jmak

Even more of a cheat than my last post! We had a restaurant meal kit for a celebration last night and is thoroughly recommend it. We went for a Sri Lankan meal by Hoppers of London. All the pre-prep was done, but everything had to be cooked from raw. Lots of ingredients that we'd never have so straightforward instructions gave us a freshly cooked meal that was different to anything I've ever made. It was £45 and supposed to serve 3-4 people; there were four of us and we've got loads of left-overs. Not cheap, but great value for a special occasion.

Stick ..

I did look last time, but like you couldn't find anything about commercial use. It is open source - but the versions for individual devices are customised by individual developers. I think they'd 1) struggle to make a case, given that you've looked for copyright notices and can't find them and 2) would be highly unlikely to pursue a school using a version a couple of years old on a dozen devices. I used various versions of Lineage OS on my only phone for years and found it 100% stable. Sorry I can't help more...

Banoffee pie So simple it's stretching it to call it a recipe. You need a tin of caramel (it'll be next to the condensed milk and looks very similar) Bash up 250g digestive biscuits and stir in melted butter ?100g? I think... (amounts on side of caramel tin [emoji16]) Press into pie/flan dish and put in fridge for 30 minutes to set Spread caramel on biscuit base and slice on bananas (recipe says 4 small; I used 1 and a half large this morning) Whip a tub of cream and spread on top. Grate chocolate as a finishing touch Appallingly bad for you, but better than any of the pre-made ones I've had.

Transmission (Not the first word that came to mind, but the first appropriate for publication.)

It's a Sin on Channel 4. Not fun in anyway, but a really good watch.

Place ..

Unexpected

Handy .

keich (Not mis-spelt)

Normally the argument is that Network Managers shouldn't be called managers because they (quite often) don't manage people, which is used as a justification for keeping someone with a senior level of responsibility (managing business critical infrastructure) on a technician's salary. In this case, they do have line management responsibilities. Without knowing what the driver is for the name change, it's difficult to give the most appropriate suggestion. If it's your own job and you're trying to ensure that you get credit for the level of responsibility I'd suggest something different than if you're a manager trying to re-grade a job with a perceived lower level of difficulty.

Who thought that a lock down could feel like it went on too long....

Yesterday: Started to melt this morning:

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler have updated some of their own work:

That's what I did too. And as we didn't have PoE switches at the time I stuffed the injectors inside the "dado rail" conduit and ran the power from there as well.

He'll be back (For his second dose [emoji57]) Wish I'd thought of that line myself, but about 3 million people on Twitter got there before me...

Thought I'd condemned our resident squirrels to starvation as I was sorting out compost heap and found two large caches of conkers. Checked and discovered that conkers are toxic to squirrels (as they are too almost all mammals), but the compulsive hoarders just can't resist burying any nuts they find [emoji16] Judging by the number of walnut tree saplings in our garden, they're pretty forgetful about where they bury things too....

Recommended listen: Radio 4 More or Less: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000rccm It's always been a bit of a favourite for me as I'm a bit of a statistics geek... But for the last year it has been almost all taking apart the reported statistics from the news and explaining them, checking whether they're either completely untrue, or mean something different to what you first think. Takeaways from this week's for me: 1) Despite my scepticism, it now looks possible that we'll get close to the target of vaccinating the top 4 tiers by mid-February 2) 88% of deaths have been in that group so we should see a massive decrease in deaths 3) 75% of hospitalisations are NOT in that group, so we'll be nowhere near ready to release lockdown, since the hospital's are still confidentiality overwhelmed

In the past, if you've run out of MAKs MS have issued more to your VLSC. I have been told that part of the electronic/BIOS key is a "fingerprint" of the device which can be broken by changing a major component. In that case you can call them and tell them what happened (failed MB or HDD etc) and they will reactivate. Not sure how they'd cope of you ring up with a set of 300! But I've replaced HDDs a few times and they've just worked.

A couple of years ago pre-Covid. Key points (IMHO) Despite the concern of it being more different, G Suite is easier to get to grips with for users and admins G Suite is easier to set up O365 offers more configurability and administrator control than 0365 G Suite was originally designed more with education in mind whereas O365 was designed for enterprise, BUT the MS offering had come on a lot, especially in the last year. Bottom line: G Suite offers way more than you need in and is easier all round. We ended up going with O365 because that's what our partner school had already selected.

That as a school tech and pretty competent Windows user I have gone with Chromebooks for all my recent personal recommendations [emoji16] I'd probably still buy Windows for myself, just to keep the option, but I don't want to run the risk of being involved in tech support for friends and family. Then it just comes down to form factor and budget, remembering that the more recent models will get guaranteed updates for longer. The first time I selected a Lenovo Yoga education model with a really poor screen, slow processor and low memory - but it was perfect because it is waterproof and drop proof - I knew the person went through 3 phone screens per year. They're still happy 2.5 years later. Last time I selected a very sleek Asus with an i3 processor which was under £400 ex-display. If you do go Windows, the Dell outlet store is still with a look (I know you've used it before) although not the bargain it used to be.

The other approach would be to put any information (policies, people's names) on documents stored in Teams, ie emails would simply be "you have a document to view". Governors can send anything to the school as that would be received on the school's email system. I always found it a difficult battle to get Governors to use school email systems - even the ones who said they understood why moaned that it was too onerous.

Share your experiences of school laptop provision during the pandemic We would like to hear from teachers, parents and students on their experiences around laptop provision for children remote learning across the UK https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jan/13/share-your-experiences-of-school-laptop-provision-during-the-pandemic? Wasn't sure which thread to put this in, but pretty certain there are people with views they'd like to share!

Extract from the article I linked above: