unixman_again

The random function on my last mp3 player, always played the same 8 or 9 songs from the several hundred on there. I suspect if I changed the track names from artist_name-song_title.mp3 so something shorter, like 1.mp3, 2.mp3, etc it would have been more random. My new one, doesn't have a random function, but can play tracks inside folders, which the last one couldn't do, hence my naming convention.

Nice video and a great idea. It reminds me of the AutoTürme at the VW Autostadt. Here is the West Midlands idea of high tech bike parking which doesn't work - Cyclists snub new railway station bike hubs in favour of traditional racks I see one every morning at Rowley Regis and I have never seen a bike in it. The newly refurbed old style "bus shelter" bike park is always full though. The manufacturer says "One of the key elements of this unique hub is its roof, the roof itself really does give the hub the ‘wow factor’." Centro Cycle Hub - Broxap Ltd I don't think is has a wow factor, unlike the Japanese park.

We allow access to the college twitter page, but we can't stop what the students do on their phones, so blocking it is a waste of time.

We use helixmedialibrary which is great for short clips but rubbish for films, where Clickview is far superior. The longest videos we host are 45 minute lectures. It is very easy to upload a video, although we do it for the teachers as most of them have difficultly in pulling something off a camera. There is a nice add-on which some universities use, where-by a lecturer clicks the big friendly record button, delivers the lecture, hits stop and the voice over and what was displayed on the computer screen, are automatically uploaded to the library. Great support from these guys too.

I have both on my desk. With the Mac it's way easier to take over the classroom Macs when somebody wants to show me a problem. The W7 box is what I do most of my work on, but I use very few M$ programs apart from Notepad. While I have M$ Office, I mostly use OpenOffice simply because I think is it a much better suite. I find the menus more logical and I can do much more with tables. I have improved M$ Office by installing UBitMenu. Similarly, I have CS6 but I find the Gimp far easier to drive. I use my own personal Linux laptop (Fedora 16) for recovering those pesky USB sticks which the students fail to safely remove. I also use Linux at home and I have done so for the last 17 years. In fact, I have never used Windows at home. I do find the Windows interface extremely primitive. I am limited to one desktop, I still have to ctrl/c , ctrl/v for copy & paste (with Linux I highlight the text, move the mouse and left/right click together and the text is pasted in), I find it really frustrating that in Windows, when I highlight a url in a text file nothing happens (automatically opens in my default web browser on Linux), I hate it that I constantly have to install extra software on Windows to get it to do the most basic things, such as AlwaysOnTop, SuperFinderXT and Cygwin (to give me some decent command line utilities such as grep, less, find, etc).

Here are the two crucial lines from my quick & dirty MySql backup bat script. Obviously you need include the appropriate set commands for the vars and I have recovered the db from the dump, so we know it works. REM yyyy-mm-dd SET today=%DATE:~10,4%-%DATE:~4,2%-%DATE:~7,2% "%mysql_dir%\mysqldump.exe" --user=%bu_user% --password=%bu_pass% --compress --quote-names --extended-insert --create-options --result-file="%bu_dir%\%bu_out%.%today%.sql" "%bu_db%"

BBC News - Fifty Shades of Grey whips North American box office

From watching the trailer, and reading an U.N.C.L.E fan forum last night, the general feeling is the film should be called The Men from C.I.A.

In a similar vain 50 Shades of Grey posters made safe for work | The Poke

Only one question, Why? The original series was very much of it's time and worked well. This new version looks terrible. I watched most of the orginals last year, and they do not need a remake.

Solihull charity shop's adult toys shock - Birmingham Mail "It is believed the products will not be offered for sale in the shop."

We've used Timpsons in the past - they may not be the cheapest, but they are a 2 min walk from the college and time is precious.

When this happened to us at the first school I was at, we just registered another domain. We went from blahblah.org to blahblah.org.uk. I've just checked on the original domain name and the Russian who got it when it expired has let it lapse. Maybe I'll register it and sell it back to my old school.

BBC News - Europe's IXV mini 'spaceplane' set to fly Watch the launch live at ARIANESPACE.TV These programs are always really interesting. I've cleared my desk to watch it in full.

If you want to exercise at home and weights aren't feasible, consider using "rubber bands". Don't go and buy them though, as you'll quickly outgrow them, and they cost a fortune. Make your own from surgical tubing - Grunt & Shen's Workshop - springs The hardest part is finding a supplier of tubing. When I made some, I sourced it from a dive shop. Another option is the classic Bullworker. You can find them on ebay for a song and you can do a surprizing amount with them. If you do get around to buying weights, consider Olympic bar vs 1" bar. An Olympic bar is more expensive, as are the weights to go on it, but it's much nicer to lift. It is harder to store an Olympic bar, as they are longer. If you go the 1" route, concrete vs steel? Concrete is cheaper, but the weights are about 3 times as thick as the equivalent steel and so you can fit less on the bar. Also, with concrete you'll have to stick with one make, as each has their own method of locking the weights together. With steel it doesn't matter. Spin lock vs clips vs collars? Clips and collars, which require a plain rather than threaded bar, are a bit more secure, and stop the weight spinning around on the bar as you change grip. This doesn't happen with an Olympic bar. Rather obviously, don't buy weights through the post! I bought my weights over the course of a year, all from ebay. With careful bidding and being patient, it all came in at a song. These are a mix of steel and concrete, but I have 3 barbells and 6 dumbbells, and enough to leave useful weights on the bars. The most I paid was £45 for a bench, a barbell, 2 dumbbells and 30kgs of concrete weights. My best buy was 2x25kg steel plates for £10.99. I use my weights in the garage, over the summer, but this time of year I just stick to the gym.

I'm the opposite. I find running outside very difficult, what with having to look where you're going, uneven surfaces, people and dogs in the way, etc, where as on the treadmill it's switch it on, brain out and off you go. I have the ability just to switch off while I'm on the treadmill and switch back on when I've almost reached the time that I've decided to go for. People in the gym have said to me more than once, that when I'm running it really is a case of the lights being on, but nobody is home. With cycling, I'm the opposite. I have fallen asleep on the bikes in the gym more than once and fallen off. I'd much rather ride outside, although I do enjoy riding on the rollers in my garage. On rollers, you have to balance and pedal and it's quite easy to come off the rollers and go careering across the room, which can be "exciting".

Here is the yahoo news story https://uk.news.yahoo.com/-i-sold-my-pride-and-joy-for-a-piece-of-paper---ebay-scammers-sent-surfer-a-photo-of-%C2%A3350-laptop-he-thought-he-d-bought-115731494.html The ebay packing note is for the xbox. I am suspicious of this story though; I have a feeling Barrington is using the power of internet news to publicise his charity drive or his new business.

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Bench - typically 75kg for 4 sets of 10. (I think "I can bench x" is an over rated statistic.) Deadlift - usually 70 kgs for 3 sets of 8, although to be honest I only do it once a month if that. Squats - usually 20 kgs although I don't actually do it. Pull ups - at least 70, starting with sets of 10, dropping to sets of 7 or 8. I often do over 100. (IMO the only true indicator of upper body strength.) Dips - same as the pull ups - I superset them just for the extra burn Treadmill running - 30 mins if I can be bothered to do it or if I feel like going home, I'll ride on the cycle rollers for about the same time. Gym three times a week, and two ballet classes a week, which I think is pretty good for someone a few days shy of 58.

There are certain members of our staff I would like to "disable".

Buy a Lada. Mine would start first turn of the key on the coldest of mornings. It didn't like starting in the hot weather though, although once going it was fine.

We're a college and we do. My last school was a school and we did. We mostly had thin clients so there wasn't any real issue. In both cases, if students can't read their stick, that is their problem not ours, but we will try to help them.

None - To paraphrase Ambrose Bierce, a mobile phone is an instrument of the devil. I used to have one, but I got better over a decade ago. I have absolutely no need to phone somebody to say "I'm on the train".

backgammon - I don't get to play very often.

We have iPads for staff who signed up to deliver paper light courses. This is monitored, and if too much paper is printed, then the iPad is taken away. AFAIK, this hasn't happened. All SMT have iPads, except one who specifically wanted Android. We have a trolley of iPads which are used by MFL. They used to have PCs but these were exchanged for iPads. We have 6 Android tablets which are available for loan by students in the library, and we've bought a few more which are going to be used for a specific course. There is a rumour that in the next 5 years, we'll ditch the student computer suites and go BYOD. The students who won't, will be supplied an Android tablet, which will be paid for from their fee.