teejay

Ah ok, tbh I very rarely use it as I just ssh into the commmand line and very rarely use the GUI, so just start the vnc server when required. I have had the odd quirk with the raspberry pi and text editors, especially with the boot config.txt, if I'm having problem I use wincsp so I can edit the file in notepad on my Windows machine. Just remembered, a lot of the file editing problems disappear with the firmware update, make sure you update your firmware - http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1195

sudo apt-get install tightvncserver run vncserver and that's about it really.

Errmm, think he was getting my scent:

Few more photos -

When they allow plugs with metal cases attached to the live pin then we might get people taking notice of signs...

@witch I completely plead guilty, I'm terrible without very strict boundaries with food, something I'm having to seriously work on.

Didn't work for me either, just terrible. I think they were trying to emulate the way the brilliant Danish series work on BBC4, stuff like 'The Killing', 'The Bridge' etc but just failed completely.

Thanks, will get that sorted then, doesn't sound good that one!

Had a great weekend with him, he is so calm and laid back it's unreal, but also loves to play. He's a completely different personality to our previous dog, who being a terrier really had a stubborn streak and was a real handful to train. Mac on the other hand in just a day and a half is just about house trained, can sit on command, fetch a ball, will drop stuff on command. He also has a bit of French blood in him I think as he takes great delight in eating any snails he finds in the garden, that's the one thing we're finding hard to stop him from doing!

Had a bit of a break the last half term and put 11lbs back on, have lost that and another 6lbs since I got back on the diet after the Edugeek conference.

That really is a fantastic achievement @garethedmondson, stuff the time, you completed it and you beat 5 people

Need to start python as root to use the GPIO, so do sudo python first. Haven't figured out a way round that yet but I'm still pretty much a noob at this

Our Norfolk Terrier died in April, we said we wouldn't get another dog for a bit. Well that 'little bit' turned out to be 3 months, just picked up a Fox Red Labrador called Mac:D

My wife asked me to get her 50 Shades of Grey, I think I misunderstood as she wasn't happy when I returned with this:

Just to gloat, I've had 2 for over a month now, number 3 has just been shipped:o I'm more excited by these than I am about the massive amount of sexy new server hardware we're getting over the summer to build our high availability/DR solution. I just really enjoy the way you can hack around with them and the fact that they are limited in speed, memory etc which makes them a bit of a challenge. It really does bring back the fun I had in my younger days of messing with a ZX81 then a C64 and then an 8086 based PC.

Go for it, in a high school will have which you'll gain much more experience at working with a bigger more complex network, plus as you say you'll be working full time on the network.

Just drove back t'north from Newbury, a boat would've been a more sensible form of transport. As for the standard of driving by some people, just unbelievable!

We've had 3 instances where the has hit the fan with our server infrastructure in the last year, first we had an arson attack on the classroom next to the server room, luckily the fire brigade turned up in the nick of time and we just had a little bit of smoke damage. Next we found our 'highly available' virtualisation solution (3 headers, 2 switches for redundancy and 2 SANS) went completely pear shaped due to both SANS having a problem at the same time which took 3 days to get a partial network up and a week to get the full network up. This was followed by a hardware failure on out NAS storage which took 3 days to get fixed by the manufacturer. Stressed is an understatement recently! After discussion with SLT and governors we're now specifying a solution which has redundancy across into another building and also an offsite DR into another school. This is costing an eye watering amount of money but it is required to meet the SLT/Governors requirements for availability. My advise now would be to do a DR plan covering the main possible disaster such as loss of server room, major hardware failure, loss of school site. It then needs a decision from SLT as to the timescales they require for each service to be up and running and then a solution specified and costed around that. It's then up to them if they want to spend the money to fulfill those requirements, if they don't want to spend that, then they have to accept compromises.

Got about 30 of the Casio projectors now, they are great. Yes they're expensive but much lower maintenance than other projectors and no stock of bulbs required:) Only problem is loads of teachers who have older projectors are moaning that they want new ones.

That's the problem though, once you're an Academy you are an independent company and so not part of the LEA, so LEA legal services won't act on your behalf (unless you buy their services which is going to cost anyway).

This is very interesting, problem is the only way to resolve this I believe is for an Academy to take Capita to court over it to get a judgement, trouble is that could cost more than just paying for the license, so is a real gamble.

You have to contact Capita Support and they will activate Discover through Solus 3 for you.

KVM is great if you've got really good Linux skills, it can be a pain to get up and running properly. VMWare is tbh very easy to get up and running, it's also pretty cheap for school if you go for the Essentials version and as long as you use certified hardware just works. You have to consider the overall cost of ownership in your time setting it up and managing it and also if the school could find someone with the relevant skills if you left/got runover by a bus.

If you're an academy then put it out as an ITQ through the Crescent Purchasing Consortium If you're an LEA school then put it through the Government Procurement Service

FTE I believe but check with your license provider, if you have the Enterprise Desktop CAL then its already covered in that. It would be worthwhile on your next renewal changing to the Enterprise Desktop CAL and Enterprise Exchange as this includes all the required licenses.