Offmessage

• How to delete a note in OpenOffice? | Ambience
  How to delete a note in an open office document. File under "oh I hate Open Office with a passion that burns like the sun"
  (tags: openoffice reference note delete)

• G-Ten
  We made this!
  (tags: isotoma plone plone-site)
• The Bigger Picture Environmental Advice Service
  We made this!
  (tags: isotoma plone plone-site)

Now I’ve been automatically posting my delicious bookmarks to this blog for a while I’m starting to wonder if it’s a good or a bad thing? I track a couple of blogs where I find it really useful, but I’m conscious that my bookmarks are often extremely techie when compared with the usual drivel that I write.

Good, bad, or meh? Answers on a souvenir leatherette bookmark (preferably with tassles) from the stately home of your choice to the usual address please. Good or meh, they stay, bad and I’ll turn them off.

• Twitter API Wiki / Sign in with Twitter
  Twitter as OAuth provider. For the right user base this is perfect.
  (tags: coding tools api twitter openid)

• Haystack – Search for Django
  Pluggable search engine for Django with both Whoosh and Solr support – sounds perfect. Lots of lovely features by the looks of it.
  (tags: python coding search reference tools django solr whoosh)

• QuizBot
  We made this!
  (tags: isotoma python django trueknowledge)
• Pinax
  Why have I not seen this before??? "Pinax is an open-source platform built on the Django Web Framework. By integrating numerous reusable Django apps to take care of the things that many sites have in common, it lets you focus on what makes your site different."
  (tags: coding python django pinax framework tools)

It’s thay-ers. Not tay-ers. Not tears. Not tie-ers. Not thigh-ers. And certainly not fay-ers, fears or (thank you Enterprise Rent-a-car for this one) spheres.

Sadly the name Theyers doesn’t appear in the How to say that name database. Still, it’s a nice idea.

• About Scratch – Scratch Wiki
  Interactive programming language to teach young (age 8+) kids how to think and reason systematically and build their own programmes. I was planning to just go for Python with my kids (like my Dad did with me and BASIC), but this might be a more structured start
  (tags: coding kids teaching)
• Embedding Flash Using Kupu – WebLion
  Good and detailed instructions as to how to get Kupu to insert .swf files. Once step further required for .flv, but nearly there.
  (tags: plone zope coding python reference howto flash video flv)
• How to Install Plone with RelStorage and MySQL « Picklebytes
  Interesting on two counts – firstly how to do it and secondly how bloody complicated it is to do.
  (tags: plone zodb relstorage mysql coding python zope)
• Scary Go Round :: T-shirts
  "The saddest wookie"
  (tags: tshirts)

• favikon
  Nice! Service to create favicons. Just about as web2.0 as you can get.
  (tags: web html tools favicon icons graphics)
• rev=canonical bookmarklet and designing shorter URLs
  I think I need to read this again It seems to imply that the short url is the canonical one? Surely this is an unpleasant overloading of a meta tag only just coming into its own?
  (tags: web reference shortener linkrot debate)

Two links doing the rounds of Twitter today bear a striking similarity; so much so that I was pretty sure I was going to end up at the same page when following the (un)fashionably shortened URLs:

• What the media’s not telling us about Somali pirates, and
• The world’s rubbish dump

What both stories tell are frankly horrifying tales of uncontrolled dumping of toxic waste of varying kinds in unpoliced waters.

Comment is hard; the degree of damage already done and the huge task of stopping it (even if anyone actually wanted to try) makes me just want to bury my head… How do you say? Stop the world I want to get off.