PageZ

Hi I know its a long time since I posted this thread, but I thought I would update the story for anyone who is interested. End of term three is an interesting time for traffic as you can probably imagine. America broke up for their summer holidays a few weeks ago now so that cut down on the traffic load in the afternoon and evening quite a lot. However, now is the time when many schools in the UK allow their kids some 'down time' and the traffic is quite intense from the UK. The siteground hosting is holding up very well - with no problems so far at all. The site is currently munching up about 4gig per day and all I can say is that I would recommend siteground to anyone who wants good cheap hosting. I am not intending to spam the forum nor am I associated in any way with siteground, - just thought I would update folks on this forum who were kind enough to check out my site for me when I was having problems. Cheers Mr B

My name was put forward to the England selectors to play darts for England against Scotland and Wlaes. I didn't get picked.... Cheers Mr B

My name was put forward to the England selectors to play darts for England against Scotland and Wlaes. I didn't get picked.... Cheers Mr B

Interesting conversation. Redbox - Good luck with your career move - I hope it works for you and that you find conditions of work that you are at peace with. I can sympathise with the 'pulling teeth' scenario - although I myself mostly enjoy the teaching experience, there are the occasional lessons..... and , unlike with most careers, in teaching there is nowhere to hide - you can't just disappear for a few minutes and leave the kids to their own devices for a bit. (although I lam fully aware that some people try.) As you say if the career change does go chest upwards, you can always go on supply - which is by no means fun as I have found in the past that the supply teacher always tends to get the dog end jobs - however it will still keep the money coming in. Cheers Mr B

Nice to know that you can control what bits the kids can load. However - we have just started a project using google docs which is a fantastic tool. Basically it is a free word processor but you can allow other people to have access tot he document that you are writing so they can add to it as well. Extremely good for brainstorming activities. Cheers Mr B

Now thats what you call a curry!!! Cheers Mr B

Everytime I hear about year 11s leaving, it reminds me of one group of year 11s we had a few years ago. On the day of their leaving, one of them set off the fire alarm. Dutifully the rest of the school filed out in time honoured drill routine - only to be prresented by a beautifully orchestrated mass mooning of the school population by about 50 year 11s..... Class Cheers Mr B

We had an incident involving kids 'setting up' scenes where one little miscreant would play up while the camera man was there ready to catch the scene. We sorted it by taking the kids in front of senior management, making a big deal out of it and then getting the kid themsleves to remove it..... Cheers Mr B

Thankyou very much for the offer. I will keep you in mind, but for now I will stick with siteground and give them a fair crack of the whip. If and when I have any problems, I may start to look around again if thats OK.... Cheers Mr B

The site actually does make a little money from the adsense content. However you would be surprised how little it is. It does however cover the costs of stats, message board subscription, hosting etc as the adsense stuff generates around £40 per month. Not a lot from half a million page loads is it? if I do have to move hosting again to either a reseller account or a vps then it becomes a hobby that costs money again as well as time..... Cheers Mr B Apparently - other people that I am in contact with reckon that I could monetise the site much more than it is currently - particularly with the kind of traffic I get - however thats not what I built it for so its not a priority for me.

Mate - so far I have acquired just under 3,000 flash games. On PageZ there are between 4 and 500 - because the vast majority are either rubbish or inappropriate for what I consider to be my audience. Defender I would love too - and Pheonix but they just aren't out there. Paul Neave is by far the best and most likely guy to produce a perfect replica of these games but I think he got his wrist slapped for his absolutely perect versions of Space invaders and Pac Man - so we will have to wait for all those action scropt 2 programmers out there to decide its time for the resurrection of these wonderful old games...... Cheers Mr B

I wounder if siteground host porn sites... hmmmm A good question - I actually don't know. However I don't think that there is any way that PageZ could be associated with it as it is not obvious to the user where the site is hosted is it? I actualy had an offer from a guy on another forum to host my site for free - all he wanted were a row of single word adverts somewhere near the top of the navigation pages. I turned him down after one of my internet 'buddies' in Australia did a bit of checking and found that he had a number of porn sites - there is no way that I would ever want to be associatied with them. Cheers Mr B

Thanks very much to all of you - thats all I wanted to know. I'm really not sure about siteground though as the deal I have got seems too good to be true.... Pipex were charging me £20 per month +vat (ish) for 60gig of data transfer whereas siteground boast a liit of 2500gig per month fo $5.99!!!!! Now when the site was first swaped over it looked real slow on my own computer, but once I did a flushdns it was fine. It will be interesting to see what it is like under load though. For those that are interested and as you have been kind enough to help me out here, I set up a viewer account for the kids that I teach so that I can talk to them about stats, optimisation, adsense, IPs etc. Feel free if you want to use it - its a nice tool to have. site - http://www.statcounter.com username - pagezstats password - pagezguest Cheers Mr B

No problem - thanks for trying. Strange that as I so get hits from Norfolk county council..... Cheers PageZ

As some of you may know, I have a 'school friendly' game site. I am not going into my reasons for this being built or who does or doesn't use it etc. but I would appreciate a few forum members loading my site and then one of the games to say how fast or slow this process is. Recently I have had to change hostings - the site currently uses around 5 gig a day and my old hosting threatened to charge £25 per day for the priviledge. I have now changed to siteground, but I am worried about the speed of this new hosting - so your opinions would be appreciated. Thanks very much http://www.pagez.co.uk

Personally, I think it is down to the image that you would like to project. If you want to give the impression that you are professional, then shirt and tie is the way to go. If you want to wear your best Star Trek or Oasis tee shirt along with the baggy jeans then......... Cheers Neil

As I said - titles in education come with strings attached. Usually, they use a change in title to squeeze more out of people for the same money or to change your job so you have to work longer or get paid less. Careful..... Cheers PageZ

My point is this - if you teach kids, you should be paid accordingly. I personally think that the new TA system is grooming cheap teachers. I also think that letting 30 kids loose on the 1 game site you allow (I hope its mine....) is not the same as being put down to cover 30 disgruntled year 11s in German with no computers available and work that you don't understand set for them. If you enjoy the teaching part - thats fine - do it, be timetabled for it and get paid for it properly. Oh and the 13 weeks a year business - I am not even going to start on that one or mention, reports, parents evenings, meetings, open days, cross phase evenings, marking, moderating, writing new modules of work, revision clubs, booster classes, piggin Ofsted, etc etc.... Personally I think its swings and roundabouts - but Im sure you would probably disagree. Cheers PageZ

An interesting thread this one.... I personally have an innate distrust of titles and have found over the years that all smt's attached various strings to various titles - the idea of 'non teaching' is no bad thing in my eyes. Let me qualify this - some years ago I remember seeing a 'new ' pay scale for a 'non - qualified teacher'. I presume that the advertising drive at the time was pushing those captains of industry who were sick of their highly paid, expense account, diners club card jobs would throw it all in and come and be a 'non qualified teacher' for 16 grand a year. As I recall - they weren't beating the doors down. However there seems to have been a push to get 'cheap teachers' in one form or another ever since. One look at the new style TA's and cover assistants should ring alarm bells with people as they are getting more and more responsibility put their way - but are the financial rewards there? So thats another view for you - if you do teach and take groups then fine - but make sure that it is recognised in your contract and you are paid for it. If you are described as 'non teaching' then at least you are safe from being landed with covering 30 bored Y11 kids on Friday afternoon..... Oh and yes - I am a qualified teacher. Cheers PageZ

I was not aware of this book, but havingread the previous messages - I would be up for getting people to take pictures of themselves with any number of stupid mesages on large boards or hugging fish etc - but I personally believe that asking them to get tattoo'd is a step too far.... Cheers PageZ

Call of Duty check out http://www.pathfindersclan.co.uk Cheers PageZ

Lovin this site.... Particularly like the ones randomly holding fish..... I so want to do this to a 419er.... Cheers PageZ

I have recently found out about this on the net. Have a look at this very funny way of dealing with the 419ers.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3887493.stm Cheers PageZ

Came across this on the net. A proxy site set up purely to allow kids to get around school security.... http://www.schoolsurf.org/ Get it on those blocking lists people! Cheers Mr B

Thanks - I am trying to be considerate and I am trying to help other members of staff and technicians. What would be nice is if people from other schools around the country sent me some more resources to put on my free tutorials page.... (on my main webbie...) Cheers Pagez