Yat: How to open a new window in Groove VO

in Groove 2.5 opening a space in a new window was a peice of cake. From the file menu was the open "New Window". For some reason this seems to have evaporated in 3.0. A neat trick however is to start editing an object say discussion thread entry. Groove is then forced to open an new window. Of course one day we will have a "Open in new Window" option whereever sensible, but right now you know what to do, ok.

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 14:13

'Tis Autumn time, a time for making...

Quince & Green Tomato Chutney. Take a head of garlic chopped, and sweated enough oil in a large enough pan on a low heat. Add and stir in heap of crushed dried red chillies, ginger, large heap of crushed green cardamons, cinnamon, lots of ground cumin seeds, similarly with smaller amounts of coriander and fenugreek, black pepper seeds, and finally some turmeric, Then chop in around 2lbs of green tomatoes and 2lb of quice, apples or whatever. Keep stirring as you go. Not too much oil, but if it looks dry add a touch more as you go. Add a 1/4 pint of vinegar. The pan should be bubbling. Add a range of dried fruit - sultanas, chopped dates, raisins. Add 2-3 oz sugar and a dollop of salt. Bubble slowly for around 1-2 hours. Seal into jam jars etc.

The actual recipe depends upon what you have in the cupboard and what you sharp fruit you can obtan cheaply. I think a recipe is something unique, something that should be created from one's environment. My tomatoes came from my loving parents and the fruit came from Cutteslowe Park (http://www.visitoxford.org/oxford/leisurelist.nsf/0/5209cb7db913c54280256a22003935ba?OpenDocument) next our flat, collected by my colleague Nick from windfalls etc.

Getting the recipe right is getting a balance between sharp and sweetness, between flavour and body. This means balancing cardamons, sugar and cinnamon with chillies, tart apples or quinces. Just check the taste as the pot bubbles and correct to your own taste - my taste always tends to the fiery side of life. Do remember that a chutney like this matures beatufully over months, and hopefully year - if you can make a big enough batch!

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 10:38

Don't you just love wierd things?

Well not in this case. It almost seems like a virus tat has hit PopG. Sometimes when someone asks to create a workspace or add a file - something that references disk - then Groove coughs with an error. I forced an upgrade to 2.0d in case this fixed the prob. It did not. The problem first surfaced less than one month ago. The fix is simple and easy - click on PopG's Start menu and choose Groove->Exit, Clean Buffers & Restart.

So the question remains what is Groove's CleanBuffers function doing suhc that it clears this error. What caused the error? And is anyone on a "normal" computer experiencing anything like this!

Luv Andy.

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 4:09

A necessary evil?

Perhaps I am a purist, perhaps I am mad. But everytime Groove extends the boundaries of Groove outside the core product out to the "real world" something inside me says "hold up". I had this feeling when Groove's integration points with Microsoft Office were announced, And when that extended to Email with Outlook - again shivers went down my spine. This is not an anti-MS thing - it is purely about the purety of the product. It is a matter of people are so used to doing things in Word - they just do it, regardless of whether it is the right thing.

And so we come to GFS - Groove File (or is it Folder) Sharing. My beef about this starts with the question "is data inside Groove secure?". Groove's claim here is that Groove data is secure both "on disk" and "across the wire".

Clearly when using normal Groove Files tool both statements are true. However when using GFS only the latter is possible. Your files are just stored on disk in native format. So unless you take extra precautions outside Groove and encrypt your disk - then GFS files are wide open.

And bear in mind that Groove is a sharing tool. So it is not only important to understand your own attitude to security - it is also important to ensure that ANYONE you share GFS data with has to uphold your standards, at least. This means you have to be confident that others are encrypting their disks.

So currently GFS runs a whopping big coach and horses through Groove's security model and any novice using GFS might think, "hey, this is ok." And of course it isn't.

My second point is that there is a performance hit. This is because all GFS data to be shared must be both encrypted and decrypted on each transfer - that is at each endpoint. This must, by definition, be a very inefficient process - to encrypt at one end - and decrypt at the other. This process must happen for each and every file between each pair of endpoints. So if you share a GFS with 5 people and they are all dropping files in then the encrypt/decrypt process is happening 5 times on each computer.

Any file stored in the files tool encrypts when initially stored, and only decrypted when read, not when transferred.

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 8:52