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 Theo just blogged about some wine and single malt whisky, which reminded me about a blog entry I had planned to write last week, but then work came inbetween. Recently my best friend from growing up came over from London on a business trip, so I picked him up at the airportand we went to have dinner at Capital Grille in Dallas. The food was good, if not as good as at Nick and Sam's where we went at a previous visit. But still good.After dinner I had a Cognac. I am usually more a single malt person, but on occasion I enjoy a good cognac as well. Capital Grille did not have any really exciting single malts, so I decided to the the Delamain Vesper cognac. At $48 for a glass, it was pricey, but worth it! This 35 year old cognacwas incredible smooth, had a great fruit flavor with a hint of vanillaflavor and a very long aftertaste.I been looking in the local liqour stores for it, but no luck. Even wrote to the importer, who told me no stores inthe DFW areacarry it. They told me to contact their local sales rep/agent for this part of the country to see if I could buy abottle. So when I get back from Lotusphere, I plan to do that.If you like cognac, I can not recommend this one enough. At between $120 and $199 per bottle (online prices) it is not cheap, though. But I would say it is worth it.  

As I wrote back in June, I managed to do a submersion test of my (then fairly new) Blackberry Bold. It worked perfectly fine after that. Then a little bit later in the summer I dropped it on concrete and got a small crack in the screen. I checked with insurance, it would cost me $125 to get the phone replaced, and it was not bad enough to spend that money on a new phone, which probably would be a refurbished anyway.The phone started acting up about a month ago, dropping calls, etc. Sure, could be the network (I have AT&T) but I walked into the local AT&T store and talked to the sales guy. He said it sounded like a problem with the phone, and it should be covered by warranty. He then opened the battery compartment and looked, then said "OK, no water damage. Tell that when you call AT&T about warranty replacement."So a few days later I called, and was told to open the battery compartment and tell her color of the sticker on there. I told her it was red, and she said that it indicated water had come into contact with the sticker. Oh well, just wonder why the sales guy could not tell. The label is supposed to be white when no liquid has touched it.I decided to hold off a bit longer. Then the camera stopped working (even if it later started working again, after about a week) and the battery started to drain quickly and teh phone got really warm while charging. Something was obviously wrong.I called the insurance company on Monday. While on hold, the automated voice mentioned that I might be eligible for an upgrade. So I checked online, and I could get the Blackberry Bold 9700 for just $99 after mail-in rebate. When the 9700 came out, I decided I would stick with my 9000, that it was not worth to spend the money on an upgrade. But now, with the phone acting up and Lotusphere coming up, I had to bite the bullet.I received the phone Thursday (no shipping charge when placing order online!) and have now been playing with it for 2 days. Here are my thoughts.The phone is smaller. I am still getting used to the smaller keyboard, at least initially I did more typos when texting.The screen has a higher resolution, 480x360 instead of 480x320. This cases my favourite theme not to work anymore. I can download it, but it does not show up in the list of available themes.The trackpad is very nice, but will probably take another day or two to get used to. The nice thing is that dirt won't get in there to cause problems, like with the ball on the older Blackberries.OS 5.0 installed from factory. Very nice. There are some small details I don't like, hopefully I can change that using Blackberry Theme Studio. For example, in the inbox the name of th sender is black and bold while…

Abouttwo years ago I bought my first1 TB harddisk, an external USB-drive from Hitatchi. I been having it connected 24/7since then. It have mostly been used for backup purposes, Isyncronizeall my photos there from the internal drive where I normally store them. But I have also beenusing it to download files, especially when the other drives in my computer were full. At times I used Bittorrent to download things (like ISO images ofUbunty, SUS, etc), and since I then shared the files for a while, there were a lot of read and writes.About 2 weeks ago I noticed a worrying clicking sound from the drive. I turned it off, let it cool off and turned it on.The sound got worse, and theexternal indicator was spinning for minutes instead fo seconds. And of course the computer refused to see the drive. So what data did I lose? All the pictures werecopies of the ones on the internal drive, butI might have some other files on therewhich I did not have backed up. ISO images and similar could be downloaded again, but I hated to not know what else I might have lost.I assumed I had to go buy a new drive, I need that space for files and I want somewhere to store a copy of all my photos. Iwent to the Hitachi website to check on warranty, even if I knew the warranty most probably was expired long time ago, but does not cost to check. Yep, expired. No surprise there.  Then it hit me. What if I could open the case, take out the physical drive and hook it up to my computer using one of my USB adapters? I started looking more closely at the drive. No obvious screwholes, butthere were two labels on the back, with teh text "Warranty void if removed". Feeling on them I could tell they were covering two screws. 30 seconds later the case had been opened. Another 60 seconds, and I was holding a 3.5" 1 TB SATA drive in my hands. I hooked the drive up to my SATA & IDE to USB adapter, plugged in the power and connected the adapter to the computer. The drive showed up fine, I could look at the files, and running the hard disk diagnostics in Ubuntu showed that the drive was fine.It seems like it was simply the electronics in the USB case that had died. Then, just 2-3 days later, a friend called me intears. Her 500 GB external USB drive (Western Digital MyBook)refused to show up in her computer. It had made some sounds earlier,which she ignored. Now the drive was dead, and she was missing all pictures from the first five years of her daughters life. No other backup, of course, the USB drive was her only copy.I did the same operation on her drive. It was much harder to open and had more screws, metal and junk inside. But finally I had a SATA drive in my hands and plugged it in…

About two weeks ago I decide to switch my main operating system at home to Ubuntu. By using VMware I was going to be able to run the handful of Windows applications I needed, and at the same time get better security, etc. I had a couple of small problems, that were eventually solved, and now I have been running this setup for a few days.For the most part I like it. I am still having to look around a bit long for where different things are, I miss being able to right-click on the desktop to change all settings related to it, and instead have to select several different items under System Preferences. I tried to get Epihpany Empathy working as my IM client, but it did not take/store my different accounts. I then installed Pidgin instead, which works fine. Only problem there is that many nice functions I am used to in Yahoo and MSN Messenger, like webcam support, is not available. I also can't just drag-and-drop a file to the chat window to send it, I have to click my way through the directories. And Pidgin does not let me browse network drive, just local drives for some reason.Some websites I visit are clearly more designed for Internet Explorer, but I have not had any real issues with Firefox.I still have not installed Notes or Domino Designer/Admin. Waiting for my network admin to download 8.5.1 for me. Hope to get that installed soon too.I have been sick most of the last week, so not been doing that much. But this far I like my new setup.  

As I mentioned the other day,I am planning to start using Ubuntu as my main operating system at home, and use VMware to run Windows applications when needed.  Late Friday evening I started by emptying a 250 GB IDE harddisk from files, and then I unplugged all drives except the empty one as a precaution. I put the CD containing Ubuntu 9.10 ("Karmic Koala") in the computer and turned on the power. The install went extremely smooth, and I even found some new things I really liked compared with 9.04 that I had installed on my son's computer this pastsummer. For example, you can now select "United States" and then "Central" as time zone, instead of having to set the location to either Chicago or some small town i never heard about. Why a large city like Dallas is not in the list baffles me, though... The operating system found some hardware, but not the wireless network card. I actually tried both a Xyxel G-302and a Netgear WG311, none of them really unknown cards. I then (thanks to the online help) found out how to use a Windows driver, and I got the Netgear card to work. I choose that card since I was able to find the driver CD in my messy office. :-)I then installed the Nvidia graphics drivers. This is where i had some problems. I have a GeForce 7900 GS card, so with some help from Google, I found instructions on how to get the latest drivers, and installed them. I think I had to do some recompiling of parts of the operating system as well. I got the drivers to somewhat work, but then something went wrong. In the end I just re-installed the opearting system and started over. I then found out about Envy, and it was a breeze to get the drivers installed. I now had the drivers installed, and even gottwinview working.  There was just one problem. The resolution was just 1152x864 on each monitorat the most, while I was used to 1280x1024 in Windows. The second monitor, a Samsung, was able to go up to the resolution, but my CyberVision C92 was not recognized. After some googeling, I figured out that I had to modify the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf in order to provide the hsync and vsync values. I changed the values, after I figured out that I could not just use the editor gedit from the menu, I had to go to the terminal and start it from the command line using sudo in order to get full access to the system. Why there is no right-click and "run as root", I don't get... I restarted (I am sure there is a way to restart X without restarting the whole computer, but I am a noob and my computer restart really fast anyway) and now I could use the Nvidia control panel to set the resolution. Oops. The settings did not stick, I had to svae them. OK, no problem, click on…

At my work they use Postini to block websites in categoriesthat the management does not thinkanyusers should have access to. Webmail of all flavors, Facebook, twitter and many more sites.Today I was looking at differentLinux distributions, and decided to take a closer look at OpenSUSE. The main page loaded fine, but when I clicked on the link to learn more, I got the following message:Guess Postini thinksLinux is illegal software... 

Last night Istarted a new project at home. The other day I wiped my son's computer, running Ubuntu 9.04 and installed the new version, 9.10 Karmic Koala. I got everything working, so I thought I would try something new. Since Erik mostly go to Youtube, Wikipedia and some educational sites, he does normally not need Windows. But he have some Windows-based games (mainly MS Flight Simulator)he like to play, so I thought it would be nice if he could play them on his computer instead ofusing mine. So I installed VMware Workstation on the computer, and it worked really good. I quickly copied a Windows 98(!)virtual machineover to his system and it loaded up without any problems. I am now in the process of building a Windows XP VM for him.So obviously the next thought was: "Why don't I do this on my main computer?".It is about time to reinstall the system anyway, it has been a year and the system is starting to run slower. Many of the things I do on a daily basis I can do in Ubuntu. And if I create a couple of virtual Windows XP machines, I can even separate different invironments from each other.The plan is to get a new drive and install Ubuntu on it, then add VMware. I plan to have one clean Windows XP VM, which I can use as a base system. Then I will build one where I install Photoshop, Sony Vegas and DVD Architect, DVDshrink, Nero (yes, I know there are tools in Ubuntu to burn CD/DVD, but I have the impression Nero have more functionality, and it integrates with DVD Architect and DVDshrink) and a few more related tools. Another VM will contain development tools (Eclipse, Notes 8.5.1 with Domino Designer and Administrator, perhaps Visual Studio Express). If I want to test some new programs,I just load up a new VM, test it and delete afterwards if I am not happy.So tonight I will finish testing the setup on my son'ts computer, and then I will start preparing my main computer. I will have to cleanup or get a drive where I can install Ubuntu, with enough space for a number of VM images. Will see how much I will break. :-)  

Carl Tyler wrote about him realizing it was 21 years ago he got his first email address:The day after my 40th birthday, I realized it had been exactly 21 years since I got my first email account. It was if I remember rightly Tylerc2@NossVM6. This was my IBM PROFS address and I was given it the day I started there. That made me think back at my first email address.I got it when I started working at Microsoft, in late August 1988, so just over 21 years ago for me as well. I was fresh out of thegymnasium (the Swedish equialent of theCollege Preperatory High School in the United States), and the Systems Programming education I had just started was cancelled and postponed for a semester due to lack of students. So I applied for a job at Microsoft, despite never using any MS products. I was using CP/M-86,WordStar and and Turbo Pascal 3.x in school.During my first week they gave me the address karlhenr@microsoft.com. Notice the missing y in my name, they could not handle my long/full first name. The limit back then was 8 characters. We had to login to a Xenix-based system to read our email... I also had a FidoNet address, but I did not get that one until a year later.  

With the newlicensing of Domino Designer in Notes/Domino 8.5.1, there have been a lot of questions.Ed Brill answered most of them the other day. As we are using the Domino Express license where I work, I put together a short executive summary for my managers, and I wanted to share it here.Domino Designer 8.5.1 can be used for free (no license needed) to develop local applications.In order to deploy applications to a Domino Enterprise Server (regular license or Express, does not matter), an Enterprise Client Access License (CAL) is needed. The Messaging only CAL can not be used, nor can the Collaboration Express license.Any developer in a Domino Collaboration Express environment need (in addition to the Express license) an Enterprise CAL in order to use Domino Designer. The cost is $159. The Express license is $142. Both prices areaccording to Ed Brill.A license for Domino Designer used to be $864, so it is still a substantial cost reduction,$705 to be precise.For a customer using the cheaper per-seat and no serverchargeDomino Express license, the cost savings will still be large, even if Designer technically not is free in that environment.Previous versions of Domino Designer are not free. Only 8.5.1 and later.In my personal opinion, I think IBM should make all versions of Designer free. No extra license needed to deploy applications on any servers. Each developer will still need either an Enterprise CAL or a Domino Collaboration Express license anyway.I hope this is a beginning of getting Domino Designer out there, and making developers aware of the tool. I can see a need for plenty of good books/wikis/reference material for new developers, though. I still believe in books. You can read them in the bathroom, in bed, on a flight (even during take-off and landing). Revisit the R6 Developer Redbook and publish a new version of it, updated for Designer 8.5.1... 

R. Lee Ermey from Lock 'n' Load on History Channel guides us through the Swedish AT-4 Rocket Launcher. A new version, AT-4 CS (Confined Spaces) as shown onFutureWeapons: 

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A new Texas law that took effect September 1, 2009. H.B. 2003 says a person commits a third degree felony if the person posts one or more messages on a social networking site with the intent to harm, defraud, intimidate or threaten another person.The same thing goes for instant messaging, it is now illegal to pretend to be someone else in an IM, trying to defraud or intimidate someone.Full text here: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/billlookup/text.aspx?LegSess=81R&Bill=HB2003    

I been having a strange problem with a particular view in one of my Notes applications.The view displays main documents andchild (response)documents.The problem is thatthe child documents are not sorting correctly, as you can see in the following screenshot:  The child documents are created using several different forms, and I have a hidden column in the view intended to sort the documents in a particular order based on the form.The first column isjust displaying the claim number (09PSITXnnnnnnn, etc). It is sorted but not categorized. It is set to show a twistie when expandable. The column is very narrow, so it will only show the custom twistie I am using.  The second column is the one I use for sorting. The column formula is as follows:@If(Form="Coverage Verification";1; Form="QuickStrikeSheet";2; Form="Expense Sheet";3; Form="Attachments";4; Form="Time Sheet";5; Form="Legal Summary";6; Form="Diary";7; Form="Log";8; Form="Negotiation Summary";9; Form="LargeLossNoticeReport";10;@Left(Form;4)="frm_";11;@Left(Form;10)="MailMerged";12;99 ); The column is hidden and sorted ascending.The next column is where I display the actual titles/descriptions of the response documents. The column is not sorted in any way, and the column formula is as follows:@If(Form="LargeLossNoticeReport";"Investigative Summary"; Form="Coverage Verification";"Coverage info"; Form="Time Sheet";"Time sheet/Activity Notes"; Form="Legal Summary";"Legal Summary - " + LegalStatus; Form="Attachments";"Attachments"; Form="QuickStrikeSheet" ;"ClaimCare summary"; Form="Expense Sheet" ;"Financial transactions"; Form="Negotiation Summary";"Negotiation Specialist summary"; Form="Log";"Log";Form="Diary";"Diary";@Left(Form;4)="frm_"; FormTitle; Form="MailMergedEmail";"'" + Subject + "' sent to " + sendto+" on " + @Text(@Date(@Created)) + " at " + @Text(@Time(@Created)); Form="MailMergedFaxed"; "'" + Subject + "' faxed to " + sendto+" on " + @Text(@Date(@Created)) + " at " + @Text(@Time(@Created)); Form="MailMergedDoc";"'"+Subject + "' mailed on " + @Text(@Date(@Created));"*** error ***") Following this column I have a handful more, but they are all for the main document, showing additional info, creating the colored background based on status, etc.Below is the design, with the non-sortable view selected.It seems like the response documents are being displayed in some other sort order. It does not seem to be consistent with the order they are created, though. Anyone can figure this out? I am using Domino Designer 7.0.2.Please mail me at khm@deep-south.com if you can't comment here.I would have asked the question on twitter or used SameTime and the BleedYellow community server, but my network admin is blocking pretty much everything. Especially twitter, as he think the only use for twitter is to see what Ashton Kutcher is doing...Update: If I move the hidden sortedcolumn to the left, before the categorized column, the sorting is correct but then the users can't jump quickly to a particular claim number by doing a view search (just start typing in a claim number). 

Today's announcement about the release of Notes and Domino 8.5.1were expected, but what I did not expect was that Domino Designer now will be free! I think this will help in marketing Notes and Domino. Developers who are interested in testing Notes development can now get it for free. As Ed Brill said: it is bringing Notes back to it's roots.If now IBMwould setup up a Domino server for the developers to try their applications on, IBM would have a winner. I know OpenNTF have been talking about something like that, but I would imagine there being a need/use for a IBM hosted offering like that as well.The licensing of the client is also changing. The old Collaboration license is changing name to CAL Enterprise. The old Messaging license will be called CAL Messaging. Those two licenses will be used for all different ways to access Domino data, no matter if it is using the Notes client, iNotes or other clients.Personally I am very interested in playing around with 8.5.1 myself, despite myworkplace just being in the process of upgrading fromR5 to ND7...I also think it was really cool that IBM is pushing OpenNTF in the announment. 

Watch the two screencam videos linked below. They are each about 10-15 seconds long.Exactly the same code, running on the same computer, against the same server.I am able to reproduce the results are reproduced every time I test.Notes 5.0.12 Notes 7.0.2 I don't have Notes 8.x on this system, as our plans currently are to eventually move all our users to Notes 7...And I don't see Notes 8.x being deployed in a near future here.Update: I just used TeamStudio Profiler to time the process. In Notes 5 it took 3.8 seconds, in Notes 7 it took 0.8 seconds. The main difference was in calling a db.GetView(). I then wrote some code that just call that function 8 times, each time to a different view. It took 2.4 seconds in Notes 5 and 0.17 seconds in Notes 7, again according to Profiler. 

After Kathy Brown wrote about lists earlier today, I thought I would share another example of how they can be used. Back in April I shared some code showing how to get latitude and longitude for an address, by calling Google's GeoCode REST service.Today I will show how easy it is to use that class together with a list...First, let's revisit the GeoCode class. I made some minor modifications, so I will post the latest version here:Class GeoData Private GeoString As String Public street As String Public city As String Public zip As String Public state As String Public latitude As String Public longitude As String Public Sub New(streetStr As String, cityStr As String, stateStr As String, zipStr As String) Dim httpObject As Variant Dim mapsKey As String Dim mapsURL As String Dim address As String Dim retries As Integer Dim httpURL As String Dim returncode As String Dim coordinates As String Dim ret As Integer Dim xmladdress As String Dim addarray As Variant retries = 0 Set httpObject = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP") mapsKey = "your_googleAPI_key" mapsUrl = "http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=" address = streetStr & ", " & cityStr & ", " & stateStr & " " & zipStr httpURL = mapsURL & address & "&output=xml&key=" & mapsKey ' Use output=CSV for CVS file Do If retries>1 Then Sleep 1 ' After the two first calls, introduce a 1 second delay betwen each additional call End If retries = retries + 1 Call httpObject.open("GET", httpURL, False) Call httpObject.send() GeoString = Left$(httpObject.responseText,16000) returncode = GetGeoValue("code") If retries >= 10 Then returncode = "500" ' Fake other failure after 10 attempts End If Loop Until returncode <> "620" If returncode = "200" Then coordinates = GetGeoValue("coordinates") latitude = Left$(coordinates, Instr(coordinates,",")-1) longitude = Mid$(coordinates, Len (latitude)+2, Instr(Len(latitude)+2,coordinates,",")-Len(latitude)-2) street =GetGeoValue("ThoroughfareName") zip = GetGeoValue("PostalCodeNumber") city = GetGeoValue("LocalityName") state = GetGeoValue("AdministrativeAreaName") xmladdress = GetGeoValue("address") If city = "" Then If state <> "" Then addarray = R5split(xmladdress,", ") city = addarray(1) zip = Right$(addarray(2),5) End If End If If Ucase(state)<>Ucase(stateStr) Then ' Different state? ret = Msgbox("The address returned seems to be very different" & Chr$(13) & _ "from the one submitted." & Chr$(13) & _ "The address returned is:" & Chr$(13) & Chr$(13) & _ street & Chr$(13) & city & ", " & state & " " & zip & Chr$(13) & Chr$(13) & _ "Do you want to use this address?",4+32,"WARNING") If ret = 7 Then street = streetStr zip = zipStr city = cityStr state = stateStr End If End If If street = "" Then Msgbox "The street address could not be verified." & Chr$(13) & _ "Existing value will be saved." & Chr$(13) & _ "Please verify that address is correct.",,"Street Not Verified" street = streetStr End If If city = "" Then Msgbox "The city could not be verified." & Chr$(13) & _ "Existing value will be saved." & Chr$(13) & _ "Please verify that address is correct.",,"City Not Verified" city = cityStr End If Else If returncode = "602" Then Msgbox "No corresponding geographic location found"_ ,,"Google GeoCode Error 602" Elseif returncode = "603" Then Msgbox "The geocode cannot be returned due to legal or contractual reasons." _ ,,"Google GeoCode Error 602" End If ' Return original value to avoid overwriting... street = streetStr zip = zipStr city = cityStr state = stateStr End If End Sub Public Function Accuracy() As Integer Dim startpos As Long Dim endpos As Long If IsValid = False Then Accuracy = 0 Exit Function End If startpos = Instr(Lcase(GeoString),|accuracy="|) + 10 endpos = Instr(startpos, Lcase(GeoString), |"|) If endpos < startpos Then Accuracy = 0 Else Accuracy = Cint(Fulltrim(Mid$(GeoString,startpos, endpos - startpos))) End If End Function Public Function HasAddInfo(address As String) As Integer If Instr(Lcase(address),"apt")>0 Then HasAddInfo = True Elseif Instr(Lcase(address),"apartment ")>0 Then HasAddInfo = True Elseif Instr(Lcase(address),"suite ")>0 Then HasAddInfo = True Elseif Instr(Lcase(address),"ste ")>0 Then HasAddInfo = True Elseif Instr(Lcase(address)," #")>0 Then…

I have a function I wrote way back to generate mail notification out of my program. But in many cases it had to be modified for each use. Yesterday I decided to write simple class instead, and here is the result. I will post it at OpenNTF.org soon as well.This is how you use the class:Set mailnotification = New MailNotification()mailnotification.SendTo="texasswede@gmail.com"mailnotification.Subject = "Test email fron Notes"mailnotification.Principal = "System X "Call mailnotification.body.AppendText( "This is some text in the body field. " )Call mailnotification.body.AppendText( "And some more." )Call mailnotification.body.AddNewLine( 1 )Call mailnotification.body.AppendText( "Docclink: " )Call mailnotification.body.AppendDocLink( doc, "Click to open" )Call mailnotification.body.AddNewLine( 2 )Call mailnotification.Send()Easy, huh?And here is the class itself. I store it in a script library called Class.MailNotification... Enjoy!Class MailNotification Public maildoc As NotesDocument Public body As NotesRichTextItem Public subject As String Public sendto As String Public copyto As String Public bccto As String Public principal As String Public Sub New() Dim session As New NotesSession Set maildoc = New NotesDocument(session.CurrentDatabase) Call maildoc.ReplaceItemValue("Form","Memo") Set body = New NotesRichTextItem(maildoc,"Body") subject = "" sendto = "" copyto = "" bccto = "" principal = "" End Sub Public Sub Send() If subject<>"" Then maildoc.Subject = subject End If If sendto<>"" Then maildoc.SendTo = sendto End If If copyto<>"" Then maildoc.CopyTo = copyto End If If bccto<>"" Then maildoc.BlindCopyTo= bccto End If If principal<>"" Then maildoc.Principal = principal End If Call maildoc.Send(True) End Sub End ClassThis LotusScript was converted to HTML using the ls2html routine, provided by Julian Robichaux at nsftools.com. 

Or perhaps the title of this post should be "Lotus should know". The story below is inspired by several suggestions at the Lotus Knows IdeaJam, including this one. Thisis a true story of how one person in 6 months got a whole department to change from one word processor to another, without even involving the IT department.In early 1993, I started working as a journalist at Computer Sweden, the Swedish edition of ComputerWorld. I had previously worked at Microsoft (in 1988-1990), and then I worked as a programmer for 2 years. At that workplace we used Microsoft Word and Excel. So I was very used to Word.At Computer Sweden, they used WordPerfect 5.1 (if I recall correctly). When writing, they used special markup for QuarkXPress, to set headlines, body text, etc. I did not like WordPerfect, and was not used to it, so I loaded Word on my computer and started working. After a few weeks I decided to make life easier by developing a Normal.dot template so I could format the text in a WYSIWYG way, and then have a macro to create the QuarkXPress markup when I was done. I also added code to copy the resulting file to tne network share where the editors could get to it.Some other users saw it, got Word installed and started using my macro. Within 6 months of me starting, the editor-in-chief demanded that everyone switched to Word and used my macro. WordPerfect was out from that magazine. Soon other magazines followed, and several started using the same macro. Later I modified it to generate HTML, upload the resulting file to teh web server and edit the homepage to include a link to the new story.Not one dollar spent in sales calls/visits, direct marketing or anything from Microsoft, just one user showing how a different tool could do things faster and better. I am sure a similar macro and template could have been done in WordPerfect. But I knew Word, soI built it there.Imagine tech-savy students coming out in the workplaces, loading their computers with "Lotus Notes Personal Edition", "Domino Designer Personal Edition" and connecting to a public demo server provided by IBM, and then develop some useful and good looking applications for their new employer in a day or two...Web-enabled and/or Notes client access in one easy-to-use environment. 

During IamLUGlast week, John Head talked about some really exciting new things that are in the planning stage at OpenNTF. Nathan T Freeman teased a little bit about it the other day as well. What the plan is (and as Nathan said, it is not set in stone it will happen) is that OpenNTF will offer free development hosting. When you create your project, you get a question if you want it hosted. If you select "yes", a VMware server is being setup, Linux and Domino installed, your ID file being created and sent to you within a few minutes. I think John said 120 seconds...I think this is really exciting, it will let everyone start playing with Xpages and other technologies without the need for your own 8.5.x server. I know that I am excited about testing this! From what I hear, IBM donated an open-ended server license for this to happen. 

A couple of months ago, I stumbled on a series of booksat Barnes & Noble. Since I am interested in history, they caught my eye. The first book is named 1632, the second one 1633, and they are parts of a series calledthe 1632 series or "Ring of Fire". Yesterday I happend to stumble on more information about the books, and found out it is a whole series of books, e-books, etc. Many of the books are available as free legal downloads at the publisher Baen Bookswebsite, through the Baen Free Library.From Wikipedia (slightly edited for length:The fictional town of Grantville, West Virginia and its power plant are displaced in space-time. A hemispherical section of land about three miles in radius measured from the town center is transported back in time from April of 2000 to May of 1631. The town is thrust into the middle of the Thirty Years' War, in the German province of Thuringia in the Thuringer Wald, near the fictional German free city of Badenburg. Grantville, led by Mike Stearns, president of the local United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), must cope with the town's space-time dislocation, the surrounding raging war, language barriers, and numerous social and political issues, including class conflict, witchcraft, feminism, the reformation and the counter-reformation, among many other factors. One complication is a compounding of the food shortage when the town is flooded by refugees from the war. The 1631 locals experience a culture shock when exposed to the mores of contemporary American society, including modern dress, sexual liberation, and boisterous American-style politics.Grantville struggles to survive while trying to maintain technology sundered from twenty-first century resources. Throughout 1631, Grantville manages to establish itself locally by forming the nascent New United States of Europe (NUS) with several local cities even as war rages around them. King Gustavus Adolphus rapidly moves the war theater to Franconia and Bavaria, just south of Grantville. This leads to the creation of the Confederated Principalities of Europe (CPoE).I just downloaded 1632 and will start reading it tonight. If it is good, I might just go ahead and buy the books. I think this kind of publishing is great, you get to read some, see if you like it, then buy the books and support the authors.