Sirbendy

Why am I a school tech? Hmm. Originally, I'd have said "it's a job with easy hours.". Now, with the management change, building expansion, new building/non NGFL controlled "in-house" IT Infrastructure all going ahead or in planning...i'd have to say I'm ENJOYING the job. Not the PCs as such..I can patch and mend with my eyes shut..but the general "keeping all the plates spinning" thing. I do at LEAST an hour a night overtime, just to keep on top of things. Plus, the kids are just incredible. So devious, so underhand, so hell bent on winding IT up..yet so personable. It's an ongoing battle of wits, without malice. Then there are the Year 7/8s...one of whom came in and asked "why do you run the excuse of an OS that is XP? Can't you install Linux and use the license money to buy us all laptops?". Even the Non-IT kids are great little personalities...all I hear from my doorway is "yer mum, yer nan, yer sister" etc...usually followed by the shout of "can you call SMT? Riot in progress". I'm now living within 10 minutes of work, which means in the summer i can nip in and repatch things/play with ideas without distraction. Sure, the money isn't great...but it's more than enough for everything I need. I've worked in Council IT before...same thing, but nowhere near as varied or fun on a day to day basis.

I'm sure you can get "degauss guns"..have a word with your local TV shop...I always find our CRTs do it if stored upside down or on their sides.

ah...I was wondering, as they seem to get great reviews.. I am quite fortunate..if you look out of my kitchen window, you can see the Wrekin transmitter.. My current TV card doesn't have an aerial..but it does have a length of bent coathanger... Excellent reception.

We've had kids nick RAM before...however, I knew it was Year 11..so I waited for the next Y11 Assembly and addressed them re: "the pros and cons of upsetting the IT department", and specifically why they didn't want to push their luck. The RAM turned up outside my door 20 minutes later..the CPU that went missing at the same time was found experimenting with water cooling in a puddle...

I have a util lurking on here somewhere that can change the screen res on a "per session" basis that I stick in the user areas of kids that "need" it. I can dig it out if you want to have a play.

After several years of beating myself with my Pinnacle PCTV Rave TV card, I've decided to contemplate purchasing one of the Freecom DVB-T USB TV/Freeview sticks. Has anyone on here got/used one? Opinions? I don't want to get one and then find it's another Pinnacle... I thought it'd be a nice portable solution for home and work, and it'd be nice to drag it and the laptop to Wales on hols and get some decent TV.. Plus, it'd be good to actually have something that'd let me use my PC instead of a VCR. I've tried MythTV on Ubuntu with the PCTV..and I can view fine, but MythTV won't play.

My missus was taught here..and I remember her arguing the toss with an art teacher, seconded to teach IT..basically the teacher was trying to teach the wrong way of doing things..and when she argued, the teacher went and did the full disciplinary thing. Talk about laugh into my coffee..Mind you, a lot of people still get things wrong..I just weigh up the pros and cons of correcting the staff member, and go from there.

We use MRBS on an XP box...should work fine on 2003. I'm not using apache though. Abyss Web Server for Win32..500k, freeware, all self contained and can run off a USB stick, with no registry changes. (http://www.aprelium.com) PHP4.3 (Use 5 if you dare -it broke mambo for me), MySQL 4.1.18 (again, tried 5..and it was a pain so I changed back.) Been running this setup for 18 months..no problems at all.

ahahaha! Well, MCS has been saying for 6 years that "it's cr*p. Nasty. Evil.". At the last tech meeting with NGFL, both Steve and I said "look, it's sh*te. If you go to BBC during breats cancer week, it bans the site because of "breast", yet if you go to google images and type in "hardcore donkey p*rn" or whatever, it goes right through". We also upset them by mentioning that we'd tested open source alternatives on the network, on a spare box in place of the SWS box in our own time..their faces dropped. I think they realised that come hell or high water we'd had enough, and decided that for once, they'd work with us. So, come the next meeting soon, they've said we can test out some alternatives..they'll bring 3 or 4 to the table, and we can pilot. Needless to say, the other schools in the area were quite eager too! It's always the same at the meetings though..25+ techies, and "any other business?"..nobody speaks up, then we wade in with "well, yes..a *few* points.."..heh. It comes to something when even the more tech savvy kids look at SWS and say "why not smoothwall?"

another thing NGFL won't give us access to...

I found it quite funny...the commodore PET in the background got me..and the ZX80/1 crack..we have one in the office here...was it the ZX80 that didn't have the rubber keys? Ian was about to crack it open as a display for the kids about "how computers used to be", then he realised how much they go for.. As for the PET...last time I was at Priory School, Shrewsbury, they had one in operational nick, in the maths dept. Same age as me, pretty much..I felt humbled.. As for IT being in the basement..they based that on the wakeman school then? They've moved now though-it kept flooding when the servern did.

mm...we're under the NGFL rule here, but this is happening to us as of a month ago as well...either part loading, or not loading. I usually go into the drive and junk the stored version, and it kicks back into gear again.

I suppose it could be the AGP slot..but I'd be surprised if you're getting no post errors codes from the speaker.. Got any old PCI Graphics cards knocking about? I always keep a few in my filing cabinet.

Gah..PHProxy/Proxify etc...pain in the arse... We have kids who'll merrily go home and install it on their own web-servers. Pig of a thing. Thats how I dealt with it...based on the content of the code. I'll look forward to trying it with the new filter, when we recieve the replacement to test in place of SWS 3.0. After 5 years of SWS/IGear..we're getting something that works...

yep, I also have a 5200.

OK. No monitor signals, but Remote desktop is ok? Naff all to do with your disk or OS then. Nvidia though-try booting in VGA mode, not safe mode-just normal with VGA mode. I had this with Nvidia's detonator 33.xx series. It goes out of range and the monitor shuts down as a safety measure. Check your refresh rates when you get in..go for a basic 800x600x16@72hz, and see what happens. Try it with the other machine as well. My bet is video system error, probably driver related.

Feedback it is then.. I think it's this week it's going in..

when they told us about what it could do (detect phrases like "I'm going to kill you" etc), I started laughing..when all the other IT Techs looked at me with confused expressions, I explained that it'd cut out teh amusement for me and Steve then...we'd be able to find out who's threatening us by mail..

look at Beyondexec....I use that. Does much more besides.. You'll need to google it though.

Thats what I thought...his "mate" insists it's possible. I KNOW SWS is crap, and this week we're having something called "policy central" installed thats supposed to watch what they're on/typing and e-mail us snapshots when "forbidden or dodgy things" are typed..my judgement is out on that too, until I've seen it. I reckon it'll load up the mailsystem quite amusingly.. Bring on a decent internet filter, so that we can use the blacklists and chuck 50,000 URLs into it in seconds. Shouldn't be long now.. I had a free system tray doodad i was playing with at home thats supposed to monitor your web access and close IE/FF if you go to "unsuitable" sites..but honestly...I'd say it was more a classroom management thing..sigh.

I've just had my HOD suggest to me that we should have a "keylogger script to monitor the workstations for repeated presses of the same keys in a fixed period of time" (i.e. Cursor Keys, spacebar), and upon detection of said keypresses to close the active window on the workstation. He thinks this would cut down on things like flash games etc...thing is, neither Steve or I have heard of anything like this, but now HOD is telling all and sundry about this...so, can anyone help with suggestions/ideas? It seems he came up with this idea with "a techie friend, over a pint". Hmm. Are there any programs that could be installed on the WS to do this, if a script isn't feasible?

We've looked at..um..blank moment..ah, Mambo. We've got an FE PGCE recommending Moodle to us as well...it would theoretically only be a stop-gap, as the VLE *should* offer much the same functionality. But I'm a sceptic..

TAW, last time I brought up PHP(last yearish), stated "no, as it's a security risk". I'm just about coping with an SHTML site..it's basic though. Very basic. The VLE cometh, but too damned slowly. In the meantime it would be nice to get our site set up in some form of CMS, or even converted to wordpress for ease of updating, as coding each page is a swine. I've e-mailled them again requesting PHP and SQL, but..somehow I'm not too hopeful. I could be surprised though!

I was wondering- anyone out there in shropshire using a .sch.uk schools domain, can you enlighten me as to what services they offer? MySQL, PHP, ASP, SSI etc etc? Our TAW provided servers give us SHTML support, but that was a long argument. PHP and SQL is still not allowed, limiting what we can do. cheers!

We're looking at one here..shared tasks is patchy. I'm currently writing a simple form to take location, teacher name, brief prob description and notes, and chuck them into the MySQL DB on the CCTV system that also runs our room booking system/intranet. Steve suggested an Excel file on the staff WG, but..this might be quicker.