Nik Nak’s Daily Teaser — 24th July 2021.

24th July, 2021.

Yes: it’s looking grim out.

Decidedly grim.

A lot grimmer than yesterday, to be honest.

Yesterday was a nice sunny day … that saw me indoors, for most of it, having assorted Zoom, and phone, meetings.

And just enough time and energy to go to the High Street: to pay my bills.

“I’ll do my shopping, tomorrow,” I thought.

“I’ll have more time,” I thought.

“It’ll still be sunny,” I thought.

Of course, I’ve looked out of the window, this morning … and ‘sunny,’ is the last word I can use about the weather.

Oy veh … !

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Nik Nak’s Daily Teaser — 24th July 2018.

24th July, 2018.

Right … 

It’s officially official.

This is one of the hottest period’s the UK’s face for some time.

I keep hearing people mention 1976: the last time things got this serious.

Frankly?

I might well have been layering the irony, in the intro.

But I’m also aware that — whilst I was watching The Call of Cthulhu — the Met Office released an Amber Health warning.

Because of the heat.

I’m thinking I want to be careful.

How about you … ?

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While I’ve got your attention?

A little while ago, the BBC bless, them, had various articles about about the National Health Service.

It was, after all, seventy years old.

A couple of articles covered the NHS use of technology: and were fascinating reads.

There’s a lot of good stuff being done.

I’ve always thought there’s something useful they could do: or, at least, look at.

You might not know it, but there’s a movement within IT to promote various shades of what’s called open source software.

Most software, you’re not allowed to examine the source code: the underlying text that our computers execute, when we use an app.

The manufacturers would rather we buy it from them, without poking around in its guts.

The open source movement?

Allows us to.

The thinking is — if I’ve got it right — is that we’ve bought or downloaded it.   Therefore it’s our right to study that code, and make any improvements to it we can.

We can even share those changes.    That’s usually fine with the original makers of a given app: so long as we tell people what we’ve changed, and where we got the original.

There’s a lot of open source software out there that’s ALSO free: at least for home users.

Famously?   Android is based on the open source GNU/Linux operating system.   There’s also things like the Firefox browser, the vlc media player.

And the competing OpenOffice and LibreOffice office suites.

From the little I’ve read, many local government bodies have switched to the two suites: finding the total cost of ownership a lot more attractive than buying Microsoft Office*.

I realise there’s technical challenges.   Ones I couldn’t necessarily follow if you explained them to me with a big fish, and a laser pointer.

But I know they’re there.

I’m also aware that the biggest part of the cost of a switch to one of the open source office suites, would be staff retraining.

But I can’t help but think that making the switch to an open source apps.

Could save the NHS significant amounts of taxpayers money.

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