Daily Archives: Tuesday, June 11, 2013

  • LibreOffice 4.1.0.0 beta2 available for testing

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    LibreOffice developer Fridrich Strba has announced that the second beta of the forthcoming LibreOffice 4.1.0, which is planned for release between 22 and 28 June, is ready for testing.

    One new feature now allows users to rotate images in Writer, several translations have been improved and a number of bugs have been fixed. The image rotation feature was implemented by Tomaz Vajngerl, who closed a feature request that had been open since early 2011.

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    LibreOffice for all your office suite needs: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, database, drawing and formulas

    LibreOffice 4.1.0 will include a number of new features, such as embedded fonts. This has been called the “most important feature” in the forthcoming release and allows users to include the fonts used in a document within the document, preventing text being displayed differently on systems where the original fonts are not available. This can happen when non-system or custom fonts are used and they have not been installed on the operating system of the reader.

    The change log contains a detailed list of all the bugs which have been fixed in LibreOffice 4.1.0 beta 2.

    This latest beta release can be downloaded from LibreOffice for testing on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (deb and RPM packages) platforms.

  • Barncamp – my highs and lows

    Steve WoodsBristol, Linux, Open Source, Politics, Tech

    Late yesterday afternoon I returned from Barncamp 2013, – a weekend of “hacktivism, workshops, entertainment, politics and fun in the sun” held at Highbury Farm up the beautiful Wye Valley a few miles south of Monmouth. Barncamp itself was open to attendees from Friday 7th June to Sunday 9th June. As part of the production crew, I got to spend a couple of additional nights on site, wearing out the view. Barncamp is a joint production between HacktionLab, FLOSS Manuals and Bristol Wireless.

    The view up the Wye to Monmouth from the Barncamp site
    The view up the Wye to Monmouth from the Barncamp site

    My highs and lows of the event are listed below.

    The highs

    • Seeing the International Space Station (posts passim) pass overhead on the first evening.
    • Ben Green’s wild food walk – something I’d been promising myself to do for years. I ate wild garlic flowers for the first time while on Ben’s walk.
    • Not reading the online edition (or any other format) of the dreadful Bristol Post.
    • A fine pub lunch – steak and ale pie -at the Lamb & Flag after my visit to A&E in Abergavenny (see below).
    • Leading the Linux command line workshop on the Bristol Wireless mobile LTSP suite.
    • Seeing lots of people I haven’t seen since the last Barncamp, 2 years ago.
    • “Wow!” Charlie‘s one word tasting note for Laphroaig single malt whisky.
    • Getting a surprised reaction from some for annointing the campfire hearth with Laphroaig before lighting (humour an old hippy as he appeases the genus loci, will you? Thanks. Ed.).
    • Excellent beers all weekend (apart from the solitary pint of Nutcracker over at The Boat in Penallt).

    The lows

    • Getting knackered walking up and down the hill from the camping field to the barn and up and down to the village shop.
    • Not catching sight of the ravens I heard all the week.
    • Hitting myself on the left thumb with a lump hammer, requiring a trip to Neville Hall Hospital in Abergavenny and the insertion of 3 stiches (picture below).
    • Having to come back to Bristol and routine.
    Ouch!
    Ouch!

    And finally…

    A big thank you to the folks at Highbury Farm, our hosts for Barncamp, especially Tez for the comfrey to help with my war wounds. Hope to see you again soon.