Stuff Michael Meeks is doing

Off to visit the Dentist - apparently perfect teeth (apart from all the existing damage), J. (who has far more perfect teeth) scheduled for remediation. M. terrified of even sitting in the chair - why ?
Prodded the ODF converter hysteria / hype - why anyone would want to install most of OpenOffice, compiled as a plugin - when they could easily install all of OpenOffice (for free), and get perfect high-fidelity ODF file exchange, with exactly the same quality MS interoperability I have no idea. More interesting, are the conspiracy theories, which are presumably fueled by considerable opacity around such deals. This The Standards Blog - has this to say:
Back then, Sun was walking an interesting line: under a court settlement it was not free to openly criticize Microsoft about OOXML, but behind the scenes it was doing a lot to support ODF.
I assume this is some more-hypothetical-than-real out-of-court settlement; either way I find it hard to believe that Sun would formally constrain their public position on a standard; moreover they had (AFAIR) a reasonably enlightened view on blogging your personal views, at least in some areas of the company. Novell similarly may have a position you disagree with on OOXML - but that view is not for sale.
Call with Gary & Joey; sync with Aaron, chat with Srini. One-to-one with Jared, core-team meeting. Sent my LXF column off.
Harrowing discovery of a number of purloined items squirreled away in a daughter's cupboard; upsetting indeed - it is an horrible thing to spend one's time devising a suitably memorable punishment.
Tried out some stepper-motor gears made of panel pins, in holes drilled through some spare kitchen chopping board made of nylon. Seems like a near perfect material for the job; 'drifts' onto the spindle wonderfully; pleasingly rigid; good stuff.

My content in this blog and associated images / data under images/ and data/ directories are (usually) created by me and (unless obviously labelled otherwise) are licensed under the public domain, and/or if that doesn't float your boat a CC0 license. I encourage linking back (of course) to help people decide for themselves, in context, in the battle for ideas, and I love fixes / improvements / corrections by private mail.

In case it's not painfully obvious: the reflections reflected here are my own; mine, all mine ! and don't reflect the views of Collabora, SUSE, Novell, The Document Foundation, Spaghetti Hurlers (International), or anyone else. It's also important to realise that I'm not in on the Swedish Conspiracy. Occasionally people ask for formal photos for conferences or fun.

Stuff Michael Meeks is doing

2010-04-27: Tuesday.