AMLinington

Having recently married, and therefore been subject to changing my name on MANY MANY documents, I can attest to the fact that changing your NAME might be easy. Getting all your accounts etc to RECOGNISE it is somewhat less straightforward. For a start, PARTICULARLY with Deed Poll, most places won't let you change names online, they insist on you SENDING them the original. If you only have one original it means you'll have to send it off and wait for it to come back before you can do the next change. Some accounts will let you change details online, which is fine, but it'll take a long time before you stop getting mail addressed to your old name. Just wanted to prepare you for the fact that it can be frustrating and convoluted at times.

I saw a tutorial on here (Edugeek) somewhere about using a fake camera housing and a Raspberry Pi with IR sensor camera as a CCTV kit. It looked like a lot of fun. Although probably more work than buying one.

I'm not sure that is such a bad idea TBH. If all properties had an inspection and certificate, we'd get to the point where these dodgy wiring jobs would have to be replaced. People would be safer. We have one. We're pretty sure it's all dead, but every now and again we'll find a bit of old brown cable poking out of a bit of metal pipe in the walls or under the floor in random places. Not 100%. But it's encased in the metal conduit in the walls and it's not in active use. It might be, but it's brown and relatively slim. Asbestos sheathed cable tends to look like felt covered, cloth insulated is more likely - it doesn't look 'felt-y' it looks woven. It IS sticky, but I don't think it's Rubber. It looks like this: Which is apparently cloth-covered according to: Cloth Cable Wiring Hazards and Electrical Safety Tips, Pittsburgh Electricians Either way, nothing is actually POWERED using it. Joys of buying a house built in the 50's or earlier I guess.

Took some stonking photos on my Honeymoon just using my LG G3 smartphone. This one is arguably my favourite. It looks like something out of a travel magazine. It's not a high resolution because I had to pull it from Facebook (my phone memory card died), but I have the high res one backed up and it's incredible:

When my sister bought her first house, they had a survey done and the surveyor found a rusty nail jammed into the fuseboard acting as a fuse. When he asked the occupants about it they said 'it kept tripping and we got sick of it. The nail isn't as sensitive as a fuse'..... It didn't occur to them to try to find out WHY it was tripping in the first place (my money is on the fact they overloaded the sockets with obnoxious entertainment equipment). The challenge in our house is that it was a 1950's jobbie. So when it was BUILT, the metal conduit and fabric-covered-wires were basically concreted into the wall when it was poured. So at some point, 'someone' has had to do a complete re-wire but because it's not possible to embed it in the walls, it runs all over the place in nonsensical randomness. Every now and again I'll come across bits of the 'old' wiring and we're never 100% sure if it's still live or not lol.

We found similar horrors when we bought our house. We uncover more every time we decorate. The most common is double plug sockets basically wired onto a length of wire with a plug on the end that is plugged into another socket - a sort of 'extension lead' screwed into the wall. We have sockets spurred off the lighting ring in the Kitchen - we can't keep more than half the bulbs in the light fittings alight at any one time or the fuse is tripped. They ran some overhead cables out of the wall of the house into the shed and terminated them in a non-waterproof box. It was a nightmare. We fed a new outdoor ring from the fusebox and our electrician said he'd cut the old wire off. So we tried to cut the wires (we can't work out where it's fed from indoors) and discovered it was still (somehow) live. Nearly killed LeHusband! We have these cables poking out the side of the house that we can't trace. We literally cannot find where they come from, how they got out the wall, or where they go to, so we can't get rid of them. We've had to encase them in something until we rip the kitchen out because we think they've been fed behind one of the false walls in the kitchen... We plan to have an electrician install a new (separate) lighting and socket ring in the kitchen because the electrics in there are a mess. DIY Is a nightmare. But I can sympathise - getting 'proper' tradespeople in to do things is prohibitively expensive. But it's catch-22 for the electricians. They HAVE to charge high prices because of the costs of training, insurance and running a business, but BECAUSE prices are high, they are pricing themselves out of work. So they have to put their prices up to survive.

It seems to me that schools might be better off STARTING later than finishing earlier. Studies* have shown that the adolescent brain learns less effectively earlier in the day and requires more sleep. * I saw it in a journal somewhere when I did my PGCE but can't remember the reference. Personally I hope they DO reintroduce Grammar schools with the 11+ entry requirement - perhaps parents might take their childs' education more seriously if they have to take an exam to get in...

Ack not this again. I had this when I first moved into my house - our phone line is with Virgin Media and they claimed to be from BT. So I told them I wasn't a BT customer and they got incredibly threatening and offensive and kept their call open until I rang Virgin in a panic and had to have my number changed. I'd like to be able to think quickly enough on my feet to waste their time but I'm afraid I just flub it and end up hanging up.

Wow! They love you. When I got made redundant from Smoothwall I didn't even get a 'Sorry you're leaving' card... LOL.

Yeah that's the 'Amazon Marketplace' - you have to look for 'Fulfilled by Amazon' as well - that doesn't mean Amazon are responsible for the product, it just means someone sent stuff there and Amazon store and ship it. I hate the Amazon Marketplace so much. I don't mind the 'New and Used' book stuff where you can buy a 'Used - Good' book for 1p (plus £3 P&P XD)

I know, right? I've had a few delivery snafu's - a couple of instances where something hasn't turned up, or it's been left in an inappropriate place, and the default response is 'Sorry about that! Here, have a free month'... I'm not going to argue with that...

Although Storm Doris has now passed as is set to be succeeded by Storm Ewan, so FURTHER storm damage would also be off topic

When I learned to drive, I was taught this too. Ditto for the 'If you get hit by another car' comment. The only reason I don't is because I have a paranoia that I'll forget and smash into someone when I try to turn my engine on with the gear engaged and the clutch not depressed properly lol

It is probably worth reiterating that I do not work for Smoothwall anymore. I was made redundant and discarded. So my comments are based on my own opinions of the product and not out of loyalty or because they are my employer. As I said, I have a lot of respect for the Smoothwall Product and for the Support and Development teams, but objectively, having been 'behind the scenes' I am aware of the challenges and can provide some relevant insight. But my comments should not be construed as representing Smoothwall in any way.

It's not the hill that is defined, but the direction the car is pointing in - if the nose of the car is pointing UP the hill, put it in first, so it can't roll backwards. If the nose of the car is pointing DOWN the hill, put it in reverse. ;P

As a former SW minion (they made me redundant, so believe me, I'm not interested in doing anyone any favours out of the goodness of my heart), I have some perspective on both the cost AND reporting capability of the SW product. I have a lot of respect for the SW product, but it is not without its challenges. The trouble is, when it comes to web filtering - especially in schools, people want to have their cake, eat it, and for it still to be whole. When a product performs an action or fulfils a purpose, everything you ask it to do requires system resource to a greater or lesser extent. Web Filtering is MASSIVELY intensive - if you want it to be GOOD and FAST it has to call a lot of functions in the code. So you have to compromise on the things that aren't directly related. If you want epic levels of reporting, the product is going to have to process and store every nano-molecule of data going through it. If you want to pull complex reports, the reporting engine has to scan all that complicated data and cross reference it against your parameters, which again requires a SHEDLOAD of processing power and memory. Pick 2: It is unreasonable to expect a single box to be able to do everything concurrently. Someone pointed out that Fortinet offer a separate reporting module for additional cost, but that it nukes processing power - I imagine it does. Every product out there has to find their own balance and decide where they want to pitch their product - if they want to offer epic levels of reporting, then they need to trim back other processes so the quality of the filtering might be affected. If you want high quality filtering and epic reporting, the box is going to be slow and bogged down by running processes. If you want great filtering and a speedy box you'll need to compromise on all the other things you're asking it to do. You cannot directly compare each product, because they will all have compromised in certain areas. The key is for you, the customer, to identify your priorities and pick that product that is the closest match - if quality of reporting is super-high on your priority list and you aren't altogether worried about dynamic content filtering because your student demographic is basically given access to pretty much everything, then pick a box that has a less effective filter and a better reporting system. If you have a bunch of troublesome students and the governors breathing down your neck to lock out every possible tiny thing, then you'll need to compromise in other areas. There is nothing wrong with changing your product to meet your changing priorities, but understand that you won't get everything - you will have to compromise with every product. You cannot directly compare the reporting in one box with the reporting in another if their levels of filtering are vastly different. Which brings me around to cost. Even before they dumped me like a broken a chair, the costs of the SW product were increasing massively. I've been behind the scenes and peered around the curtain and can tell you that the 'old prices' were MASSIVELY undervaluing the product. I've sat with developers as they work on the SW product and know that in order to maintain development and continual improvement of a product, you can't manage on a small development team. If you want a product that relies on doing the same thing year in, year out, without ever changing or adapting to the changing environment, then it will obviously cost next to nothing, because the vendor isn't having to pay a big team to keep pace. I've been in support - some of you have probably even spoken to me on the phone. When I was there, I was PROUD to be a part of the support team because the business CARED about going above and beyond for the users. Yes, there will ALWAYS be unsatisfied customers that feel 'fobbed off' or feel like they don't get good value, but I can tell you that this is not the customer service ethos (or it wasn't when I was there - I can't comment on their business priorities these days). I miss being part of that team. I miss the guys there. We'd have 'technicians' phone us up having done ZERO troubleshooting themselves. I've lost count of the number of times a customer knee-jerk called support to complain about the product having failed to perform any reasonable tests of their own network and infrastructure. SO MANY TIMES I would run packet traces and discover that the customer had installed a product that was messing with routing, faffed with DHCP or DNS or has an internal networking SNAFU that has nothing to do with the product. Is it my job to support your internal network? Are you paying SW to support your network? Of course not. Would you phone Microsoft to complain that Windows was broken when your PC isn't even plugged in? But the SW engineers did it anyway because they are GOOD. SO GOOD. It might not seem like it, but SW customers get waaaaaay more for their money support-wise than some companies would give you. I won't say they're perfect because they aren't. But they aren't a faceless script-reading entity and that might not have a monetary value, but it certainly costs SW to maintain that ethos. A cost reflected in the price of the product. There aren't many first and second line support desks that have a direct link to the developers of the product. Not many that can get a developer to help them tweak a piece of the SOFTWARE CODE ITSELF to solve your problem. I won't lie, I have literally zero respect for sales people - they are mostly non-technical and have very little idea of the work that goes in behind the scenes. Returning to the cake analogy, they give the 'bakers' (Developers and Support) 2 eggs, 4oz of Flour and 2oz Butter, then promise the customer a 4 tier chocolate masterpiece containing a tiny clockwork bird that flies out when the cake is cut. It doesn't work that way. I can't comment on the current state of the SW product because I've been out of the game for a while, but I do think that many users I see complaining on this and other tech forums about the performance and reporting of their respectively chosen filtering solution (whether it is Sophos, Bloxx, SW, Fortinet, etc) have really unrealistic expectations because they have little to no understanding of how the underlying code, data logging and databases within their products actually work. In part I blame sales people, because they promise the earth based on benchmarking done under controlled conditions and with the best spec hardware. We all know real life doesn't work that way. EVERY part of a product is the result of carefully calculated and debated cost compromises - you want a new reporting system built from scratch? Great! But it won't happen by the 3 month deadline. So a company will develop and improve the existing platform, but that can result in complex and convoluted UI processes. It's a toss up - difficult to use but THERE, or 'Simple to use' but will take 10 years to develop from scratch? Anyone familiar with ServiceNow? Great, versatile product but OH SWEET MERCY it's complicated. You can actually TELL where the code and development for one feature finishes and another one starts because it's SO BLIMMIN COMPLICATED and one part of the product works in a totally inverse way to another part. The SW product is the same (and I hazard a guess a bunch of the others are too, but I have no experience with them). So my advice would be to assess each product based on your own unique priorities, and understand that each product will have strengths and weaknesses in different areas. So pick the one that is the best fit for your organisation - the one that 'ticks the most boxes'. This might change over time or you might need to accept that the 'nice to haves' will have to make way for the 'ESSENTIAL's.

Depending on the gradient of the hill, I usually park in gear if I'm on a slope - reverse for a downhill and first for an uphill. I'm sure it probably isn't healthy for the gearbox, but my car clonking someone else's isn't healthy for my bank balance. I don't park on hills that often though so it's only an occasional thing.

Interesting happenings on my journey home from work last night. Took the Itchen Toll Bridge out of Southampton (it saves me 10 minutes) and the traffic was backed right up and crawling. So I think 'Maybe a tree has fallen' or something. So I sit in it for 30 minutes until I see weird manoeuvres happening ahead of me... Cars are pulling up onto the OPPOSITE pavement, and the bus several cars in front of me nearly scraped someones wall. Turns out, somehow, that someones car brakes had failed and their car had rolled out into the middle of the road from the side road it was parked in. The closer I got, the further out into the road the car was - at first it wasn't blocking the whole lane. By the time I got past it, it was nearly across both lanes! Not sure if storm related or just happenstance but it was pretty bizarre to see this car just rolling around on its own...

53wpm. Not bad. I found it hard when the word list changed. I'd prefer it if the whole paragraph was visible.

Not at all - if you don't use the catenary wire, Openreach will come out and repair or remove it. If it's fallen down, just get them to remove it. That's what they did for us. It was really easy. I just rang them up and said their catenary wire was damaged and they arranged a visit. No problem.

LeHusband has a stubborn insistence on sleeping with the bedroom window open a crack - even in sub-zero temperatures. The wind was howling last night and the curtain was slapping him in the face. Serves him right, stubborn A$$. At ridiculous-o'clock this morning, he finally got up and shut the window. So far we've not lost any fence panels, but we nearly lost two tarps - LeHusband left them on the grass (as an aside, they are now COATED in baby slugs - ack) and then refused to go retrieve them. I made him weigh them down last night. They will probably be missing when I get home. I kinda hope they are. I don't like the vast quantity of slugs on them. We also might lose a couple of the Rabbits - two of them keep escaping into the garden during the night. If any fences fall down, they'll be long gone. We can't work out how they're doing it, either. The hutches are secured. We think they've learned that 'thumping' the ground floor of the hutch rattles the bolt. We think they just do it repeatedly until the bolt works itself loose. Rockster is smarter than he looks! It's pretty blowy here but nothing particularly extreme. So far I'm deeply disappointed that 'Storm Doris' has yielded neither Thunder NOR Lightning - Real-Time Lightning Map :: LightningMaps.org

For lovers of slightly naughty romance novels: The Hating Game by Sally Thorne is AMAZING

The problem with exploring abandoned or empty buildings, is that the few spoil it for the many - vandals and careless idiots spoil things by setting fires or trashing the place, or leaving rubbish. This in turn forces councils/owners/someone to reinforce access points. Case in point: Fort Gilkicker - super fun to 'break into' and explore (read: walk through a giant hole in the fence) until some morons decided to set some fires and try to burn this historic building! Now the fences have all been replaced and reinforced. Thanks muppets.

My mind was blown when I found out that Arkansas is pronounced 'Ark-en-saw' not 'Are-kansas'.... My sister used to have pronunciation issues when she was a child, some memorable examples include: Lellow (Yellow) Invididual (In-vi-did-u-all) instead of Individual (we still use it in the family now) Libbef (Elizabeth) At work, people in the office pronounce Mandatory differently. It kinda drives me mad because I don't think either way is WRONG as such, it's just jarring. 1) Man-date-ary (I can see the origin of this, because Mandatory is derived from 'Mandate' meaning compulsory instruction) 2) Man-da-tory (I pronounce it this way) When I was at school I had a full on argument over the pronunciation of Adidas. I used to think it was 'A-dee-dus', and someone else said it was 'Ad-ee-dass'. I later discovered that Adidas is named for 'Adi Dasler' which suggests that Adi-das is the correct pronunciation.

It's not a school related story, but I have a couple of 'strange encounters' to share: Some background first, though. My Maternal line immigrated from Ireland a few generations back, (I believe my Great Grandmother was an infant when they moved, or born shortly after arrival here) and have always claimed to 'have a touch of the fae'. Something I didn't really take seriously, because it was mostly superstitious-sounding stories spouted by my Nan's slightly batty youngest Sister and the other attention seeking sister my Nan didn't speak to much (she was from a big Irish family - my Nan had several siblings that survived childhood and a couple that didn't - bearing in mind my Nan was born in the 1920s...). But over the years there have been odd things that have happened to, or been experienced by, me that suggests my maternal line might not be entirely batty... Bear with me because these are a bit lengthy in the telling: 1) First off, when I was a baby (as-in pre-talking, not-old-enough-for-imaginary-friends) I used to gravitate to a certain corner and giggle, laugh, and play with 'something'. It used to freak my mum out. But babies are babies and you can't really use that as conclusive proof. Growing up (and even now) I HATE being alone in my parents house. It was a new build in the 1970's, my Dad bought it from-new, but it was built in an area with a Tumulus. On Ordnance Survey maps, there was a 'Tumulus' marked at the end of the road, and there is a 'hill' that no-one uses. It's not explicitly 'Out of bounds' and there are no signs up. It's a perfect place for residents and kids to play, walk their dogs, have outdoor parties because it's surrounded by trees on one side and a path on the other in front of a row of houses. But I've never seen ANYONE walk on it. Ever. I've tried a few times and I can't bring myself to actually walk across it. Even when it's covered in Snow, it's the only patch of ground in the neighbourhood where the snow stays untouched until it melts. As I got older, there was a 'presence' in the house that felt increasingly hostile. Things would go missing until you demanded that 'the ghost' return them. Being alone in that house fills me with irrational terror. I assumed it was me being stupid, and when I bought my own house and moved in, I expected to feel the same way when I have to spend the night alone in my current house (a much MUCH older 1950's home - not even remotely new-build). To my surprise, I feel nothing at all. The home I grew up in should feel safe and secure. I've never had any bad experiences there (unless you count puberty ;-) ) but being on my own there is is terrifying. It's only gotten worse as I've aged. We have a theory that whatever the 'presence' is, it 'liked' me when I was a child because I could interact with it, but it's grown increasingly hostile perhaps through frustration because we grew up. Just before my Sister's baby was born, stuff started going missing again. We think the ghost is excited that a new child is visiting the house. But this is entirely based on circumstantial and arbitrary things like 'feelings'. 2) When I was at Primary school, I had a friend I used to meet at break time - Carina. I assumed she was in another class in the next year group down because I never saw her in the areas where our year had their classrooms. She was my best friend and we'd play together all the time. One year our school was doing some diversity stuff and decided, as a school, we would celebrate Diwali. Basically the whole school went Diwali-mad with an entire day of crafts and activities devoted to learning about, and sharing in, Diwali. Part of this was basically that all rules about staying in your 'classroom area' went out the window and children were allowed to move to other classrooms to hand out Diwali cards and share crafts and stuff with their friends. So I carefully prepped a bunch of stuff for Carina and went looking for her. Assuming she was the next year down from me, I went to the year 3/4 classrooms and asked all the teachers where Carina was. They had no idea who I was talking about. Long story short, I went to every single classroom in the school and not a single teacher even knew who Carina was. After that day, I never saw her again. I assumed she was one of the many kids that joined us for a term or two then disappeared (I realise now that these were likely to be the children of travellers or diplomats). People I speak to assume I had an imaginary friend, but it doesn't make sense to me that she would ONLY exist during break time at school, and not come home with me. Even now I'm convinced she WAS real, but perhaps not ALIVE. I was reminded of this story when I was helping my parents clear some clutter from their attic. My Mum is a sentimental hoarder so she kept all the crappy work we'd done at school and I came across all the cards and crafts with 'To Carina, Happy Diwali, Love (Me)' in my handwriting. It definitely happened. I asked my Mum about it and she doesn't recall me ever being friends with a girl called 'Carina', but it was right there, in my handwriting. 3) My pièce de résistance, though, is the legit scary thing I did at my cousins wedding. My Sister and I were bridesmaids, and the ceremony took place in a church in Harrow with a massive Graveyard (because: London). I vividly remember there being a Looooooooong, slightly downhill gravel driveway through the graveyard lined with trees of varying ages and sizes. After the ceremony we're all standing around outside the church while all the formal photos were being taken and I noticed a bunch of people loitering behind the trees. I remember thinking it was odd because some of them had lacy parasols and 'frilly dresses' and I wondered why they didn't come up the hill. So I happened to be standing next to my aunt (Mother of the Bride) and said to her 'Aunty, who are those ladies behind the trees'. So my Aunt looks down this driveway and says to me 'which ladies?' 'The ones in the frilly dresses with the parasols', says me. 'Oh, they must be people who just want to catch a glimpse of the bride', she says. Me being a kid thought nothing of it and went on my merry way. It was only a couple of decades later that I heard the truth. Apparently my aunt had looked down at where I was pointing and seen nothing but trees. She asked my Mum who agreed: Nothing but trees. I'd been ill recently so they passed it off as hallucinations from the Calpol and Penicillin (to which I'm actually allergic). Thinking nothing further of it, my cousin and her husband went off on their honeymoon. While they were away, the photographer delivered the proofs (this was back in the days of rolls-of-film-and-ugly-90's-photo-albums). We happened to be over for Sunday dinner and my Aunt got the proofs out. Flicking through them, there were several of this beautiful picturesque driveway. Immediately I jumped up and said 'SEE, I TOLD YOU THERE WERE PEOPLE THERE', pointing at these pictures. Nothing but trees. It still freaks my family out to this day. One day I'll get another look at that album. I'd be interested to find out if I still see the people - it was such a clear event to me. I still see them in my memory. One woman in particular had a massive hat and was wearing a frothy peach-coloured gown. I remember them vividly. The gown was similar to this but had more layers in the skirt and she was wearing a huge hat that looked like it had feathers in - which is why I thought she was a guest: http://s24.postimg.org/cjnfzkd1h/940849_526245167545614_4151961079657689727_n_jpg.jpg So yeah, weird stuff happens to me. My family reckon I've inherited the 'Fallon Fae' ;P