Ages ago I stumbled across this really nice & small word processing application called Bean. Essentially it's like a cut-down Microsoft Word of OpenOffice but designed just for the basics, it handles all the major file formats great and for simple stuff works fine.

Check it out here

OpenOffice - convert .ODT to .DOC loses bulletpoints

Lately I've had to convert an OpenOffice document over to a Word .DOC document, which went smoothly but had because OpenOffice uses a Symbol library called OpenSymbol and Office uses Symbol it caused all the bullet points to be broken when converted across.

So to fix this open OpenOffice on your Mac,

• Goto Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Fonts
• Enable "Apply replacement table"
• Select "Symbol" in the left-hand Font drop down, select "OpenSymbol" in the righthand "Replace with" dropdown.
• Press the checkmark to the right to add the substitution to the table. Make sure you check the Always box.

Now everytime you convert between formats your bulletpoints should appear correct.

There's a tool called David's Batch Processor which allows you to batch process images within the free Graphic Image Manipulation Package (GIMP).

To install on Ubuntu Hardy, first...

sudo aptitude install libgimp2.0-dev

Now download David's Batch Processor from here

Extract the file and Terminal into the directory, now make & install the plugin...

sudo make
sudo make install

...if it still doesn't compile make sure you have build-essentials installed, which can be added via,

sudo aptitude install build-essentials

After all this open GIMP (Application / Graphics / GIMP), Click the Xtns tab (next to File) and you should see Batch Process..; click it and you'll open David's Batch Processor.

Shocked my boss yesterday after telling him i'm building my own rackmount server, well i've built machines for about 20 years and most of those have been custom jobs with 3 running Ubuntu Server for my Rails projects so doing this is the next logical step.

Here's the things I've dug up, which should help you out if you ever decide to go down the same route.

Co-location + Power Limit

For this I've found a company in Manchester (uk) who will host it for me at £32 a-month as long as the power usage doesn't spike over 0.5A

So with a few calculations, that gives me...

0.5a => 120 watts

The company is called RapidSwitch

Case

Next up the case and I've gone for a SuperMicro 1U case, problem is I need specific boards to slide in and so this...

M2N-MX SE Plus

But still looking around for the perfect fit.

Processor

This will probably be an AMD 64 dual core CPU, as they're power efficient, reliable and the O/S i'm choosing (Fedora 8) fits rather well with them.

PSU

For this I'm sourcing the most power efficient model as most PSU's only run at 50-60% operating efficiency.

• Sparkle 1U 220W ATX

CPU Heatsink

ThermalTake have a good array at...

• ThermalTake 1U Coolers

Not sure about the availability but your 1U case is 1.75" high so it's a big factor.

HDD

I'm picking 2x 500gb Western Digital Caviar drives, I've always used them, they're not special but reliable.

This'll go in a RAID 1 configuration similar to my NAS box at home, doubling the HDD read speed but lowering the write speed due to the mirroring, reliable though.

Memory

2 sticks of 2gb memory, I'd choose Samsung as they're cheap and just work but having trouble sourcing the OEM sticks, may just go with some corsair sticks.

Power Calculator

Found a power calculator which should give me a judge on how much power I'm gonna be using,

• Power Calculator

Probably not that accurate but gives me a ballpark figure, with the hardware I've chosen:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2600 CPU AM2
• 2x WD SATA Drives
• 2x DDR2 2GB Sticks
• (graphics card on-chipset)
• 1x 80mm fan, 2x 120mm fans

All comes up to needing a PSU of 177 watts, which fits in with my Sparkle low-power 220w PSU but might be a might too high for the power coming in.

Finally

It's a learning process and one that'll probably not be as easy as it looks but worth the effort for the experience.