mrlegs

This is an open invitation to all Sussex & Kent (and beyond) school staff, teachers and technicians, to join us for a warm welcome to the first TeachMeet in this area! It is being held at the Hop Farm Conference Centre, Paddock Wood, Kent, TN12 6PY, from 7 - 9pm. For those who don't know about these, they are based on unconferences - anyone can speak about strategies for teaching and learning in a 21st Century classroom, either for 7 or 2 minutes. Alternatively, you can simply listen to the talks, meet other like-minded professionals, or simply drink coffee! The best thing is that they are completely FREE! Register your interest at www.TeachMeet.org.uk, or let me, Stephen Lockyer, know using [email protected] or on twitter with @mrlockyer . We hope you can come!

There are 2 x 24 port ethernet switches, one that works, and one that I have just replaced. Could I just confirm your suggestion Michael (Thanks BTW), that if say, number 16 was free on the first one, and 12 on the second, I just connect them up with a standard cable? I have justed tested this and it works perfectly - many thanks! Stephen

So at school we have two separate 24 port Ethernet switches, one of which died over the holidays. I have replaced it, plugged all points in (I even wrote them down), but it doesn't work. I know why - it isn't connected to the 'System', but this is my problem - how do I connect it to the system? A really newbie question I'm sure, but if anyone could shed a little light on this, I'd be massively grateful! mrlegs

I would highly recommend EyeTV for £50.

Thanks I will check both those things.

Another alternative. Buy a Mac Mini and EyeTV plug-in (about £450 altogether), and you will have a TV, EPG, pvr and DVd player/recorder in one handy box. Episode 50 of the ITidiots podcast will sell it to you if I haven't yet!

It certainly seems like the direction the school is heading, and I know Joomla is quite effective as an intranet device. Thanks for all the ideas folks. I will attempt them in order!

This is probably a really basic thing to do, but is beyond me at the moment! I am putting together a standardised Home Page for the school, Firefox stylee, and want to have text on there taken from a .txt file which will also be kept on the server, but accessible by the Head/secretary etc for dates, messages etc. The trouble I'm having is I don't know how to get the .html code to go to a text file and read it. Any suggestions/ideas?

Interesting to hear all this feedback. Thanks for adding comments and resolving my mind. I may still have been tempted if I was at the beginning of a BT Broadband contract (for the homeplugs), but I'm half way through and looking forward to completing my 12 months and save some money!

Seems I spoke too soon. To sign up, you have to forgoe your existing 12 month contract, and start afresh, which may well wreck any existing contract you enjoy. The cheapest package of £18.95 a month is very steep though!

This is the router log from the weekend. Does anyone notice anything untoward here: Fri, 2008-01-18 11:38:16 - ICMP Packet - Source:205.234.160.30 Destination:84.201.136.211 - [DOS] Fri, 2008-01-18 11:38:16 - ICMP Packet - Source:209.170.96.196 Destination:84.201.136.211 - [DOS] Fri, 2008-01-18 11:38:16 - ICMP Packet - Source:202.172.101.35 Destination:84.201.136.211 - [DOS] Fri, 2008-01-18 11:38:16 - ICMP Packet - Source:66.77.34.235 Destination:84.201.136.211 - [DOS] Fri, 2008-01-18 11:38:17 - ICMP Packet - Source:202.67.211.244 Destination:84.201.136.211 - [DOS] Fri, 2008-01-18 11:38:17 - ICMP Packet - Source:205.234.160.30 Destination:84.201.136.211 - [DOS] Fri, 2008-01-18 13:11:29 - UDP Packet - Source:212.58.227.87,24814 Destination:84.201.136.211,6970 - [DOS] Fri, 2008-01-18 18:03:24 - LCP down. Fri, 2008-01-18 18:03:30 - Initialize LCP. Fri, 2008-01-18 18:09:34 - LCP is allowed to come up. Fri, 2008-01-18 18:09:45 - CHAP authentication success Fri, 2008-01-18 18:23:42 - LCP down. Fri, 2008-01-18 18:23:50 - Initialize LCP. Fri, 2008-01-18 18:29:53 - LCP is allowed to come up. Fri, 2008-01-18 18:30:15 - CHAP authentication success Sun, 2008-01-20 03:51:56 - LCP down. Sun, 2008-01-20 03:51:58 - Initialize LCP. Sun, 2008-01-20 03:55:23 - LCP is allowed to come up. Sun, 2008-01-20 03:55:34 - CHAP authentication success Sun, 2008-01-20 04:18:45 - LCP down. Sun, 2008-01-20 04:18:52 - Initialize LCP. Sun, 2008-01-20 04:20:06 - LCP is allowed to come up. Sun, 2008-01-20 04:20:20 - CHAP authentication success Mon, 2008-01-21 08:24:39 - Administrator login successful - IP:172.16.1.1 Thanks in advance, mrlegs

I have EyeTv and EyeHome (both £50, one from Apple, one from Ebay), so I can record on my mac, then stream to my TV downstairs or my ipod touch. Those Apple TVs are tempting though...

Thanks for flagging that up mrtechsystems. Still worth a punt though..

We use Lixxus, and nothing else is on the line (it is a school). I will look at the router firmware and see if it produces reports I can find some error message from. mrlegs

anyway, why would a bot 'bad-up' a company?

Certainly not a bot, just a frustrated customer/newbie. Some of the memory was for some private work, so their lateness made me look tardy!

I saw an offer the other day that seems to have slipped under the radar. If you are a BT Broadband cusotmer, you can new get a BT Vison box for £30, no extras. this is a freeeview PVR, with 80hours capacity, but even better than that is that you get two home plugs thrown in as part of the deal. These are network plugs that use the circuitry of your house to create a network, and are worth about £50 on their own. This package is worth at least £130, so I thought I should flag it up. Oh, and BT say they advise only using a homehub with it, but other sites disagree and say that virtually every router works with it.

Hello, We experince a problem that is sadly not router-based, since I changed the router and it continues. Every morning, the broadband line has dropped at some point during the night, and I have to unplug, then replug in the phone line into the router. It is a five second job, but a real hassle at the same time. Has anyone else experienced this/come up with a solution? We did try a timer, but the plug for the router is one that doesn't seem to fit any of the three timers we tested out!

I don't know if anyone else has had bad service, but my experience of them was appalling. I ordered £100 worth of memory etc from them on 17th December 2007, with promised first class delivery. It finally arrived on 14th Januray, after many emails sent, all of them ignored. It took the threat of Trading Standards and a Small Claim to get my supplies. I was very tempted to create a message book for aggrieved customers called memorybitsbites.co.uk, as on searching for them, they have given other customers similar experiences.