software – Page 10 – Hand Coding

QOTD – Marshall on Helvetica

December 18, 2002August 13, 2005 Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

I was amused by today’s quote from this quote of the day mailing list:

“Every now and then you’ll see a tattered piece of 1950s signage, something exuberant that harks back to flash bulbs and frozen glamour. Most have been torn down now, replaced by brutal information boards stamped out in Helvetica, the official typeface of purgatory. Helvetica isn’t designed to make you feel anything good, to promise adventure or gladden the heart. Helvetica is for telling you that profits are down, that the photocopier needs servicing, and by the way, you’ve been fired.”

—Michael Marshall, The Straw Men, on the way to Santa Monica.

Hmm, I wasn’t aware about the photocopier ;).

Tux Tattoo

December 17, 2002August 13, 2005 Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

Wes Kurdziolek, one of my friends from Virginia Tech, got a tattoo of tux the other day. Wes is also President of the Virginia Tech Linux/Unix Users Group, but that’s still quite a show of dedication to an operating system :).

There’s also video footage available (21 MB, DivX format).

OpenOffice.org – Export to PDF!

November 25, 2002August 13, 2005 Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

Back in October, I lamented the non-functionality of the Export to PDF option in OpenOffice.org (it would just crash every time I tried that option).

However, I’ve discovered that there’s a new Developer Release (643C) and I’ve confirmed that Export to PDF now works! Woohoo!

LighthouseBlue Theme for Gnome

November 6, 2002August 13, 2005 Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

From the Gnome-announce mailing list:

Those of us that read OSNews regularly know that Eugenia writes some thorough reviews and have no inhibitions about commenting on what she thinks are bad UI design choices. Well Jan Rosczak read one of her articles and decided to try and make her happy. The result is a very nice Gtk+ 2.0 theme which I myself use. For screenshots and the full story check out the lighthouseblue homepage.

I really trust Eugenia’s opinions on UI design, and LighthouseBlue is a great looking theme that I think even she would be pleased with :).

Workrave Typing-break Reminder

November 1, 2002 Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

Workrave is a free (GPL) app for Linux and Windows that reminds you to take typing breaks (with configurable timing, of course).

I found out about it from the Gnome-announce mailing list, of all places. Obviously, their focus was on the Gnome/Linux version, though I’ve used just the Windows version so far. Unsurprisingly, because the Windows version is based on the GTK toolkit, it’s still very… Linux-looking ;).

If you care about preventing RSI, it couldn’t hurt to give Workrave a try. By default, it comes configured to suggest a 30 second “micro-pause” break every 3 minutes, and a 10 minute rest break every 45 minutes (those numbers are from memory, but I think those are about right).

I’m not expert on typing-injury prevention, but that seemed awfully frequent to me (?). If anyone can speak to what kind of numbers are suggested in the scientific community, let me know (for all I know, perhaps that’s how Workrave derived its defaults, but I’m not sure). In the meantime, I’ve configured to the micro-break interval for 10 minutes, which seems a bit less intrusive.