Cosima Underwater

At the risk of sounding like a total geek, I am counting open source software today. It’s software without restrictive copyrights whose source code is readily available, and therefore can be improved, adapted, or changed. Best of all, it can be used for free.

Most open source software is developed and improved in a collaborative effort. And once the core software is written, lots of people contribute so called add-ons or plug-ins that make the application highly customizable. For me as a user, these add-ons are the biggest advantage of open source compared to commercial software.

I am not a geek, far from it, and you don’t really need to be, to use open source applications. Some of them have rather spotty instructions, but most are very user friendly, come with documentation, and have user forums, where non-geeks like me can ask embarrassing questions without being laughed at.

At the moment I am using the following open source applications, and I would recommend every single one of them:

I use Thunderbird for writing emails and Firefox to surf the internet. There are hundreds of useful add-ons for both applications, that make using them a real joy. Just to give you an example, I installed a Firefox add-on called ColorZilla, which let’s me determine the RGB and Hex code of colors in web pages. If I come across colors that I like while surfing the web, I can determine their code and replicate them for my own blog or website. Well, I don’t really need that, you say, but there are hundreds of other add-ons, and the nice thing is that every user can install the ones that are useful to him. I also think that Firefox loads web pages much faster than Internet Explorer.

My blog uses Wordpress and is hosted on a Linux server. I was so used to working with blogger, that I hesitated to use my own domain, because it wouldn’t allow me to use the new version of blogger. However, since I switched to Wordpress, I haven’t regretted that I did. Most of Wordpress’ advantages can only be seen behind the scenes, at the administrative level. For example, comment reading and reply is a much more convenient than in blogger. And again, there are many useful plugins that can be installed to customize the application.

For Cosima Inc’s web page, I use Joomla which is a bit like a blog application only more versatile in how pages are structured and which features can be chosen for a page.

I also installed FileZilla, which let’s me quickly and conveniently upload files to my webserver. Most of the music for my Musical Monday posts were uploaded to my server with FileZilla.

Today, I also installed Vanilla (don’t ask me why half of open source software names end with -illa), a forum software, on Cosima Inc’s server. I am going to use it as a private messageboard that only invited users can see, and I am hoping that it will make communication between me and the company of my partner much easier.

Seven applications, all open source and for free, on my non-geek notebook alone. I like all of them, and am thinking of adding more. There is this open source office suite that I have yet to check out…

Thank you all for your well wishes! I would love to say that my cold is on the retreat, but these little viral bugs are still having a party inside my throat and nose. I am having a fruit and veggie day today, to send some battle-ready vitamins to them.

Yesterday, I spent the whole day in front of the computer to tinker with Cosima Inc’s website. I thought that a flash slideshow of my products would be a cool thing to have, and bought this product, which is a cheap and elegant solution to put a picture slideshow on your website or blog, but as always the devil lies in the details. It took me the whole day to make this work and look like I wanted too. By the end of the day, it was hard to focus my eyes.

So I thought, that I deserved a  special treat this morning, and went to the neighborhood coffee shop. It belongs to a local chain, and has very nice decor with comfy chairs and sofas, good jazz music, and a wide selection of newspapers and magazines. Only the coffee is lousy, but drinkable in cappuccino form. So I sipped my cappuccino and read the news on Burma. Apparently even Rambo aka Sylvester Stallone, who was filming at the Thai-Burmese border, thinks it’s a “hell hole”. Then I glanced at the people rushing by on the other side of the window, struggling to get to work on time. The coffee shop felt like a quiet and comfy bubble, swimming slowly against the tide. It was luxurious to be inside of it. Life felt good.

Last week, as I was surfing around to find a slideshow extension for Joomla that looks good and doesn’t require a masters degree in programming to install it, I stumbled upon www.monokai.nl. Click on the the funny-looking monokai man to enter the site, and then on the “the lab”-tab on the left side of your screen. When you have finished chasing the spider thingy around your screen, check out all the other flash games by clicking on the round navigation button in the lower left corner. The photos are very nice as well.

This morning I showed little man the site, and the evolution and spaceship games were his favorites. After playing for a bit, he told me that he wanted to make a “real spaceship”.

Mama: Uuh, that’s very, very hard to build.

Little man: Out of paper, like Opa did last Christmas.

Mama: Aah, a paper airplane!

Little man: Yes!

Opa is very good at making paper airplanes. They have a reinforced tip, slight curve on the underside of the wing, and winglets. Unfortunately, I have forgotten how he folds them. Morning in Hong Kong equals some ungodly hour in Berlin, so calling Opa was out of the question.

I did my best, but the resulting airplane flew about a meter, then stopped mid-air, before spiraling to the ground, and smashing its nose. Some research was in order. Googling “best paper airplane” brought this site up on top.

First, I adapted the old airplane by cutting out the middle section of the wings, which brought an immediate improvement. The soft nose was still a problem though, and we started to make a new one, according to the site’s instructions. As I was folding the front part of the airplane, I remembered some of the steps from my father’s planes. He does the nose exactly the same, but he never did the tail. Both constructions fly very well, but the tail definitely has an added coolness factor. After letting it fly around the living-room, I suggested letting it fly from our balcony.

Mama: But we probably won’t get it back (we live on a +10th floor of a high-rise building).

Little man: Nooooo!

Mama: We can always make a new one.

Little man: Nooooo!

So, after that was settled, we decided to go to the park and let it fly there.

Gotta love the Internet!

I am up to my ears in creating a web site for Cosima Inc. I could have given the task to a web designer, but ultimately decided against it because:

1) I am crazy

2) Have nothing else to do… lol, so not true

3) Have to work with a tight budget

4) Need to update the content of the website by myself anyway, and setting up the structure of the site it will give me the knowledge to do that

5) Learnt of Joomla from a friend, which makes it possible to design a nice-looking web site, even if you are only a part-time nerd like me

6) Joomla works similar to a blog, making it easy to add new content and change the look of the site

7) Allows you to be lazy like me and just buy a template from one of the zillion of Joomla template sites and tweak it a little

8.) Joomla is open source, and there are thousands of far smarter people than me working on improving it, adding new features, and helping bloody beginners like me to get off the ground

9) If I fail miserably, I can still hire a web designer who works with Joomla, and I will at least understand the basics

The website has to take a back seat today though. Little man and I will go to two children’s birthday parties, one in the morning and another one in the afternoon. Last weekend, we went to one as well, and we are pretty much booked out until the summer holiday starts in July. June minus nine months… September… yeah, can be such a dark and cold month… better to spent it in bed ;).