A great little video to demonstrate the scale of the planets and stars
From YouTube
Scale of Planets and stars
December 20th, 2006 byWSGI comes home
June 12th, 2006 byWSGI Ref, the reference implementation for WSGI has been checked into Python svn repository for inclusion in the stdlib in Python 2.5.
Looks like the BDFL is serious about the Web
Open Data Formats in Minnesota
April 10th, 2006 byThe most interesting bits of the bill are these underscored clause ( amends the statute ) :
(1) is free for all to implement and use in perpetuity, with no royalty or fee;
(4) has a specification available for all to read, in a human-readable format, written
in commonly accepted technical language;
(5) is documented, so that anyone can write software that can read and interpret the
complete semantics of any data file stored in the data format;
RGB Goodness
March 24th, 2006 byRGB Goodness, my photoblog has been setup.
It will exhibit my photographs and hints on photography as a journey through improving my photographic technique.
New exhibits will be hosted daily and all comments, feedback, crictisms will be accepted.
Please visit RGB Goodness at your leisure.
OpenOffice.org Developer Article Contest
March 23rd, 2006 byOpenOffice.org is running a monthly contest for the best Developer Articles on OpenOffice.org.
Articles on porting, add-on and filter development (e.g. new wizards, Calc functions, chart types, etc.), bug fixing, etc are all welcome.
The best article every month win $750.
Maybe I should write something on PyUNO component development?
See the contest rules for more info
ODF Toolkits
March 3rd, 2006 byA good starting point on ODF is OpenOffice.org’s XML Project
Also the OpenOffice.org’s Developers Guide and the OpenOffice.org SDK are good resources for working with OpenOffice.org
Christmas Trees in the Sand
January 9th, 2006 byTransplant, a public artwork by Artists Tara Kennedy and Barbara Nealon collected Christmas trees “planted” them on Sandymount Strand on January the 8th.
The Christmas Trees were left “planted” for a complete tide before being recycled.
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Photo of the Day: Building in Reflection
January 3rd, 2006 by 
Buildings in Reflection
Taken at Dun Laoighaire harbour
OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 release
December 22nd, 2005 byOpenOffice.org 2.0.1 has been released
Get it from the Irish OpenOffice.org Mirror
Picture of the Day: Howth Harbour
November 21st, 2005 byVishal saw this on my PC this morning and asked me why I hadn’t posted it. I thought I had posted it already. 
So here it is:
Anyway, this was taken a few weeks ago og Howth Harbour on the northside of Dublin
Pictue of the Day: Hello Birdie
November 15th, 2005 by|
Not sure what type of bird this is, if you know stick it in the comments. Took it on Saturday.
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[Update: It's a Blue Tit, Thanks to Inge Wallin, Andrew Brown, Niallm, Shane and others for that]
Picture of the Day: Dublin’s Custom House
November 6th, 2005 by 
Picure of Dublin’s Custom House from across the quays.
Technical Bits:
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm
Focal Length: 18mm
Exposure: 1/500s
Aperture: f/8.0
ISO: 200
XUL Goodness
October 21st, 2005 byThere is lots of good stuff happening around XUL at the moment.
Nufox is a python XUL toolkit that serves XUL pages to Gecko based browsers
Mark Hammond has been doing some great work on a Python-binding for XUL
Stephen Schaefer’s talk at the OpenOffice.org Conference on embedding XUL inside OpenOffice is an exciting idea on the use of XUL.
OpenOffice.org 2.o
October 20th, 2005 byOpenOffice.org 2.0 has been released.
Get it from the Irish Mirror here
Debs are available from here for Debian and Ubuntu Users
Picture of the Day: Red flower
September 25th, 2005 by
Took these flowers at the Botanical Gardens in Dublin.
I have uploaded about 10 good images from the day to Flickr Account
The technical bits:
Camera: Canon 350D
Lens : Canon 50mm f/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/800s
ISO: 200
Aperture: f/2.0
The great OpenOffice API hack
September 22nd, 2005 byOpenOffice’s Dispatch API seems like a great big hack and it is something one tries to avoid using when working with the API but
sometimes the API just won’t do what one would like it do i.e. Copying and Pasting content.
The Dispatch API allows developers to execute slots where there is some function in the office but it is not exposed by the API.
In the code below, the slot “.uno:Copy” is being executed, which is the same functionality in the UI as copy (CTRL-C).
executeSlot( ctx, controller, ".uno:Copy" )
def executeSlot( ctx, controller, islot ):
dispatchHelper = ctx.ServiceManager.createInstanceWithContext( \
"com.sun.star.frame.DispatchHelper", ctx )
frame = controller.getFrame()dispatchHelper.executeDispatch( frame, islot, "", 0, () )
A nicer way to do copy/paste if the API was capable of it, would be:
textEnum = doc1.Text.createEnumeration()
textCursor = doc2.Text.createTextCursor()
while textEnum.hasMoreElements():
para = textEnum.nextElement()
textCursor.insertRange( textCursor, para, absorb )
textCursor.gotoEnd( False )
In the first example, if one wanted to copy and paste content between documents, they are reliant on the operating system’s clipboard
In the second example, the code is only reliant on OpenOffice but the there is no insertRange() function on textCursors.
Which is a nice solution do you think?
JCB Song
September 14th, 2005 byJCB Song is a very cool animated video along with excellent music.
The band behind it is Nizlopi.
For more of Nizlopi’s music, see their media site
[via dropsafe ]
Picture of the day: Yellow Rose
September 1st, 2005 by
My picture of the day, hopefully the first of many.
A miniature yellow rose that is a plant pot in our small garden.
For my of photos, see my flickr account
Canon 350D Digital SLR
August 30th, 2005 by
Got myself a new toy recently, a Canon 350D Digital SLR.
This an impressive camera and when coupled to a macro lens some great shots result like this one
XPCOM <-> UNO Bridge
August 30th, 2005 byThere is an XPCOM to UNO bridge in OpenOffice CVS.
The full OpenOffice API is available through the bridge to any JavaScript applications.
Have a look at the README if you are interested and follow the “xpcom_uno module” thread on the UDK dev mailing list
There could be a number of interesting applications that would use this bridge.
Thanks to Daniel Boelzle and the udk team for this.