Hauser & Wenz :: Blog

Entries from August 2005

Tuesday, August 30. 2005

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta 2 Posted by Christian in ** English at 08:05

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My job requires that I use a lot of word processing and presentation software. I always try to use as many different products as possible, but for performance and usability reasons, I mostly stick to Microsoft Office products. Some Publishers have fancy macros that only work there, and the software runs faster and is more intuitive to use (at least for me, YMMV, of course).
However I like the idea of OpenOffice.org, including the nice language bindings for extensions, so I am always eager to try the latest and greatest from "OOo".
However, until recently, this has been a PITA. I am still not too happy with OOo Writer, the PPT export of OOo Impress was severely broken (if you have graphical bullets, you had to do a frightening batch of conversions until you finally get a PPT that can actually be used by Powerpoint, just to give an example; also, links were crippled when exporting). Also, the various 1.9.xx versions of OOo Calc spit strange errors from time to time.
But since version 1.9.122, this all seems to be fixed and OOo is really usable. The Beta 2 of OOo 2.0 (which is internally 1.9.125) was released yesterday and is definitely worth a look. Performance has become better (though saving files and especially the startup of the application still takes longer than the competition, at least on my systems), so this is really is an alternative. I wouldn't say the software is superior, for my usage it's also not equal on all accounts, but definitely worth a look. The download page contains (among other things) binaries for various operating systems and languages.

Thursday, August 25. 2005

CHIP-Sonderheft "Web-Design ... Posted by Christian in Publikationen at 14:31

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CHIP-Sonderheft "Web-Design professionell"

Bereits zum zweiten Mal wurden wir von der CHIP in den illustren Kreis der Autoren für ihr Sonderheft "Web-Design professionell" eingeladen. Das Besondere diesmal: Per spezieller Vereinbarung dürfen wir unsere Beiträge frei zur Verfügung stellen. Am Montag gibt es dazu die Details; wer nicht so lange warten möchte, sollte sich das Heft jetzt schon kaufen.

Thursday, August 25. 2005

Google Code Jam 2005 Posted by Christian in ** English at 08:18

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Google Code Jam 2005

Nowadays, I do not program as much as I did some years ago, which is sometimes a relief, but sometimes I do miss it. So I signed up for Google Code Cam 2005, just to see if I still have basic knowledge of coding.
When the qualification round started, I was confronted with two problems to solve, one a bit easier, one a bit harder. The languages of choice were C++, Java, C# and VB.NET. Since I have done quite a bit of work in all of them (and only swore to never touch C++ again), I actually tossed a coin and then solved the problems in C#, but it didn't make much of a difference.
Unfortunately, both problems required some mean array handling which in turn required some dirty conversions and other things. I hate array handling. While coding, I was thinking of how many minutes this task would have taken me in a not strongly-typed language with dynamic arrays, like JavaScript or PHP. But in a strongly-typed language, this required a bit more effort (as I understood it, the Java version in the system was 1.4, so I could not use the handy features of Java 5).
Anyway, I managed to somehow solve the two problems in about half an hour (PHP estimate: 15 minutes). Probably not the prettiest code I have ever written, but hey, it survived all unit tests

I finally ranked in the top quarter, which unfortunately was not good enough for the next round. But it was still fun, working on not-that-hard problems but against the clock and in an online environment, i.e. without debugger, IntelliSense and such things. I hope I will find again the time next year!

Wednesday, August 24. 2005

SVG in Action Posted by Christian in ** English at 18:34

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SVG in Action

I was quite surprised to see that the German government (to be exact: the "Bundeswahlleiter" who is in charge of the upcoming national elections) is using SVG. They offer an interactive map that shows election results for different geographic versions. Unfortunately, the application does not work with ASV 6 but requires ASV 3.
The official suggestion is to use ASV 3 or ASV 3.01, but for obvious reasons be sure to use ASV 3.03.

Friday, August 19. 2005

Consultants, Stored Procedures, and ... Posted by Christian in ASP.NET (English), Security at 19:19

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Consultants, Stored Procedures, and SQL Injection

I keep on mentioning in security-related talks that using stored procedures does not generally avoid the dangers of SQL Injection, but just limits the number of sloppy programmers that can mess it up. This entry in The Daily WTF proves me right -- in a very funny way.

Wednesday, August 17. 2005

SVG Open 2005 Posted by Christian in ** English at 16:19

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SVG Open 2005

After Zurich, Vancouver, and Tokio, the fourth SVG Open, SVG Open 2005, is currently taking place in Enschede (The Netherlands). I will have to depart quite early tomorrow, so here is already my personal roundup of the events here.
Monday's tutorial on scripting SVG went fine, Tobias was quite happy with it. On Tuesday, we attended (among other things) the obligatory "SVG Wow!" session, as always fun, entertaining and enlightning. The following presentation titled "The Story of Art" was a bit strange, but showed in which unusual places SVG is used nowadays. The rest of the day was more spent with listening for strange sounds in our mobile hard disk, but during that, we also saw some quite intersting talks. We did not attend the ice-breaking session but were lured into a very fine restaurant, but according to some of the other attendees, the night did not end too soon (three words: university campus bars). Continue reading "SVG Open 2005"

Thursday, August 11. 2005

Microsoft cancels Visual Studio .NET ... Posted by Christian in ASP.NET (English) at 11:08

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Microsoft cancels Visual Studio .NET 2005

ok, I am just kidding, but could someone please explain me the following announcement on today's MCP newsletter?

Tuesday, August 9. 2005

NCC 2005 A Posted by Christian in ASP.NET (deutsch) at 11:33

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NCC 2005 A

Ich kann leider selber nicht dabei sein, aber die Veranstaltung ist so empfehlenswert, dass ich einfach darüber bloggen muss. Also: Die .NET Community Conference 2005 zum Thema "Security" findet am Freitag, den 12. August 2005 in Wien. Statt. Noch sind einige wenige Plätze frei. Zur Anmeldung geht's hier.