Monthly Archives: February 2016

Leapin’ Lizards, It’s Leap Day!

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So, its February 29th, that special day that comes every 4 years. A year with a February 29th is, as we all know, a “leap” year.

So, where did this come from? Well, there is a lot of history behind it, but, basically, in earlier times, they found that calendars, growing and planting seasons, and so on, were getting further and further off until it was realized that our planet’s year is not exactly 365 days. It really is closer to 365 ¼ days.

So, to insure that Christmas doesn’t eventually drift into what would now be July, an extra day was added to February every 4 years to catch up, or “leap” back to the correct time. Hence, the leap year, and leap day, February 29th.

Now, to be sure, the Earth doesn’t complete an orbit exactly in 365 ¼ days, and, the planet’s orbital speed and daily rotation changes imperceptibly over time, so, every so often the correct time is adjusted by a few seconds here and there. This so our days and years continue to match the seasons and our calendars.

So, Happy Leap Day, everyone!

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Windows 10 and Missing MS Office? Try Libre Office!

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If you have a Windows 10 computer or have upgraded to Windows 10, you may notice that MS Office, which contains such programs as MS Word and Excel, among others, as well as MS Word Starter, isn’t quite as accessible as it was on earlier versions of Windows. Oh, it may be there, but now you may have to pay for a subscription to use it on Windows 10.

Is there a way around this?

Yes, there is! Libre Office is the answer!

It has just about everything Windows Office has, and is entirely free to download. In fact, I’ve not only downloaded it onto my current Windows 10 computer, but also on my spare computer which is running Windows 7 and already has Windows MS Word Starter and Excel Starter on it (The free versions, of course!).

So how good is Libre Office? Well, it does save things in its own format. Word documents are saved as .odt documents by default, but, you can save them as .docx documents (for word docs), or as other types of documents and, there’s a special “Export to pdf” button, as well, which saves a separate copy as a pdf file, which is accessible for adobe readers. Also, it will open your word documents as well.

Then, when you open Libre Office, it will display your most recent documents that you worked on.

In addition, Libre Office also has Excel type spreadsheets, drawing capability, and a presentation program.

And, while donations are accepted, (I did donate $5), the program is entirely free to download and you aren’t required to donate anything!

So, where to get Libre Office? You can visit www.libreoffice.org and download it from there.

It’s really a great program and I still haven’t explored it completely, but I think it’s well worth downloading. As a matter of fact, this post, as well as my last two or three, were all written using Libre Office!

Happy computing!

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