Adventures in home working

• What a great winters morning, sunny, frosty and no wind. We’re off to Fairhaven Lake and then back down the beach to a cafe for breakfast #
• For the first time in the last few weeks I managed to spend a few hours reading in my favourite chair watching the sunset #
• Swimming pool closed early tonight so the twins and I are watching Just My Luck on DVD, everyone else is at the carol concert at church #

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• Walked into Blackpool with Stephie – in the rain but we had a good chat about universities and university life #
• Decided to go to watch St Trinians at the cinema rather than walk home in the rain. Feasting on hot bread and cherries while we wait. #
• St Trinians was a lot of fun, Steph complained that I laughed too loud #
• Walking back to the car now – 3 miles – and then a bit of shopping #
• Watching ICE age with Anna cuddled up on me #

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• Admiring my loft, after 2 days flooring and insulating the joists I can hardly move but it looks great and is warm and dust free #
• Off to chill out over a late breakfast and read the New Scientist at Boaters Landing Cafe #
• Dismal afternoon tidying up and taking all the kids rubbish and old clothes to the recycling centre #
• Putting power and a light into the loft and then redecorating the bedroom (where the power came from) #

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• managed 2 hours sleep before being woken up in pain, now waiting for pain killers to work #
• Working in the loft. I’m very tired and dizzy so the lofts not really where I should be. But this weeks the only one I have to get it done. #
• Taking a break to watch the twins carol concert at the library #
• Good progress on the loft today – and its Orange wednesday – so we went to watch Enchanted at the cinema #
• @GrahamChastney – yes christmas chocolates, didn’t last long! #
• @mgd Blackpools changed a lot for the better since 1974, thank goodness. We’ve been in St Annes for 10 years, about 6 miles from Black … #
• Trying out the Witty Twitter client, quite nice #

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• I’m sort of on holiday now, just a couple of conference calls today and tomorrow, then that’s it until the 7th of Jan. #
• Luxuriating in the fact that I have time to really read something rather than scanning it. Right now BBC Focus popular science magazine. #
• Off to B and Q to get some floor boards and other bits for my holiday project, boarding out and insulating the loft. #
• Unloaded 16 packs of chipboard from the car, had lunch and now working on Mobility 2010 ready for my last real conference call of the year #
• Feeling very sore – hoping that I can work on the loft through the pain, otherwise the house will be a real mess this Christmas #
• Just got back from swimming with the kids. Have got tonsilitus so 20 lengths was enough #
• Watching the gadget show – very funny – while doing my feed reading #

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If you use multiple monitors then you need Ultramon.  I have three and I really don’t know how I would use them effectively without it.  It makes the whole experience so much more natural.  My favourite features being:

1. The ability to drag maximized windows by the task bar and drop them onto other displays
2. The ability to have a wallpaper made up of three different images stitched together across the three displays
3. The Smart Taskbars that get added to the secondary displays, these are just like the real Microsoft taskbar that is restricted to the primary display and they only show the applications actually showing on their display.

Combined with Synergy – which allows me to use my desktop keyboard and mouse to control my docked Tablet (my fourth screen) its all very slick.

Well it was anyway – up until Vista – because with Vista beta 1 of Ultramon 3 was really flaky and lacking in functionality,  I still used it because I can’t live without it – but it was very frustrating.  Now my hero Christian Studer has released beta 2 and wow! what a huge improvement it is.  I can now really recommend Ultramon again and life is so much easier

• Decided to go out earlier this morning and so did my reading (on paper today!!) at the Beach Terrace Cafe instead of my usual place #
• Freezing at home today – my central heating has essentially packed up downstairs and we have to wait for the spring to get it replaced #
• Working on the social networking wiki #
• Just got back from taking the kids swimming, only just made it home – feeling very ill #

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This blog represents my own – pretty feeble – attempt to work in the open, sharing my ideas with the broader community and getting feedback and insights along the way.  I don’t worry about who’s reading it – customers, competitors etc because I trust that the benefits are greater than the risks and that what I share I am sharing with the community for the greater good.  However I don’t get to share anywhere near as much as I would like to.

In fact I think that CSC generally does way too much work behind closed doors because of some misguided view that this work somehow provides us with competitive advantage by being private.  In fact I think the opposite is true.

The vast majority of the development activity I am involved in is of commodity tools and processes that would be best developed with a community of like minded individuals, customers, suppliers and even competitors.   Customers don’t contract with CSC to get hold of these carefully guarded documents, rather they are partnering with us to get access to trusted advise, rapid low risk delivery and managed operations.

For example what competitive advantage comes from our standard operating system configurations, our reference architectures or our decision support material and technology positions, none/very little in my view. 

In fact I think we and our customers would benefit from these being developed in a more open way, with full input from customer experts, suppliers and others.  The results would be more authoritative and accurate and we would get more visibility and be seen as providing more thought leadership.

Blogs are a first step in becoming more open and participative within the community, but lets be clear they are tiny steps and I look forward to much bolder steps as we grow, taking my inspiration from enterprises that are taking open source software principles and embedding them into their core values.

• Installing the new version of Ultramon – beta 2 – essential for multi-monitor users and this beta seems much improved so far #
• Just returned from breakfast and walk with the kids – the twins have worked through their bible study books which they are really enjoying #
• We are off to see the Golden Compass #
• I read the book – Northern Lights – while in hospital about 4 years ago, I really enjoyed the adaptation to film and the kids did too #
• Anna couldn’t find any shoes! so we decided not to go swimming tonight and hit the exercise bike instead – 22KM later #

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• At manchester town hall. Stephie won a jewlrey design prize so she is at the Dazzle exhibition picking out her free jewlrey #
• At the science museum marveling at the mechanical inginuity of the textile making machines #
• Having a very nice lunch at the science museum with Stephie #

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