Russell Smithers"Experience is the only teacher we have" – Swami Vivekananda

Last night I watched “South Pacific” (episode 1) on BB2 which is a “documentary series looking at the remote South Pacific islands” (www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jq11g). This  episode looks at the  Anuta (pronounces anootoo) and the story of Easter Island. It has been my opinion for some time that Easter island is a history lesson the world is ignoring at it’s peril. This program demonstrated to me opposite ends of a spectrum of how man can choose to live.

The Easter islanders chose a competitive way of life. Different tribes on the island trying to out do each other by creating larger and larger stone statues. This behaviour used up all their trees which were a vital natural resource for them. Once a enough trees had been cut down for moving huge stone carvings, life on the isolated island became impossible for human peoples to live. The upshot was that the peoples of Easter Island died off, all because they allowed the ego to rule their culture.

The other end of the spectrum shows the Anutans (pronounced anootans) living on an area 1/6 of a sqaure mile in size, and has one of the highest population densities found. The have the largest variety of ways to fish. They succeed because there is no competition, there can’t be, the island is too small and there are too many, they all co-operate and live as one harmonious group of peoples, living in harmony with their environment.

As a global culture which of these two do you think more closely resembles our current global culture? and, which one do you think we should attempt to be more like? I know which way I would choose to live. I think our current global culture is in danger of going the way of Easter Island.

We could call this potential disaster Easter Planet!!!

Copyright © 2009 by Russell Smithers

Well I decided to try twitter, I have known about it for some time, but seeing it on the gadget show convinced me to try it. I like it, it looks like it will be a good supplement to my Facebook, myspace and WordPress blogs.

It’s very versatile, for example there are wordpress plugins that let you update twitter, or be updated from twitter. Also with facebook is you add the right application, you can update twitter, and have twitter update your profile on face book, and so type once and it can update facebook, myspace and wordpress blogs to name a few.

It’s worth playing with for sure, and if you don’t like it you can delete your account.

Nothing wrong with small, small doesn’t mean it can’t be perfecty formed. Small is neither positive or negative, it just is in relation to other things.

Copyright © 2009 Russell Smithers

A quick note to friends and those who know me. I am moving address on the 21st Feb 2009, and this is only a few months after moving to Wales in July 2008. So if your unsure of where I am living, which would be understandable considering recent events, please contact me if I haven’t let you know my new address.

Recently I installed the wordpress plugin article2pdf (Marc Schieferdecker) which converts a post or page into a PDF document, you can see it in action at russellsashtanga.info. Further information can be found at the author home page and plugin home page although you may not need to visit these sites. You can download article2pdf from the wordpress plugins website or install from within a wordpress 2.7 installation. A note of caution, depending on your perma link structure you may want to read the installation notes.

So why would you want to create a PDF template? and how do you create a PDF template without spending any money? You may want extra information about the article or add some branding to it. I decided I wanted to include my name, web address and copyright on all the PDFs people create.

I thought I needed a special software package because when the PDF format first came out you had to pay for software to create PDF files, although I knew Open Office was able to create them, it didn’t seem to have a special PDF template option. After hunting around websites looking for ways to create these template files, I decided to create a normal PDF file and see if that would work, and it did!

So, the easy way to create a PDF template is using Open Office. Create a single page document, and set the headers and footers to what you want. Once this is done save it firstly as a document you can edit, and then save it as a PDF document. Then use the plugin to upload the file, and not forgetting to select the PDF you just loaded as your default template.

It realy is that simple, just any PDF document will act as a template for article2pdf. There is probably a standard PDF template format, and you may well have to use PDF templates in other applications. Of course the final disclaimer is that this may well depend upon the versions of software you are using, and changes in both the PDF format and article2pdf over time.

I have to share the following, it’s just so funny, im sure that little boy will go far! It is taken from the last of 4 stories at the following link; http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Little-Boxes-Everywhere,-and-More-Support-Stories.aspx

That Might Help? (from Dirk Grosskopf)
Back in the late 80′s, as computers were becoming more and more available for the masses, I worked at the computer desk in mid-sized electronics store. We carried several lines of computers, but the most popular tended to be the Commodore PC. While computers themselves were OK, Commodore’s customer service was a complete mess, taking six to eight weeks on average for warranty repairs.

One particular customer had a rather unfortunate experience with his Commodore PC 10 III. After purchasing the computer, he brought it home only to find that it didn’t work. Period. Nothing happened when he pressed the power button. This wasn’t a huge problem for us, but it required that the system be sent back Commodore.

After six weeks, the customer returned to pick up the repaired computer. When he got it home, he experienced the exact same problem: nothing happened. Not even a blink when he hit the power button. Angry, he brought it back in and we sent it back to Commodore a second time.

Another six weeks passed and he came back to get the computer again. And again, nothing. He went completely nuts, demanding to speak to the store manager, and insisting that he get his money back. This was surprising to us as, before giving him the computer back the second time, we tested it to make sure Commodore actually fixed it. Stranger still, the service reports from Commodore said that the PC was returned without any errors.

While waiting for the manager to come to the desk, I unpacked the PC, monitor, and keyboard, and installed it on a sales desk. I couldn’t find the power cord and therefore used the “brown” one we used for tests. The PC came right on, which the customer’s little boy notices right away.

“Daddy,” he said, pointing to me, “we didn’t plugged that brown cord into the computer, did we?”

The customer quickly learned after PCs do, in fact, need to be plugged in. I gave him back the Commodore and a new power cord. He was never seen again in the shop.

Subversion is used for version control and, having recently set up a subversion repository, I wanted to share the experience. Previously my experience of versioning was SCCS and CVS, both of these systems do the job, but Subversion is very easy to use and setup. Over the last few months I have used it extensively and become very knowledgeable about it. I would recommend Subversion to any one needing version control, I use it for source files, but it would be equally good for any thing else, it handles binary and text files so there is no limit.

Here are some links should you want to find out more;

Subversion website – subversion.tigris.org
Subversion forums – www.svnforum.org