unixman_again

We use a system that I wrote, which is just a web form that updates to a MySQL database. The form can be accessed from the staff, student and site staff portals and, depending on where it is accessed from, has different fields. Staff can report a health & safety concern or a near miss, students a health & safety concern and site staff (who are the first aiders), what ever they want (accident, incident, h&s concern, near miss, first aid or student h&s). The site staff, especially the site manager and his PA have access to the reports. It isn't integrated to UNIT-e (our MIS system), but I think specific events relating to students are entered into that by the MIS manager.

Even though it's past Noon, I couldn't resist this (besides, it might just be real!) "HeavyBubbles - Sparkling water that makes you sweat." Heavy Bubbles

Here's a list which fooled me until I got to number 8 - shame as I so wanted number 10 to be true! Top 10 Most Mysterious Unsolved Mysteries Of All Time - Listverse

To be pedantic, it's not a backup until to actually have to do a restore. Which brings me to a cautionary tale and the very worse disaster recovery I had to perform. I worked for a company that sold solutions for housing associations. Part of this was their own clever backup software, which would scribble the files to tape and then read back the tape and compare what was on the tape with what was on disk. One of the clients was meticulous in their working and of the 50 or so clients, they never asked for anything to be restored. Clients always had the odd file go missing but not this one. They had a hard disk crash, which was reported to one of the juniors in the team. I quizzed him on what he was going to do, and he said the hardware support company would replace the hard disk, install the o/s and then he would do the restore. No problem! A while later he came back and said the only thing he could find on the backup was the backup software, and could I make sure that he was doing things right. Sure enough, that's all that was on the backup tapes. When the backup software was installed, the standard test was to back itself up, to make sure the config for the tape drive was correct, and then change the config for the backup to backup the client's data. Who ever had installed it all those years before had neglected to do this important step. So even though the client had been religiously backup up every night, and replacing the tapes every year, they actually had no backups. Even though I knew there was no point, we checked every tape the client had, including those that were in the bank. Result - me spending three weeks in Glasgow (which is a very nice place) in January (no so nice) doing a disaster recovery without any form of backup apart from paper records, such as rent books, maintenance scedules, etc. We managed to get back about 95% of the data without using a backup, so perhaps backups are overrated after all.

People are paying to remove sex, violence, and Jar Jar Binks from movies - Quartz

Printed off and put on the notice board in the library.

You mean "Grunt ................... long silence ........................... grunt".

A book with a free download and a for-sale trade paperback. Why I Wrote "Designing with LibreOffice" - Datamation Book home page Designing with LibreOffice

We have All Staff, All Teaching Staff, All Support Staff, All SMT, All Students, All Lower Students and All Upper Students. Who can actually use them is heavily restricted. Teachers can send to any of the student groups, but not the staff groups. Heck, the students get annoyed with emails from one particular teacher, who sends to all students, but doesn't include a subject, and I can only imagine what happens if this went to everybody. I see emails to all the groups, except SMT, and a few other groups as well, such as H&S, enquiries from outside, etc. This is so I know that the email server hasn't crashed. Only a select few can send to really all, and I am one. This power is used used sparingly.

The first school that I was at received a grant from the Wolfson Foundation for a computer room. There is a load of info on their website.

Of course, who ever performs the launching ceremony, could say "I name this ship Boaty McBoatface and God bless all who sail in her" regardless of what is painted on the side. That's what I would do. BTW the site where you can vote for suggested names, appears to have been pulled - I wonder why?

We still use ours extensively. At the mo, it is largely a glorified network share, with staff dumping mostly word and huge powerpoint files on it. This is going to have to change, with staff using it properly, that is entering content into the VLE rather than uploading files. We have a huge push towards tablets, mostly Android, and they are finding the files are either too big to download and/or they won't open when then do. We also have some courses, where work has to be submitted via the VLE.

It appears as though Henry Worsley has overtaken Boaty McBoatface in the name stakes.

I submitted a name yesterday (RSS Waste of Money) and I'm a bit miffed that it didn't make it, although RSS Very Expensive did. I quite like RSS Pole Dancer although I hope Boaty McBoatFace wins.

The first computer maze game that I ever saw was in 1976 when I was at uni. It ran on the Control Data Corporation Cyber 173. Here's a picture of a CDC Cyber, although ours didn't have an operator in a mini skirt - the ops wore doctor type white coats.

And the winner is Too Naked for the Nazis named oddest book - BBC News It's a good read too!

Crumbs...

Sorry it's on The Poke, which I know some people can't get to here, but you can always look her up on twitter! Kay Burley just tweeted an RIP about someone who died 26 years ago and people are confused | The Poke

Here's another little article about DIY arcade games https://opensource.com/life/16/3/projects-building-open-source-arcade

That two most English of things together. https://www.facebook.com/rootsandshootswithroger/posts/1159003917466128 Here's a less clear copy on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbcpx7bW80M

The site GradeSaver is blocked here and Sophos says rather unhelpfully "Education sites are blocked". I'm checking with SMT if they want it opened up. While they spend the next 3 weeks deciding , I thought that I might update the message to something more helpful. I think that it might be blocked to cut down on plagiarism. Is it blocked where you are and if so why? Thanks!

The Assassin Nie yin niang Which has to be the slowest martial arts film ever. If you seen the trailer, it looks in the ilk of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but this is more Slouching Tiger, Sleepy Dragon. Endless shots of stunning scenery. It's 105 minutes long and the story, what little there is of it, could be dealt with in a third of the time. It's won several awards too - perhaps the judging panels wanted a little nap.

Love the irony of the bit in red

We had one last night and everything was a bit slow this morning, with PCs taking about 10 minutes to logon, sitting at a black screen (although for some reason my screen was blue - I'm special!). The PCs did eventually wake up and then if you immediately rebooted, normal service was resumed. In comes one of the staff, complaining how things were slow - she said that she would have raised a ticket but couldn't logon with. I explained the above to her. About 20 minutes later she comes back angry saying that her PC had been at the black screen for 30 minutes and she was still waiting. The others in her office were all logged on. I goes to her office with her and looks at her PC. It was very difficult not to piss myself laughing when I saw that her PC wasn't switched on.

See inside the UK I like comment telling us about The Ladies Walk Centre in Dudley