Fun with the New Word 2007 Document Format

Here’s a little exploration of the new Word 2007 document format. It’ll give a little insight into how we can leverage this new format programmatically.

1. Open Word 2007. A new document is created by default.
2. Type “This is a test”.
3. Drag and drop an image from your computer into the document. It should drop in a picture.
4. Click the “Save” icon (little floppy) to save. Select Word Document (*.docx) as the “Save as type”, note the location where you’re saving the file, and then click Save.
5. Close Word 2007

Find the file and explore it…

1. Using the file browser (Explorer), fine the file you just saved in the file system. It’s probably called “This is a test.docx”.
2. Rename the file by replacing the “docx” extension with “zip”. You’ll end up with “This is a test.zip”
3. Open the ZIP file.

Changing it around a bit…

1. In the ZIP file, browse to word/media.
2. Drag a different image from your computer and drop it into the ZIP so it replaces the image1.jpeg that’s already in there.
3. In the ZIP file, find the file word/document.xml, drag it onto the desktop or into a temp location, and then open it with Notepad.
4. Find the string “This is a test” and replace it with “This WAS a test” and save the file.
5. Drag document.xml back into the ZIP so that it replaces the original version.
6. In the ZIP, find the file docProps/core.xml, drag it onto your desktop of a temporary location, and then open it with Notepad.
7. Find the <dc:creator> tag and replace its contents (probably your name or username) with something like “Frank Sinatra” and save the file.
8. Drag core.xml back into the ZIP so it replaces the original version.

Re-opening in Word 2007

1. Rename “This is a test.zip” back to “This is a tet.docx”, and double-click it to open it.
2. Note that the image and the content has changed. The image is stretched to the size of the original.
3. Click the Office Button, which is the round button on the uppoer left corner of the window,
4. Click Prepare, then Properties, and note that the author has changed.

Besides just being a fun word to say, it turns out that "Foy" is a place you can go to get the answers you need, 24 hours a day, from Monday through Thursday during the typical university school year. I can't wait to try it out! :) 

The "Foy Information Line" rings to the Foy Student Union Information Desk at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama.  It was started back in the 50's as a resource for students, but at some point in the recent past opened up to the public as well. And now they get calls from all over the country -- and the world -- like over a thousand calls a day, with the most interesting (apparently) coming in after 3:00 AM. (Thinking: "Hmmm... I wonder if they'd know if you can melt a pure ice cube in the microwave oven...")

So here's the deal: You pick up the phone and dial (334) 844-4244. Soon enough you'll be greeted by a friendly southerner (or at least someone going to school in the south) who is eager to surf the web, talk to other Foysters, or even refer to actual books in order to find you an answer. I know -- actual books... sounds kinda crazy, doesn't it? 

Maybe I'll call and ask then what a Foy is, even though I know it's almost certainly a local philanthropist or former dean of the university. Or maybe I'll ask for the 42nd digit of pi. Or where I can go for a hot cup of Joe in Barrow, Alaska. Or maybe I'll just check in to see how the turtles are doing -- the ones that live outside their door.

The possibilities are endless. :) 

Edit: I just found a video of Matt Lauer form the Today Show asking Foy! Linky: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI1IDHYxz0I

So is this really a blog if it has no comments, no trackbacks, no gravitars, no permalinks, no clouds? Well, I guess probably not. But hey, it's a start, right? :)

For this site, I'm using a content management system called Joomla, which was suggested to me by a friend over at one of my other sites www.rackcreations.com. (I have to say Joomla has a lot of cool features, and it's very easy to extend to meet some of my own specific needs.) But it's not your typical blog software like WordPress, and it doesn't have a lot of the blog-like functionality built in.

I can add some of those features, but there's a ripple effect I'd need to content with along the way. For example, to add commenting, I should really install (among other things) the yvComment module, but that requires MySQL 5, but I'm currently still running a slightly earlier version. An moving to a new version requires a bunch of work and testing, when what I really should be focusing on is getting my ordering system completely moved over from the Windows sever over at plans.theFrankes.com. 

So is it a real  blog? Maybe not. But is it a step in the right direction? I certainly hope so! 

Now that I have this blog, I thought I'd post some legwork I've done trying to figure out a mindlessly simple way to backup my hard drive at home. Mindless because I have kids, and simple because I have kids.

I solved the problem before (back in the day) by rolling my own application that copied off new and updated files from one location to another (usually another computer), but that, of course, requires both computers to be on when the backups are scheduled. It's also written in an obscure out-of-date programming environment called VB4 -- or maybe it was 3, I don't remember. AND, it assumes that whatever disaster might befall me and my data be pretty localized -- only one hard drive or one computer. And whenever I come back home from a vacation, I'm convinced that I'm going to drive up and find that my house had been transformed into a pile of ashes while I was away. So there must be a better way.

I considered signing up for a terabyte web host and just uploading everything, but that would require writing a lot of code (security and otherwise) especially if I wanted it to behave nicely with respect to my CPU and 'net bandwidth. So I dropped that idea. But there are backup solutions like Areca, Cobain, and Amanda that have done all the hard work for me. And I could even partner with a friend and swap disk space for backups using one of these tools. But that requires learning a new tool, configuring it, etc -- and it also requires both computers to be on and connected whenever one of them wanted to backup. Too much trouble.

So I turned to online backup services, partly because one was recommended by a presenter at TechEd this year. At first I was a little nervous about storing all my data on some server somewhere, but I'm getting over that. Besides, I'm not sure I have any files that would be of any real value to anyone other than me and my family -- among them over 60,000 photos at last count. Wow.

So here's where I am:

Mozy. Mozy at $5/month uses 448-bit blowfish block cipher before the files hit the wire. It's an EMC company (30B mkt cap), but looks like it limits its upload speed to 133k/second for the "home" edition. So the first backup can take days (weeks?), but after that it's block-level incremental, which is usually super-fast.

Iron Mountain. Iron Mountain, at $10/month, uses Rijndael block cipher (AES) before it hits the wire. It's public at about 5.5B mkt cap, and I guess it started in a big iron mountain. I don't know about its upload restrictions, but it also uses block level incremental backups after the first "big one."

Carbonite. At a little over $4 a month, Carbonite is the least expensive, and it's the one that was enthusiastically recommended by a speaker at TechEd. It's a private company funded with $27M VC, but I figure if I subscribe and it goes out of business, I haven't really lost anything unless the house happens to vaporize at the same time. It uses a combination of blowfish and 3DES before the bits hit the wire. Again, block level incremental is used after the initial backup. There's no upload throttling. Carbonite also versions files, so if you save over a document and you need a previous version back, you can recover a version going back 90 days. But perhaps most importantly, carbonite the stuff Han Solo was frozen in when The Empire struck back.

Why isn't Google in this business? Hmm.... maybe they'll buy Carbonite...

All of their agreements seem like pretty much the same legal gobbledygook: "We're not responsible for anything, even if we are responsible for it."  I wasn't overly alarmed by them.

So once I convince myself that 99942 Apophis isn't going to make this all a moot point, I'm probably going to sign up for Carbonite.