Duranis

Yeah my youngest wanted one as well (purely for Splatoon and Mario Maker). I wouldn't hold your hopes up of getting any money off deals before Christmas. Nintendo seem to deliberately inflate the price and reduce the availability of their hardware around this time of year/

Oh dear.... I accidentally fallout'ed until 4am this morning. To be fair my boy was playing it until 8.30 and then Walking Dead was on so didn't get started on it until about 10.30. 6ish hours played and so far I have only just got the people back to sanctuary... must.... explore(loot)... every....thing... Really enjoying it. I can see why people didn't like the perk/skill changes but I actually think it works quite well. The dialogue options do seem fairly weak but hoping they get better. The armor and weapon crafting along with the base building are a massive addition (no matter how clunky the UI is) and I can see myself spending a LONG time just collecting and painting up power armor variations.

Wonder if them shoes would work with my sulky 18 year old

I finally caved in and bought it on xbox one last night. I was going to get it on PC but my rig is getting a little old now so wasn't sure how well it would run. Also both my boys wanted to play it so at least this way it is shared with my oldest boys xbox one so basically got 2 copies for the price of 1. Was downloading last night so hopefully will be able to get on to it tonight (my Mrs didn't think it would be a good idea to call in sick with "radiation poisoning" so I could play it today).

Now people have had some time to play more what are your thoughts? I have held off buying it as the removal of the SPECIAL system, karma and an apparently very linear progression (very little consequences no matter what options you pick the results end up the same) really put me off. The lack of weapon degrading seems a bit of a step back as well. One of the things I liked in previous fallout games (especially more early in the game) was when you had some awesome gun but only saved it for special occasions as you didn't have anything to repair it with. Seems like now once you have some decent guns the only thing limiting their use is ammo. Now it could be all of this is true and the game is still awesome (I hope) but it is enough that I think I will maybe wait a bit for a price drop and mod support. Is it as dumbed down as it seems (compared to previous FO games)?

Still undecided if I buy this on PC or xbox one. If I get it on PC then I can mod it, however the only PC in the house that will run it is mine and both my boys want to play it as well (so 3 of us sharing 1 PC which never ends well). If I get it on the Xbox one then it will be shared with my oldest sons xbox one as well (so no having to share) but no modding.

Interesting. One bit I found funny was the bit were the woman says that is irresponsible for Microsoft to stop supporting XP because of the important systems it is used in but then the next quote has her saying they wont switch their systems to something else because it will cost to much. i.e. It's important that these systems are secure when someone else is paying the development costs to keep it that way but when the company with the systems has to pay it then it is not as important anymore. Have to say XP is still one of my favorite OS's. Could be made fairly lightweight, was pretty damn stable and from an end user prospective it did the job it was supposed to do.

I have a couple of friends who have reasonably successful YouTube channels and they are not overly happy about this. Content creators are pretty much being forced into using it (just like they are pretty much forced into using syndication if they want any kind of protection from false IP Strikes on their videos). Combine that with the multiple other ways YouTube likes to screw with content creators and I think quite a few will end up jumping ship and moving on to other places. I also think that a lot of the popular content creators that remain will end up with all of their content hidden behind a pay wall as YouTube looks at more ways to get money out of it. In terms of the ad's I never had an issue with having ad's on youtube videos (even the 30 second ones). If someone has spent the time creating content I want to see then they deserve whatever small amount of ad revenue they get from me.

Got 18 & 10 year old boys. Pretty much both of them are getting computer games (older one is really into football as well so will be getting a couple of shirts). As much as I would love to get the younger one toys he just doesn't play with them that much. Will be getting the younger one board games as well (he loves these and its something that isn't electronic for a change). Youngster wants Lego dimensions which is another of these "buy the game and then buy ALL the add on toys to actually unlock the content". When we were in Game the other day I did a quick price up on everything they had on display for it and it come to over £400 (and I'm sure there is a much larger selection then they had). Really hate this new marketing move that is similar with Disney infinity, etc. I wouldn't mind but when you only get about 30 hours gameplay out of it anyway it just a big con. My Mrs is a nightmare at Christmas she spends way to much (which I don't really mind) on stuff that they will lose interest in quickly (which really bugs me). Few years back she bought a PS3 (before the 4 came out when it was still £300+) even though we already had an xbox 360. It has been used for less than 50 hours, the funniest thing is that she justifies it by saying "well we don't have another BluRay play", apprently the reply "we dont have any BlueRay disks either" doesnt compute Same happened for the NDS and later the 3DS. She also buys a bunch of "little" presents which might be funny or cute or whatever and "only cost a few pound" but when you add all of that up you could get them another big decent present rather than a bunch of carp that is just going to break/get thrown away/make a mess in their rooms for the next 12 months. Sorry that seems to have escalated into a rant quickly I love Christmas and love spoiling my boys, I would just prefer to get them stuff they are really going to use.

Can't offer advice but with Christmas fast approaching I would be interested in any answers you might get Generally I pick up the odd IT job or phone/tablet repair here and there but this is not reliable as I'm not actively going out looking for the work.

This really messed with my head for a second. I didn't see the original post date and was thinking to myself why the hell are so many people still using FF/IE and why is chrome not even mentioned. Wasn't until I read down further that I noticed the date on it.

The other thing nobody has mentioned it actually understanding the answer that Google points you too and being able to implement it which is what sets an IT professional apart from your average person who could find the same answer but would not understand what it meant. Often you might not know the specific answer to a problem but because of the knowledge you have of the system/software that is causing the problem you can put in the correct search phrase, filter through the results to find the relevant information and be able to apply that solution. Nobody can claim to know everything, especially when it comes to technology and in my mind at least it is a better solution to search for an answer, saving time and learning more about the problem then just trying to blindly fumble through something.

Would also say TES and Twinkl. Have a look for a curriculum guide for that age and find stuff that fits in with it. As far as a remember at that age its things like counting to 100, learning to write letters, difference between capitals and lower case, etc. If she isn't so too keen on it then you might need to take a slightly different approach. For example if she likes baking then make some cakes and use it as a maths lesson. For example have her measure stuff out, she puts in say 6oz of flour but needs 8oz, get her to work out how much more she needs. Have her count out chocolate chips to use as decoration, etc. Also count everything with her all the time, Windows on a house, lamp posts you drive past, etc. Try and make a game of as much of it as possible, for example whoever counts the most birds on a walk wins. The writing is a little hard as you have to get them sitting still to do it. One thing I used to do with my oldest boy (he has ADHD/ASD) was that we would sit and make up a short story together (the more stupid/funny it is the better). I would write it out (keep it short) and then we would make up a little book and he would copy the writing into the book and draw pictures to go along with it. This not only gets them thinking about ideas but also gets them writing and they have something fun at the end of it. We ended up with quite a few little story books that we would read through from time to time. I think he still has a couple of them somewhere and he is 18 now For the writing side of things as well get them doing things that will build up finger dexterity and muscles. My youngest struggled with writing because his hand used to cramp up and get sore very quickly. We got him doing a lot of things that used his fingers a lot (cutting with scissors, playing thumb wars and finger running games, etc) which helped him quite a bit. My oldest really struggled if you sat him down with a worksheet and tried to go through it with him. We found that by just trying to add it into everyday life as much as possible he was much more receptive to it and actually wanted to do things.

I'm doing this for a Year 4 class next term. I'm going to label things up with the actual name and a simple explanation of what they do. For example: CPU - This is the brain of the computer that does all the calculations. RAM - This is the computers short term memory were it stores things it is working on at the moment. Harddrive - This is the computers long term memory were it stores information it wants to keep. Motherboard - This is what connects all the parts together. PSU - This is what powers the computer. Heatsinks/Fans - When the computer is working hard parts of it can get very hot. Heatsinks and Fans help keep it cool. etc, etc. I'm also not a teacher but I AFAIK the bit of the curriculum this covers is basically the children just need to know what the main components are called and their basic function. Depending on what year group you are doing it for you will be surprised how easy they pick it up.

Jeez. I sit directly under our main cabinet but it looks like it might have been our site manager that installed it so feel fairly safe. *goes to look for a hardhat*

Had another go at it at the weekend and unfortunately there wasn't any hidden gems that I missed in it. The spawn system needs some SERIOUS work, got over a 100 kills in one match as I was in the AT-AT standing directly in front of the enemy team spawn point. As soon as they spawned I could kill them, then they respawn in the exact same space. I basically locked the enemy team down for a good 2 minutes which is just very poor game design. It could have been so much more but it is all just so generic and bland. I have played F2P games that had more depth. The worst thing is that my oldest boy loves it so going to end up having to pay good money for it as well

The sunglasses are just stupid, for the one episode as a gag and because it fit, yeah why not. Permanent replacement is just taking an iconic piece of the franchise and swapping it with something terrible. The sonic screwdriver was always like a magic wand, it looked cool and could do anything. Sonic sunglasses, just look like sunglasses and when you do something more with them then put them on your face it looks stupid. Just to note I'm not a rabid Dr Who fan but this is a really odd decision by the writers.

I'm also running two 2008R2 servers (one with CC4) and Windows 7 devices. I tried running Win8 on some devices here but the staff hate it and I have had no end of issues with CC4 not working properly with it so they are all going back to Win7. I'm fairly fortunate though that if I made a case for upgrading I would probably be given the funds for it. The problem is as much as I would love to switch to a vanilla 2012 server with VM's, etc I really cant justify it. What we have (although it is a massive pain in my neck) does the job fairly well as far as the end users are concerned. If I switched it all out it would likely cost between £13-20k (RM will not give us our licenses so would need to rebuy them also) and the only difference the end user would see is a slightly more responsive system. I could make the argument that it will give us more flexibility and future proofing but in reality I could run the current server with win7 clients for at least another 2-3 years. In all honesty though I don't think it is that different out in the real world. No company I have ever been involved with has updated anything just because there is a newer version. Things only get updated when they are no longer able to do the job or they are that old the risk of them failing outweighs the cost of replacing them. I remember back when I was a field engineer (around the time XP was released) and one place I was sent to was still using just DOS on their PC's as the software they had (which was YEARS old) did the job they needed. The only way to really get to play with new tech on a regular basis seems to be either working in a support company that is rolling it out on a regular basis or working as support for a company that is involved with a tech heavy industry that will need the latest and greatest.

Had a few goes on it when I could get the controller out of my boys hands I have to admit I wasn't that impressed (and I REALLY wanted to be). I prefer a more tactical shooter and this seems to be more everyone just lemming running at objectives. The controls feel sluggish and the maps are too empty (or too big). I think the map size and lack of anything interesting in terms of level design is what make it feel less about skill and tactics and more about just running and gunning, respawn and repeat. One of the most annoying things I come across was the terrible spawning system. Lots of times I got spawned directly in front of a massive group of the enemy team and instantly died. Should either give you a choice of respawn point or just don't spawn you within X distance of an enemy player. The guns feel weak. I know they are only low level in the beta but considering the size of the maps and the massive empty space on them lots of times you are trying to shoot someone at extremely long distance with a gun that has lots of recall AND takes 6+ hits to kill someone. If the maps were more enclosed or had more obstacles in the way to block LOS and get people closer this wouldn't be such a big deal. Going to play it a bit more and hopefully it will grow on me but so far it just doesn't get me excited.

Not a 2 player game and not technically a board game but I would recommend Cards Against Humanity as a good group/party game, I have never played another game that made me laugh as hard as that does. Scrabble Trickster is actually a pretty good game as well, even if you are not normally a scrabble fan. Evens the playing field a bit as well if you have some people that aren't normally good at scrabble as its not just about getting the longest words but also using your trick cards strategically (like when my Mrs was super happy to get a 90 odd point word and I used a trick card to steal her score ).

I hadn't seen the price tag!!! £1000.... yeah I don't see any market place for this at all. It is a really cool bit of tech but for a grand you can get a decent DSLR and a nice lens or 2 to go with it.

Creative way of doing it for sure. Whether it takes off or not though I think is going to depend on price point as it is a very niche product. I think the majority of people now use their smartphones for taking photos. Even though this camera might take much better quality pictures most people will be happy to sacrifice quality for convenience and most people don't want to carry another device around with them all the time and they will always have their phone in their pocket. I have a DSLR for example and a couple of nice compact digital cameras. However 99% of the photos I take are with my phone as they are generally events, holidays, etc where I'm out and about and don't want to be carrying extra stuff with me. For the small number of people that do care about decent quality photos then this camera needs to come in quite a bit cheaper than a digital SLR to compete. Considering it has 16 cameras in it I doubt that is going to happen which puts it function at somewhere between a convenient phone camera and an SLR with a price that is likely to be close to SLR pricing. Does look very cool though.

I'm sure I remember seeing a self tuning guitar quite a few years ago. Seems like a good idea but I'm sure most serious guitarists want 100% control over how they are tuning. This is most likely aimed at idiots like me that would love to learn to play but have no idea what they are doing and want as much help (shortcuts) as possible

So I was asked to buy and install the below iOS app's, which is great, except we don't have any iOS devices here Instead of just going back saying "can't be done" I would like to be able to offer a few Windows based alternatives as another option. I have had a look around but it seems to be the same old thing as most "educational" software, badly put together, flash based, with massive price tags (£400 for 1 piece of software that looks like it has been put together as a college ICT project, no thanks). Was hoping someone here might be able to recommend some good SEN/ESOL software. I only need to install on a couple of laptops so don't need something with a site license. For reference the apps below were what I was asked to get. Speech with Milo - sequencing/feelings/prepositions Splingo’s Language Universe Choiceworks by Bee Visual Phonics Studio Little Writer Splash Maths Game Motion Math Massive thank you to anyone that can point me in the right direction.

Anyone else reading Supermarionation as "Super Mario Nation". I think maybe Nintendo had a bigger influence on me as a kid than Thunderbirds