nztebs

Android Input - playing with 8Pen

2010-11-11T11:34:00.000+13:00

I recently read about 8pen - a new input method for Android, created for touchscreen input, rather than adapting our existing keyboard to somehow function in a tiny space with no tactile feedback or input guidance.

I was reluctant to give 8pen a go, not because I could see there would be a significant learning curve, but because I resent paying for an app that I really am just wanting to try out. I am curious by nature, and I mostly agree that adapting what we have used for years to fit our new devices is a little on the side of craziness. However, they sadly don't do a limited trial, so I spent the ~$NZ 2.04 and installed the app. (By this stage I'd already watched the introductory video so knew what I was getting myself in for).

So, just to briefly give you the gist of 8pen without sending you off to their website to find out more - the characters are laid out in an X shape, with a central round area as below:

You enter characters by starting in the central circle, moving out to the region your letter is on, then moving around the X through up to 4 quadrants and finally returning to the central region - it's really hard to explain in words, but quite simple in action.

An example: to input the letter r

start with your finger in the inner circle,
drag out to the right hand quandrant,
then in the direction that the r is in (so anticlockwise), drag your finger through 2 quadrants (ending in the left hand quadrant between blue & green)
and finally return to the central circle.

Why 2 quadrants? Because the letter r is the 2nd one along the axis. If you'd wanted f - the 3rd letter on the same axis, you'd have done the same, however you'd have gone around 3 quadrants instead of 2.

To input a word, you simply string together a whole bunch of letters without raising your finger. If you raise your finger after inputting a letter, a space is implied.

So, I expect that's probably as clear as mud - as I said, it sounds really complicated in words.

What did I think of it after using it? Well, I like the concept, I think the implementation is pretty good - easy to capitalise, add special characters, insert smileys and punctuation, however, and this is a killer for me, I found all those tiny but quite precise actions that required me to keep my finger on the surface of the phone quite problematic - my wrist became very sore very quickly, and the build-up of skin oils on the screen means that dragging your finger across the surface becomes more and more difficult.

I did a comparison from a comfort perspective between 8pen and the standard android keyboard, and I do find that pecking at the various keys on the keyboard is actually much better for my hands - rather than using lots of tiny muscles to make small precise movements with a single finger, I use a couple of large muscles and move my whole hand to the various keys.

I wasn't quite sure what was going on with the predictive text part of 8pen, but I certainly didn't find it as accurate as the standard keyboard - it seemed to regularly think that I was trying to enter obscure words of at least 5 syllables when I was just trying to write 'testing' for example!

8pen has also implemented non-standard gestures that you can record - anything that doesn't start in the central section can be recorded as a gesture. So for example, I get really sick of having to type my email address in. With 8pen, I created a single gesture which I could draw in the input area and have it translate to my full email address. This I like. But the physical aspects of using 8pen mean that it is a no-go for me I'm afraid.

Holidaying in Sydney with an Android

2010-11-03T09:35:00.000+13:00

We've recently returned from an 11 day holiday in Sydney, Australia, including a couple of days up in the Hunter Valley tasting wines and cheeses. I used my Android phone extensively during the holiday, where I would previously have done a whole lot of research and preparation before I went, and carried guidebooks and pieces of paper with the things I thought would be helpful.

Here is a list of the things I found helpful, and some things that enabled this.

Firstly, I didn't bother buying an Australian SIM card, which meant that I 100% avoided using any data over 3G - at $5 per Mb, forget it! However, for the Sydney part of the holiday at least, we were staying in a hotel with free WiFi for all guests (Radisson Plaza on O'Connell St)
There are plenty of free WiFi hotspots around Sydney! We made use of:

Upper deck of the Manly ferry - you have up to 2 blocks of 30 minutes/30Mb (whichever you hit first) per day
Museum of Syndey Cafe - there is a 'Free Wireless Hotspot' here that requires you simply to fill in a simple survey to get access (I believe there are more of these around)
The new Westfield Mall on Pitt St (which opened while we were there)

TripIt - Simon's been using this for a while, but finally convinced me to use it in earnest for this trip, where I would normallly have done up a one page calendar with all the hotel and transportation information and carried around a printed copy. So I had the master trip in TripIt online, added Simon as a traveller, then installed the Android App so I always had the details with me. (Nb that I also have a TripIt calendar linked into my Google Calendar - so I also had all the appointments in Jorte - my preferred Android Calendar app). One thing I would like to see from TripIt is that the app not be read-only as it currently is.

I used 'other' events in Tripit to write notes about shops we were interested in, restaurants we wanted to make bookings for and info we'd found about transport and such like - so again, these were all just there in my phone (again, with the slight frustration that I couldn't edit them using the TripIt app)

TripViewBeta - I cannot recommend this app enough! I started off using a bus app, and 'next manly ferry' app, then stumbed on this one and promptly removed the others. This includes all bus, train & ferry timetables for Sydney - you can either search by route, or by start and destination suburb, save trips, then refer to them as needed. And the public transport in Sydney is fabulous! (well, coming from Auckland it is anyway). We did a lot of walking in central Sydney, but we also ventured out to Neutral Bay, Manly, Central, Surry Hills (a couple of times), and contemplated heading to Leichhardt, but gave that a miss in the end.
c:geo - for geocaching of course. :-) Although I have to admit, getting coordinates in central city is an absolute nightmare, and every cache you look at will include log entries of people commenting about not being able to get a lock!
Foursquare - again, this is another app that Simon has been using for ages and regularly encouraged me to do so, and I finally relented and signed up while we were in Sydney. This was useful in that it was good to see where there other people nearby - this often indicated good local hangouts, and the tips at various locations were also useful - recommendations for dishes to try, seats to avoid, service to not expect! One thing to note, if you sign up from your phone, even if you use the browser, you don't seem to be able to add a photo to your profile (at least on my N1 I couldn't, and had to use the netbook we'd taken with us).
Camera - I got some great pics from my N1 camera, which I then shared up to flickr using...
FlickrFree. (photos can be seen here) Simon then used some of these, along with the ones he'd taken, for our Sydney blogposts.

There were a bunch of other guidebook style apps I had installed for both Australia & Sydney, but they all ended up being next to useless. Most of what we did and saw was based on recommendations from friends (particularly restaurants), plus a few specific google searches for things we hoped to find while we were there.

Random including google, analytics and loving open office

2010-10-10T22:43:00.001+13:00

I just checked out google analytics for this blog and found that someone found it this week after searching for "jane gianoutsos" and "jane gianoutsos openoffice". Makes me feel a little bit famous. Someone other thane me googled me. [sheepish grin]

Anyways - if you're still reading mystery googler - Hi!

And once again, if anyone is swearing at Open Office, please please do let me know what's bugging you with it so I have more inspiration for working out how to do other things in OO and subsequently blogging about it. Hmm, I must do that post on getting the most of TOCs - which I love btw.

Apps I use on my Android

2010-10-05T09:32:00.001+13:00

Apologies to all those that I promised this to. It's taken me waaaay too long to do it. In the name of getting it done, I'm going for a list only here, but please feel free to ask questions in the comments.

What I'm using: Google Nexus One, running Froyo, Android 2.2, build FRF91.

Notes:

I'll list all the apps I either find useful or interesting, and then will finish with a list of widgets I'm using.
All apps in the list are free unless otherwise stated, and currently there is only one app I have purchased (Robo Defense - see games below).
for most of these apps listed I have tried multiple different apps to solve a need, and the list below represents the ones I have settled on as having the best combination of features, usability and fit for purpose.

General OS and device organisation

3G watchdog - to keep track of when 3G is on, and how much 3G data I've consumed
Adobe Reader - so I can read PDFs on the phone
Astro - primarily for file browsing and file management
Android System Info (seldom used, but useful if I need to know what's going on)
Apps Organizer - this is one of my favourite apps - allowing me to categorize applications then create folders of related apps - ie 'Games', 'Travel', 'Social' etc. (not as ugly as the default folder functionality, allows ordering by way of 'favourites')
Barcode Scanner - useful for scanning in QR codes for apps in particular
Bluetooth File Transfer - I find this much easier for sharing files to my PC via bluetooth than the standard system bluetooth features
Browser - ~~I'm using the standard N1 browser. I tried Dolphin for a while, but didn't find any of the features to enhance my experience, so went back to the default~~ shortly after publishing this I was reading a blog on my phone that I wanted to subscribe to in Google Reader and realised it didn't have a 'subsribe to RSS' function (which I'm used to from FireFox). So I gave Dolphin another go - and I"m sticking with it - love the integration with all my google applets, Delicious, the ability to subsribe to RSS, and I think I'll probably find the gestures pretty useful too.
Dotty - not a useful app, but interesting - especially seeing some of the dodgy behaviour in multi-touch handling on the N1.
Dr Web for Android - antivirus
Sensors - again, like Dotty, not useful, but interesting to see the inputs from the magnets and accelerometers on the phone
Trafficstats - to see which apps are using the most WiFi data
VolumeToggle (free) - for managing sound profiles

Communication & Social Media

ebuddy - for instant messenging - this allows you to sign in with various IM apps, including windows live (which is what I use at home)
Delicious - I have 2 delicious apps installed - one allows me to tag pages from the phone browser to my delicious account, the other is meant to show me my delicious book marks, but it seems to be munted, I live in hope that an update will change this!
Facebook - does what it says (although doesn't allow me to access any FB apps - just feeds, notifications and friends)
GMail - the default app for accessing my GMail
Handcent SMS - for text messaging - I find this more feature rich than the default SMS app, and love the conversation bubble display.
Mail - Yahoo Mail - my primary email account is on Yahoo, so I use this a lot.
NewsRob - for reading my Google Reader syndicated RSS feeds (I tried various different apps before settling on this one)
Phone - I don't even know if there are other phone apps! I just use the default
SMS Backup - I have this installed but haven't used it yet. I probably should.
Twitter - I also tried Twidroid & Toiteur, but finally decided to stick with the official Twitter app

Scheduling & General Life Organisation

Contacts - I use the default contacts manager
Jorte - love love love this calendar app, I find it so much better than the default and it integrates beautifully with my Gmail calendar, including things like national holidays, contacts birthday calendar, and any others I have shared to me (for example I view Simon's calendar as well as my own). It also integrates with my Gmail Tasks list beautifully (manual sync for now, but that's not a problem). This is probably my absolute favourite app.
OI Shopping List - and I use this for way more than just shopping lists, including packing lists, goals, general To Do. Love the functionality of this one (and I tried a few)
TripIt - I use this online so it helps to have the Android app for offline viewing

Imaging & Documents

Camera - the default camera
Camera Illusion - for different effects, and with the added bonus that the 'shutter' sound on this camera is far more subtle than the default one
FlickrFree - for uploading photos to my Flickr account. (I must try Flicka now that it's out, but haven't got around to it yet, not to mention that FlickrFree does pretty much everything I could want)
Gallery - the default - I probably ought to look around for some alternatives
NoteEverything - document, scribble pad
NE GDocs - allows me to import my Google Docs to NoteEverything (not a 2 way sync), and export to new Google Documents
Whiteboard - love this for sketching design ideas down (I make handbags)

Location Related

c:geo - a fabulous app for Geo-Caching. Allows me to link to my geocaching.com account, find caches, then download them for offline use (so I don't have to use 3G) - this includes maps at various scales. Provides various methods of navigating to caches, plus the ability to log your find while in the field (network connectivity dependent). This is a brilliant app and very much our preferred tool for geo-caching now
Compass - I can't think why I still have this now. Given I would have installed it for geo-caching purposes, but c:geo does everything I need.
Google Sky Map - this is another of my favourite apps - location and orientation aware, this simply shows you a live sky map, which you can orient towards a star or constellation and compare what you see in the sky to what you see on screen and work out what it is you're looking at. Love love love!
GPS Status - I find sometimes the GPS takes a bit to get a location, but this app gives me a bit of feedback as to why, and I find it also seems to speed up getting a lock. Also has a light intensity reading.
Maps - default maps app
Moon phase - does what it says, requires network connectivity
My tracks - haven't used this yet, but have it installed for recording GPS data on a journey
NZRoadInfo - requires network connectivity - then allows you to view all NZ traffic webcams
Places - Google Places - have occaisionally used this when we're trying to find a store, cafe, or.... nearby

Miscellaneous Tools

Bubble - a spirit level tool - vertical, horizontal, and a circle level for flat surfaces
Color Flashlight - turns the screen white for bright illumination (you can choose other colours), I'm told this is very useful if you get stuck with a flat tyre in a dark area - personally I'd just call AA. ;-)
Instant Heart Rate - uses the camera to read changes in oxygen in your blood and thus take your pulse rate. Nifty. :)
Moon phase - requires network connectivity. Very basic, just tells you what phase the moon is in, when the last full/new moon was and when the next full/new moon is due.
OCR reader - I'm still playing with this, but basically, take a photo, run it through this to extract the text. It doesn't seem to handle italic, serif fonts so well, but I do need to play some more.
Aldiko - ebook reader
Advanced Task Killer - while I still have this installed, I don't use it anymore. For ages I did, but then after a bit of reading I decided just to let the phone handle it's own memory - and it hasn't been a problem. (pre android 2.2 was another story, but that IS another story).

Games

There are several games that I've have a play with, got bored of and then deleted, I'm only listing ones that I go back to.

Andoku - sudoku that includes irregular areas
Backgammon free
Cribbage Pro
Galaxy domination - I've completed the 100 levels for this, so am due to uninstall, but it was fun for a time.
Gem Miner - haven't really played this one yet
Light Racer - kind of like snakes, but against an opponent, and there's no real goal or 'death', so nothing to keep you coming back
Paper toss
Robo Defense - my ONLY paid application, and then it was the grand sum of $NZ4.03. I played up to the 10 free levels, was still loving it, so went ahead and bought the full version. I absolutely love this game - didn't realise I enjoyed tower defense games so much! This is a great one for when I'm stuck somewhere waiting for someone or something and don't have network access.
Traffic Jam
WordUp! (like boggle)
Zilch Free (a dice game)
I used to have a Yahtzee game. Not sure what happened to that, possibly a victim of my stuffed SD card a month or so back.

Anything else?

I have a bundle of location specific apps installed - ie a London tube map (you never know when you'll need it!), and a bunch of things for Sydney where we're heading for a holiday soon. So things like bus timetables, maps, public transport maps, Ferry details, travel guides.

Widgets

Jorte Horizontal 4x1 week view (Jorte has lots of options for calendar widget layouts - again, can't tell you how much I love this app)
Battery Widget - tells me what percentage of battery I have remaining
Volume Toggle widget - this is customisable, I've only got 2 profiles in the toggle - Silent and Normal (which is also customised). Love the ease of silencing my phone with this.
OI Shopping list
Google Search
3G watchdog - 1x1 display of total usage in period and also tells you if you have 3g on, includes a percentage of quota for period
Power Settings - for toggling wifi, bluetooth, gps, sync, auto-brightness (system supplied tool)
LED Flashlight - toggle for turning on/off the LED (which is the camera flash). That guy is seriously bright!
Default music toolbar widget (I had played with Double-twist, but wasn't using it enough to keep it, I may come back to it yet).

So, while this is not an exhuastive list of everything I have installed, it is a pretty good representation of everything I actually use on the phone. Once again - any questions, even if it's 'oh, you use newsrob, have you tried Greader' (yes, rejected). ;-) I've played with quite a bit!

Android Update - last weekends 3G problem

2010-07-24T18:58:00.001+12:00

I had intended to get an update in last weekend, but I had one thing go really wrong with my Android on Saturday and I really needed to get past that so that I had lots of good to report as well! I hate having to write whiney blog entries.

So first, my bad experience last Saturday. On Friday evening I'd installed a bunch of apps, went to bed, woke up in the morning and my battery was dead. That should have been a hint that something was amiss, but I didn't quite take it. I went out later in the day, and as I was about to head into a shop I noticed my 3G icon was on, indicating I was using data. This is something I had explicitly turned off, becuase I didn't want to be chewing up data on a casual plan.

Well, I sat with the phone in hand for a good 20 minutes, desperately trying to get 3G to STAY off. It didn't matter how many times I changed the APN to an off one that I had defined, something kept on changing it back to Vodafone and re-enabling it. So I renamed the Vodafone connection settings - STILL it kept connecting! Argh! Well, finally I went and found the codes for getting into what was called the 'testing' menu under Android 2.1, and I forcably turned off the data connection. (see below for details).

Later I uninstalled Twidroyd, which I think was to blame, but I'm still not 100% certain. Since then it has behaved. And since then, I've also received the OTA (over the air) update to Froyo (Android 2.2) - which has moved that APN control to a menu you can get to it without entering seemingly random codes!

Unfortunately this episode resulted in me using over 50Mb of data!!! That one is going to ouch. (Oh, I know how much I used because I had installed 3G Watchdog on the recommendation of a friend. Thank goodness for that.

Well, that's the bad news out of the way. A few tech details for reference if anyone needs to know, then I'll close this post and move on to the good news and how I'm using my fabulous new device.

Facts:
OS: Android 2.1
Device: Nexus One

I'd created an "OFF" APN which I had set as my default for data connection. You create this by:

Go to Settings > Wireless and Networks > Mobile Networks > Access Point Names.
Press menu button then press New APN.
Set name to "Off",
set the APN to "blank",
then press menu and press Save.
After that press the circle to the right of your new APN so that it is selected as your APN.

I went one step further and I edited the type field to be Default, and I removed the work 'default' from the Vodafone APN.

I ended up having to do the following to keep the connection off (if anyone can explain why other measures didn't work, I'd love to know!)

Go to the phone dialler and enter *#*#4636#*#*
This will take you to the 'testing' menu.
Tap on Phone Information.
Press the Menu key or button.
Tap on More.
Tap on Disable data connection to disconnect and make inactive any data connection immediately.
Also tap on disable data connection at boot to prevent any unwelcome surprises.

I also installed 'Quick Settings' which I think does both the Disable Data Connection thing above, and it renames all of your APNs to ensure they don't work. Others have mentioned APNDroid, but I've read some reports of it not working well on the Nexus One.

More details on unexpected 3G use here : http://www.mydigitallife.info/2010/04/30/how-to-turn-off-and-disable-mobile-data-connection-2ggprsedge3g-on-android-phone/

Falling for an Android

2010-07-15T21:45:00.001+12:00

I just deleted several very eloquent paragraphs for this post because I have soooo much I want to say about this particular story, that I can't afford to dress it up with extraneous words.

The very simple back story:

iPhone 4 was announced
Simon said 'hey, you've been wanting a new gadget for a while, you should get an iPhone 4'.
I didn't protest, funny that
Simon brought home a loaner iPad to play with.
I was more impressed that I expected to be (and as Simon will attest, my expectations on technology are so high, the result is I'm rarely impressed)
I wanted that iPhone 4 more than ever
Simon brought home a loaner Google NexusOne Android to play with.
I played
He took it back
I pined
I bought a Google NexusOne Android. 3 days later. (and I was a little bit unbearable in my impatience I might add)

In a nutshell, during that weekend with the Android, I discovered a sleek, functional, usable device, with a boatload of free applications available for easy download, a price tag significantly lower than what I'd be facing with the Apple, and an ideology that I have of recent years become more and more a supporter of (working for an employer who is passionate about open standards will do that for you!)

There is essentially nothing I'd have got with the iPhone 4 that I don't get with the Android - with the exception of the Apple brand - an ommission which I'm more than comfortable with.

Like I've been doing with Open Office, I'm going to write a series of blogposts on my experience with the Android, tips and tricks, things I've learnt, things I'd like to see (I always want more when it comes to tech!), and as always, I'm also more than willing to try things out on request if you care to leave a comment.

Stay tuned!

Open Office Writer - Changing page orientation mid document

2010-05-28T21:05:00.002+12:00

Despite this being one of my original goals in my Open Office challenge, I realise I have yet to blog the steps to achieve this. And funnily enough, one of my colleagues asked me just yesterday how to do this.

So what is it we're trying to achieve exactly? Lets say I have a multiple page document (8 pages for arguments sake). It's a portrait document, however, on page 5 I've got a table, or picture, (or whatever) that looks better with the page in a landscape orientation. But then pages 6, 7 and 8 are back to normal and need to be portrait.

I used to find this really difficult to do in OO, even while following the help file. Now? It's a doddle!

To make page 5 landscape, while keeping pages 6,7,8 portrait
First a couple of assumptions:

you're using at least version 3.2.0 of Open Office
your default page layout is portrait (so when you create a blank document, it is automatically in portrait orientation).

Place you cursor after the very last character or element on page 5 (the page you want to be landscape).
Go to Insert | Manual Break
Change the Type to 'Page Break'
Click the 'Style' drop down and select 'Default'. (This is essentially telling the document to use the default page style AFTER the page break you're inserting)
Hit Ok. Nothing will appear to have changed at this point.
Now place your cursor after the last character or element on page 4 - immediately before the page you want in landscape orientation.
Go to Insert | Manual Break
It should default to Page Break - if not, select Page Break.
Click the 'Style' drop down and select Landscape and click OK.
Now, page 5 will be in landscape orientation, and if you scroll down, you'll see that page 6 returns to portrait - that's because of the break you inserted at step 4 above.

Problems? I discovered a gotcha! (let me know if you have others and I'll update this post).
While I was doing this to type up the instructions, page 5 didn't rotate to landscape at step 10 for me. This was because I just had an enormous continuous stream of text from page 1 all the way through to page 8. So, put a carriage return at the end of page 4, and also at the end of page 5.

By the way - if you're creating a document and you know as you get to page 5 that you want it to be in landscape, you can just end page 4 with the manual break and style of Landscape, and then as you reach the end of your landscape content, insert the second manual page break with the Default style. I do it the opposite way above (by explicitly ENDING the landscape section even before I've created it) in a finished document because otherwise every page after 5 will rotate t0 landscape before you add the next break at the end of that page - which can be a little disconcerting! I hope that makes sense!

Living Life Well

2009-12-03T19:34:00.003+13:00

A few little ponderings from my very passionate pep-talk to myself today:

Love who you are - don't make apologies for you
Hold people and experiences lightly - they'll stay if they're meant to, linger if they (or I) need time to work it out, or leave if they really ought not to be there (or when their time is done)
Live incredibly well - love the highs, enjoy the lows, knowing they're merely precursors to further highs
find the silver lining in discomfort - it's actually incredibly exciting being uncomfortable, because it means you're out of your comfort zone - and thus you're in the process of expanding said zone

I really am very excited about living life well right now. And I'm incredibly grateful to have rediscovered that joy.

Embrace the journey, it's a wild ride!

OOW Interoperability - Custom Fields from Word Docs

2009-08-19T21:40:00.004+12:00

Long and rambling intro - skip to the next heading if you want to get to the real content
I had a colleague phone from Wellington today needing to work on a document riddled with custom fields, only, it was a Word doc and he wanted to work on it in his Linux environment (I think, either way, he wanted to use Open Office). Problem was though, he couldn't work out how to edit the fields once the doc was open in OOW.

So I suggested Ctrl+F2 and check out the Variables Tab and the User Fields section. Nope, not there. Ok, try double clicking on one of the fields. Yep - opens the Fields Dialog, to the DocInformation tab and there are all the fields listed under the Custom type. But they're not editable there. So, I hunted around, and I have to confess this one took a bit of hunting and adding puzzle pieces together from a variety of hints found on disparate forums, help files, and feature update info, but I got there in the end. So for your knowledge and edification, this has been a very long and grutuitiously babbly intro to:

Beating Fields into Submission When You're Working on a Doc Created in Word
A quick recommendation first up - if the document in question is one you intend to use over and over again and create mutliple versions with different values in the various fields, I would strongly recommend taking the time to go through it and actually put in OpenOffice native fields and remove the converted Word Custom fields. But if it's just a one off use, go ahead and use the instructions below to change the field values to what you need them to be.

NB: remember I am using OOW 3.1 - I believe what I'm about to describe has worked since about 2.4, but I have no way of testing that, so do get the latest version!

Open your custom-field-riddled MS Word document in Open Office Writer.
Do a Save As, choose the default Open Office format (odt) and save the file.
Now close it. Seriously, just close the file. The rest simply won't work if you don't close it. I know, I've tried, many times in many ways. It won't work.
Open the recently re-saved file (the odt).
Go to File | Properties
Click on the Custom Properties tab
Here you will find all of the fields that had been created as custom fields in Word. You can change their values in here, you can add more, you can remove them as well. (NB: If you didn't believe me at step 3 and insisted on not closing the file before proceeding, you will now discover that every change you make in this tab is a teaser only - close the dialog, open it again and you'll note that the updates you have made - poof! They've disappeared. Bugger. Should have closed the file at step 3. Better do it now and go back to step 4.)
Once you've updated the values to what you want them to be, close the dialog box.
Your document won't look any different at this point. This is where these fields differ from the ones I've described in an earlier post. They don't automatically update. Easy fixed, just hit F9 (or go to Tools | Update | Fields) and all of the field instances will be updated throughout the doco (unlike word, you don't have to do a Select All first).
Save the file.

Easy once you know how huh?

OOW - Setting your default fonts

2009-08-17T10:22:00.003+12:00

I've just reset my user profile (I'll tell you why at a later date providing it fixes what I'm hoping it will!) and consequently need to re-set my default fonts, so I'll take the opportunity to document it while I'm at it. This is one of those things that took me a little while to work out. To be fair, in comparison to Word though, it is a lot simpler in OOW, and it only took me a while to find because again, I'd been conditioned by MS Word to expect this to be difficult.

Go to Tools | Options
Open the OpenOffice.org Writer menu and select Basic Fonts (Western)
Change your default fonts to whatever you prefer. (Personally I hate Times New Roman, so I I never leave it on this!)

You have to admit, this is a whole lot easier than having to locate your normal.dot and setting the fonts like you have to in Word. (Have I mentionted lately that I continue to be impressed with OOW?)

The Challenge - Update and What Next

2009-08-09T22:00:00.000+12:00

I've been sitting here playing silly games this evening, in between catching up on some of my RSS feeds and have been feeling a little guilty that I haven't blogged in a bit on my challenge. Then I got to thinking about what to post next. Then I went back to my original Challenge post and realised that I've actually acheived all of the goals I set out to. Which is great. Except that I'm not ready to stop this little blog journey. So I'm going to just modify my intention statement a little bit.

From here on in, the purpose of my posts will be about sharing tidbits I'm finding about Open Office Writer, in User 101 style instructions. (Occaisionally I'll get into a bit more technical detail, but I'll continue to indicate when I'm doing that!) This isn't really a change to what I've been doing, I'm just being clear about it!

One of the things I'd like to be able to do, is to help people make the switch from MS Word to OO Writer. So I'm also completely open to questions - some of my posts so far have been inspired by people commenting about their pet hates in OOW to me.

See my previous post on my 6 solutions philosophy, and you'll understand that whatever your pet peeve is, I'm pretty confident I can find a way around it, unless of course you're being intentionally difficult! (And if I really genuinely can't come up with something, I'll seriously consider logging a feature request if there isn't already one).

So feel free to leave a comment if you have a question, or message me on Twitter. There is a huge community out there supporting OOo and quite honestly, the answers are already there, but frankly, I enjoy finding them, and a lot of them I find are often very technically phrased and not especially user friendly at times - I like making things 'graspable', so you'll be doing me a favour. :)

There it is! More from me soon!

My Philosophy: At least 6 solutions

2009-08-09T21:51:00.000+12:00

I have this philosophy that there are at least 6 solutions to every problem.

This isn't an original philosophy. I heard it first from a musician at a music conference about 15 years ago, and I suspect he wasn't the one who coined it either, but it's a damn good philosophy and has served me well ever since.

There are at least 6 solutions to every problem - you only have to find one - and that can't be too hard!

You could call it tenacity, perserverence, optimism, or a mixture of all 3.

Minimising the irritation factor of context senstive toolbars

2009-08-03T20:52:00.000+12:00

One thing that a colleague had mentioned to me as being the thing that annoyed him most about Open Office is the way that the display jumps around when you have tables in a document. I recognised exactly what he meant today while I was converting over half of my monthly report documents to OOW. It's really irritating! BUT, now I know how to stop it.

So firstly, for those who don't know what I'm on about, when you click into a table in an OOW document, it turns on the context sensitive Table Toolbar. Now, I have my toolbars docked as I don't particularly like them floating over my workspace, so my Table Toolbar is down the left hand side of my screen. However, when this comes on, it takes up some additional space in your application window, so OOW reformats the screen display to recenter your document in the window - generally pushing it to the right by a centimetre. Seriously disconcerting.

But easily fixed! Follow the destructions....

View | Toolbars | Customize....
Click on the Toolbars Tab
Click the "New..." button
I called mine PlaceHolder, whatever, give it a name
I did add a button to mine (the Toolbars button in fact) but I've just checked and you don't actually even need to have a button, you can just leave it empty.
Hit OK to close the customize dialogue.
Now, View | Toolbars | select your new toolbar (PlaceHolder in my case)
Drag it to the wherever you have docked the context sensitive toolbar that's annoying you (it may not be the tables one after all!), and position it either at the top or bottom (I went for the bottom).
Now, the space is already allocated in your application window for a toolbar in that position, so when the Context Sensitive one is activated, your document position doesn't get adjusted. Phew!

Thanks to the Open Office forum for the answer on this one.

OOW switch - Milestone achieved

2009-07-30T13:10:00.000+12:00

I am delighted to announce that I have just successfully completed recreating my monthly report template in Open Office Writer. I still need to create a new version for each report, but with the template done, that will be simple.

NB: today's efforts were on my work machine - so Win XP Pro.

Things that took a bit of investigation, but now that I know how are easy (details where appropriate in later posts):

formatting the first page so that everything on it is aligned vertically centered. (using frames)
Creating unnumbered headings in a document that uses outline numbering
changing cell colours in a table (not the whole table, just a cell - slightly counter-intuitive in that you have to go to 'Table' not 'Cell' to format this.)
Getting the layout of my Table of Contents right - this merits some more play-time.
Creating custom colours in the palette - Tools | Options | Openoffice.org | Colors

Things that surprised me in how easy they were:

paste special - Ctrl+shift+v and then select your format - useful for pasting in Excel graphs (choose Bitmap) - actually, these came through flawlessly, which was also unexpected based on past experience (and they print nicely to boot!)
creating a table from formatted data - I wanted to copy a table of data from excel, but pasting it straight in brings in all sorts of revolting styles, so instead I did a paste special | unformatted text and then just selected the text and hit the table button. Hey Presto! A perfectly formatted table of data.

One thing that marred the experience slightly:

Early on in this, but enough into it to annoy me because I hadn't saved, Open Office Writer hung. Completely and irretrievably. I had to kill the process. I lost everything I'd done, and I was up to page 3 by this stage! At least it was all easier the 2nd time around for knowing what I was doing. But this behaviour is one I'm wary of!!!

More on Fields - mutliple formats - especially dates

2009-07-26T23:02:00.000+12:00

I've been thinking over the last few days that when I was raving about OOW's implementation of fields, I had neglected to test a couple of things which I actually use extensively in my documents, and honestly, I was preparing myself to have to write my first "word does this better" post. I was wrong again. But I'm getting ahead of myself!

What I hadn't tested: using a single date field (call it 'Release Date') multiple times in a document, with several different formats.

So for example, using July 25th 2009 as the date in question, the following formats are required:
Front page: July 2009
Headers: 25/07/09
Creation date: -Jul-09 (I will be manually entering the day number as I create the doco)
QA Date & final revision date: same as creation date, but of course, I'll still be entering the day number manually.

In MSW, I have to go to Insert Field | Document Information | DocProperties, select the "ReleaseDate" field (which I defined earlier from another menu), then click the Field Codes button and remember the highly obscure string to append after the field - "\@ "MMMM yyyy".

Sometimes, if I haven't done this for while, I have to search through Help to try and remember what on earth the correct string is - I simply cannot seem to find a way to do this by selecting GUI options, it does seem you really do have to remember 'backslash at-sign' and then the appropriate format. Again - why was I so forgiving of Word for putting me through this torment???

Anyways, using multiple formats in OOW is a cinch. Lets assume you've already defined your field, but haven't inserted it yet.

Front Page "July 2009"

Click at the place you need the date field, hit Ctrl+F2, make sure you have the Variables Tab selected
Select User Field in the left column, your 'Release Date' field in the middle Selection Column, then
In the right column, click on Additional Formats....
Select Category of Date, and then scroll through the list of formats
if your desired format isn't there, select something close and then modify the format field down the bottom - in this case "MMMM yyyy"
Hit ok, hit insert. Close the dialog box and proceed to your document history section in the document, ready to use the field again.

Document history "-Jul-09"

So, you're at the insertion point

repeat as above up to 4
this time, you pretty much will have to do a custom format, so in the Format Field type "-MMM-yy" (again, you can pick something similar and then just modify the code - it will create you a custom format automatically)
and again, hit ok, hit insert, close the dialog, and continue inserting the date field in as many formats as you require.

But wait! I want to use this document as the basis for the new report in August!
No problem.

Changing the date

Double click any* one of the dates you've inserted, where the format includes all 3 of day, month & year.
You'll probably notice that the value is now just a number and seriously doesn't look like a date. Don't worry. Just type in the date you want it to be, lets say 21 August 2009, or, 21/08/09, type either in and click the tick.
Close the dialog box.

Hey Presto! ALL of your Release Date instances have been updated to the new date, and the correct format preserved for each one.

Extra for Experts (and geeks)
* that little star unfortunately means that while testing this, I did come across a somewhat unexpected behaviour. To avoid encountering it, just follow the instructions I've given and make sure you select one of the date entries that includes the day, month and year before updating the date.

What I found:
When I double clicked on the instances that didn't have the day, but just the month and year and tried to update the date, OOW got seriously confused, changed all the instances to whatever format I inputted and then I had to go back to another of the fields (with all 3 parameters) and update it, but it still wouldn't change to the new date, so I closed the dialog, and then double clicked the same one again and this time it would update them all. So no harm done (alll of the instances still have all the correct formatting), but if you tell OOW that 'december 2009' now needs to be '21 January 2009' it doesn't know what to do with that 21. So, yeah, programatically that makes sense, but from a usability perspective, it means I needed to be more specific in my instructions.

OO CD Jewel Case Template

2009-07-23T15:22:00.000+12:00

Indeed I can upload my template to OpenOffice.org and indeed I have. (but you won't find the snazzy upside down text in this example - it occurred to me there was a better way).

Find it here. And even I do say so myself, it's MUCH better than the other 2 jewel case templates I found.

OO Writer - upside down text in a table

2009-07-23T13:38:00.000+12:00

I just found out how to do this and it's a little quirky, so I need to make a note of it for next time I need it and have forgotten.

You may ask why you would need upside down text. Well, I needed to print a CD jewel case, so I went to 'more templates online' and grabbed one of the 2 jewel case templates that came up (thank you for making this so easy OO), but frankly, the implementation was stupidly ineffecient.

I wanted to recreate it using tables & fields so that I could enter the title once and have it appear in the 3 required places for a jewel case. And yes, on the sheet that goes in the back of the jewel case, the text needs to have its baselines facing each other. I have no idea whether you can do this in Word or not.

Firstly - this must be done in a table, it uses some of the table formatting controls to achieve the affect.

EXPERTS: the below instructions put succinctly, as I found them in the OO forum:
"Format Character, rotate 270° + Table, Text Flow, Right to left vertical."

Select the text that you need to display upside now (in my case it also happens to be field/variable)
Right click and select Character (or go to Format | Character)
Change the rotation to 270 degrees. (Bear in mind that this is going to stuff up the height of your row - so if you're needing fixed cell heights like I did for the jewel case, once you've finished this exercise you're going to have to go back and correct the cell height).
Now select the Row in the table that contains this text
Right click and select 'Table...'
Go to the Text Flow tab
Change the Text Direction to Right to Left (Vertical)
I'd also suggest changing the vertical alignment to center. Depends on what you're trying to achieve though.
Click ok, and then, as mentioned in point 3, go back and fix up your row height if required. Lovely upside down text. QED.

And yes, I do need to submit my fancy-schmancy field enabled efficient jewel case template back up to OO. I assume that's something I can do.

Word to Writer - part 3 - Fields (variables)

2009-07-19T21:49:00.000+12:00

After my intro update the other night, I sat down that evening on my home computer and worked through some of things I was anticipating to be problematic - with the intention of re-familiarising myself with the specific problems I was having and then starting to identify some helpful websites that may have the answers, or at least some helpful hints.

As it turned out, either version 3.1.0 has made a whole lot of improvements from last time I tried to use Writer in any seriousness, or I actually learnt quite a bit last time around but just hadn't realised. My suspicion is that's a combination of the two. If I write up everything I went through, I'll be here all night, and I'll lose you in the fine print, so I'll just cover one aspect per post.

For your reading pleasure, the topic of the night is.....

Fields
Seriously - OOW seems to do this soooo much better than Word, once you know how. But lets face it, file | properties | fields is hardly intuitive now is it? (nor is Insert | Text | QuickParts | Fields as it is now located in word 2007 - that took a while to find! And Quick Parts???? Is that kind of like, ok, no, this is a family show).

Define A Field

Insert | Fields | Other (or Ctrl+F2)
Click the variables tab
Under Type, select User Field
Select a format (data type) (if you need a date, you can use the 'additional formats' option)
Down the bottom, give the variable (Field in Word speak) a Name, and then a Value, and then click on the tick.

If you're not ready to insert it, no problem, just click the close button.

To Insert a Field
When you reach a point in your document where you want to insert the field/variable:

Hit ctrl+f2
Click the name of the variable/field you want
Click insert (or double click the variable name)

Update A Field
And this is the bit I REALLY love about the way OOW does this.
If you need to change the contents of a field, say it's your name and you decide you want to include your middle initial: (and see below for tonight's revelation on a MUCH easier way to do this).

Ctrl+F2
Click the variable in the Name column
Down the bottom, change the Value, click the tick.

That's IT. Every single instance of the field will be updated throughout your entire document. No farting around with Ctrl+A, F9 then going into headers & footers and doing the same, and repeat for every different section header/footer containing the field. Update the value. That's it. Why was I so accepting of the hoops that Word made me jump through to do this????

OH MY GOD! It gets better!!!

I just went back to my test document, found a field, and I double clicked it - and now I can just update the value. Brilliant. And seriously, I am usually really really really hard to impress when it comes to software.

Also, after double clicking a field in a document, you can use the < > buttons to step through every instance of the field in the document. Bliss.

Next topic coming up some time during the week. It'll either be outline numbering, or the fascinating task of changing the orientation of a page in the middle of a document.

The Challenge - Technical update

2009-07-17T10:25:00.000+12:00

Just a quick update on this little project.

Immediately after posting the previous post, Open Office kindly informed me that version 3.1.0 was available, so I have upgraded to that version.

Also, I have now installed OO 3.1.0 on my home computer, where I am using Vista Home (yes, I am) and Office 2007.

And a couple of additional keys to success:

4. The ability to manage different headers/footers depending on the page - ie Different First page etc.
5. Something I've previously found quite nasty to do in OO (although to be honest, it's not exactly simple in Word unless you know how either) - having a page, or a couple of pages in the middle of a document with a differnt orientation - so in a 20 page portrait doc, have pages 7&8 as landscape pages.
6. Just occurred to me - printing needs to be predictable and repeatable as well (have seen others in the office having issues with this in the past).

And as a teaser to my next actual update on how this is going, I spent a couple of hours last night working through some of the milestones, and to my suprise, I was seriously impressed. And at a technology level, I have high expecations and am not easily impressed. Watch this space, will update this weekend.

The Challenge - Part 1

2009-07-16T12:06:00.001+12:00

Ok, I've been thinking about this for days now, actually, I've toyed with it years, but I've been seriously thinking about it this time around for days. No more thinking, time to take action.

The challenge: switch from using MS Office Word to Open Office Writer.
The fear: oh dear god, there are so many!

I am a power user in Word, and have been for years. I don't so much use VB to simplify things like I used to, but I am completely at home in Word and am confident I can make it do whatever I need it to, and I tend to ask more of it than the average user.
I love efficiency & I love, no, EXPECT logical, intuitive interaction with technology - now admittedly, what I'm calling intuitive, may simply be more about familiarity in this instance - I'm now simply too familiar with Word to be able to judge if it is in fact intuitive or not.
I have used Open Office Writer and so far, my experiences have ended in frustration, disillusion and a sigh of relief as I have returned to using Word. (Not to mention getting seriously agro with Open Office apps randomly crashing in the middle of operation.)

The motivation:

I work for a company that is passionate about Open Standards, (which I get) and Open Source - which I kinda get, but not as much as I want to. (I confessed all of this to my manager the other day and did seriously wonder if I was severely impacting my future career options! He responded with a comprehensive reading list - which I'm working through (in fact, I just stopped reading "The Cathedral & The Bizarre" to write this.))
I don't do things by halves. I'm not comfortable with being passionate about the company I work for, but not being fully on board, or at least not fully understanding, the things that my employer is passionate about.
I'm not a programmer (although I did learn to be one), and I'm no longer a hands on tech (and haven't been for years) but I am technically savvy, and most importantly, I am passionate about 'Invisible Technology' - ie - a user should NOT have to think about using technology, they should just be able to do the things they need to do. Full stop. (I need to write a more detailed entry on this as it will take more than a couple of sentences, but you'll have to wait for that one! Suffice to say - ease of user experience is high on my list of priorities).
Other than email, a word processor is probably the most common office tool people use in a work environment, or at the very least, it's right up there. (ok, I'm also not quite ready to let go of my Excel comfort zone - yep, power user there too, but one step at a time!).

3 keys to success

Without thinking about it too hard, I can think of 3 things that I am going to have to get comfortable & confident with in Writer to consider my switch a success.

(Oh - important point - this HAS to be a success, I am not even considering failure as an option - I am confident that I can become as confident & at home in Writer as I am in Word and can hopefully contribute some helpful suggestions for others making the switch as I go)

Beat outline numbering into submission - this is a challenge that has caused me to give up this quest in the path - despite reading multiple articles and spending some considerable time, I have never managed to fathom the logic in Writer's particluar implementation of Outline numbering (and maybe I'll read back on this and wonder what sort of dunce I was in the past to have not got it, but there it is for now).
Fields - I use fields extensively in Word documents - especially for monthly reports & contracts where the same name, term, number, word etc. needs to appear in multiple places throughout the document (including in headers and footers). And yes, this is another thing that I have so far failed to master in OO Writer.
Interoperability - and yes, I appreciate this one could be a big ask. I will have a need to copy graphs from Excel into Writer. I'm not the only one (I tend to be the go-to person for all desktop apps). If I have to go via OO Calc, so be it, but I need to be able to do this and have the graph turn up in Writer looking professional and not mangled - which has been my experience to date, and also my observed experience where I am receiving Writer docos from other people needing to do this.

Technical bits
Version of MS Office Word: 2003, SP3
Version of OO Writer I have currently installed: (waiting for it to open................) (can you see I'm really very apprehensive about this??? :) Rest assured, I am committed (and am still waiting)) There it is! 3.0.1
OS I'm Using: Windows XP Pro, versio 2002, SP3

So there it is. I'll update as my journey progresses.

Another confidence trick

2009-06-29T12:15:00.000+12:00

Huge day tomorrow, starting with an interview (I'm conducting, not attending!) at 9am, so unlikely that I'll get a spare moment to post my thought for the day. So, instead, a lesson from last week:

Another trick if you're not feeling all that confident:
Be prepared.
Find out as much as you can about the situation while you're approaching it. Ask questions, plan your approach, dwell on your desired outcome (not your feared outcome!)
If you walk in knowing you've done as much as you can to face the situation as well equipped as possible, you'll have that to believe in and consequently you'll walk in taller, stronger and far better placed to come out even more successfully than you've planned to. (and of course you've planned to be successful - that's the 'dwelling on the expected outcome' part of preparation - and worth a 2nd mention!)

How you think about it (preaching to myself)

2009-06-27T12:14:00.000+12:00

If you're faced with a situation that you perceive as being "stressful", "bulls***" or god forbid "impossible", then you're hardly going to get through it with a sense of calm or satisfaction or anything vaguely positive.

Instead, approach the situation with confidence, knowing that you will get to the other side (sometimes you may have no choice but to do so!) and that you do have the resourcefulness or the creativity to rise to the occasion.

With a confident approach, you're far more likely to have a satisfying outcome. (and if you don't feel confident, tell yourself you are anyway, square your shoulders back, stand tall, and stride on in boots and all! Make them steel capped if you need an extra boost!)

Another one (or: mixing metaphors)

2009-06-26T12:13:00.000+12:00

You're accommodating. Fine.
Make sure you have some house rules, respect them yourself and make them clear.
Otherwise you'll find yourself sleeping on the street after you've accommodated everyone else. (and without house rules, they may never leave, and almost definitely won't leave things as they found them)

Jane's Thought for Today

2009-06-25T12:12:00.000+12:00

Be consistent.
If you expect it of yourself, why not of others?
Conversely, if you won't expect it of others, why do you expect it of yourself?