Is OpenOffice good tool for advanced applications?

I had to make some "serious" and personalized reports in "office" format. One time task, no need for fancy reporting software.I had to acquire one of the MS Office licensed copies or just use newest OpenOffice 3.1 which I use everyday. I'm a fan of Open Office as a tool for simple documents and spreadsheets - there is no real advantage in choosing other solutions. But new task was more demanding: preprocessing table of data, making nice template and then generating personalized documents.

Data part preparig was rather tedious - fixing some errors, cleaning and adding missing values. The OO database fits well in the OO environment but it lacks more advanced data operations, like joining two or more tables, grouping etc. So I decided to switch to external database (sqlite in that case) and connect it to OpenOffice through ODBC Driver.

I have tried to make nice report with graphs etc., but I couldn't find a way to make it work with mail merge.
I used some scripting to manually copy template and insert some data, but unfortunately I couldn't set up some details, like print ranges and merging documents into one.

I dropped graphs and just placed more data in simple tables. That kind of document was easy to personalize using "Mail Merge" feature. I was afraid it wouldn't work well, remembering bugs in OO 2.x and hacking to get work around. No more problems this time. Good work OO folks!

It took me more time than I planned due to finding ways to do the work, but I'm still the OpenOffice (and family) proponent :). There are features I didn't even mentioned like possibilities of external scripting in server mode, making it even more universal tool (for hardcore coders).

Fantasy Kommander - tactical turn based Flash game

It's a games genre I like: tactical decisions with a bit of strategical planning. Isometric look at the battlefield reminds me graphics from XCOM U.F.O series, but placed in medieval times with typical fantasy races like goblins, dwarfs and elves. You can buy new units every unit has a lot of stats and characteristics that could be upgraded with game money. Turn based engine is simple- your move then opponents move. Units movements are animated and the whole game looks nice. Units could take counterattack also during defence phase. Battles look more simple that description. The best tactic is old "circle around and attack from behind". Many levels are very time (turns limit) constrained that makes playing even more fun.

I have found Fantasy Kommander title at the Kongregate, but it could be hosted at other sites too.

Build your army and go for the victory!

Post announcements on Twitter

A little bow towards Twitter fans. I've created Twitter account for IT Pro Life post announcements.

Still testing! Keep in touch.

After 100 posts

I haven't planned to get that that count, but it happened. When I'm checking readership statistics it looks like not a big achievement, but there is always somebody who can find something interesting for itself. The best thing I get through blogging, were contacts with interesting people sharing interest on common subjects.

I'm not actively generating inter-links, track-backs and using other web marketing tools. Most of the readers get here through search engines. After 2 years I'm still treating it as low time consuming experiment. It's not so bad, but always could be a lot of better.

Initially I've made routine to post once a week, giving yourself free days on vacations or during "busy" time. Now I'm bending that rule posting at less frequent rate. I'm looking for more interesting subjects, or I'm just more lazy. It looks like there is a trend to write less but more frequently (Twitter frenzy). Maybe I will have enough willpower and time to develop my blog beyond that.

Running an automated trading system

Some time ago I tried to get into automated trading systems. I have choose custom software trading platform that I'm co-developing with my friends that like system investing too (and helped me to quickly get into subject - so thanks a lot). It's rather my hobby than real source of income, but who knows.

My target was easy system, trading on index futures. It should be suitable for individual investor, that spends no more time than couple minutes a day on-line "looking at" the market.
After lots of tests (I really mean it) and choosing one candidate model I started using it at real account in "production" mode. Decisions are made by system, then manually validated and executed. The software was tested a lot, so no surprises from that side. Besides of that I still need to manually validate correctness of input data.

It's hard to get good free data source. I have heard that many commercial services that provide stock market data, have glitches in their data too. It's hard to find something usable for low scale individual investing - that kind of services are more oriented towards bigger businesses or "investing houses".

I'm still learning so I'm going to make next trading system after I catch some problems with the first one. My next target is more sophisticated system including machine learning methods, and maybe better procedures for choosing good candidate systems during backtesting.