Norphy

Well crap. It’s a really bad time to be a Star Trek fan ☹️ This one has hit me hard as well. Sir Patrick was an inspiration. Even outside of Star Trek and Picard, he’s been in so much that I’ve loved.

I said in my original post that I've looked for second hand furniture stores. They either don't deliver to where I live or they charge so much for delivery, you may as well just buy a new desk.

That worktop idea is a good one. Screwfix have a 1.8m length for about £65. I could reuse my existing legs. This could be a goer, and cheaper too.

So, the crappy paper desk I bought from IKEA donkey's years ago is finally disintegrating. That's what happens when you bolt 3 28" monitors to the thing I suppose. Not only that, it's too narrow and I desparately need something a bit wider. I've looked around, and most second hand furniture shops either don't deliver or charge a fortune to deliver to where I am, making it uneconomical. Office stores are charging in the region of £300+ for new desks that size and I don't want to spend that much. So I've been looking at IKEA again and I've seen the Mittzon which seems to fit the bill. It's got a particleboard top and quite a robust looking underframe which supports the entire width of the desk, so warping hopefully wouldn't be an issue, and the cable management features look pretty nifty. It's £175 and can be delivered to my local Tesco for free to be picked up, so that's not so bad. I should be able to get that into the back of a Škoda Octavia, right? I've also seen some desks on Ali Express which are roughly the same size for about £100. Something like this. Supposedly delivered from a UK warehouse so it won't cost a fortune for postage. But Ali Express stuff doesn't exactly have a reputation for high quality, so I'm wary of the old "buy cheap, buy twice" thing. The one linked is supposedly a height adjustable standing desk, but that's not something I'm interested in. Has anyone tried the cheap Chinese desks? If so, how have you found them? Or should I just get the IKEA one?

Bester was a far better role than Chekov was. Koenig got to show the world just how good he was when he played Bester. However, Chekov will always be the more iconic role and the one most associated with him.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/oct/26/walter-koenig-actor-star-trek-dies Just Shatner and Takei left now 😢

I know what you mean. I read back some of my early posts when I was bored one day and there were plenty of posts where I sounded like a complete idiot. Oh well, every day is a school day.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm one of the early wave of users who was working in education when the site started up. You're not the only one who's being made to feel old here

I liked it too. I liked the Loki series too. I need to watch the Agatha series, haven't done that yet. There's also VisionQuest coming out later this year so hopefully that will be good too.

Neither is it that ununsual. Connect an HP or Samsung printer to your computer, for example, or a Logitech device and you get nagged to install the app. It's scummy behaviour, one way or the other. I don't want you to think I'm condoning it

I'm not entirely convinced that that's worth the money. Terriestrial broadcasting is getting to the end of its life in 2034 and the Astra satellites that are used for Freesat and Sky are being wound down within the next three or four years. At this point I wouldn't buy anything which relys on them.

The protocol is fine. They need to rename the connectors

Let's caveat that just quickly. As well as operating system support, this will also need hardware support on the side of the ChromeBook. Not all USB-C Ports are created equally. The USB-C port on the Chromebook will need to support USB-C Alt Mode so it can carry DisplayPort or HDMI signals to the dock. I'm willing to bet DisplayLink support on a Chromebook is non-existent so alt mode is a necessity.

I’ve got four bars on my oil tank right now. I’m hoping it’ll last until November. I’m tempted just to buy some oil filled electric radiators and leave the boiler for the hot water.

I mean, that’s not a million miles from how SIMS came to life. It was originally written by a teacher in a school in Luton to produce school reports then got built on and built on. Bedfordshire County Council then formed a commercial company to develop it further and sell it to other schools.

For the vast majority of use cases in the workplace, I find it extremely unlikely that anyone will notice any difference. Get whatever seems to be best value.

That's good. I enjoyed the show. It was a nice gentle comedy with heart.

Did you know that there's a (relatively) new one? The Shattering Peace was released last year. It's pretty good.

This where I feel it gets a bit messy. I have no objection to buying my kid equipment he needs for his schoolwork, but if I'm buying and I'm owning it, why is it being managed by a government institution and why is the goverment institution telling us what can and can't be done with it when it's not on government property? If the device was government property I wouldn't have an issue with that but as soon as personal money comes into play, it gets a lot murkier.

I think the phrase "Stay in your lane" applies here. I would expect that person would be a bit annoyed if a dev started taking over her job. The same applies here, especially if she doesn't know what the code is actually doing. We use Claude in my company. I particularly use it to help me with coding PowerShell scripts in regards to Intune and MECM stuff. However, I wouldn't dream of using it to create a SharePoint app because that's not my area of responsibility. Claude Code is great, but in my opinion you should still have at least a basic knowledge of the language you're coding in before you start pushing stuff into production, especially if it's asking for permissions like that.

That was a promising start to the season. Long may it continue!

Episode 1 available today. Excited for this! Hopefully it will be more like seasons 1 and 2, rather than 3.

Education IT is undeniably an underfunded sector, but that only gets you so much latitude. Even if it is underfunded, you should know enough to never put a secure credential in a place where anyone can get it.

Another Apple TV one: Trailer might be a bit NSFW but it's mild. So far, so good! I'm two episodes in and it's keeping my attention. I think Tatiana Maslany might be elevating this a bit, but she does with everything she's in.

I’ve just finished watching Pluribus on Apple TV. I’m a bit late to the party, but never mind. This is the new thing from Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan. It’s pretty high concept and it’s by no means packed with action, but for the most part I think this worked really well. It’s slow but it’s never boring, at least in my opinion. Performances all around were perfect, especially Rhee Seehorn. I hope Apple renews it for another season or four.