Rydra

For a single day of closure, the normal practice is those who can safely get in should do so, which basically means anyone within say 1-2 miles, maybe closer, and that is still dependant on the exact conditions out. Expecting a staff member to do a 3-4 hour journey when in most of these cases, the schools close up completely by lunchtime if the school is officially closed. If it's multiple days of closure, it's a fair chance the site agents won't even open up the 2nd day, so no point in trying to get in. In the end, most teachers presented with a random day at home in the middle of a teaching week will catch up on lesson planning or other paperchasing exercises, so it's rarely a wasted day. Just the nature of most teachers i've ever met, they never quite stop (until about the 4th alcoholic drink, then they REALLY let go!)

Thanks for this. showed it to the HT, who loved it, and I've just been round half the classes and installed it on their PC's for them!

Last xmas I didn't go into work one of the days it snowed, despite the school being open. I live on a residential road, but it's the main bus route for the town. The buses hadn't run down it for 3 days, and we hadn't seen a gritting lorry at all. The road and the footpath was just a sheet of ice, so if I had tried to get the car off the driveway, I'd have just slipped straight across the road, right into the parked cars opposite. That would then have blocked the road no doubt, and with the idiots around me, most likely got side swiped by someone driving without clearing the windscreen while smoking a cigarette and retuning their radio and turning up the Subs...

I generally like snow, the cold, and even rain. A couple of decent warm layers, a waterproof coat, a good pair of boots and some music, makes for a nice walk. My car has decided it does not like the cold at all, and has refused to start for 4 days now. This morning, i didn't quite fancy the walk and decided to try the bus. 3 Buses didn't show up at all, 25 minutes later one turns up, and charges me just under £3 for a return ticket less than 2 miles each way... 20 minute bus journey, and I would have been just as quick walking, albeit i was a little warmer and not quite as tired, as it's uphill all the way. Tomorrow I might give the mountain bike a try. Can't be any worse than paying an overpriced overcrowded bus that turns up half an hour late.

Then again, i've also by the same employer been turned down for being too shy and young (then hiring a person 3 weeks older than me!), then 9 months later they turned me down again for being overconfident!

Funny really, I've been turned down on 4 jobs with them saying "We really liked you and your personality, but the other guy had more experience/qualifications"

Ok, so I'm 26, and a NM. I have no A levels, having dropped out of 6th form before completion. I am married, and have a 35 year mortgage on a house, and between me and the wife we earn circa £40k per year. we do not live badly by any means, but things like my new bathroom i need will take me 6-8 months or more to save for, I cannot afford a car bigger than a 1.2l 10 year old Corsa, because of the insurance etc etc. I have no relevant IT qualifications to my name at all, just my experience of 7 years of working in the IT industry. And you know what, I need one! I have had 3 interviews in the last 18 months and some 60-80 job offers, 20 of them gone beyond first phone call. Every single one, except for my current position, i was trumped by someone "More qualified" Now i've studied with the Open University on and off since I was 19. 2-3 years was spent studying Chemistry, and i've spent the last year or so picking up my first IT courses, mostly just starter stuff, and the plan is to do the 'proper' level/year 2 course next year. I am in the situation, where I have a choice of having something of a life, and i'm not talking about going out clubbing every night.... I mean spending time with my wife, scouting, or even doing some of the DIY/housework my house desperately needs. God forbid i then find time for myself... OR, I work on my courses. I just don't have the time otherwise to do both. And with evening study such as the OU, I am looking at another 4 years for 'an open mixed degree' or 5-6 years for a full BSC honours in Computing of some sort, and stuck in the same job/salary/work until completion. Why do I want a degree? Because I have proved time and again, that the jobs that will pay me more, in my line of work REQUIRE it. Without it, I will be trumped by someone with a degree every time. For me to goto university under the new fee's, I would need approximately £50,000 (since my earning right now is ~£20k, my outgoings are 15-18k or more per year, plus tuition fee's, and no i cannot move as my wife's job is only available here, and it's a specialist field.) Do I think degree's are undervalued? No. The problem lies deeper than that. 2 candidates for a job, one has a relevant degree + 5 years experience, the other has no degree and 7-8 years experience. One has a document proving he has the skills, the other just has his word that he can do the job. From my experience, employers, 80-90% of the time will pick the degree student. WHY? Because it's less risk. A person who has a relevant degree, will have the requirements to do the job you require, and you know it because they have a document to prove it. The other candidate MIGHT have more hands-on experience, MIGHT be better at the job.... But would you risk your high priority job on a MIGHT? There should be less funding on degree's for the masses, more funding for apprenticeships and the like, more vocational courses for the skilled (but not "high tech") work. And push for more WORK EXPERIENCE! A degree should mark that you are specialised in your field, and good at it. One possible solution should/could be that you cannot attend university without relevant work experience and a reference from an employer, and if a degree is offered by a university, there should be incentives for companies to hire graduates. And all courses should include some sort of work placement.

Well I'm in today, despite my car refusing to start (it coughed, started, took foot off accelerator, and it promptly died and refused to start again.) The heaviest snow for me is forecast in the next 2 hours, then basically going to lightly snow for the next 18 hours. I suspect, that I will be in all this week

If we as a country are so desperate to keep these 'works of art' then we should do what we can to keep them here. But having them sit in the basement of a free art gallery is not the way. If we really want them, then they need to be on display, and IMO there needs to be an entrance fee to go in these places, albeit a modest one. The point people are making is they are there to generate money on the long term, as an investment. A item that spends most of it's time in a box, in a free museum is of no use to us. The critic was not saying sell it all off, far from it. As with all walks of life, everyone has something they can't bring themselves to ever get rid of, in case they might want/need it. But sometimes, when you need the cash, or the space you just have to bite the bullet and get rid. A piece of national (or even local) heritage should not be sold, but some random modern artist's piece that some art nut will pay half a million for the bent out of shape bicycle with a clown painted on it, well I won't shed any tears about it. And who's to say it will go abroad? There are art collectors, and paying galleries in this country too. Probably the biggest flaw in British society, is we just don't know how to let things go. I mean we still harp on about '66, there's still people who won't talk about 'The War' (cue Basil Fauwlty reference), and we are the worst group of Kleptomaniac's around.

damn beat my by seconds!

"It is, and don't call me Shirley..." One of my all time favourite comedians.

So my main aim here was to get away from frontpage where I have to code practically everything, as any feature built in is generally bloated, doesn't do what you want and 10 years out of date. Having played with Joomla all day, I have to say I'm just as frustrated at the complete lack of template customisation you can get. If i want to go and download someone else's completed skin it seems fine. But what I want, is a simple way of editing the top banner to what I want, the background colours, the menu styles.... As it stands, I'm farting about with 8 .css files with absolutely no labels on what stupid code language sections do what. tbh, I'd rather go back to frontpage at this time, as this is proving to be a waste of time and effort. Once this sort of thing is done, i daresay that adding new documents, news, updates is easy enough with the article systems, and i can teach the secretaries to use it. But if it's going to take me a month just to input a banner and a menu style and system that doesn't look like a 4 year old drooled on the keyboard while a monkey pressed keys with it's nose, then I'll be going back to frontpage! Anyone found a better way of messing with style sheets than working through dozens of .css files and trying to interpret lines of code?

"Please explain how it would be good for our country to remove funding and support for Uni students, reduce the number of university places by 40%, then increase fee's 3 fold, while reducing the benefits to those who are unable to find a job, and doing nothing whatsover to improve the massive void in prices for low cost housing." (as a side note, my local university, in this time of lack of funding is in the process of building MORE student accomodation.... At a time when noone can afford to goto university and there aren't enough places, they are almost doubling their student accomodation!)

breakfast, brunch, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, High Tea, Dinner (5 courses of course; Appetizer, Starter, Main, Desert, Cheeses), supper, Late supper, midnight snack, and of course all of these are intersected by periodic breakouts of munchies and snacks. And of course, how can we leave out the hobnobs....

Been there, done that That was my first introduction to PHP using that.... I know just enough to know I have no idea what to do with it

I haven't looked at Joomla before, though i've heard of it. I thought it was Moodle-ish, focusing more on forums, quizzes and 'interaction'. We already have a VLE/MLE thingy. I'll download Joomla and have a play with it, some of the example sites look pretty good, and some are close to what I'm after as well.

I'll start off by saying, I'm not a web designer.... I have fiddled and diddled with them before, and I have enough knowledge of computers to work out how most sites work eventually. But I do not know any proper coding language, or web design language. I have been tasked with revamping/designing my school's website, and they want some dynamic banners that cycle images, video/photo galleries, and a generally clean and tidy look.... All of which are, frankly, beyond the abilities of Frontpage 2003, which I currently have. Since anything I do will take some minor re-education, anyone recommend a web design software package that doesn't require me to spend the next 2 years learning a new coding language to do what I want, some decent template options, and not requiring a doctorate in astrophysics to operate it? I have worked with frontpage mostly for simple HTML based editing, have played with Dreamweaver 4-6 years ago, but nothing more than playing, and when I did they were still Macromedia! Otherwise, I'm a blank slate on this!

all a load of rubbish to me. I live in East England, and the snow was bad yes, but the problem was lack of gritting. I didn't go in one day and got told off the next day for not trying, despite living on a normal day 30 minutes away, and the conditions outside my house being so bad the buses refused to come down my road. I made it in the next day, after a 2 hour journey.... Met office reports that east england has 'light snow' forcast for east england, max of 2 inches. I should get a good bit of it living on the chiltern hills, but probably not enough to warrant me not coming in (i live within 2 miles of where I work) I suspect my trusty mountain bike will come out if it does snow. That's always fun in the snow!

Don't forget Ductape and superglue. You can fix anything with enough of either or both!

"I've lost my money and I can't get home".... response: "I'm sorry sir, standard protocol is that we cannot accept a missing person's request unless they have been missing for over 24 hours, unless it's a minor. Would you like to call back tomorrow?"

I find nowadays my time actually spent playing eve isn't all that much, probably only an hour or two on average per day, with the odd 6-10+ hour stint at a weekend. The other 3+ hours i spend daily on the PC is spent chatting, talking rubbish, meetings, and I'm usually doing something else at the same time as 'playing', most recently studying. I pay my gametime annually by credit card, and after 5+ years of eve, I have the skills to fly what I want, and if I need a new ship, depending on the size it takes me either 1 night or one weekend to get a new one... But with skill and experience on my side, I lose ships very rarely. Do I miss going out with my 'RL mates' to the pub etc? Yes I do, but as you get older, finding a night for a group of mid 20's people to meet on a weeknight is hard enough, we have to plan about 4-6 weeks in advance it seems to catch the majority, and then people forget. At least my mates online are just at the other end of a headset, and if 2 of them can't make it that night, There's 400 others to keep me company.... And when i've had enough of them, the mute button, or simply turning off the speakers and walking downstairs does the trick!

my old place had star trek ship names, and of course the primary had to be Enterprise! They started moving away from that eventually and moved into firefly and galactica too after a while. My current place I haven't renamed the servers yet. Main DC is has a boring name, admin server is adminsvr. I have however, recommissioned an old server to host my AV and a few other bits, and that is now Rivendell. I'm thinking the admin server when I rename it will become either Rohan or Isengard. The main DC i shall not be able to rebuild until I get the goahead to rebuild the whole network from scratch with server 2008 R2, which hopefully will be next summer. If so, I shall probably name it Gondor. Future servers will of course be Hobbiton, Bree, Mirkwood, Moria, Edoras, Lothlorien, Bywater, Tookborough, Dale, and if i run out, Fornost, Mordor, Angmar and Osgiliath!

Before you all rush to it, no I do not play WoW. I know a good number of the regulars here have the console fps bugs, but I was just wondering what the MMO'ers out there in the edugeek community play, and what are the reasons you play it? For me, I have 2 MMO's. Eve Online - This is my old lady of PC gaming. after some 5-6 years I'm still playing solidly, and by far the game, in fact thing outside of work that occupies most of my time. It's an immensely social game, it simply cannot be played alone, and is not a pickup and play for half an hour game. It takes time and effort to really get anywhere, though the learning curve has improved over the years, and younger/newer players are able to participate. The complexity and politics within the game mean that no day is ever the same. Almost nothing is seeded or price set by the developers anymore (some items are bought by npc's, but they have variable price AI's according to supply/demand, and often loosely tied to storyline), everything is player driven, including most of the storyline. It's also not the cheapest game out there, at about £100 per year in subscription fee's for a single account, if not a little more at current exchange rates, and the vast majority of players will run 2 accounts. BUT, it does have the ability to pay for your subscription using ingame money, though this requires regular playing to keep the isk flowing in to maintain it. One of it's biggest pluses to me, is everything makes a difference, nothing is free, and dying/losses really mean something. If you get caught, you lose your ship, your fittings, your loot/cargo, and if your not careful, you will lose your hardearned skills. You can spend months working towards something, and lose it all in an instant. If you hadn't guessed, I really like this game ________ My other MMO of choice, is Lord Of The Rings Online. The game has now gone to a free to play micro-transactions model, but I was lucky enough to have a founders Collectors edition with lifetime subscription, so most of this hasn't really affected me. It's a great little casual MMO, easy going, laid back with a good storyline. 3 or so years on since launch, I still haven't hit the level cap, though I don't play that often, but I still find myself wandering around doing the quests, I read all the details, and still just go exploring to see what I can find. Some of the landscapes created are spectacular! It's downpoint for me, is the kinships within it can be quite insular, and getting into a good, active one that doesn't boot you if you don't show up for 3 weeks can be hard. You can do some of the group content with public groups, and they are not that hard to come by in primetime (since it's split EU and US different servers, a vast majority of the gameplay happens in the EU evenings and weekends and frequently not much outside of this). But the game is more than playable without a kinship, and in fact, when compared to the constant bussle of EvE, I really quite like the tranquility of not being spammed with questions, and the ability to find a quiet corner, sit down, and smoke a virtual pipe while admiring the sunset, overlooking a field of trolls, orcs, goblins, wolves and god knows what else.... well it's another world to get lost in! So what other MMO's do people play, and why do you play them?

destructable buildings and proper teamplay are what have made bfbc2 for me. The one thing missing from so many FPS games for me though, is proper variable sniper options. I want Prone AND CROUCH, and I want a properly variable scope, not the one zoom fits all, with weapons that actually work, and have realistic ranges COMPARED TO STANDARD RIFLES. My biggest gripe with bc2 atm, is the medic's spray and pray machine guns, and most of the assault rifles will match or beat the sniper rifles for range and accuracy, and the shotguns are a lot longer range than they should be, and not enough damage. Within 2 metres, a shotgun ought to remove body parts, not merely ding you. At 50ft+ unless it's the right barrel/ammo type you shouldn't be hitting regularly, and in that case your more using a pump action rifle than a shotgun anyway... Will i buy BO? Probably not. I bought MW2 for PS3, Battlefield BC2 for PS3 and I hate both with a passion. BC2 on the PC is a brilliant FPS game, i love the team play aspect of it that you just don't get in MW2 which is all about solo crusaders. If when they make a CoD game that rewards teamplay not just to benefit the solo'ers, a decent sniping option, and ability to skill up a certain weaponset/ craft rather than having to level up weapons in the order a game developer wants, I might consider them.

i had a teacher complain the internet was running slowly. I suggested it was because too many people were looking at big pages on the internet, and she should try resizing her browser to as small a window as possible, to reduce bandwidth. I giggled as I left the room, and they were attempting to operate google in a box not even 6 inches across and only about 1 inch of space showing.