cheredenine

Its budget time and, althought its been agreed, our governors were concerned over the cost of our broadband connection. Our business manager has aked me to have a round-up of the issues so she is suitable armed with facts for next time; I've not looked into this sort of thing for a while, so i'm struggling, however. I thought school's had some obligation to use a suitable broadband connection - Becta accredited or connected to the National Educational Network, but after a look on Becta's site i'm having trouble finding anything that specifies what exactly. As it turns out the Becta Accreditation isn't a required thing at all; our regional provider in norfolk (E2BN) doesn't appear to be accredited at all, currently. Anyone have any pointers to what i'm after?

I've got another brewing kit to go from the brother-in-law - a lager kit, though not it seems with lager yeast, so i have my doubts about it - and then i think i'll have a go at a proper strong IPA. Lots of extract, lots of hops. Lovely! Temperature control will be tricky, however - can only really store the fermenter in the kitchen and i think it'll get too hot during the summer...

I started up homebrewing just after Xmas after being interested in taking it up for a year or so previously, but not really having the room. Prior to this i had one successful kit whilst at university, though in hindsight the resulting beer was nasty (dodgy kit from Boots that recommended using white sugar for the fermenting phase - a good way to intoduce nasty flavours). I don't have the room to mash my own grains (so to speak) so mainly rely on malt extract and small amounts of speciality grains to add colour/flavour, etc. I bought a kit of equipment off the internet - huge stock pot off ebay and the remaining equipment from a shop called Hop and Grape (not sure on the web address while at work, but prices and service so far have been faultless). You don't need much to get good results; I sprung for a 5 gallon plastic fermenting vessel with tap, a hydrometer and thermometer, a plastic jug, some funnels - other stuff such as a long metal spoon and a sieve i already had. I prime and store the beer in 2 litre coke bottles - perfectly suited to the pressures involved and freely available due to the amount of coke and lemonade we drink at home. Sterilising stuff involves immersion or a wipe down with VWP powder mixed in warm water, then a rince off with cold water. First brew was a cross between a special bitter and a red bitter - 2 big tins of malt extract, some roasted barley grains steeped for colour and a slight nutty flavour and Worcester Goldings hops in two batches, mid and late boil. End result was about 3.7% and tasty, if lacking a bit of body - the hoppy taste was amazingly fresh compare to commercial beer. Second brew was a stout - 2 tins for extract again, this time steeped with roasted barley, black malt and crystal malt and Northern Brewer hops mid boil only. End result was about 4.5% and an improvement on the first brew. In terms of taste - somewhere between Guinness at its best and worst, if you see what i mean. Should have been stronger, but i don't think i steeped the grains enough. Currently maturing a cider for the better half. This was a kit bought for me by brother-in-law, perked up with a bag of Granny Smiths apples wizzed up in blender, 3 litres of Lidl apple juice, approx 250g of pale spray malt (dried malt extract) and three tea bags (for extra tannin!). Hopefully when matured and chilled it'll be a pleasant scrumpy - can;t be worse than Strongbow, anyway. As you can tell - homebrewing gets under your skin! A fine tasty hobby, though...

Xbox live tag - cheredenine

Xbox 360 for me, w/ Live... I'd get in trouble with t'other half if i spent all my gaming time on the PC upstairs, but i gain brownie points for being sociable if i go on the Xbox in the living room. This is not to say conversation ever sparkles whilst gaming - i find it rather difficult to maintain coherent sentences whilst running round in MW2... Plus i've grown to like the fact that games just work on the xbox - can't really be bothered to keep updating the PC to suit new games anymore. Costs too much!

Nice try! Pregnancy and baby books are partly what behind my book backlog. Plus, we've been to the classes; generally very interesting, with a high point of trying the gas and air... Its like been woozy from too much beer, without the accompanying lack of limb accuracy.. Fiance's family are of Maltese heritage on her father's side, hence alternate spelling.

Looking good so far, keep the ideas coming! Unfortunately i'm a bit too much of a pragmatist for stuff that cost money and does nothing! Plus I've got thousands of pet rocks at home, covering our driveway...

So a week on saturday i turn 32. Fiance has been asking me recently "what do you want for your birthday?"... The trouble is, i have no idea what i want! Every attempt to come up with an idea ends up with me being distracted by something else, or staring blankly in to space for minutes on end, devoid of thoughts. So, my fine fellow edugeeks, I humbly ask for you help. Suggest birthday presents that a 32 year old network manager might like, bearing in mind the following provisos: * No games - i do enjoy a game on my Xbox, but its not a very imaginitive present following what i got for Xmas * No books unless they're really good - i've got a backlog to get through... * Budget is £20 to £30 * Nothing too difficult to obtain - fiance is 7 months pregnant and, despite coping really well, isn't up to marathon shopping trips Let the suggestions commence!

Had a reply from Heart which suggests what i want to do costs extra on top of the domain registration fee.. Oh well, maybe i will give 123-reg another look and forget my previous doubts... Thanks all!

I've used 123-reg before... Can't say that i'm a fan, really. The control panel didn't seem particularly comprehensive, at least compared to the options offered by my current ISP who'll look after my domain and give me management controls free-of-charge. Also, my brother-in-law had many email issues with them when they slotted in some sort of anti-spam measure - delivery times went from normal to poor with seemingly random lengthy delivery delays. 123-reg's attitude was apparently 'oh well, you shouldn't be using us for business emails anyway'. Maybe things have changed? I like the look of Heart Internet so far; might give them a punt...

I'm sorting out some web related issues for the school and there is a requirement to purchase some domain and have them redirect to the replacement school website we're building using Fronter, our VLE. After mixed success the other day - we buy a domain without realising that the company doing the selling doesn't actually have any provision for managing that domain - i'm looking for recommendations for companies that can do the following: * sell us domains as required * let us set up DNS aliases (i.e. ww.school-name.co.uk, eportal.school-name.co.uk, et) * let us redirect traffic from domain alias to the hosting site (i.e. ww.school-name.co.uk to ww.horrid-and-length.com/county/school-name) whilst letting the redirection remain transparent. I don't want the horrid URL replacing the nice new school-name domain at any point * take over the management of domains already owned with minimal fuss Any suggestions? Cheers!

I think i might be flogging a dead horse here, but here goes: Our school uses the RM Easymail email accounts provided by the local authority as the sole form of email for most staff. Whilst we have a list of email addresses in an Excel document on the network, there is no centralised address book available to all staff. I have recently been looking at providing one, using the tools available on the Easymail site. Now it appears to be possible to share an address book; letting anyone search for it and gain access, or by inviting specific individuals. The problem with this is that RM appear to only let you share an address book within the same domain - the accounts we're issued with are in the form red.esinet.org.uk or yellow.esinet.org.uk, meaning address books can only be shared with other people having the same colour in their email address. Needless to say, there is no rational to how we're issued addresses, so every colour of the rainbow and more is represented in staff email accounts... I can thing of one way round this - email all staff in one go and have them use the tool on the email website to add all the addresses into their address book. Seems overly complicated and prone to being outdated to me. Any ideas how this could be got around?

I've helped remove unwanted birds (a pigeon and an unspecified small bird) from an outlying building. I say help; i mean chase ineffectually until aformentioned bird decides to leave anyway!

No spares, unfortunately... The logging on the UPS connected to the unaffected server shows voltage records - as far as i can see there were no brown-outs or other events that might explain things, unless the cause is in school and effecting mains sockets in the same little room differently The timing puts it towards the end of a lesson, so its not like it could be a class all switching their PCs on at the same time..

So.... a few users couldn't print on Monday afternoon. 'How odd', I thought and tried to remote in to the print server. RDC doesn't work, so off i go to physically look at the beast, and find it powered down. Hmmm... Switch it back on and it springs in to life and works perfectly as before. Later investigations show that it shut down with no warning - nothing mentioned in the various event logs until after it was brought back up, then 'previous shutdown was unexpected'. It gets stranger, however... Print server sits next to, and shares a UPS with, our new Curriculum server. Curriculum server holds all staff and pupil files, and several shared drives. Curriculum server also shut down at the same time as the printer server; luckily it restarted itself as well, so disruption was minimal. Same story with event log; no mention of a shut down until after it has restarted. Curriculum server holds the UPS software for the pair. When a disruption of mains power is detected, server is configured to stay running until extent of battery runtime, then shut down. Before it shuts down, however, it uses a cmd script to send a shutdown command to the print server. Though this might explain both servers shutting down, there is no record in the UPS software or Windows event log of any power events, etc. Also our Admin server, which is connected to another UPS and which stayed running, recorded no power events. The REALLY odd thing about this is that this is the third time its happened. Each event has been a monday, between 13:59 and 14:05. Not every monday, mind, alternate mondays. As we run a two week timetable, this corresponds to Week A, and a period where the ICT room that contains the server cupboard is free for staff to book it for their classes. One particular Maths class has been in the room on every occasion. Not sure what to make of this - although the same pupils are in the ICT room everytime the servers restart, I can't see how they could cause the issue. The server cupboard door is locked at all times and i can't see anything outside that would do it. Any ideas?

Not sure my ninja edit got noticed - just in case: Once i've started to set up using the universal template, i have the option of specifying the appearance and content settings via the drop-down menu, etc - in the basic settings theres an option 'Fronter Installation'.. not sure what i need to put in here or if its significant. I'm guessing i might be as i'm getting '[an error occurred while processing this directive]' four times at the top of the page... Also, i've just noticed that Fronter appears to have assigned the correct teachers to teaching groups, but no pupils. Great!

We do indeed have Fronter92... And, it seems, the Universal template, too. I was lead to believe by our support that we'd have to edit our own templates and upload them - seemed a bit of a headache. Thanks for the tip! PS: Once i've started to set up using the universal template, i have the option of specifying the appearance and content settings via the drop-down menu, etc - in the basic settings theres an option 'Fronter Installation'.. not sure what i need to put in here or if its significant. I'm guessing i might be as i'm getting '[an error occurred while processing this directive]' four times at the top of the page...

Might be a little specific this one, but i thought it worth a try. I'm investigating using webfronter as a replacement for our website as the existing site is looking decidedly old and is out of date. I'm at an early stage, just seeing how things link together, but i thought i'd try uploading a new blank template (sent to me earlier in the year by County). I can't get it to work though, for reasons that aren't terribly clear. I go to the tools -> templates for webfronter for the root node for the school (this location recommended by Fronter, apparently) and click 'New webfronter template' - i then get a screen that allows me to specify the name and description, but the 'Choose template room' and select controls don't seem to let me select anything on my local PC to upload. Am i doing something wrong or is it perhaps that this feature hasn't been fully activated? Cheers.

The mention of posh was more the Head's wording to illustrate the fact that he wanted to get the most value out of this pot of money he has designs on by buying lovely new kit... You are, of course, correct about actual industry conditions. The other carrot in this project, however, is that for a portion of the week the room will be up for grabs for normal ICT lesson use, so decent kit would be a plus there...

Ooo... Nice idea! Keep them coming!

On the contrary, i'm not one for hot weather! A cooler research location would suit me better...

Our head teacher has just mentioned to me that a pot of money might be available in the near future in relation to the school starting to offer a travel & tourism diploma. He wants to use the money to make an existing classroom space into a very nice posh looking ICT based travel & tourism teaching space. A couple of ideas he has mentioned off the top of his head would be to have a mock office in one corner, a call-centre or travel agent style flat screen TV showning appropriate content on one of the walls, and a series of hexagonal tables fitted out with PCs, etc. He has asked me to have a think about this to see what else could be added to the mix to make it even better. My first thought - ask Edugeek! Does anyone have any ideas about how to make this plan better? Any experience of doing a similar project, maybe for the same subject? Cheers!

He is... Like you've never seen him before, though! He is very good in it - his accent at times is hilarious! Definately - and its generally conveyed in the form of an otherwise perfectly polite conversation... Very clever!

I saw Inglourious Bastuerds last - thought it was very enjoyable! Not s much action as you expect from Tarantino, but the script is fantastic...

No problem with PMs - send me your questions...