Symphony Thursday: Developer 101 1. Introduction to UNO Development and Documents/Writer "Hello World" 2. Spreadsheets"Hello World" 3. Presentations "Hello World" Last time, I covered the basics of UNO Development and walked you thru a "Hello World" application for OpenOffice.org Writer and Lotus Symphony Documents. This blog entry will cover an introduction to OpenOffice.org Impress and Lotus Symphony Presentations. Introduction to Lotus Symphony Presentations In both Impress and Symphony Presentations, you work with presentations. From there, you work with slides / pages. On each of those slides / pages, you have shapes. The shapes contain text, graphics, or the other data on your slides. Once you navigate to the shape, you get a text handle to the text object and everything else is much like working with text in Symphony Documents or Writer. Let’s Start Lotus Symphony Presentations To create the instance of Impress / Lotus SYmphony Presentations, call its URL Set I

Here is what's coming out today ... Movies Breaking Bad: Season #1 Canterbury's Law: The Complete Series Cities Of The Underworld: Season #2 Futurama: Into The Wild Green Yonder Girlfriends: Season #6 Haunting Of Molly Hartley, The Ironweed Jacked-Auto Theft Task Force: The Complete Series Just Shoot Me!: Season #3 Kurau Phantom Memory: The Complete Series Lair, The: Season #2 Last House On The Left, The: Collector's Edition Love Hina: The Complete Series Make Room For Daddy: Season #6: Volume 1 Maria Watches Over Us: Season #3 My Wife & Kids: Season #1 Oliver Twist (2007) Sword And The Fairy, The: The Complete Series Computer Games Star Ocean: The Last Hope ( Xbox 360) Stoked ( Xbox 360) 50 Cent Blood on The Sand ( Xbox 360) Shellshock 2: Blood Trails ( Xbox 360) Killzone 2 ( PLAYSTATION 3) Shellshock 2: Blood Trails ( PLAYSTATION 3) 50 Cent Blood on The Sand ( PLAYSTATION 3) Disney Sing It: High School Musical 3 Senior Year ( PLAYSTATION 3) Dead Rising: Cho

Symphony Thursday: Developer 101 1. Introduction to UNO Development and Documents/Writer "Hello World" 2. Spreadsheets"Hello World" Last time, I covered the basics of UNO Development and walked you thru a "Hello World" application for OpenOffice.org Writer and Lotus Symphony Documents. This blog entry will cover an introduction to OpenOffice.org Calc and Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets. Introduction to Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets Just like we did with Lotus Symphony Documents, we have to call the Service Manager and the Desktop. Set SM=CreateObject("com.sun.star.ServiceManager") Set Desktop=SM.createInstance("com.sun.star.frame.Desktop") Next, we need to start the Calc / Spreasheets appplication. They use a different URL to define the application, one specific for Calc / Presentations. Set CalcApplication = Desktop.loadComponentFromURL_("private:factory/scalc","_blank",0,args) The command above creates the workbook and opens it for the user. We then need to get the

Here is what's coming out today ... Movies Beverly Hillbillies, The: Season #3 Body Of Lies: SE Changeling (2008) Choke Dead Like Me: The Complete Series Faces: The Criterion Collection Flash Of Genius Gene Simmons Family Jewels: Complete Season 3 Ghost Hunters International: Season #1 High School Musical 3: Senior Year: Extended Edition Hobson's Choice: The Criterion Collection Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Season #8 Lunar Jim: Season #1 Midnight Meat Train: Unrated Director's Cut Murder, She Wrote: Season #9 Real Adventures Of Jonny Quest, The: Season #1 Sabrina, The Teenage Witch: Season #5 Shadows: The Criterion Collection Still Waiting: Unrated Computer Games Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned ( Xbox 360) Street Fighter IV ( Xbox 360) Street Fighter IV Collector's Edition ( Xbox 360) Xbox 360 Street Fighter IV FightStick ( Xbox 360) Street Fighter IV ( PLAYSTATION 3) Sony PS3 Street Fighter IV FightStick ( PLAYSTATION 3) Street Fighter IV Collecto

On the J. Michael Straczynski & Babylon 5 Books page on CafePress, a page of videos has shown up. Here is what you will find: OFFICIAL BABYLON 5 MUSIC VIDEOS During the 1990s, J. Michael Straczynski hired filmmaker John Hudgens to compile eight videos which set Babylon 5 clips to music. Until now, only fans who attended science fiction conventions where JMS or Hudgens screened the videos have seen them. In December 2008, JMS authorized Hudgens to post them on YouTube. For your convenience, we have grouped them together here. We have also included two moving tributes that John produced on his own: one for Richard Biggs and another for Andreas Katsulas. Check these out - especially the two tributes.

Hard to believe this is true For Immediate Release February 13th 2009 DREAM THEATER’S “PROGRESSIVE NATION 2009” TO TOUR NORTH AMERICA IN JULY/AUG WITH SPECIAL GUESTS ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA, PAIN OF SALVATION AND BEARDFISH New York progressive metal veterans DREAM THEATER will take their PROGRESSIVE NATION tour back on the road for its second incarnation with a run through America and Canada in July/Aug 2009. In addition to a headlining set by DREAM THEATER, this year’s package will feature the outstanding musicianship of ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA as well as two incredibly talented imports from Sweden: PAIN OF SALVATION and BEARDFISH. PROGRESSIVE NATION was created by DREAM THEATER drummer Mike Portnoy and its successful inaugural run in 2008 also featured OPETH, BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME and THREE. Portnoy once again hand-picked all of the bands for the 2009 bill based on their diversity and musicality. He comments: “This year’s lineup is so exciting for me. Every band is bringi

Here is what's coming out today ... Movies Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Mystery Of The Easter Chipmunk Are You Scared 2 Clint Eastwood: American Icon Collection Dungeons & Dragons/Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath Of The Dragon God Exterminating Angel, The: The Criterion Collection Foot Fist Way, The Friday The 13th: The Series: Season #2 Gigi (50th Anniversary SE) Gospel Hill Invasion (2007) Kennedy: The Complete Series Lodger (2008) Melrose Place: Season #5: Volume 1 New Detectives: Seasons #1-#2 New Line Crime Collection Nights In Rodanthe One Foot In The Grave: Season #5 One Foot In The Grave: Season #6 Route 66: Season #3: Volume 1 Simon & Simon: Season #2 Simon Of The Desert: The Criterion Collection Skulls Trilogy, The Street Fighter: Extreme Edition Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!: Season #2 W. (Widescreen) Computer Games Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection ( Xbox 360) Fear 2: Project Origin ( Xbox 360) Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad ( Xbox 360) X-Blad

Great too see this stuff showing up on LotusLive (even if it is a bit later than announced). Make sure you are part of the Lotusphere2009 group and then go to the My Services \ Files page. You should see this:

So based on a couple of conversations that I have had the past 48 hours, I wanted to pass along a few tips that I have. I started using DDE full time on both a client project and XPages development right around the XPages Training that took place for Design Partners in Cambridge in June 2008. Tip 1: Work Locally Unless you absolutely have too, work locally. Either in a database or a template. Working locally will drastically speed things up Tip 2: Recompile your application if a version of Designer before 8.5 has done any touching of a design element If you have to mix versions of Designer when working on a database, do a Recompile of database before using DDE. It will clean up and convert all the design elements to the 8.5 version and any glitches DDE might have with older version design elements will not hurt you Tip 3: If you are doing fancy C API calls or multiple levels (like more than 5) of script library nesting with LotusScript, DDE might not behave nice. Fall back to 8.0

I put these together for the Chicago Lotus User's Group (GRANITE) and figured the general community would like to check them out Lotus Symphony Granite 2.9.2009 2008 Review And 2009 PlanView more presentations from John Head. (tags: ibm lotus)

Any other suggestions?

So those whole follow me on Twitter have read about how I am making some lifestyle changes when it comes to my health. I figured I would blog it to not only share with others, but to document my thought process and the beginning. So the reality is that during the holiday season, I recognized that I needed to make some changes to get myself into a more active and healthy lifestyle. Nothing major caused this - no holy crap moments at the doctor, just a general feeling. So let me get some stuff off the table: 1. I like food and have a major sweet tooth. Ice Cream is my downfall. These things will never change 2. I can't stand the taste or smell of coffee so I need to get caffeine from soft drinks. 3. My genes gave me a body that gains weight in my stomach and butt. And fairly easily. 4. My job does not give me a chance to be active - writing code or selling usually requires one to sit on a chair for long periods of time OR eat and drink with customers So once I put all of those things

One of the things I asked for at the ODF round table at Microsoft last year was for a web based tool that would verify a file, both ODF and OOXML, and list what the rendering issues would be for various applications. It looks like someone else had the same idea. Officeshots.org is going to do this for ODF files: Officeshots.org will help you make a better choice by letting you compare the output and other behaviour of a wide variety of applications. Does your corporate style - the technical basis for many documents - actually look consistent across the board of applications - from OpenOffice.org 3.0, Adobe Buzzword and Symphony 1.2 to Microsoft Office 2000 with the ODF addin from Microsoft - or the one from Sun Microsystems? And how does it look on Mac OS X in iWork? When you are in an acquisition phase, officeshots.org will help you do a reality check if that fancy new open source suite or that productivity package you can get a bargain deal at - actually does what it says. On the

This is the first of the Symphony Thursday developer articles. In this post, we will cover the introduction to UNO development, a bit of history, and our first "Hello World" application. Introduction to OpenOffice.org Development Designed on an interface-based component model called Universal Network Objects (UNO) UNO definition UNO offers interoperability between different programming languages, different object models, different machine architectures, and different processes; either in a local network or even via the Internet UNO components can be implemented in, and accessed from, any programming language for which a UNO language binding exists OpenOffice.org? StarOffice? Lotus Symphony? StarDivision StarOffice written in the mid 80s Bought by Sun Microsystems in 1999, StarOffice released in August 1999 Source code released October 2000 OpenOffice.org 1.0 released May 2002, 2.0 in October 2005 OpenDocument format becomes international standard ISO/IEC 26300 November 20

Here is what's coming out today ... Movies Alec Guiness Collection Becker: Season #2 Being There: Deluxe Edition Bewitched: Season #7 Brainstorm: Deluxe Edition Dave's World: Season #2 Foot Fist Way, The Friday The 13th: Part 2: Deluxe Edition Friday The 13th: Part 3: 3D Deluxe Edition Friday The 13th: Uncut Deluxe Edition Jon & Kate plus Ei8ght: Season #3 Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist Night Court: Season #2 Noah's Arc: Jumping The Broom Oliver And Company: 20th Anniversary Edition Partridge Family, The: Season #4 Private Valentine: Blonde & Dangerous Rent: Filmed Live On Broadway Son Of Rambow Space Buddies Tom And Jerry Tales: Volume 6 Xanadu: Magical Edition Yentl: 25th Anniversary Edition Computer Games Xbox 360 Real Arcade Pro. EX ( Xbox 360) Xbox 360 InCharge Extra Battery ( Xbox 360) Samurai Warriors 2: Extreme Legends for Xbox 360 ( Xbox 360) World in Conflict for Xbox 360 ( Xbox 360) Fatal Inertia for PlayStation 3 ( PLAYSTATION 3) Imagine Fashi

I am excited to announce here on my blog that I will be doing three presentations at Lotus Developer 2009 in Boston on April 15th thru 17th, 2009. Get your taxes done early and come learn all about the Lotus product portfolio at Lotus Developer 2009 and Admin 2009. Here are the sessions I am giving: Integrating Lotus Symphony, OpenOffice.org, and Google Docs with Lotus Notes and Domino Go behind the scenes of Lotus Symphony and OpenOffice.org and learn how the Universal Network Objects (UNO) API provides development opportunities for very customized integration with external applications and data sources. Get the lowdown on using the new LotusScript LSX for Lotus Symphony, and see how to build additional functionality into Notes applications that provide access to Symphony objects, such as using Notes as the data source for a Lotus Symphony document Mail Merge. Walk through integration of web based document tools such as Google Docs and investigate how AJAX and Web 2.0 technologie

So this is mostly for my Chicago readers, but I have wanted to mention a few of my favorite Chicago places for a while. Halo for Men is the best hair studio and spa I have ever used. Designed for men, it makes getting a hair cut and asking for spa services welcome. It has everything you would expect in a man focused place like this - hard rock blasting thru the speakers, a Wii station for use, a waiting room that is really a theater with leather chairs and no bad magazines, and TV's at every station. The signature service, The Man, is the best hair cut any guy will ever get. You get the following: HAIRCUT & STYLE SHAMPOO & CONDITIONING TREATMENT SCALP MASSAGE PARAFFIN HAND WAX HAND MASSAGE HOT TOWEL & FACIAL TONER CLEANUP SHAMPOO AFTER THE MAN FREE TOUCH-UP WITHIN TWO WEEKS OF PREVIOUS APPOINTMENT COMPLIMENTARY BEVERAGE All for just $45 bucks. Seriously, the best hair cut I have ever gotten. They have multiple locations in the downtown area. Well worth trying somethin