caballe.
Gràcies als que han fet aquests entrevistes possibles!

September 28, 2008

London Critical Mass September 2008

On Friday I headed along to this Months Critical Mass. It was very strange that the Police weren’t there at all to do the corking of the junctions, and hold back any frustrated drivers. The two usual off-duty bike paramedics were there. It took a while for the mass to get used to the idea of corking the traffic themselves. There was a few times when some drivers tried to have a run at some of the cyclists, which was quite frightening. These possibly would have been less likely to happen with the bike police there. The key to preventing the drivers from being annoyed is to keep the whole ride moving all the time.

After Buckingham Palace the ride managed split in two, with both halves meeting up later. At one point we did bump into a bunch of organised roller skaters.

As the sun is setting around the time the ride starts off, so it becomes more difficult to get good photos, particularly with most people wearing reflective clothing.

Overall it turned out to be a good night without any major incident.

P1060619.JPG P1060611.JPG P1060613.JPG P1060608.JPG

Danish newsletter out now

The monthly overview in Danish are out now: http://doc.oooforum.dk/Nyhed/2008Oktober.pdf.

Do as I do, not as I sell

PC World Business is part of the DSG Retail Group, whose Currys / Dixons / The Link / PC World / etc shops are a standard feature of UK high streets and out of town shopping centres. In this price competitive environment, you’d expect them to know a good deal when they see it, and share it with their customers.

Well, they certainly score on the first point. I received the following email yesterday:

I was in PC World’s Business Centre in Worcester yesterday and in the course of conversation a salesman told me that all their branches now use OpenOffice.org. When I showed surprise and asked why, he pointed me to another guy who had been directly involved in a deal with Microsoft which went sour, involving PC World’s MS Office licences. Essentially, what happened was PC World decided that MS were trying to charge them too much, so decided to stop using MS Office altogether and switch to OpenOffice.org. He then told me that all their branches use OpenOffice.org, but I’m not sure whether he meant PC World or PC World for Business, which is a different entity.

I then thought I’d check on their web site to see how they were sharing this wonderful discovery with customers. Curiously, clicking under Office gave pages of listings for Microsoft Office, but nothing for OpenOffice.org.

So, PC World, if you have discovered the benefits of OpenOffice.org, why aren’t you sharing them with your customers?

September 25, 2008

Congratulation Charles-H (and OpenOffice.org)

Charles-H Schulz writes on his private blog: Yesterday I was honored to receive the “Lutèce d’Or” trophy on behalf of the OpenOffice.org Project from the hands of Mr Besson, Minister of the Prospective and Digital Technologies of the French Republic. There was a standing ovation, but this one was not so much dedicated to my humble person than it was to the OpenOffice.org project and its members.

Danish readers: Join group on Facebook

Join the group Jeg bruger også OpenOffice.org on Facebook and let us count how many users we actually are http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=40447480420

What a day…

Yesterday I was honored to receive the “Lutèce d’Or” trophy on behalf of the OpenOffice.org Project from the hands of Mr Besson, Minister of the Prospective and Digital Technologies of the French Republic. There was a standing ovation, but this one was not so much dedicated to my humble person than it was to the OpenOffice.org project and its members.

 

OpenOffice.org won this award because of the success of its international scope and action; it is a bit unusual for us to win this kind of awards, but I am extremely happy we got this award. It outlines the hard work of the native-language projects worldwide, their successes on a global scale and -need I mention it?- the more than growing interest for OpenOffice.org.

 

OpenOffice.org download numbers are growing. The numbers I have are astounding. Let me just pick this one, for instance: OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, in French, on the servers monitored by the Francophone Project, has been downloaded two million (1, 998 000 to be more accurate) times in just three months. This only takes into account a handful of servers, one specific micro-version in one specific language over the course of the last three months. This does not cover the central servers, nor the mass of servers spread worldwide. This also does not cover CD and USB keys distribution, nor does it cover our peer-to-peer distribution. In short, the numbers show a tremendous momentum for OpenOffice.org, and one that sometimes gets unnoticed by the press.

 

All this would not be possible without the work of thousands of volunteers working on the code, quality assurance, documentation, translation, localization, user support and marketing, worldwide, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This trophy is dedicated to all of them.

 

In the same train of thought, we are about to release OpenOffice.org 3.0. We have released the RC 2, and there will be a third one. And in order to celebrate the release the greatest OpenOffice.org version so far, we’ll be having a great party on the 13 th of October 2008. The Region Ile de France and we hope you can join us. (More information very, very soon).

 

Yesterday was also the day against software patents. I hope you signed the petition as well.

 

Last but not least, I would like to mention a great victory for Democracy that took place in Brussels yesterday. A set of directives has been discussed and voted on yesterday on the future of networks and spectrum at the European Parliament. As usual, what could have initially been a great opportunity for growth, innovation, and leadership in IT driven by the European Union was attacked by special interests groups of all kinds, all of them gunning against Net Neutrality and pushing for the most reactionary policies such as network filtering and censorship.

 

When I was a child my family and th school told me that what set us (France) aside of dictatorial regimes was that we were a democracy. Democracy means individual and collective freedom, freedom of speech, conscience, vote, etc. Some people in 2008 seem to have decide those criteria should be revisited. It is a shame, and not later than yesterday some of these lobbies pushed again a few friendly MEPs to attack the directives again. I am curious to know if the people who elected these politicians are even aware of what they are doing. So once again, democracy in Europe is in danger, and I would like to congratulate and express my deepest respect to our freedom fighters, french and others.

 

To all of them, to OpenOffice.org, to my readers,

Thank you!


Share This

September 24, 2008

Day Trip to Calais

On Saturday I took a random day trip to Calais on the train and ferry. It’s been eleven years since I last travelled on the Dover to Calais ferries. This time I was on foot instead of being in a car.

I learnt quite a few things that I should do differently the next time.

  • Don’t get lost in Dover by taking a wrong turn
  • Take the bike
  • There is a 45 minute check-in for foot passengers, while only 30 minutes for car vehicles
  • Aim for an earlier return ferry, so that I don’t have to take the 2304 from Dover to Faversham to change at 23:42 to arrive in London Victoria at 01:29, and then have to take a night bus home. (The stop before London Victoria on the last train is Dartford).
I did have a nice wander around Calais, and you will be able to see the trail of destruction next week when the data is rendered on the main map. So far it seems that someone has traced the railways from landsat, which isn’t particularly accurate.
P1060329.JPG The Dover Docks. (I’m sure that OpenStreetMap can do better than the commercial mapping agencies, however it isn’t going to be easy, as I doubt the port authority nor the border controls will allow you to wander round the port.)
P1060420.JPGP1060419.JPGP1060354.JPGP1060410.JPG Got 2 stations added.
P1060373.JPGP1060365.JPGP1060591.JPG

Are we there yet?

Those of you with long memories (or who know how to use the version history on the wiki :) ) will remember we originally planned to launch OpenOffice.org 3.0 on September 2nd. We actually announced the Release Candidate on September 8th.

However, the final round of testing produced a list of known issues. As a result, the Release Committee have now announced a second Release Candidate, which in turn has its known issues.

So, are we there yet? The latest plan shows a third Release Candidate on September 30th, which could become OpenOffice.org 3.0 on October 7th. meanwhile, I’ll carry on using the latest release candidate!

September 21, 2008

Everyday should be freedom day

Yesterday I spoke at the Software Freedom Day at Copenhagen Business School. I spoke about my view of the expression Software Freedom. I also gave a brief demonstration of the new features in OpenOffice.org 3.0. The concentration was about the ability to open pdf files for editing in Draw and to save (or export) pdf files as hybrid. But also the new commenting feature (create a note) found some

Thank you for the music

Up at 05.30 to find a calm and windless morning, so the Flying Cat was able to set off from Skopelos, and we were saved the dash round the coast to Agnonta. The weather deteriorated steadily during the crossing, so by the time we found ourselves back in Volos we were in the rain, waiting in a queue for taxis to take us round to a typically depressing coach station.

The 200km drive in the coach was slower, but considerably less stressful than our taxi journey in the opposite direction at the start of the week. The idea of killing over twelve hours in a damp Thessaloniki before the flight departed was pretty dreadful. Andy’s Rough Guide (courtesy Glasgow Public Libraries) suggested a city centre hotel where we could rent a room to dump luggage and possibly let the more exhausted have a kip. At 75 € it must be a record price for a left luggage facility.

However, everyone brightened up considerably during an amazingly good and cheap lunch/dinner. Robert and Andy finally abandoned the attempt to herd the cats and the party split up as people went off to do movies, sightseeing, or Starbucks, using the hotel as a base. By midnight the sewers in the Hotel Atlas had collapsed under the collective volume of British excrement and a series of taxis hurriedly ferried everyone out the airport.

Not much more to say really: 04:04 from Thessaloniki to Zurich; 07:10 from Zurich to Manchester - an opportunity to catch up on some sleep. Good old Northern Rail did their best to round off the week by replacing the Manchester Airport trains with a bus service, but by 14:20 the last of the party dragged themselves off the train at Waverley.

Robert and Rachel, it was an amazing week: your families are great and your friends are wonderful; and we wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Just don’t do it again :)

September 20, 2008

Desè aniversari de Softcatalà

Fa uns dies que l'Eduard Gamonal va acabar la pàgina del desè aniversari de Softcatalà que celebrem el divendres 3 d'octubre a partir de les 19.00 al Museu d'Història de Catalunya.

He tancat amb el Museu una visita guiada de 45 minuts que comença a les 18.00 amb l'Edat Mitjana i arribarà fins l'actualitat. Els que tingueu intenció d'atansar-vos si us plau ompliu el formulari de registre i indiqueu si voleu fer aquesta visita. No cal dir que sou tots convidats.

Després de bastants dies amb estires i arronses amb diferents possibles ponents, finalment he tancat l'agenda:

· 19.00 Benvinguda al museu i l'esdeveniment per Agustí Alcoberro (director del Museu d'Història de Catalunya) i Marc Belzunces (Softcatalà)
· 19.15 Jordi Bosch (Secretari de Telecomunicacions i Societat de la Informació de la Generalitat). Llengua, TIC i administració pública
· 19.30 Assumpció Maresma (Vilaweb). Oportunitats del català als nous formats a les TIC
· 19.45 Òscar del Pozo Triscon (Google). Futur de les aplicacions a Internet per llengües minoritàries i de la visió de Google
· 20.00 Jordi Mas (Softcatalà). Reptes de futur per a Softcatalà
· 20.15 Comença la festa al Bar del terrat

Un agraïment especial a tothom que ens ha fet un lloc en la seva agenda per apropar-se a fer una xerrada, alguns que a més venen de lluny, així com als assistents.

Aquests dies estic rebent bastants correus i felicitacions personals per l'aniversari i alguns em pregunten perquè no fem un repàs de la trajectòria, història, assoliments, etc. Jo personalment estic extraordinàriament satisfet per la feina que hem fet plegats però trobo important mirar cap al futur. Pensar com afrontarem els nous reptes i oportunitats que se'ns presenten a aquells que treballem pel català a les TIC, i en menor mesura, alguns més específics de Softcatalà, que de fet, és el tema en que centraré la meva intervenció.

Avui remenant la col·lecció de fotografies digitals amb l'F-Spot he trobat una foto meva del 1998 un dia a casa dels pares provant una versió beta del que seria el Netscape en català:

Al Flickr hi ha una col·lecció de fotos de diferents trobades que hem anat fent a Softcatalà.

10 anys de Softcatalà

September 19, 2008

Settling a score

Another windy night and ferries diverted to Agnonta. There is a definite end of season feeling here now - the breakfast honey has run out; all the outdoor chairs in the hotel are disappearing; the bar is emptying; the hot water is becoming elusive; with luck, we’ll have gone before they start stripping the beds.

We decided to have another bash at Palouki, now officially on the grudge list after our failure to climb it on Monday. This time we ignored the completely bizarre route from Skopelos Trails and simply set off up the hill following the map. An hour and a half later we were on top. It was well worth it. Palouki knocks the socks off Delphi, its higher brother. The top feels like a real hill, and the views are stupendous. By some miracle, the powers that be have actually managed to avoid plonking the sodding great communications masts on the top, and have chosen a slightly lower outlying peak.

From the top we headed on down the other side of the island, then curved back along rough roads round the monasteries. There was still no sign of Heather’s path. We couldn’t find another short cut shown on the map, but a convenient firewatcher told us firmly the path was “closed”. The weather alternated between sunshine and cloudy, but there was a stiff breeze which made for great walking conditions.

Back down at our corner bakery for ice creams. The bakery too has shrunk overnight, with the outermost rows of tables and chairs packed away, and plastic curtains now keeping the wind at bay. We missed seeing Rachel and Lizzie off, as their 16:15 ferry had been diverted to Agnonta. They were traveling home courtesy of ATOL, who had laid on a plane from Skiathos to Gatwick to bring stranded holidaymakers home, followed by a coach journey to Manchester. Bit of a strange end to a wedding with the bride and groom heading home on totally different routes… but then expect the unexpected here.

Dinner with Pat and Sue to round off the evening - they have joined us in the Ionia Hotel for the night, as we all have an extra day in Skopelos thanks to the failure of Exel. Alarm clocks and mobiles set to go off at 05:30 to start the long journey home.

September 18, 2008

Ambling around Glossa

A windy night, and in t-shirt and shorts it felt a bit chilly going down to breakfast. We began to wonder about our journey home on Saturday, as the Flying Dolphin is diverted to Agnonta if it’s too windy at Skopelos. However, it looked like good walking weather, so 10:15 saw us waiting for the bus again for the journey to Glossa at the far end of the island. On the bus we were surprised to see the temperature reported as 20 degrees - we must be getting acclimatised.

Glossa is another collection of houses piled up in a ridiculous confusion on steeply sloping hillsides. A few phone calls got our plastic money operational again, then it was off to the fields. By some miracle we emerged onto our chosen route from Skopelos Trails and followed a circular route past the Agios Texiarchon monastery and back via the TACAN station - taking care not to point the camera in the direction of this military installation :)

In all, we ambled along for a couple of hours, stopping to eat and enjoy the views from both sides of the island. The sun shone, the sea was incredibly blue, and the hillsides looked more verdant than those at the south of the island.

To round off the day, how could we resist it - Mamma Mia - aka Carry on Camping - in an open air cinema in Skopelos, in English with Greek sub-titles, with the moon rising above the screen. I knew we were in for audience participation when I saw a mega flagon of local red wine and plastic cups making their way down the row. Now tell me, when was the last time you were in a cinema, and the performance came to an abrupt halt while the projectionist changed the reels on the projector? It was a hoot.

Busy upcomming weeks ...

This weekend I'l be speaking at Software Freedom Day in Copenhagen. It takes place on Saturday at Copenhagen Business School. I think I'll talk about my own pesonal view of the expression Software Freedom first. I'm sure I'll be able to find a few minutes talking about OpenOffice.org 3.0 from a users point of view. If you have the time and if you live in Copenhagen or sourounding areas, I'll

September 17, 2008

Walking … it’s what we do 2

We decided it was time to get some walking under our belts today. We piled onto the 10.30 bus from Skopelos to Glossa and got off at Palio Klima about an hour later, ready to head to the hills. It was a bit overcast, not so good for sun worshippers on the beach, but ideal for elderley Munro baggers out of their native element.

The walk from Palio Klima to Skopelos took us from one side of the island to the other, over probably three quarters of its length, and over its highest hill - Delphi (no, not that one) at 681 metres. The vast majority of the way is on forest tracks, with the odd bit of road and some stretches of footpath.

The weather meant the views to the neighbouring islands were not as clear as they might be, but it was a small price to pay for very comfortable walking conditions. The Skopelos Trails book only led us astray aa couple of times, but in fairness, we were doing the walk “back to front”.

We were back in Skopelos eating some really disgusting chocolate buns at 17:00 or so. When it comes to making sicky buns, the Greeks take a lot of beating. For once, we were not spotted by other wedding guests :) Some of the early arrivals have started to drift off - Donald and Mal, and Mandy and Rosie had left by the early ferry this morning.

Text from Rachel while we were eating dinner to say that the evening’s excursion was cancelled. There had been plans to meet up at 21:00 and go to the open-air cinema to see Mamma Mia (what else?), but it was too windy and the cinema was closed. We’d noticed a slightly autumnal feel to the air, with the odd drop of rain and a stream of leaves falling on us during dinner.

With the evening free, we decided to do some shopping. I’d had problems topping up my mobile from my Visa card earlier in the day and had to use my debit card instead. After a couple of failed attempts in shops it became obvious our credit card had been stopped, and after a couple of failed attempts at ATMs it looked like our debit cards had been stopped too. This was particularly irritating as we’d carefully rung the credit card centre to tell them we were off to Greece for a week.

Back at the hotel we counted up our Euros, cursed the bank, and wondered how to complete our holiday with no plastic. Then the mobile rang and a robotic voice from the bank took me through recent debit card transactions, and asked me to confirm one by one they were ok. The process was painfully slow - “don’t you know this call is costing me money and you won’t let me top up my phone?”

Looks like tomorrow will be spent on the phone to the bank…

September 16, 2008

Skopelos town

Peace and quiet - even the hotel was empty at breakfast. We decided to spend a lazy day pottering around Skopelos. With its white buildings, red tile roofs, and blue paint to match the sea and sky it’s a paradise for artists and photographers.





We started bumping into people again in the evening. Rachel was on her way back from the internet cafe just as we were arriving. The sun worshippers had continued their circuit of the beaches on the island. The one bit of local knowledge they hadn’t picked up about today’s beach was that the island ferry creates a mini-tsunami as it passes by. So that’s one upset teenager, and one salt-washed camera, iPod, and phone to argue about with the insurance company.

I settled won in the internet cafe with my Eee PC to do some emails, upload blogs, and check some of the press coverage of the wedding for outrageous inaccuracies. The prize must go to the Edinburgh Evening News, for suggesting that the CAA had sorted everything, leaving Robert delirious with happiness.

When Lizzie joined us at the cafe to check how she was placed for her return flight on Friday, the shabbiness of the full ATOL response became apparent. She was instructed to visit their website and only ring them up as a last resort. The website was useless, as it only mentioned last week’s flights. When she rang, she was told to turn up at Skiathos as normal and she would be sorted by a rep there. I don’t have a good feeling about this.

No sooner had Lizzie left than Donald turned up to do emails. As I said yesterday, Skopelos is a small place :)

Off to Anne and Desmond’s for a meal with forty or so others - the wedding party plus ex-pat island friends. Unlike most of the other ex-pats (who appear to live a curious semi-detached life), Anne and Desmond live on the island year round, in a wonderful rambling home, half house, half garden. Lizzie told us there had been another disaster the night before - the taxis booked to take people from Limnonari to Skopelos simply hadn’t turned up, leaving her to run a shuttle service.

Despite the late night on Monday, the party still ran on into the beginning of Wednesday. The traditional musicians provided gentle musical accompaniment, and the conversation just flowed…

I made a small update to my first (and so far only) openoffice.org Extension Lorem Ipsum Generator extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/Lorem_ipsum_generator. This small nifty extension shows as an extra icon in Writer. With a click, you can fetch a piece of true Lorem Ipsum text from www.lipsum.com. This time I added some error handling to prevent the macro to stop (and show the Basic

Last of the London Mapping Marathon Tomorrow

Tomorrow, will be the final installment of the Summer 2008 London Mapping Marathon. We will be moving to the Fortnightly Winter 2008-9 Random Pub Meetup. Each week will be a different pub in a potentially unmapped area, for those hard core mappers out there. I’m looking for suggestions on where we could go. On the 24th December we will be going to that thingy pub at latitude 90, longitude -0.12345.

Matt Amos has started organising a mapping party in the Wembly area of London on Sunday 12th October 2008. Hopefully we will have a few weekend mapping parties, in the more outlying parts of London, over the course of the winter.

Later in October I will be going to a mapping party in Kyiv.

The big day

Met Phil at breakfast - we’ve scrounged a lift down to the wedding with him in a taxi at 11.00. He’s coming back to Skopelos immediately after the wedding to file his story at the internet cafe. Rachel had been turning her charm on him last night to persuade him to rejoin the party afterwards - we’ll see!

After all the traumas, the wedding finally turned out to be everything that the guests could have asked for. The mayor turned up only a little late :) and the brief civil ceremony was followed by a short but touching service from Donald. We were all asked to lay a stone to build a cairn to mark this milestone in Rachel and Robert’s journey. I’ve not seen this done before - it was very effective: an alternative way for people to join in if the religious elements didn’t mean anything to them. I’d also not seen a wedding cake with fireworks on top before :)

Music local and Scottish, photo session on the beach, then an afternoon snorkelling, snoozing, burying people in sand - the usual beach diversions. The weather clouded over and it made a half-hearted attempt to rain a few times - in fact ideal weather for the non-sun worshippers.

More vague conversations and worries about how people will get home. It will be interesting to see how people like Lizzie will get on - she booked with Freedom Flights, but flew out before Exel went tits up, so she is entitled to be repatriated. There has been a mutual agreement not to worry until the wedding was out of the way. Worrying in earnest will begin tomorrow.

The celebrations then resumed in earnest at 20.30 with a meal in the taverna that was excellent but seemed to go on for ever. Dancing queen Sue couldn’t wait for the Abba to start. She’d happily dance with anyone - if all else failed, one of the local cats would do ;) Robert and musician friends provided live music for those who preferred ceilidhs to cats.

We had texts through the evening from people in the UK to say they had seen Phil’s report on ITN. Phil had not reappeared for dinner, so Mel and I scrounged a lift back to town with a couple of Danish guys who had their second home on the island. In the small hours of the morning it was still pleasantly warm and people were still sitting out in tavernas - a peaceful end to a lovely day.

September 14, 2008

Walking … it’s what we do

Up at 8 o’clock, thoroughly rested after a good night’s sleep. We decided to try out Heather Parson’s book of walks on Skopelos. We don’t do beach holidays, whereas everyone else on Skopelos does. We felt a bit out of place heading off for the hills with rucksack, long trousers, and long sleeved shirts (I don’t do sun either). Walking along the seafront in Skopelos we must have been an odd sight. We had made some compromises though - we’d left our hiking boots at home :)

Hiking up roads in full sun isn’t much fun, but once we turned off onto the footpaths it was really very pleasant. The ground is very dry and dusty underfoot, and there’s a lot of scrubby little goat-resistant shrubs which would not be much fun in bare legs. Mostly there’s enough shade so that even the ascents are comfortable.

We found Heather’s book a bit of a challenge. Admittedly, I’m not a guide book person. If I get a book of walks, I like to decipher them on a good map and then use the map. Unfortunately the map with Heather’s book isn’t a walkers’ map - it’s a colourful impression of the island for tourists.

We happily pottered up to a couple of monasteries - pre-Mamma Mia, the island was famous for the profusion of abbots and abbesses; now its just famous for Abba :) but then got totally lost in a confusion of goat tracks trying to follow Heather’s route to Palouki, at 567m the second highest peak on the island. Still, we had a thoroughly enjoyable day, including a little siesta under some trees.

Back in “civilisation” in Skopleos, we hoped to sneak off to the hotel unnoticed, but made the mistake of stopping for ice cream and fresh orange. Sure enough, Rachel turned up with Pat and Charlotte, heading off to the port to collect some more arrivals (I have lost the plot in Rachel’s extended family). Everyone else seemed to have spent the day on the beach. So Mel and I are now outed as a pair of genuine eccentrics. Today’s disasters so far: one mobile phone had gone for a swim with its owner, and Donald (the vicar) had lost his wallet with all his credit cards.

To round off the evening, the entire party met up at Englesias for a meal at 20.30. Another disaster for the list: the proprietor had been in a car crash that afternoon and was in hospital (in Volos!) getting fixed up - nothing serious, just bones and bruises. The rest of his family had rallied round to keep the business going. We will all remember the apprentice waiters running round looking for takers for meals: “fish! fish! fish!” or “meat! meat! meat!” The good news was that someone had found Donald’s wallet and had handed it in - the biggest incident the police have had to deal with in Glossa for a long time.

We were also told that Heather’s book has a bit of a reputation with locals. They are used to seeing tourists with a copy of the book in one hand, and a bewildered look on their faces.

Big day tomorrow (11.30 on the beach at Limnonari - what else can go wrong - food poisoning tonight?).

Who are 'they' ?

I recently found a discussion on our Danish forum (http://www.oooforum.dk) about language tools. One of the participants wrote: It will be nice when they get automatic grammar checking implemented in OpenOffice.org. Yeah that's right. But who are 'they' ? Do we expect the OpenOffice.org development team to create a Danish language tool ? I hope not. Danish language tools must be developed by

September 13, 2008

Off to Skopelos (maybe)

Off to Skopelos - the “Mamma Mia island” - for Robert and Rachel’s wedding next Monday. Rachel had gone out to Skopelos a week earlier to make arrangements, and we were expecting to meet up with most of the other guests en route.

Alarm clock went off at 5am. Switched on the radio and heard the news that Exel - the UK’s third largest holiday company had gone bust. We’d booked our flight through one of their subsidiaries, Freedom Flights :(. The taxi was booked, so we decided to go on to Waverley Station, where we met bridegroom Robert. He hadn’t heard the news, so I broke it to him gently…

He was in a worse position financially as he’d booked his flight directly from the Exel website, which meant his only hope of getting his money back was if he’d paid by credit card. We knew we were ok, as we’d bought ours through an ATOL registered broker, so we’d at least get our flight money back eventually.

We all decided to travel on down to Manchester anyway - as our flight was actually operated by Air Malta on charter to Exel, it wasn’t entirely certain what the position would be. The on-line departure boards at Manchester airport showed any planes owned by Exel were grounded, but our flight was still shown as running.

No-one seemed any the wiser at Manchester. By now there was nearly a dozen of us. It turned out that ATOL didn’t want anyone else flying out to Greece, as there were thousands of stranded tourists already out there. If they could stop more people going out, it meant there would be more empty spaces coming back for people who were stuck. Air Malta would only let people on their flight if they paid again. Some tour operators mannaged to do this for their customers, which meant the Air Malta flight eventually went off to Skiathos half full, but we weren’t on it.

Meanwhile the press were hunting round the airport for sob stories of tourists who hadn’t been able to travel. Once Rachel’s Mum Pat gave them the story about bride Rachel in Skopelos and groom Robert in Manchester the media arrived in force, and Robert and Pat were in great demand. We all had to pose for photos looking suitably miserable. Shame Robert hadn’t called Max Clifford - he’d have made a fortune.

More phone calls from Rachel and co. They had been on the internet and had found a SwissAir flight from Manchester to Zurich, and then Zurich to Thessaloniki, from where it is theoretically possible to get to Skopelos. We’d looked at this route before and decided it was too tedious to be worth considering. Anyway, everyone else was going this way - Rachel’s mum dithered but was persuaded to go - we felt we couldn’t be wet blankets so we threw our lot in with the rest. It would be a long journey.

So we boarded the evening flight from Manchester to Zurich (in flight meal: choice of manky cheese or manky tuna roll), a very short change which would have guaranteed lost baggage anywhere in the world except Switzerland, then on to Thessaloniki (in flight meal: choice of manky tuna or manky cheese roll), arriving at about half two in the morning, with baggage.

Meanwhile Rachel had gone to the travel agent in Skopelos and booked three taxis to take the eleven of us the 200km or so from Thessaloniki airport to the next stage, the port of Volos. She’d also had a call from ITN, who wanted to fly out a reporter from London to cover our journey and the wedding. He was due to arrive in Thessaloniki at half three, so Robert held back one of the taxis for an hour until his plane got in from Gatwick. Rachel thought there was a good chance ITN would pay for our taxis and ferry.

So the first two taxis set off with the first eight of us. The people who were sitting in the front passenger seats immediately regretted it as the two drivers set off at speeds up to 160km/h on the quiet roads. To add to the interest, they’d keep ringing each other up on their mobiles (one hand) while chain smoking (other hand flicking ash out the open window).

There was also something going on with seat belts. Both drivers conspicuously belted up when they reached the toll gates on the motorway - and immediately unbuckled as soon as they were through. They also shot off alarmingly into the countryside at one point. The pessimists thought we were going to be held for ransom in a remote barn - then we realised they had a ’scenic route’ that bypassed one of the toll gates.

We eventually arrived in Volos at half five-ish. We grabbed some of the chairs from a seafront cafe (closed) and made oursleves comfortable. It was dark but warm. People were getting a bit frayed by this stage… The final taxi arrived about an hour later, with our three, plus Phil the man from ITN who had indeed agreed to pay for a taxi in exchange for the story. Maybe Max would have secured a better deal than Rachel:)

We had an apology for a breakfast at the seafront cafe and got on the ferry just after nine. It sailed at ten, what was supposed to be a four hour crossing. The crossing was fine, but there wasn’t much to eat except toasties with plastic ham and plastic cheese. The ferry was comfortable to sit (but not to sleep) and air-conditioned, which was good as it was very hot and hazy outside.

Phil got some more footage and another interview with Robert. It was interesting to see the economies hitting ITN. Once upon a time it would have been the journalist, a cameraman, and a sound recorder. Now Phil was looking for a volunteer to hold his little Sony camera while he spoke to Robert.

The final indignity came just as we were within swimming distance of Skopelos. We’d all been summoned to the downstairs decks (it was a big car ferry). The lorries had started up their engines, filling the deck with fumes, when it became obvious we weren’t going anywhere. We emerged back on deck to see that another ferry had just nipped in ahead of us, completely blocking the port. So our ferry had to wait, sitting doing nothing, until the ferry moved off. Felt like hours - probably 30 minutes.

Anyway, the eleven of us plus Phil finally got to Skopelos around 3pm local time - 32 hours after we got out of bed at 5am on Friday morning. It’s amazing how long you can go without real food or real sleep if you have to :) We may never see the final story on ITN, probably broadcast on Monday night after Phil has done some shots of the wedding. Some of the youngsters have had texts to tell them they’d been spotted on Channel 4 and BBC News last night.

So, we’ve just had a quick potter round Skopelos to buy our ferry tickets for the first leg of our return journey. This looks to be pretty grim too, with a 7am catamaran to Volos, bus to Thessaloniki, aim to get as late as bus as possible out to the airport and start our return flights at 4am on Sunday. This time the time difference will work in our favour, so we’ll actually get into Manchester at 8am UK time, after a six hour journey via Zurich. We should be home mid afternoon.

My USB wireless dongle thing doesn’t work here. The hotel’s advertised “internet” actually means they’ll let you use their PC at reception, which is Windows XP in Greek with a painfully slow, useless dial up connection. Other than that the hotel is fine, air con, en suite, little balcony, swimming pool, etc. There is an internet cafe with WiFi though.

Local specialities for dinner on the seafront: Skopelos cheese pie: a coiled sausage made of local feta cheese in filo pastry, which wasn’t anything special. Main course was stiffado (beef, onions, and prunes pot roasted) which was delicious. Bumped into Eildon and Ian who by chance had alreaady booked to be on holiday in Athens and so had a much less painful journey here. They joined us for coffee, which arrived eventually. The restaurant was pretty full, maybe more than they had planned for. I suspect we’ll keep on bumping into other wedding guests during the week - it’s that sort of island.

September 12, 2008

Advise: before you switch to Linux

I'm pretty sure that I will stick with Linux from now on. I have had some problems on the way, but now I feel quite comfortable with my 'new' computer. I'll give you a few advises before you decide to switch: Find out witch programs you actually use on your computer. Do it very accurate, for example by making notes about it every day for about two weeks. Then, put priority on the applications.

September 11, 2008

Lotus Notes integration

I've been working with system integration with Lotus Notes and Office for several years now and I have been looking forward to see how IBM Lotus would take advantage of Lotus Symphony and Lotus Notes. Both applications are build on the same Eclipse platform and I have talked to lots of customers about how IBM could take advantage of this. Here it is. And I hope that this is only the beginning.

Celebrating Freedom


Right since the beginning of September we are being litteraly submerged by the number of events promoting OpenOffice.org around the world. Let me summarize those for you; I hope you will see that we have something for everyone these days! 

The first even to come is the NLC Meeting in Bolzano, Italy. This meeting gathers the international community of OpenOffice.org for a bit more than a day and will provide a broad overview of our activities in the development, marketing and localization fields. You are encouraged to register here; you will also find additional information on the same web site.

The second event will also be quite fun, but at the moment we’re missing the actual registration web site; stay tuned though, because we’re inviting you in Paris for the official launch of OpenOffice.org 3.0 and the eighth anniversary of the OpenOffice.org Project. This will be a party, gathering not just the community but the broader circles of technophiles, entrepreneurs and journalists in a magnificent place, courtesy of the Region Ile-de-France.

The last, but not the least, is the actual OOo Con 2008. This year, our official yearly event will take place in Beijing, PRC. Please hurry up to register and make sure you have your Visa; this year will be exceptional, I’m being told.

And of course, in case some of you were still wondering: OpenOffice.org 3.0 is landing. More exactly we have released a RC1, and the RC2 should come soon. As it is something more stable than traditional betas, you should download it and try it; but keep in mind that this is in no way the final version. I have been trying it as I have been trying the betas and even less stable builds; but the RC is definitely worth a look. And it simply rocks on a Mac, has improved looks, features, presentation, and so on. But I don’t wish to make you wait; freedom cannot wait.Stay tuned!

Share This