Finally, the last day of Movember!

Posted by Adrian on Nov 30, 2010 in A C Labels, business, Labels, Open Source | 2 comments Since starting to grow a tache for Movember I’ve realised what an irritating feature facial hair is, at least for me.  Well, its the last day and after a joint photo with my local Round Table this evening its coming off, thankfully! If you havent read up on Movember, the awareness campaign for prostate cancer then you can do so here.  Or, if you wish to make a donation to the Movember...
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coffee spill+old laptop=new laptop , but the windows 7 EULA has changed

Posted by Adrian on Oct 19, 2010 in Open Source | 0 comments I had a coffee spill over my laptop yesterday which killed my 5 year old HP nx6125 laptop, so I ordered a new one and it arrived today.  Its a HP Compaq Presario CQ61 for about £280+vat, cheap and cheerful as these things so, but as always came bundled with Microsoft Windows.  I tried to buy a naked computer with no OS, but it was substantialy more expensive.  I therefore took advantage of...
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Mercian Labels are now recruiting for a Graphic Designer

Posted by rich on Aug 23, 2010 in Open Source | 0 comments Mercian Labels located in Cannock, Staffordshire are now recruiting for a Graphic Designer (published 23 August 2010). The role of Graphic Designer is to assess and prep electronic design files for digital pre-press work and the production of printing plates, ensuring maximum continuity, the highest quality and efficiency of operation. 100% desk based. Detailed responsibilities * To reconcile...
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first chilli crop of 2010

Posted by Adrian on Aug 2, 2010 in Open Source | 0 comments The fist chill cropping of 2010 was on Saturday, now all safely picked away in jars ready for the winter curries. Lots to come from the initial plants!
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Getting a refund for your Microsoft Windows License

Posted by rich on Jul 28, 2010 in Open Source | 14 comments I recently purchases a new Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop from Amazon.co.uk This came with Microsoft Windows Vista pre-loaded, but being the Open Source advocates we are here at Mercian Labels, I bought this laptop with the mind to install Ubuntu 10.04 right away. Whilst installing Ubuntu 10.04 was easy, a few issues arose with getting the wireless working with the chipset, but thats another story;...
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Label Grid launched – is is possible to have browser based label printing software – and open source too!

Posted by Adrian on Jun 29, 2010 in coding, Labels, Open Source | 1 comment I was interested to hear of the launch  of Labelgrid recently.  This is a new open source project (GPL licence) to design a web based label printing software stack to design and print labels in a browser rather than the typical client based software.  There  will be a number of challenges in this as the authors point out on their webpage, but I thin its a really interesting idea if they get...
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Please help us to support the Help for Heroes European Rally 2010

Posted by Adrian on Jun 17, 2010 in A C Labels, business, Labels, Open Source, Security Labels | 1 comment Cpt Ed Pawsey of the 2nd Battalion, the Yorkshire Regiment recently contacted us in their bid to raise money for Help for Heroes , the charity that helps to support wounded UK service men and women.  Ed and his colleagues are doing the Help for Heroes European Rally and have had some good local publicity.  This is what they say on their website Team Green Howard has secured a place on the Help...
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Chilli plant update

Posted by Adrian on Jun 13, 2010 in Open Source | 0 comments As I’ve been blogging here and here, I’ve been on a bit of a chilli growing mission this year after last years startup effort.  Here is the current state of play, and I think I’ll get about 150-200 chillis out of this lot which will make some excellent christmas presents once picked or dried, plus some curries for my family.  There is mix of hot and mild varieties, and...
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Ubuntu In Business – London – 13 July

Posted by Adrian on Jun 13, 2010 in Open Source | 0 comments Mercian Labels are passionate users of Ubuntu Linux throughout our business, and since our migration to open source software we’ve found it to be much more stable and reliable that Windows, which we now only use on machines where there is isnt really a choice eg graphic design, sage accounts etc. We hope to attend the Ubuntu in Business Event on 13 July in London to meet up with other...
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Bother… Firefox 3.6.3 shipped with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS has a CSS rendering problem

Posted by Adrian on May 6, 2010 in Open Source | 0 comments Having had some recent experience on a family members windows PC recently, and a iMac as well, I know why I have a strong preference for working on an Ubuntu linux PC.  The new distro 10.04 is great, very nice GUI, but there is one real problem with the CSS rendering in Firefox 3.6.3 it ships with in that it dosnt show the same CSS as firefox 2.8.  This is withdrawn my access to our intranet...
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How to configure a SNOM 300 phone for a conference call using TRIXBOX

Posted by Adrian on May 6, 2010 in coding, Open Source | 0 comments We use a lot of SNOM 300 VOIP phones at our sites, and have just cracked a way to make conference calls on them, which is not obvious or covered by the manual. If you are trying to do this: Login to your phone using the web GUI via http://its.IP.x.x and select function L4 – directory, (or any function you dont use) change the function tag to   F_CONFERENCE save to make a conference...
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