pcstru

We have bought hundreds of refurb Lenovo laptops from them and a hundred+ desktops. I think our worst complaint would be that occasionally they are a little slow to respond, but in the end any problem we have had with kit has been sorted out and in the main, I'd happily buy from them again.

If Badminton and Tennis count then ... probably still a little too much. The last week would probably be ~16 hours. I do try and force myself onto other tasks; but I'm also still enjoying being beholden to no one on how I spend my time.

I just buy bog standard stuff from ebay, Rapid etc, I've never had a problem with any. Get the right size for the job or get a variety of sizes (big is handy for encapsulating a lot of wires comming out of a switch (for example)). I don't use a heat gun, I just gently stroke it with the edge of the bit (not the tip) of the soldering iron.

The career mode is very challenging with the equipment constraints. I had a head start on space flight concepts having used and abused the amazing (and free) Orbiter (which with the high resolution texture packs available for the planets, looks amazing from orbit) but then felt lost without some of the instruments Orbiter craft provide to plan orbital manuvers. Still - keeps the brain active trying to figure it all out.

I very rarely 'finish' games - perhaps I'm not dedicated enough or maybe I play the wrong kind of game. Currently enjoying Kerbal Space Program - cute Frogs but quite a steep learning curve.

In the end I think our IT got off lightly. Lot's of carpets and flooring to be ripped out, but only a dozen or so PC's pulled out of rooms to to dry. Probably one machine dead which was below a waterfall surrounded by the 3d printer and scanner. Lot's of clearing up and disruption. Perhaps our Summer is now Monsoon season, along with spring, autumn and winter!

Just arrived home. We had the fire brigade on site to rescue some folks in a low lying building, 1ft of water inside and it was still rising. That was music so lot's of amps, instruments etc will be just lying about. I looked in on an ADT room with computers (some of our best kit!), milling machines, 3d printers etc - water pouring in from the ceiling - most of it will be ruined. School will close tomorrow while we try and clear up. Quite heartbreaking to see :-(.

Right now we have rivers where there shouldn't be and at least 3 buildings with water ingress - one completely flooded. One river is a couple of inches short of the aircon compressors for the main server room. Eeeek!

ISTR a couple of years ago Parentpay promising they would communicate better with their customers and users. So much for that! My first thoughts were that it was a cynical move to hold money in their accounts. Funnily enough, that was my middle and end thoughts too.

Not really. A SAN decouples raw storage from physical servers in a way that makes provision of raw (block) storage very flexible. When you add more storage to the SAN, it is potentially available to any server with some basic software configurations changes. With the right kind of file system making use of the block storage, it can be available to multiple servers (physical or logical) simultaneously. So we can plug a big block of SAN storage into 3 different physical boxes running VMWare's ESXi, and then we can store our VM's on that and run up the guest on any of the 3 boxes. An NAS on the other hand IS a complete file server. It's aim is to service end users directly. A SAN usually only services infrastructure directly - i.e. someone uses it as the back end of their file server (and typically many other servers).

Yes, in an ideal world. Our iSCSI devices are all on a physically distinct network from the client devices. Servers straddle a plug (or 8!) into both.

NAS tends to offer end user file and file system management (either via LDAP or local user management). A SAN tends to be block based via iSCSI. These days a lot of devices straddle both functions. For a SAN, the storage devices should be on their own network, so communication with the device is between the server and then device on a network, while users access their files via the server on a separate network.

"If only there had been more people who took up their right to bear arms and protect themselves, then we may have seen fewer casualties." Is how they always spin it!

They could be serial connections for 'dumb terminals' - old VT100's and the likes.

A Logitec wireless mouse A PS3 cam which I hacked to do headtracking A Leo Bondar USB controller which was used as the basis of an 8 segment analogue throttle thingy-ma-whatsit (piccy for the curious). All of which probably covers the last few years. Next up I'm looking at direct drive servo based wheel rigs, pedals and h-box type shifter - possibly setting up a dedicated racing rig.

Introduction to Project Management, a short course (~20 hours over 6 weeks) which might be informative and look good on a CV.

That should be easy enough. The programming for the LED's should pretty basic and is a good entry into interfacing the PI to the real world (a single LED would be about as simple as it gets - RGB LED's are just three LED's, which is the same difficulty but a more work, (i.e. it's not three times as difficult). A driver program shouldn't be a noticeable drain on resources.

We use a sharepoint site for Governors. They have login to the domain, email redirection where necessary but mainly the login just gives access to their sharepoint 'team' site.

In which case you are running with clear text or MD5 unsalted passwords somewhere - which is probably ... unwise.

GAPS will only sync a password when the password changes (I assume it needs to intercept the clear text). GADS can set an initial password on account creation but does not as far as I know sync them (I assume because it cannot access the password clear text).

The advantage of USB should be that the voltage is tightly regulated. Of course a "proper supply" should be well regulated but I've seen some supplies provided with 5050 strips put out over 14V into the load - which for 12V strips will overdrive the LED's and quite quickly degrade the output. WS2812's are an interesting alternative to RGB strips, each LED is individually addressable through a single wire interface. They are a bit more expensive but not prohibitively so. Probably not drivable from a PI directly because of timing requirements but easily supported by a cheap Arduino board (I have a little plan to put a long string in my hedge and then use a PI with a camera and some image processing to try and track passers by and have them followed by a single lit led).

MIS Contracts Manager @ £45,000.

I play - don't know about dab hand, but I play most weeks and have been doing so for the last 6-8 years. Unfortunately I started Tennis a few years ago and neither game is good for the other.

Looking good - and it does remind me ... Vinyl comes in All sorts of colors and finishes, you can even get stuff you can print on (I've never tried it but since it's used on the sides of vans it must be quite robust!). Some big block space invader graphics in bright colors might look good. Another thing I've done in the past is machine text/logo's into clear polycarbonate sheet which is then lit from the edge with (concealed) LED's. Like these. Using that technique for something might look good fronting the overhead. You could even run some RGB leds from the PI.

It's a long time since I did any, but I always painted the parts before assembly only doing weathering and touch up on the completed model.