Extracting Clipart from the Office Website

Despite things like the recent GPL-licensed(!) contribution from Redmond, Micro$oft is not well-known for being friendly toward the open source movement. One example is the clipart available on the Microsoft Office website. It's an excellent resource for teachers and office workers. With the Office 2007 clipart manager dead in the water with Crossover Office and Wine last I checked, getting clipart to make newsletters and such in Linux is a problem.

The problem is that clipart from the Office website is downloaded in MPF files. These are simply XML files with the actual file data base64-encoded. There is a Perl script to extract the files, but it requires several modules to be downloaded from CPAN. Not too horrible for me, but definitely not something that, say, the secretary at my church would be able to tackle. No more. I have written a GPL-licensed Python script, mpfextract.py, to extract all clipart from MPF files. This'll also be a nice thing to have once Haiku has WMF support beyond having libwmf ported. :)

Ups and Downs

That would definitely summarize my life for the last couple of weeks. Not so much a roller coaster, but it has had some smaller ups and downs. I started working on integrating my old website and this blog and renovating my old site for the integration. It's a ways off and I'm having to relearn Javascript and learn some DHTML magic to make it work well, but it's started. Teaching computers at school has also spawned a couple of smaller projects and revived work on another -- if you're a coder and none of the tools available fit your needs, what do you do? Make your own, of course!

This would probably be the first time where I've been juggling more than a couple projects at once: a simple whiteboard application (almost done), fixes for BeMines, a few more tweaks remaining before Paladin's 1.0 final release, a small app for reviewing flashcards -- mostly pictures -- in class with my students, and reviving my first project by rewriting it: BePhotoMagic. It's a lot, but I'm not planning for the tools to be used before the end of this year, and it's all been fun stuff, so a timeframe for release isn't really an issue.

Unless you've been under a rock or don't follow Linux at all, the latest release of Ubuntu, Jaunty Jackalope, was released last Thursday. I absolutely *love* it because of the much-improved boot times -- the only real complaint that I've had about Linux up to now. My development box is a Pentium 4 3Ghz with Hyperthreading and 1GB of RAM and it boots in 30 seconds. That's half as long as XP Pro on the same machine!

Also in Jaunty is the dovecot-postfix package, a complete mail server installed in one package, courtesy of the Ubuntu team. If you've never attempted to set up a mail server under Linux, it's not for the faint of heart. In fact, I'd say it's harder than compiling and installing your own Linux kernel, so this is also big news for any would-be beginner sysadmins out there.

It's also easier to work with more than one monitor under Linux using the new release, as well. It's still a little strange and takes some playing around, but it's nowhere near the headache that it used to be. Gone is the need for futzing with xorg.conf files to configure Xinerama. This is also a major improvement in a smaller area.

In other news, Microsoft has conceded defeat on the OOXML vs ODF wars and apparently has included full ODF support in the just-released Service Pack 2 for Office 2007. All I can say is it's about time that Redmond got some sense in this area. Unfortunately, it won't be rolled out via Microsoft Update until August. At least now my coworkers can finally use my OpenOffice.org files without much hassle.

There isn't much else to tell, but when I have something to show, you'll know. TTFN. :-)

Will Windows 7 be a Hit for Microsoft?

Right now, I’m sitting in my living room, writing this from Windows Live Writer from within the newly-released Windows 7 that I put on a spare laptop from school. So far, my impressions are largely positive ones. The installer is much less involved than any previous version, though it does have a couple of annoyances. It creates a 200MB System Partition – not sure what that’s for – and it, once again, overwrites the MBR, so if I had another OS on this machine, I’d have to install the bootloader. Again.

Performance was my biggest gripe for Vista. Getting around feels a little more like a battleship than the cruise liner that Vista is. Driver and device handling is much easier. Once again, more stuff has changed, rendering an experienced user like myself a stranger in a strange land. Numerous places, as usual, are two usability steps forward and one step back.

Some of the changes over Vista are truly nice to have. Dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes it. Dragging it to the right or left edge tiles it to occupy half of the screen. The new taskbar is a nice improvement. Windows Live Writer is a very nice blogging tool that I just might be using quite a bit on my main computer if it’s even possible.

Other changes are… less than ideal. I’m not impressed by the fact that I have to download a separate e-mail client. Even Windows 95 came with Outlook Express. Yeesh. If I want to download an e-mail client, let it be out of choice and not from lack of one. If Microsoft is going for their own answer to iLife, this ain’t it. The whole Windows Live cloud computing thing doesn’t exactly impress me. If you live in Silicon Valley, fine, but there are many people in the US that are stuck with the choice of dial-up or satellite, with neither being a pleasant option.

I’ve only had Windows 7 for about 6 hours now, so I know I haven’t hardly scratched the surface of the entire experience, good or bad. Some general looking around has given me some ideas for Haiku that would make it more pleasant, but for now, the jury’s still out on the next generation out of Redmond.

Cleaning the Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000

A couple of days ago, I decided that I needed to take apart and clean out the keyboard at my workhorse machine: a Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000. The name seems kinda over-the-top, but despite my general disdain for the giant from Redmond, I like most of their hardware. I have a couple of minor gripes, but it's overall a good keyboard for RSI sufferers. Anyway, disassembling it wasn't exactly obvious and there may be others out there who wondered how to get the thing apart to clean the thing. Not only will I relate how to void your warranty this way, but I'll also give you some tips on cleaning the thing.

Tools:

• Lineman's pliers or, alternatively, needlenose pliers
• Cotton swabs (Q-tips)
• Philips-head screwdriver
• small flathead screwdriver (or other small prying device)
• old toothbrush
• compressed air
• rubbing alcohol

Disassembly:

1. Unplug it from the computer. While this might seem obvious, some people might go commando and use the thing while in the process of cleaning it. You've been warned. ;-)
2. Remove (no exaggeration) 21 screws from the underside.
3. Place right side up and wiggle off the faux-leather wrist rests.
4. Remove a screw from under each of the newly-removed wrist rests.
5. Find a small flathead screwdriver (or some other flat prying object), slide under the front edge of the space bar and gently give it a twist. The spacebar should pop right out. Set it aside.
6. Remove two silver screws and then remove the top cover. Note that this will require some wiggling becase there are a few plastic catches sort-of holding it in place, such as in front below the F-Lock light.
7. If your keyboard is anything like mine was, you'll need to be able to clean under what's left, so remove 4 more screws under where the Back and Forward buttons normally are along with the metal bar they hold down.
8. Remove the silicone overlays.

Now you'll need the rest of the tools I listed above to clean the thing. You'll probably want to remove all the keycaps from the grid. If that's too much bother, at least get the ones with the metal sliders.

Caveats:

• The best way I've found to get the keycaps out is to use one hand with the pliers to slightly pinch together catch for the keycap while gently pulling on it from the other side with your other hand. If you pinch too much, you'll bend the plastic on the catch and possibly break it, which would be a Bad Thing (TM).
• If the warranty was good on your keyboard, it certainly isn't now.
• It's amazing how many crumbs (and in my case, cat hair) fall in between the keys and collect in this thing
  

Tips

1. The compressed air will come in really handy for cleaning under the components that are still in place.
2. The bigger keys (spacebar, Backspace, Caps Lock, number pad +, etc.) have a little metal bar that slides under a couple of plastic "hooks" which are a great place for crud to collect and make the action for those keys pretty gummy. Cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol work well for cleaning it from the back side of the key grid.
3. The silver buttons at the top shouldn't need cleaning unless something has been spilled on your keyboard.
4. Cleaning an empty grid is pretty easy with the sprayer hose on the kitchen sink. You *might* be able to get away with running the grid through the dishwasher, but you might melt the plastic, so don't complain to me if it does.

Plan to spend a couple of hours doing this, but for a $50 keyboard, it's probably worth your time. It's also less mind-numbing if you're doing it in front of the TV. I hope this helps someone else out there. :)

Steve Ballmer is a Funny Guy

I doubt that he really is trying to be as laugh-inducing as he is, but he makes me laugh on a regular basis. Most of the time it's by making himself look more than a little foolish. For example, I'm not the only one who enjoyed the video of his "Developers, Developers, Developers" hype. He dances at least as bad as I do. Sometimes I just shake my head in disbelief at events surrounding his leadership at Microsoft--times like a very unhappy Hungarian lobbing eggs at him, his training for the Chair Throw event at the next Summer Olympics, or his comparison of Linux to a virus. Today, I'm doing both.

Apparently, Windows Vista sales are really good in Steve's opinion. More and more often I hear about low opinions--often very vocal ones--about the latest desktop OS from Redmond. This article was quite an enjoyable read. Why? It shows just how much of the Kool-Aid he really has drunk. He's happy that Vista is selling really well because of OEM preloading it onto machines. I wonder what he would say if he had to depend on selling Windows than depending on OEMs to do the dirty work for him by not offering customers a real choice. Here's where I translate the marketing speak Steve used into real English:

Steve: "Application compatibility in Vista was not as high as many of our customers would have liked."
English: People didn't like that we broke as many programs as we did.

Steve: "I think we’re going through something of a process whereby Vista users are still getting used to Vista after moving from XP"
English: People are going to have to get used to all of the changes we made, whether or not they're good ones.

While there are those people who wanted it for whatever reason, many consumers who bought it with a computer don't necessarily know the difference between Office and Windows, but they knew something was wrong when their hardware wouldn't work and a comparatively smaller number of people don't want it at all. He really thinks that a lot of people like Windows Vista and wanted to upgrade it. Now that's funny.