Dos_Box

I had Astro Wars! They go for a decent amount these days. if you can find a working one that is.

I still go to the Blackpool one (it's just down the road really), but the one thing I've noticed about it over the years, is that the type of home computers from the 80's you can play on have begun to get younger and younger. Gone are the many ZX81's, Spectrums, C64 etc, and there are many more Amigas's etc. I guess a lot of these machines have either become too valuable, or just break too easily now.

They had Dragons Lair II at the Arcade Club (didn't play it). I recall when the first one came out and we all thought that was the future!

With a little bit of thought, perhaps the younger generation view that what a game is has changed. By this I mean that it should be high definition or genuinely cartoon like. Still I got to play Battlezone and (my favorite) the sit-in Star Wars cab all I wanted. And why can I play vertical scrolling shmups, yet horizontal ones have me struggling!

I took my lad out to the Arcade Club in Bury yesterday, and it was very busy (as it always is on the weekend), but one thing shocked me, it was that out of the four floors, the top one, which contains the bulk of the 80's arcade cabs, was pretty much deserted. The others however, were very busy, with more modern machines such as the Dance Dance series, Guitar Hero and every one with a gun prop were not lacking in players. It got me wondering if kids now have no interest in their dads\grandads generation of games, and what will happen to them. At least I didn't have to queue to play on anything!

They have been consolidated and moved to here - https://www.edugeek.net/forums/forum/99-regional-broadband-consortiums-rbc/ We had looked at archiving many of these permanently as a lot had not been posted in for some time and having forums named after now defunct RBC's could have been confusing, but there is a lot if useful content in there still.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to get a venue locked down for our EDIT 2025 Conference. As in previous years, we like to hold the EDIT in an interesting and novel location. If you had seen my brief post when I announced that the National Railway Museum at York was our favourite choice to host us this year, you would have noticed that I took it down shortly after. This was because about an hour or so after I posted it up I finally got a floorplan for the venue containing the room dimensions and it simply wasn't suitable, so I had to go out and find somewhere else, and I have! We intend to hold this year’s EDIT Conference at the National Space Centre in Leicester. We have hosted EDIT here a couple of times before and it's an excellent venue (who really look after us) with a central location to allow more of you to attend +free parking! The date is yet to be decided as we need now to get some feedback from yourselves as the best time period to host this. Usually, we would hold EDIT at the end of May during the school holidays, but given the site upgrade in March, when we’d usually be starting to organise EDIT, and the delay in venues getting the detailed information we require back to us, we are now looking at holding this during term time either before the summer break in June\July or after in August\September, depending on your feedback. We are more than aware that many of you will have a lot on towards the end of the school year, and even more so once schools return after the summer, so if you could please fill out the poll it would help us greatly 😊 We are also changing the timings a little this year to allow you more time to arrive, speak to exhibitors or get away slightly earlier if you have traveled a distance. EDIT of free to attend and we like to look after you, so after the conference there will be a free meal hosted for you which will allow you to relax and network in a more social environment. If you have never been to our EDIT Conference before and want to know what to expect, I have included a few talks from previous conferences below: You can view all of these plus many more EDIT talks and webinars on our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@edugeek/

I got a very unneeded surprise last night when Outlook decided I really (really) needed to try 'new' Outlook. This came as a surprise to me as it hadn't told me it was going to do this, and equally confusing as it merged my personal email account which I used the free Outlook that come with Windows for, with my work one. Compounded with this was that it listed my personal accounts over my work ones, so as far as I could tell, all I had was my 'free' Outlook accounts, unless I scrolled down a bit. I had two Outlook quick launch icons in my taskbar, one for each version, and it just got baffling when both appeared to display the same accounts and layout when you opened either. Thankfully, after a few mins and clicking the slider back to 'old' Outlook the situation was remedied. Anyway, my gripe is that I really want, and need, to keep my personal and work email separate, so I think I'll be having to install Thunderbird very soon. Whilst yes, having all accounts still on the same PC still has the same amount of risk from malware etc, I think it's not appropriate to have my work and personal email mixed within the same email client. Actually, this could make for a decent conversation about whether mixing personal and work email accounts in the same package is a good idea, or even allowed. Especially if a member of staff has very interesting personal life and you need to sort out their email.

Interesting times, TES seems to be building up quite a portfolio of essential backend educational software.

I paid £115 in April 2020, just before things got silly. I'd bought my son one from the seller for £150 and they sent two by mistake (lockdown had started just a few days before) and offered me the second at a great discount. I bet they regretted that sale later! They were unused and, I suspect, used as spares for crypto mining.

I'm still soldiering on with an 8GB RX580 and know I really need to upgrade now. TBH, I don't play many modern titles, but there are some coming soon (Half Life 3 seems to be on the cards - no pun intended) where if I don't upgrade soon, I won't be able to play. The whole situation with graphic cards and MSRP, is very off-putting though.

Do you know how long they have had this line? Could be easier to work out the use if you have a time period to put with it.

I'm going to move this to the MIS forum as it is more school management than educational software. @aretelearningtrust I hope you get the answers you're looking for.

I sent the afternoon at Foulshaw Moss, on the Kent Estuary, on Saturday and got a few good spots in (and foolishly left my camera in the car). There is (or rather was) a second pair of Ospreys in residence, however the female hasn't been seen since last week and just the male is left hanging around by the nest. The new nest is about a quarter of the distance from a hide than the original one (still being nested on this year) which you can see here - https://www.cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk/osprey-webcam The pic of the Osprey is the lone male near the new nest. And lots of lizards out trying to soak up the sun, but were very sluggish and made for some great camera pics.

Lamb

Pretty much what others in the group chat said!

Because people believe the hype around AI I suspect. Yes, AI is good for some things but, IMO, not interacting with the real world.

I thought I'd post this up as a general thing to be aware of. Yesterday I was talking to a member who had someone submit a quote to them for some replacement kit. The quote came back with very low ball figures which beat any the member could get. It turns out the school office in question used AI to go and get quotes that bore no relationship to the actual market prices. They also made up a couple of quote from imaginary suppliers! The TLDR is to make sure your schools have a policy in place for getting in quotes that actually involve contacting real suppliers and not asking AI to do it, and have legitimate contact details for each.

I'm very tempted to go and see what they have said about the Minecraft Movie now. My son went to see it last night and to say he was unimpressed would be an understatement.

I totally agree, sometimes he can be great, and other times totally off-putting. Hopefully he's a fan and will get behind it totally.

Would make a great double album!

I am very much looking forward to this, so finger crossed that they have treated the Tron world with respect. And a soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails to boot!

Noooo! I think there are some films that should not be remade, and this is definitely one!

Following feedback from yourselves, we now have two new forums: AI - https://www.edugeek.net/forums/forum/347-ai-in-education-enterprise/ Esports - https://www.edugeek.net/forums/forum/346-esports/ We still do have a little work to do moving threads over, but many have already been done now, so please be aware of these new forums, and these will help stop threads about these subject areas being scattered around a lot of different forums 😊

I went to see Interstellar in IMAX with my son last night, I have to admit, it's not my favorite Nolan film (that goes to Tenet), but in IMAX it really popped, and the sound was unreal!