Rob_D

It really depends on what you want, what your priorities are, and what budget you have. In the past we've used manageengine (zoho) helpdesk. They have a pretty cool multidepartment feature that lets you run multiple departments helpdesks of the same server/instance and worked fine for what we used them for, but their sails teams are super pushy (they started "reminding" us about our renewals about 8 months in advance). These days we use a Sharepoint site. There's some templates that make for descent starting points, and one of the guys built off that to incorporate all the features we wanted. And once it was tested and working for one team cloning it for the others wasn't hard.

Looking forward to giving that a go. I was going to jump on last night but it took nearly 20 minutes to load shaders. I thought they'd come up with some "fast shader" tech to help with that?

What they want is a solution that can grab all the student choices from a spreadsheet, and automagically set up the bands/classes with an easy (or at least user intuitive way) to tweak the output before it's exported and turned into a proper timetable. To be fair the Timetabler Options, looks good to me.

We originally just did it on student devices (but also had local server based Securus on the staff devices), but this was back when it was first released and there were some concerns about them storing all the logged keystrokes which was fixed in later updates. Later we consolidated to having everyone on monitor. We have it in the main AUP and again on the short, click-through AUP on the login screen (interactive login GPO setting), that all actions on the school computers are recorded. This is also covered in the ICT induction.

We use Bromcom as our MIS, but the options module isn't great. Does anyone know of any good options software? We've asked other schools in the locality, and they're pretty much all using SIMS options.

Interesting idea. I can see it working in public or selective admission schools. But I see any attempt at a wider rollout into state/comprehensive schools collapsing under the weight of teenage apathy. Also, the "2 hours or longer if they don't hit their benchmarks" they talk about in the second article is worrisome. Does that mean that slower students will be missing out on the "extracurricular activities"?

The screen directly behind reception just has a couple of our promo videos on loop, "Welcome to (schoolname)" at the top and the date at the bottom. (We used to pull the school's Twitter feed into a ticker across the bottom, but the RSS broke so we removed it.) It looks professional enough, it's GDPR/safeguarding compliant, and it doesn't need updating that often. Further into the foyer, we have one of the main "school news" screens which roll clubs, notices, student awards, this week's canteen menu, etc. (We have pretty good staff engagement with creating content, and us and a couple of other staff know how to push new slides to the news feed.)

Has she tried the Strange Horticulture/Strange Antiquites series. They're both interesting takes on this sort of game.

Isn't it going to be a free update for owners of the original game?

Started playing Control Resonant. Enjoying it so far, but not quite grabbing me the same way the first one did.

I find it more than bright enough for what I use it for. Consider that the LEDs are only going to be like 15cm away from the thing you're working on. It measures as around 9-10k lux, compared to about 100 with just the room light (if that means anything).

I've got a 4x version of the one you linked, and it's great for building/painting minis. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Daylight-Magnifying-Adjustable-Setting-Reading/dp/B08PNSJTKP

We do intermittently get this issue. It's working for me right now and, based on the complaints from our repro guy, it seems to happen more in the afternoon for us.

Anyone else finding Bromcom really slow today?

I was told the same on my first working-at-heights course about 12 years back. Which is a far cry from watching a Sky engineer get into his five-point harness, high-vis and hard hat, and drill anchor points into the wall, just to go up three steps.

It's fire, it doesn't have a very accurate thermostat. 😁

We've got a log burner in our 3 bed suburban semi and it gets the most of the ground floor and the upstairs landing up to a nice toasty 26C most evenings (would probably heat the bedrooms okay too if we left the doors open). I don't disagree with anything else you say. Having to buy in fuel means it's probably not a cheaper alternative, but it works great.

That they were a strong prospect? I thought people still thought that, did I miss something?

I like the softcat ecat portal for getting quick prices for random bits. And they can set you up so you submit orders and your finance/bursar has a logon to authorize the order. Or you can just turn your shopping basket into a quote.

Site team has some taller ladders that would get us maybe 2m off the ground, anything above that we'd have to use the scaffold tower. Some years, our site team has rented a scissor lift for the summer holidays (I assume the site manager has a potential time savings v cost of the lift metric to know whether it's worth it for that holiday).

As I recall, buying through ASM (which would be the same for any MDM) you get the number of licenses you need to cover your concurrent device installs.

Back in the day didn't Virgin use the coax for both internet and TV? (okay I'm probably thinking of 20 odd years ago)

Our Drama department is going to get a set of 5-10 tablets for this (if the ones they want ever come back in stock). We looked at laptops/chromebooks, but they're too big and unwieldy for how they want to use them.

And floss.

You guys know if it goes pete-tong tomorrow, then I'm blaming you. 😁