The best photos of July

Lattest album.
Home, sweet home.

The best photos of July

Family albums - quick recap

Well, in case you don't know, I'm photography and filming enthusiast. Since late 90’s I started to take more and more stills pictures and home made movies. Well, not movies but I do have several DVDs with my family vacation trips, events etc. The photograph collection is already huge and lately I started to use Picasa Web Albums to share the best once with my relatives and friends. If you are reading this blog, probably you one of them :-) so, to make it easier for you I’ll post the links to the albums at the blog as well.
Just for the recap, here are the previously posted albums, you can click on the thumbnails to view the album...

Tali, First Year

Einat, Nir & Tali

Tali' First Birthday

Yael & Tali, June 2007

Look and feel change in Office 2007

I find where Microsoft hides the look and feel change of Outlook 2007! If you don't want to read all the next bla-bla you can skip until the instructions block and find how to do the change.

But first thing, first...

Since its introduction I like using Windows XP look and feel except one problem – the blue default color scheme. It was just too colorful for me and I started immediately to look for alternatives. No, Windows platform is a given in my place, no alternatives here. I looked for a neutral and still modern look for my working station. Surprisingly quick enough I was found just everything I asked for: Silver scheme was there from the beginning and simple configuration via Control Panel > Display > Appearance > Color Scheme – is almost everything I change from the default installation (except maybe the annoying task grouping…)

Screen shot of the Windows XP Silver Color Scheme

Years, this setting was sufficient until our IT decided to upgrade to Office 2007. Of course, I liked the opportunity to play with the new toy and also I heard before about the enormous effort invested in the usability of that version. On the other hand, I'm heavy Office user these days and basically without my corporate e-mail and Word I can cover very little of my work responsibilities. After a week or two of struggle I decided that the adaptation is unavoidable and I have to learn to use this Office sooner or letter and better is sooner. With almost religious trust in the IT guys I started the upgrade and today after several months I think this was good decision. Better productivity, nice environment, sexy look. Sexy look, hmmm… well, no, not perfect.

One again the default color scheme! I don't know how Microsoft make these defaults, maybe they use psychologist advice for targeting some special group or segment? For my taste, and I see it also in some others, these colorful fancy themes sweet more a teenager then a corporate user. Make it nice, but make it less clamorous. The focus of user should be on the presented content and not on the fames, buttons, icons and other UI controls surrounding and embedded in the content.

But, no worry, I know the solution, right? Well, this is true, but unfortunately the first program from the Office 2007 I started to use was Outlook. Yes, the Outlook default color scheme was blue so I've opened the Options tab and started to look for the place where I'll be able to change it to something more acceptable. After endless overview of all the tabs and sub-options and advice settings and again and again I failed to find it! RTFM attempt, search the help didn't bring the desired result either.

Then it's just hit me: what if I check for the Word options? What if this will affect all the Office programs? I don't know how this idea reached my mind, I don't know how this idea reached the mind of Microsoft engineers, but here is the result of my research:

INSTRUCTIONS:

To change the color scheme of all Office 2007 programs you can open Word file > Office Button > Word Options > Popular Tab > Color Scheme. This change will affect also color scheme of Outlook. I'm advising to choose 'Silver' which looks very nice with XP silver color scheme.

Screen shot of the Office 2007 Silver Color Scheme

Configuring Beyond Compare for Excel files

The simple way to compare MS Excel (xls) and even MS Excel 2007 (xlsx) files using Beyond Compare 2.

First of all, you need installation of MS Excel and Beyond Compare. This tip is prepared and tested with BC version 2.4
The comparison of excel files is possible due to additional viewer rules. The catalog of such rules could be found at the official home site of Beyond Compare (http://www.scootersoftware.com/) >> Download >> Miscellaneous Downloads >> Additional Rules definitions (for BC 2.1 and later) or just use the following direct link http://www.scootersoftware.com/download.php?c=kb_morerules. The page has many different rules definitions and you may find interest in other rules posted there.
Download the next rule definition. From its description you can guess the way it’s working. For more details you can see the readme file inside the downloaded zip.
MS Excel, 14-Sep-2006 v1.0.3, Download 2kb

Installation instructions:
1) Extract all files in MSExcel.zip into: C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 2
TIP: If you want to be able comparing Excel 2007 files (*.xlsx) you need to modify the original rule definition by adding new extension for the same handling:
a) Make a copy of C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 2\MSExcel\MSExcel.xml file and name it MSExcel2007.xml
b) Open the file MSExcel2007.xml with any text editor and modify the next line to include *.xlsx string
The line before the change includes: "*.xls"
The line after the change should include: "*.xls;*.xlsx"
2) Run Beyond Compare and from the "Tools" menu select "Import Settings...".

3) In "Select import file", enter the name of the rules file:
C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 2\MSExcel\MSExcel.xml (or, if you prepared, MSExel2007.xml)
Click "Next". In the "Pick rules to import" list, "MS Excel" and "MS Excel Formulas" should be checked. Click "Next" again, then click "Finish" to import the rules.

Use:
1) Whenever you load a pair of XLS files in the file viewer Beyond Compare will now display a comparison of the text.

2) To compare formulas in cells, select ToolsPick RulesMS Excel Formulas.

ראיון בועז בתכנית הבוקר

http://www.reshet.tv/video.aspx?video_id=3901

What is a Software Architect?

Nice post by Ray King.

What is a Software Architect?

http://kingtaipan.blogspot.com/2007/07/there-seem-to-be-more-and-more.html

I liked the most: “The nature of the role of Architect is that he has influence but no power, so he needs to work to keep his influence and to bring people along willingly.”

Chris Aniszczyk Blog

Excellent blog by Chris Aniszczyk, basically on Eclipse and Java development.

mea-bloga.blogspot.com

מספר רעיונות לעתיד

נושאים על פיתוח תוכנה, JAVA, Eclipse

ביקורת טלוויזיה, בעיקר דעה אישית על הבעת דעות אישיות של אנשי טלוויזיה וחמור מכך אנשי חדשות. מראיינים המפגזים בשאלות מבלי להקשיב ושאר החוצפה בתקשורת. למען הסר ספק: החוצפה של אנשי תקשרת

פעם ראשונה בעברית

טוב, הגיע הזמן לנסות לכתוב בשפת הקודש. במידה וזה יצליח לא תישאר לי שום ברירה ואהיה חייב להמשיך ולכתוב בה...