unixman_again

The usefulness of Moodle relies very much on the teaching staff and if you can them on board, it can be very good. SMT can help here, wielding the big stick and/or carrot. I've been three schools, two of which were Moodle sites, with varying degrees of success. School 1 - we implemented MoinMoin as VLE and the students loved it, but most staff refused to add content saying "I haven't got time to learn new stuff" or "I've been doing it this way since 19xx and I won't change now". When a new Head of IT came along, he decided Moodle was the way forward, so we setup a server. The staff still wouldn't get on board, and enter new teaching resources into it, preferring a bunch of mostly M$ Word docs scattered on various shared drives. One teacher had developed a website hosted outside the school and was (with the blessing of SMT) putting his materials there. Result - failure. School 2 - they were using Sharepoint and some departments used it extensively and others not at all. I can fully understand this as SP is a beast and the interface is not very intuitive. Some teachers who weren't using it had tried, but couldn't get to grips with it. Just as I was leaving (3 years) the school switched to Frog and there has been a much larger uptake by staff, and according to the techie, about 75% of teachers are using it in some form. School 3 (actually a college) - we use Moodle and all departments use it, in varying degrees. A few just use it as a document repository, while others only accept student work that has been submitted via Moodle. This can be in the form of quizzes or file upload. There is a willingness by staff to learn more about the use of Moodle. There is a push towards more of these paperless courses and there is a pilot to get more teachers doing this. SMT are very keen to do more paperless courses and to this end, staff that sign up are given a iPad. If they drop out of the pilot, they lose the iPad. This has proven to be very successful. We also run some HE courses and the work is only accepted through Moodle. We have a minor issue with teachers who want to learn more about Moodle. Not being a teacher, I don't actually use it, but they still come to me for one to one training. Actually, it's not too bad, as I know just enough about Moodle to be a danger to everyone! There is a group of teachers who have become mentors in various things, one of which is the use of Moodle. These are the very experienced Moodle users and they are running sessions to pass knowledge on. The uptake of this has been slow; I'll go and talk to that clever IT techie. These mentors are running sessions on Inset days and I understand attendance is mandatory.

In disk management, there was no drive letter assigned to the second USB disk. Dunno why though, 'cus when I inserted a USB stick into the same port that was assigned. Anyway, I assigned a drive letter and it works. Thanks to the panel for their invaluable help.

A splendid article in The Guardian "YA author Natasha Desborough settled on the title ‘Weirdos and Camel Toes’ for her first book because it was cheeky, funny, flowed beautifully and she knew it would stand out. But a lot of important people in the industry thought the title was too ‘rude and risqué’. If the title wasn’t changed, the book wouldn’t be available… what happened next was more than ironic!" I intend to start using quimboid at every opportunity!

Just got a call from a teacher, who has a Sony USB h/d plugged into his computer. He had plugged another identical h/d into the PC and it wasn't recognised. His laptop did recognise it though, so he knew it was working OK. After much messing about, I found out that these particular W7 machines (both PC and laptop) didn't like having both Sony drives plugged it at once. If you did this, only one was recognised. My PC is the same. Is this a fault of W7, a fault of Sony or a mix of both? If W7 can't handle two identical drives, that is complete pants! My Linux box at home has two identical Toshiba USB drives plugged in and both can be mounted at the same time.

The government is moving into the 21st cent very quickly. It was only 4 years ago (almost to the day) that the first MP was allowed to deliver a speech in Parliament from an iPad. Mind you, they still wave order papers at each other. I have yet to see somebody wave an iPad.

It has been my experience that batteries in UPSs swell over time and, I guess, eventually end up like yours. I've had a couple swell but never to the point of yours. Generally when the batteries start to swell, the UPS doesn't UPS any more.

If Auntie wants to carry on with Top Gear, and Hammond & May say they'll go now that Clarkson has gone, Auntie could do worse than hire Mike Brewer and Edd China. These chaps host proper car programs.

We all have 19" monitors. I've got a pair of Samsung SyncMasters and I'm the only person in the office with a matching pair. We all used to have a pair of these when we had Dell Optiplexs, but when we "upgraded" to Millennium PCs, the graphics card had a vga and an hdmi port, so everyone finished up with odd monitors. Everyone except me, who decided to take the video card out of the Dell.

OK I'll play... pre 1992 - 1x18" TV, 1x6" TV/Radio combi) (which I still have, but it's in Australia), 2 VCRs 1992-2002 - 1x22" TV, 1xVCR (living in a share house) 2002-2012 - 1x20" TV, 2xVCR, later a DVD player and later still a DVD recorder today - 1x32" TV (which is way to big), 2xVCR, 1xDVD player, 1xDVD recorder with broken DVD (but h/d still works) which is connected to FreeView box, 1xDVD recorder with FreeView and connected to FreeSat. I wont give money to the evil Rupert or other provider. I've got about 200 channels on FreeSat and there isn't I like, so I don't see the point of paying for more stuff I won't watch. I still have 450+ VHS tapes, with about 50 to move to DVD. I've got about the same number of DVDs and I think digital TV is a big con. When it rains, I lose about 1/2 my channels and I have line of sight to the Sutton Coldfield transmitter. This didn't happn with the proper analogue TV. Mother has a similar problem in Australia.

Oxford for me. I've been these twice and both times I had a bad experice (mugged and car broken into). Corby is the worst place, marginally behind where I live and Dudley just up the road isn't too bad. On the whole, I'd rather live in Australia, Adelaide to be specific.

Surely if you're trying to stay natural, you eat proper food and don't take any supplements? That's what I do. There is one supplement that I take - chocolate, in the form of Penguins - just the job for that quick energy boost. Of course, a banana would be better but they get squished in the kit bag.

Flatpack homes aren't a new idea. In the 1980s, an Australian company Logan Homes, advertised houses that you could fit together with just a spanner. There were also the prefabs erected in the UK after WW2, but I don't think these were DIY. Manual tills were good. The checkout operator had to work the change out by brain, and they would count it back to you going from the price of the item, up to the amount that you had tendered. This ensured that there were no mistakes. Nowadays, they just dump a pile of change into your hand.

Either is fine. If staff with Windows experience are easier to find, go that route. We host ours on Windows but the last school that I was at had Linux. For smoother running, I'd go Apache rather than IIS. It has been my experience that IIS has an annoying habit of not logging the cause of, for example, a 500 error.

We use exactly this product on tablets. For iPads, aluminium compound works well and it also works on some steel backed tablets. As Chris_Cook pointed out, not all plastics are etchable. It's not limited to expensive plastics either; these aren't Hisense Sero 8 Tablet PC. We don't etch desktop equipment, although 8 or so years ago, we did etch the flat screen monitors. We haven't tried recycling etched equipment, be we don't sell on, so it shouldn't be a problem. It's not too messy to apply - just don't get any on your clothes!

It's pretty typical for a BBC IT project - something is working fine so they fix it and it becomes worse. I used to like the original blue news site and since they changed this, each incarnation has become harder to navigate and slower to load. At tech_guy pointed out, it is more clicks to get you your local news. This feature reminds me of listening to BBC4 programs on iPlayer. It used to be 3 clicks to get to any program. After the last upgrade, it went to 7 clicks, although they have listened to user feedback and reduced it to 6.

I've had a beard for about 15 years and it just grows. I've had a moustache for about 37 years - same story.

We're replacing all 48 printers in college - it's not a joke, we're really doing it.

BBC says I'm a lefty, which I knew. X-13s quiz says I'm a centrist

I'm guessing the escaping is getting confused - you will need mysql_real_escape_string(). Of course, really you should use mysqli...

Typical gym (3 times a week in winter, twice a week in summer) : shoulder press 3/4 sets - Smith machine without counter balance bench press 3/4 sets - Smith machine without counter balance pullups, starting in 10-12, dropping to 7s at the end, until 70-80 in total pec dec - 3 sets upright row supersetted with dumbbell curls - 3/4 sets of each seated row - 3 sets running on treadmill or walking on cross-trainer, depending on how my knees are - 20-30 mins chin ups supersetted with dips 8 & 12 4/5 sets (depending on time) I also sometimes do squats, leg extension, deadlift etc My shed (once a week in the summer) : upright row/shoulder press/deadlift superset - 3/4 sets benchpress/lunges superset - 3/4 sets pullups as per gym flys/reverse flys/bench dips/preacher curls superset - 3/4 sets squats/tricep extension/front raise superset - 3/4 sets Why the strange supersets, especially at home? With the bars, dumbells and plates I have, this is the most efficient use of time.

At the first school I was at, one IT teacher had the password. She wasn't Head of IT either, just a teacher. However, as an ex sysadmin on highly available systems, she knew what she was doing and I trusted her. She only used it if I was off and she needed it. In the subsequent two schools, only we in IT know it. It isn't even recorded in a sealed envelope, so if the IT team are all run over by the number 11 bus, I guess the college might be in the poo! Actually they won't be; I'm sure most admins know how to crack an M$ password.

I approve of meeting in The Old Joint Stock - I won't be there, but I wholeheartedly approve!

Ditto but Joomla. Loads when users logon, so staff get staff portal and students get the student portal, unless they are in the library, where they get the library portal.

I wondered what TNGT stood for yesterday. Mr Google says "The Next Greatest Thing", so it has "the next greatest thing heirloom tomato sauce" on it. Presumably this is from a 9 year old bottle that they found at the back of the cupboard.

It's lovely and sunny here in the Black Country, but I think him upstairs could do with turning the temperature up. It was a bit grey this morning. Yesterday morning on the way to work, it was so foggy that I could only see about half way though the park I walk through on the way to the train.