I had a random thought on my way home today about Microsoft Office 2007. It’s great that Microsoft have adapted the XML format for Office 2007, but it’s not particularly useful when sharing with someone using Office 2003 or prior, who can’t open this new file format. I’ve read previously that the Office 2007 Word Document .docx format file can be opened with a ZIP extraction utility, and the XML file can be read within the file. However this still isn’t particularly useful.

It makes sense for me to start using these new file formats since I’m using Office 2007, but what about people I send the files to? What are they going to do?

Blow and behold, Microsoft have actually released a compatibility pack for Office 2000 onwards, which depending on the exact previous version of Office you have, allows you to open and possibly even save to .docx format.

I shall go install it on my fathers computer before he asks me how to open that .docx file I just sent him!

Whilst I’m waiting to board, I might as well take the time to blog to the world how impressed I am with the Spamato Ad-on for Thunderbird. I have not had any much success with the Thunderbird adaptive junk email filter system, nor with the uncustomisable Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2008 anti-spam solution. So I sought greener pastures and tried Spamato. It doesn’t take much effort to setup, but you do have to manually specify your Java binaries directory. Once setup, you’re laughing! It uses seven types of anti-spam filters which means you can use them all with low thresholds, and set it to require two filters to classify as spam (i.e. default settings) which means chances of false detection are slim to none.

If I didn’t use the gmail web interfaces (for mobile browser as well as normal browser) and still used Thunderbird, I would defintely go the Spamato solution.

I do find Gmail to have an outstanding spam filter built in anyway, which has never falsely detected any spam, and only let less than 0.1% of spam get to my inbox.

Today James Field borrowed Morven and myself to practise his photography skills for a couple weddings coming up that he’s the photographer for. Morv and I had already been thinking about getting some professional photos done because the only photos we really have of the two of us together are taken at night in less than desirable conditions, are blurred, don’t seem to be framed correctly, or I just look ridiculous as per usual due to some random awkward stance. It was mutually beneficial for both James, Morv and I, although once we actually saw the photos he took of us there was no way I wasn’t going to reward him for his services.

The layout for the day was he took photos up at Mt Osmond overlooking Adelaide, and a couple locations in the city. All up he took 150 photos, 43 of which he decided were acceptable. From those 43, we picked our favourite 15, and he then spent time adjusting the light, contrast, etc. He even fixed up my double chin! I highly recommend James as your professional photographer for any occasion, but just make sure you pay him well because he deserves it! I’m sure he’ll smack the pants off the sort of prices other professional photographers would charge, and when you see the quality of work he’s done with Morv and I you’ll totally agree.

Click on the thumbnail below to go to a gallery of our favourite 15 photos he took on the day. In case family are reading this and want to print one of these photos, just let us know which one you’d like to print so I can send a much higher resolution file.

Having seen what can be done with a good digital camera (Canon 20D) that he uses, I’m inspired to sell my little slimline camera and upgrade to a digital SLR. I like the idea of being able to shoot in RAW, where the camera saves all the pixel and sensor data, and then using Adobe Photoshop to do the actual processing of the image rather than the little processor of the camera. If you have a powerful computer, and sophisticated software with much more advanced processing features, you’re only cheating yourself out of image quality if you don’t use it (other than the time it takes to learn the software, and actually perform it). At the end of the day, the way I see it is that I might as well shoot in RAW, use up some hard drive space, and not lock myself into a reduced quality of photo from that occasion for the rest of my life as eventually one day technology will be so much better, that processing of photos will only get better and easier. The only drawback is the fact that it’s more data to have to store.