newquisk's blog

Election Coverage

• League of Women Voters 2007 State Municipal Election Guide.
• The Morning Call's take on the guide (PDF)
• Express-Times' Endorsements
• Morning Call Endorsements

Voting Information

• How to use the voting machines
• Where to vote in Northampton County

My first few days on NeoOffice haven't turned up any major problems, but I have encountered a couple of foibles. Most of these are personal preferences, but I think most heavy Word users while find them to be similarly annoying

Firing up NeoOffice and using it to write a few quick documents, the first thing I noticed was how slick and Aquafied it was -- it feels like a Mac OS X native application, which is a major advantage over Open-Office-under-X11 approach that I took earlier.

Open Office is a free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Office. Based on Sun's Star Office, Open Office has been around for a number of years, and has proved fairly popular with the geeks, particularly those who dislike being beholden to Microsoft, Apple or any other proprietary software developer. It's the predominant office productivity suite on Linux, and comes bundled with distributions like Ubuntu.

The new version of Mac OS X really is going to ship this month. While I'm excited about new features like Spaces (known as virtual desktops for our Linux friends), QuickView (which lets you look at almost any file without opening the associated application) and Stacks (piles of documents that rapidly expand when you mouse over them) I think I'll wait a while to upgrade. The 10.5.1 release seems like a good milestone to shoot for.

I received this via campus mail and thought it was blogworthy:

The department of computer science will sponsor an autonomous robot competition noon Friday, Nov. 9 in Acopian Engineering Center room 500. Organizational meetings will be held 4:10 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 18 and 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 25 also in Acopian room 500.

The upcoming competition is open to anyone interested in programming/commanding/directing a robot. No prior experience or technical background is required, only the desire to learn what you can do with a robot. Anyone from the Lafayette College community can participate, which includes students, faculty, staff, and their family members.

Imagine commanding a robot mission to seek out a target/treasure/prize (maybe a rescue mission) on a field riddled with obstacles! This could be you!

If you missed John Fulton's "Getting Started with Linux" brown bag lunch presentation today, you can still check out his presentation notes. You can learn more about the user-friendly Ubuntu Linux via it's official web site or or check out an education-specific iteration known as Edubuntu. Oh, and Open Office? You can get that here.

CommandN is my favorite video podcast, featuring a great mix of tech and web tips, news and suggestions. Not a week goes by where I don't learn something from this show, and that's something I can say of every podcast I listen to. It's well worth the time it takes to watch it, and its the perfect show to start your geeky morning routine.

The October 3rd edition of the Coffee Break leads off with news of Lafayette's implementation of Shibolleth and the recent Podcamp Philly event held at Drexel University. In Tech News, hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley discuss the new Firefox Campus Edition, the Chronicle of Higher Education's new Tech Therapy podcast, and one professor's attempt to rate the trustworthyness of Wikipedia's contributors. In Help News they review file compatibility issues with Microsoft Office 2007, announce upcoming Outlook and NetStorage workshops, and offer a tip for quickly saving photos using Safari.

Apple's new store at the Lehigh Valley Mall opens this weekend; specifically 10 a.m. this Saturday. I think a weekend expedition with the kids is in order. Check out the store web page.