It's looking quite nice - first stage was to get the floor stripped.

Solihull Hardwood Floors came over to do my room, and the hall.  Really friendly guys, and whereas last time it kicked up a lot of dust, these guys were lovely and clean.  As you can see, they came out quite nicely.

Stripped Floor

* N.B. If anyone wants pictures of the hall floor, please contact me and I'll email you some samples.

A couple of weeks back, Mum and Dad had their room redecorated by Joal Designs. They did a very good job, so we've kept in touch and they're now sorting out some other rooms in their house.

Mum's decided it's time to get my room redecorated (as I'm going to be out of it for 9 months in a year - go figure). We've got Opus Services doing the decorating for me. We've used them alot in the past, and it's awesome quality.  Also by coincidence a friend of mine over @ Sans Deputy has just done a fresh re-brand.

So I've decided to document the stages of decoration when I'm about, and to give the guys doing the jobs a bit of credit :)

Before

It's come around very fast, but in a weeks time I'll be just about to land at heathrow, after a great trip to India.  I've done so much stuff since I've been here, and honestly believe that it's going to have a profound affect upon my character.  

The one thing that has really struck me is the moral arguments and reasoning that I've been forced to consider; though not necessarily directly affecting me - but people very close to me out here.  I know now to value social services much more than I currently do, and I already respect the NHS for providing me with fantastic healthcare in the few occasions that I've had need to call upon it for help.

After reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography last week, I made much of the link between S.A. and India in S.A's fight for equal rights and the abolition of apartheid.  There's so much political wrangling - especially now during the elections.  

I really hope I can come back to India.  It's a fantastic country, with lovely people.. just a shame that at the moment it's so hot!

Over the past few weeks I've been helping my Uncle out by setting up a few computers for him. He wanted a laptop to take out 'on-site' - and a Desktop for a new employee.

Unfortunately, the ASUS eee901 is not yet available, and the 7" series is slightly too small for his perceived 'on-site' usage, so he ended up getting a Toshiba Laptop and HP Desktop - both running Windows Vista (against my advice).

So, three weeks on, he's not happy with Vista at all. Having already spent a fair bit of cash on the two machines, he was little disappointed that some 'core software' (his term) was still not installed. The new "Live Mail" application was also far too complicated compared to his Outlook Express - the change in UI wasn't welcome.

So, I installed Mozilla Thunderbird onto both computers, and OpenOffice.org. I do have to admit to setting the default file-format to Windows 97/XP/2003 formats though (.doc, .xls and .ppt). I'd like to not do this, but for simplicities sake when dealing with clients - it was the easier option.

Aside from running the proprietary accounts software "Foundation Evolution" - I've got the company running on a very open-'saucy' setup. The best thing about it has been the change in attitude towards the software since originally buying the PCs. After initially thinking that my enthusiasm for the ASUS eee was due to the Linux OS on it - it seems likely that when the 9" series come out, that will be an addition to the "Construction Computing Team".

The best new was though that I received a call this morning asking me how to install OpenOffice.org on all of the computers and get rid of MS Office & install Thunderbird on all the machines. With the old setup, there would have been a training overhead in having to run different versions of the same software on all four PCs - however, with the Open Source Setup, all the computers, despite being purchased at different times, can run the same software - giving the users the opportunity to use the computers to help run the business, rather than having to work out how to use that particular version of the program.

Smile :)

I've been thinking alot recently about the power of free software and how it could be put to better use to innovate in companies.  At the moment, most of it is used to replace old proprietary blobs around offices, and has very much the same components as the old system - only cheaper.

However, with free software there are many more benefits that just being cheaper than paying for a legacy software license for things like file storage and printer servers.  There are many cases when I look at small/medium sized companies and see how their entire business model could benefit from adopting an Open Source system as the backbone to what their business does.

In the past, IT has been a tool which allows businesses to go about their business - only recently has it actually become the business of businesses.  It's a shame though, because as more and more businesses sell services based on free software - in essence it becomes standard customised solutions at a slight discount to the client, and without licensing overheads for the vendor.

What I'd like to see is the promotion of open source and open standards, and the ability for as much software to work in tandem with other stuff.  There's a heck of a lot of quality free software out there that companies should be able to utilise.  Rather than simply provide free software on a plate, efforts should be made to educate the users on what exactly they are getting.  How extensible the packages are and how to utilise them to their greatest benefit.

I don't know how other people feel, but setting up a new company legally incurs some costs - and when you add MS licenses to the mix, for just a single PC, it can double the cost.  I've recently set up a business who'd just bought a couple of new PCs.  They both came with Vista (laptop and Desktop).  I've been runnning purely Open Source Software on those two PCs for the company (aside from Vista) - and they're very happy with all the software, it does exactly what they need.  The next step is for me to speed them up, by switching them over to ubuntu.  I can see this happening within the next six months.  However, I'll also leave 1 Windows XP machine intact, so they can use it for remote-desktop connection for running some legacy software.

Neat!