Adventures in home working

Stephie was at drama school last week.  They did Richard III.  I thought it might be a bit dry, (not being big Shakespeare fan), especially after Blood Brothers the week before, but it was great.  The adaptation was loosely based around James Bond and Gold Finger.  They used the movie music and some of the songs and lots of great comic touches for anyone who knows the films.  But they also spent a lot of time in workshops understanding the play and the language, so it was not just a trendy adaptation. 

Everyone loved it, and Stephie did great, a marked improvement over last year.  The group she is in is really starting to bond now, and it should get better next year as she moves into the senior group.  Even better she is also going to help out with the Junior class which should build responsibility and confidence still further.  Drama is such a gift for kids,  I was totally turned off by school drama where 70% of the kids just mucked around.  I wish I had had the chance to get over my shyness in such a supportive environment!

I was talking with some senior guys from Red Hat last week about their potential move beyond platforms towards solutions.  We were actually discussing collaboration solutions.  There view at the time was that their focus was to take what was available in the Open Source community and productionise it.  Its interesting therefore to see them release an application server.  When you look at the potential though to address the collaboration market Red Hat would do well to consider packaging a solution for email, IM, document management etc.  At the moment they ship the bits, but the bits don't make a solution.  If you look at a previous post about Microsoft and their, "integrated innovation", marketting there is probably as much scope if not more to do the same thing in the Open Source world.  Start thinking Solution guys, you seem to have Platforms and Component packaging fairly well sown up.

Absolute goldmine, lists every OS you can image and provides details on whether its works on Virtual PC.  I was pretty amazed by the list, especially compared with VM Ware.  Where a product has issues it also has notes of workarounds.  Even better if you want to keep up to date with the latest additions there is an RSS feed.

Also if like me you have VMWare Workstation, GSX Server and VPC then this is a good review to help you decide which to use.  I also suggest checking out the comments on the review.

The new Seimens SK65.  Full blackberry functionality with a really innovative format, tri-band.  Hopefully it has a decent task manager!  For more details check out this web site.

We live 5 miles down the road from Blackpool, which is not one of my favourite places.  However on a quiet day its not a bad location for shopping, its got a great beach and the promendae walk is excellent.  On a busy day, (never go on a Bank Holiday!), its full of drunken louts and is best avoided.  That said it has some great entertainment my favoutrite of which are the yearly shows, and the best of these is eclipse, a combination of Music, Dance and Acrobatic circus.  It really is worth a visit.

Here is the marketting buzz:

Eclipse is the first and only circus musical created in the UK. This unique show is pure theatre. From booking your seats your journey through the elements and a fantasy of our world class performers will leave you truly amazed as they perform elegant and death-defying feats before your very eyes.

With the ultimate in choreography we dare you to see the whole show in one visit. All the special effects in this show have been created especially for you - so you will have a dream come true and a memory forever.

ECLIPSE - A SHOW YOU DREAM OF SEEING!

"BEAUTIFULLY STAGED" - OK! Magazine

"STUNNING" - The Daily Telegraph

"MUST SEE" - OK! Magazine

We all went to see it again today, I have seen it twice, Debbie' Jenny and Stephie 3 times and Tessa and Anna and one of their friends saw it for the first time.  Tessa and Anna are six and they sat mesmerised through the whole thing!

Check out the web site if you are interested

eWeek reports that Wyse, (a long term user of Windows embedded technologies), is now moving into Linux in a bigway.

"Linux has really grown, and has become 20 percent of the worldwide thin-client marketplace,"

What actually suprised me was that the market share was so low, given that Linux seems to be a perfect fit for the embedded market, but clearly it takes time for things to catch on.

This article describes some of the characteristics of XML that make it so powerful  The bottom line is that its generic nature means that generic solutions can be created tat can be applied to all manner of different problems.  The example quoted is a tool that compares two XML files, produces an XML file showing the differences.  The article then goes on to explain how this generic tool might be applied to different types of problem.  Well worth a read if you are trying to get your mind around some of the things that will be possible in the future.  Reminds me a bit of Unix pipes!

Jonathan Schwartz, provides a very interesting perspective on the pickle that IBM have got themselves into over Linux.  Whats even more interesting is that he does not discuss Sun's simillar predicament!  Maybe thats because his series of blogs on this and related topics is building up the background for Sun's position which is likely to see a return to the promotion of Solaris as a viable alternative to Redhat which is gradually being positioned by Jonathan as a kid of "proprietary solution", certainly one that locks you into RedHat.

Update: I am not the only one who is puzzling over what Jonathan is up to with his blog.  Look at this eWeek article that pulls lots of opinion together, it appears Jonathan is playing a pretty risky game.