invention

Pierre-André Galmes has a great tip on typing data in OpenOffice.org calc. Basically select an area and use tab to switch between cells.

The only problem - I can't see how to get it to work nicely with the AutoComplete that happens when you start typing the same text as an entry above. Pressing Enter or arrow key all lose the selection, and pressing Tab gives a beep. Any ideas?

(I would have left a comment on his blog, but you have to start your own Blogger blog to do that...)

Trying to proxy network traffic through my wireless network on my laptop which is unfortunately running Windows... (oh, the irony)... these are handy hinters:

First, use ssh -D to create a SOCKS proxy. That's fairly easy. Use tsocks to make any application use the proxy. (Or, try and battle with why GAIM isn't listening to the Gnome network preferences, then get fed up and run it through tsocksify).

Next, its helpful to have a caching DNS server. I finally found a good one for Windows that actually works natively (via cygwin) and doesn't crash: Posadis. Simply start it up and it functions as a DNS cache. They also include some basic DNS querying tools that are missing from the Windows command line.

I also tried using dproxy which is much lighter but although it compiles in cygwin fine it produces various errors (misformed packets sent in response to queries etc).

Finally you need to let the Windows machine know to use the wireless network as its default route rather than the LAN. To do this follow this article's recommendations to adjust the Automatic metric under Advanced TCP/IP settings for each network connection (lower is higher priority) otherwise Windows XP will always select the LAN as the default network. (You can check which is default by saying 'route print' and seeing what the default gateway is).

The Code Breakers looks like an interesting documentary on open source software around the world...

But the description contains an hilarious quote: According to Jonathan Murray of Microsoft "The Open Source community stimulates innovation in software, it's something that frankly we feel very good about and it's something that we absolutely see as being a partnership with Microsoft."

Very kind of them to include us as their partners voluntarily, I must say...

Gervase Markham has a nice rant on how complicated SIP is.

Jingle on Jabber is a much nicer solution if you're not a telecommunications person yourself. It's an open standard that's much simpler than SIP which makes it easier to implement, and there are open source libraries available that provide support, and it is Jabberish which is sensible and makes all the confederation work nicely. It addresses some of the technical issues that make people seem to like Skype (getting through firewalls etc) without having some of its headaches (proxying other people's phone calls through your computer, a totally mad idea).

The main issue is that the only current final-release program available with support is Google Talk; it's not open source and its only available on Windows.

I'm currently recommending Google Talk to Windows-using friends in the hope that the best solution will win.

There are also a few emerging services for doing Jingle-to-Phone calling: gtalk2voip seems to work well, I've also seen jabphone. gtalk2voip apparently now also support SIP interoperability (which is only described as currently free of charge).

And it seems like Asterisk Jingle support is on the way too...

In terms of open source support, Patches / Branches are available for Psi, Kopete and Gaim (although that one's a bit more tricky to get working). See my blog on building Psi and Kopete on Fedora Core 4. Neither were too complex, and that was a few months ago.

Unfortunately all of these patches/branches are languishing in we'll-finish-that-at-an-undetermined-date mode, as the projects are busy doing other things and so on. Yet they all seemed to work reasonably well, a lot of the remaining work is cleanup and merging to the main branch etc. (The one most likely to emerge in the official version is Kopete as its in 0.12, which is in Beta. But I'm not sure whether it'll be included in official builds on various distros...)

There are a number of proposals out there to do more work as part of Summer of Code, and I think it would be great if people signed up for these:

Jingle Audio Jingle Video Kopete Jingle Support

Just phoned Debonairs to order some Pizza. The conversation went something like this:

Them: Hi
Me: Hi, I'd like to order some pizza
Them: Hold the line please...
(a 30 second pause)
Them: Sorry about that, what's your phone number?
Me: 000 0000 (Gives phone number)
Them:Great, is that David?
Me: Yes
Them: OK, would you like to order?
Me: Three Large Pizzas, one vegetarian, one four seasons, and one sweet and sour chicken
Them: Great, are you paying by cash or credit card?
Me: Credit Card
Them: Is your credit card number 0000 0000 0000 0000? (Reads out my real credit card number
Me: Yes (pretending not to be surprised)
Them: Expiry Date 01/06?
Me: No, it's changed, it's 00/00
Them: CVC number 000? (Gives out my previous CVC number)
Me: No, that's changed too, it's 000
Them: Great, your order will be with you in thirty to forty minutes


Hmmmm.....