Archive for July, 2010

The evils of a word processor

July 21st, 2010 | Category: thoughts

I’ll admit I’m not the greatest fan of the modern word processor. Being in the web world perhaps the greatest evil is the markup that is generated when text copied from Word is pasted into any rich text capable HTML editor such as TinyMCE. Word is not alone in doing this, OpenOffice.org also has its fair share of ugly HTML and most other systems have a nasty habit of creating ugly HTML. But this isn’t what I’m concerned about in this blog, it is more about the plethora of formatting options it provides and lack of focus in the user interface.
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Thinking about things differently

July 15th, 2010 | Category: internet,joomla,technology

The other day I was looking at something and came across “Hotaru CMS” which on it’s about page describes the system as a “plugin powered content management system” or “Wordpress without blogging”. The system describes that it is a platform to build upon, that “Hotaru plugins provide such key components as user systems and post publishing” and how it has a few different extension types: main themes, admin themes, plugins and language packs. But it got me thinking – wait, this is just Joomla!?
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Today: 12-Jul-2010: Just a little bit further

July 12th, 2010 | Category: joomla,microsoft,today

One of the nice things about Linux is the smooth way that the package management system operates. It just happens. The problem with Windows is that it doesn’t really happen – which is a painful experience.
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ATO, HECS/HELP and interest – or lack there of

July 10th, 2010 | Category: australia,thoughts,work

In Australia, it’s tax time again. This means that the tax office sends me nice letters saying how much I owe them for my HECS/HELP debt, how if I paid it all up front it’d reduce by X amount (if only I had that much money!) and how they don’t charge “interest” on the loan, they merely “index” it against the cost of living. What ever makes it easier to sleep at night. But recently I realised something simple: the Australian Tax Office charges interest not including amounts you’ve already paid.
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