Hurray for odf !!

I have been trying to switch from windows to Linux for some time now. The fact that i paid $ 150 for my Windows XP(last year when vista was free with a new dell and i wisely decided to be smart and invest that money) made it difficult. I had to get my moneys worth before making the switch. (and I was lazy to get a dual boot system).

My attempt over last few months has been trying to use as much open source software as possible. I switched to thunderbird from outlook, also i was using open office suite for all my text presentation needs. However all my submissions were required to be in .doc format. Open office allows saving in .doc format but this almost always messes the document formating. I had to make change to my source file and check for proper formating by opening it in word viewer.

And then for my last report I had to insert lot of equations. I used OOOLatex with open office and then decided to hand in a printed report. My professor liked the whole thing so much he asked me to submit the report as .odf and made up his mind to give open office a try. I consider this a victory for .odf and takes me one step closer to converting completely to Linux. Hurray for .odf!!

The International Space Station

The International Space Station(ISS) is a research laboratory being assembled in outer space. The ISS is a joint project carried out by the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, EU, Brazil and Italy.It is a fine example of international cooperation in science and space exploration. Here is nice presentation which shows the ISS construction and its modules. An interesting perspective of its size comared to the scifi ships can be found here another nice shot showing the scale of astronaut against the backdrop a section of ISS can be found here.