Sarconia

I'll have to go with a good old classic Gin & Tonic...

I'd also check the .net framework installed on the machine as well as checking to see if any other users are connected to that machine externally as I know there is quite a low limit (I think 10? users) to the amount of external connections which can connect to any Windows XP machine. It's probably also worth running the usual utilities.. exec sims.db_p_install exec sims.db_p_grant exec sims.db_p_reset_sysman_password

This is exactly what I was thinking as both SLG and PX cost a bomb!

Generally I find that most educational software houses stipulate that schools should not even go into SQL and execute any queries at all, it's normally written in their contracts. However, select statements are harmless so as long as you don't tell the provider you actually went into SQL and had a prod around - it's all good!

I got 70/100 on everything... hmm!

My thoughts are virtually almost the same as this!

I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who I met from Edugeek on Saturday evening. I had a great time and it was cool to be able to put some real life faces to a lot of people here.

I have learnt from experience that it is never a wise move to tell your current employer that you are looking for another job. If they actually value you as an employee in the first place then they wouldn't pay you a wage which is a joke. Personally I'd leave the low paid job and take the other job for sure, money isn't everything and at least it's for a year, if it doesn't work out you also know when you'll be out of work and can plan for it.

Sometimes this can be caused by not having the previous installation files present within the Setups directory. I'd say to download it from the Capita FTP site but it is awfully slow...

I'm watching this now on iplayer via my PS3... I hate to admit this but having been gaming for many years now I can definitely say that when I was a child I was addicted to gaming. I used to play for up to 8-10hrs at a time, even used to get enraged when my parents told me to go to bed at various hours of the night. I used to bunk off school to play games quite frequently. It was like gravity, I was being pulled into the games and heck, I wanted to get away from my real life (for many reasons) so that just made it easier for the games to take over. Nowadays, my gaming is perfectly under control as I don't want to escape my real life quite so much, quite frankly I'd rather have sex than play my playstation! (Wouldn't we all I suspect) I still play games quite a lot, maybe for 2-3hrs every other night and a bit more at the weekend. I exercise at the gym, watch TV, read books, craft and sew things - it's all about keeping yourself occupied with things other than gaming, once you've found other things to do, the gaming simply won't seem to be as important, it'll just become another hobby in which you engage in now and then. I wouldn't say that gaming is bad, just that it can be addictive to some given the circumstances or that particular person's susceptibilties.

Here in Surrey we're stuffed, I managed to de-snow my car earlier... it had about 8inches on the top of it but I never made it to work in it as it wouldn't budge over the snow, tyres just kept spinning so I went back indoors and used the company VPN instead.

Hmm, I've been thinking about this after reading this topic... In regard to streaming, I somehow doubt that this will happen yet. The whole reason why I don't really like streaming that much is because I like to have a copy of whatever media it is that I have downloaded. Even if my internet does go down (and it does... dodgy BT) it means that I can still watch/play/listen to the media on my hard drive and with 2TB of space, I'm not going to run out of that any time soon. I think that a lot of others also see this the same way. I think that the future will simply expand upon what we have now. VR may eventually come along but it is a way off at the moment. All of this motion control business is great but what I find is... how long can you actually stay moving around in front of a console before you simply get tired out? I'm quite fit but even the wii controller begins to hurt after a while of doing similar sorts of motion! For the near future, 3D gaming will probably also take off... and I'm not talking about the kind where you need any glasses to see the 3D effect, this will be 3D by just looking at the screen. Decent voice controls as well... imagine being able to issue specific commands to your squad in Call of Duty? "Alpha One, Shoot the guy on the top of the ridge"

Cor, that is indeed a very hefty document. I'll have a read when I've got a while! The only problem I can see is getting schools to switch their MIS provider, most of them simply don't ever want to deal with the hassle of it.

100 sit ups.. fine run a mile... fine 100 press ups... *dies* Still, I'm on a fitness bender at the moment so I'm up for this It should be interesting at least..

As nobody seems to have answered this... Schools do indeed have to revoke their current license and re-license. They have to be licensed with the company which supports them and this is a killer... big LA's receive huge discounts on their licensing costs whereas a single site school SIMS license is approximately £2000. You can receive a discount if you manage to have a few schools on your books but it won't be anywhere near how much the big LA's receive so in terms of offering SIMS support... it probably won't be very profitable initially.

I've dealt with Hertfordshire and they're generally one of the better LA's out there. Not sure how they are price-wise though in regard to SIMS they have... err... (I'll PM you)

I've been wearing glasses since high school and I've figured that there's only two routes which you can go down. A) Buy a black pair of frames and pretend that you're not half blind or B) Buy an outrageously cool pair and just say "screw it - my vision isn't going to get any better, might as well accept it". A few years ago I decided to go for option B and bought an awesomely bright coloured designer pair, you'll always get people commenting on them and it'll set you apart from all the people with boring specs, go for it!

In your first post I was thinking "hmm, sounds somewhat like SIMS and FMS to me" as that also suffers from quite a few "full access needs to be given to X folders" issues and you also need to install the BDE. Engage suggests that you're from an Independent school so I'd recommend looking at Isams and maybe the Bromcom MIS too as they're both browser based MIS solutions.

Table for one moments are only made awkward by the staff in places in my experience. I always say "table for one" and then they'll say something like "really? no date?" which then makes you feel like a plonker, just remember that it's all them and not you and it'll be ok

If it looks that awesome in a photo... I can only imagine what it'd look like in real life, wow!

Haha, I chill out for a week or so and come back and there's been a whole topic of hmm... "discussion". It's a difficult one really, some schools are really on the ball and know exactly what they are doing when it comes to virtually everything but others are just so laid back and clueless they may as well be asleep on the floor, it's swings and roundabouts if you ask me. In regard to training manuals and videos... I have created a fair few and I've sent them out all of the time but I'm fairly sure most people probably don't use them! A lot of people I find would rather just talk to someone and have them hold their hand to do whatever task it is that they have been assigned.

When you add a User Defined Field (UDF) you can choose the data area where you would like the UDF to appear. So, this UDF has been added to the Student Details data area and subsequently shows there and not in the Applicant data area. I'm not sure off the top of my head as I'm at home now if you can create UDF's in the Applicant area, I'm fairly sure you can, however I'm not 100% sure if that data would carry across when you admit the student(s).

It does look nice but functionality > nice. Unleash the evil cables!

Hmm... this seems to be similar to what you want... I created a report based on the Period (it's under the school focus in the report design). I then added the fields: Period Day Name TimeTableModel (this seems to pick up the cycle) Lessons (Sub Report) Class Name of the class Class teacher of the class It did give me a really long list... I hope it helps.

As with any kind of event/attempting to persuade people to donate money I always find that the biggest problem is drumming up support and enthusiasm for it. The first step would be to try and raise everyones awareness of the event and to try and get them involved, however this is often quite a difficult challenge. For example, if you are trying to organise a party the first step would be to set the date, ask if people are interested, officially ask them and then maybe book a venue. It's generally not until the last minute that things start to go wrong, people will say that they will come along and yes, you'll have a few decent people who will stick to their word but most people will either be too busy doing their own things or they'll just plainly forget or just can't be bothered. No matter how much awareness you try to raise, sending emails, banners, posters, flyers, newspaper adverts, absolutely anything most people will still bail out at the last minute. The same applies to those who have signed sponsorship forms. I sometimes think that trying to raise awareness/gather cash for charity/organise any events goes against human nature as more often than not, people simply don't want to co-operate with anything. Slightly cynical, yes but mostly true. At the end of the day, do it for yourself and the charity, those who help you out and happen to contribute are just bonuses. Also, don't underestimate the amount of effort when it comes to these kinds of things, lots of co-ordination, planning and training is needed if it's going to be a successful ride. Good luck!