Duranis

Double check that the pins are not bent/broken/dirty in the USB socket. Also is the battery ok (is it bulging at all, was it losing charge before)? When you turn the phone off and try and charge it does it do anything at all? Trying turning the phone off, remove the battery, plug phone into charger, put battery back in and then turn it on. There is a few things it could be, first thing I would check is the battery (samsung batteries have been known to have issues). Next is the over/under charge sensor needs resetting (doing the above should reset it). Last is the USB port/charging board needs to be replaced. You can pick these up for around £10 and they are dead easy to replace.

I used to upgrade my PC every 6-12 months. Also as I used to work in the mobile industry developing hardware/apps I often had dev/pre-release phones sent me from samsung, rim, htc, etc I never normally had a phone for longer than a month or 2. I also used to switch cars about every 6 months. Now I have 2 kids and work at a school so my PC hasn't had any updates for like 4 years and I'm counting down the days for when I can get a free upgrade for my S4 which likes to randomly stop seeing the sim card. I also have to do running repairs on my car at least once every couple of months to keep it going just a little longer. Funny enough though I couldn't be happier and wouldn't change it for the world (though a bit of a payraise would be nice ).

I don't know why but that just strikes me as a hilarious thing to be charged for. Just picture the scene, here is this guy in a holding cell. Big guy handcuffed next to him says "Their charging me for armed robbery, GBH and resisting arrest, what they get you for?" "Me? I'm being charged for mischief....."

I agree 100% that it makes no sense to put win 7 on a touchscreen device but when it comes to it if they are not going to get used because the teachers don't like win8 then I would prefer to just put win7 on. They are hybrids (detachable keyboard/trackpad) so not quite so bad as pure tablets. They can use mouse/keyboard for general OS navigation then switch to touch within the applications they use. Really frustrating as I trialed win8 devices here before buying these and not one person complained. Win 10 is the end game and will solve the problems (I hope) but as we are also running cc4 I'm not holding my breath on it being well support any time this year. Classic shell is something I need to look in to and see if I can deploy it via CC4 as this may solve the problem as well. It's not that there is a fault with the tablets, just that the teachers don't know how they work (and to be fair win8 gui is horrible ). Have offered to give training but I know from experience this wont change the opinion of the few who "just don't like it".

Not in a position to hire in this job but in my previous job I almost always looked at either experience/knowledge (for high level jobs) or how keen they were (for entry level jobs were they would be doing a lot of training anyway). Qualifications only ever entered the equation when they were a legal requirement. I have more than once taken someone with less qualifications and sometimes with less experience (on paper) because in talking to them they had a better understanding of the business or were more enthusiastic. Most of the time these people worked out really well for us. I think the problem you are seeing is quite often the people interviewing for a job might not actually know that much about it. Because of this they have no way to judge if what you are talking about is relevant to the role. Judging candidates by their qualifications makes it easier (i.e. "This guy has a degree in IT so he for sure must know something").

So recently got a load of hybrid tablets for the kids to use. They are working fine but the teachers REALLY hate windows 8. I have been considering dropping them to windows 7 but have never tried using it with a touch screen before. If they were purely just tablets I would probably just leave them as they are but as they will mostly be used as laptops with the touchscreen just being used in certain app's then I'm thinking it would be ok. Anyone had similar experiences or is running Win7 on touchscreen devices?

Was awesome. Me and the mrs were stood for ages watching it, was a lighting flash almost every second.

OMG a fox attacked a grown woman and bit her hand completely unprovoked for no reason!!!!! ahhhhhh ok then.... I guess saying "A stupid woman that tried to hand feed a wild fox got bitten" doesn't get the same amount of attention.

I could be interested in that I have just been playing it locally as nobody else I know plays it and I didn't fancy trying to learn the game solo on a PVP server.

Semi related when I walked in my home yesterday I was greeting by the sound of a loud insistent beeping and the bunch of fans screaming away at full speed. Turns out my oldest was using my PC to play Ark Survival but the PC was seriously overheating (must have been around 60C). His response when I asked him why he didn't turn it off when it started making a loud beeping noise "Its been doing that for hours, the game was running ok though" .

Server room is same as always, small room, large aircon, the temp never changes much in here. Today is one of the few days I'm happy to call this tiny box/fridge my office Have had 1 projector that was over heating that I have completely removed the filters from for the moment to try and get some more airflow through it. The classroom is like an oven though, even with all the doors and windows open. The small cab in the out building is a little hotter than normal but its in the cooler part of the building with good airflow around it so fingers crossed it will be ok.

I did the same as you have and had exactly the same results. Honestly not sure what the solution is. Anything that is actually going to be useful (i.e. tell you if something is broken or missing) needs teacher/pupil input to work (teacher in my case as we are primary school). If they cant enter a fill out 3-4 boxes on a sheet then I don't see what could be easier. Only way I could see something working is if they can't physically remove/use the laptops unless they have been signed out. I have never seen any automatic system like this though.

Just do it. You can take all the lessons, read all the books and watch all the videos in the world but if you are only spending 20 minutes a week on it then you will take a long time to notice any improvements. Keep a sketch book to hand and use it often, even if you are looking to get into digital media or painting, sketching with a pencil will help train you to think about proportions, shapes, shading, highlights, etc, etc. See a nice photo, try and replicated it with whatever media it is you are wanting to work in. Read up on colour theory, composition and contrast, even an average artist can make some nice stuff if they use these basic* things in the right way. *basic as in everything builds on top of this knowledge, not basic as in simple.... A lot of people seem to think that "art" is just something that comes naturally and you are either artistic or your not. This is entirely not true and it is a learned skill, the same as anything else. The more time you put into doing it the better you will get. There are some amazing videos on youtube as well. I found watching people painting/sculpting (especially if they are talking about how and why they are doing things in a certain way) really helped me link what I had read about to something real. Look at videos/information outside of the media you are wanting to work in as well. For example I found some great sculpting information and videos that talked a lot about human body proportions which really helps for any kind of drawing/painting of human figures. Edit: Also find a forum or two that you can post your stuff on to get critique from (and look at other peoples work). Decent feedback from people with knowledge is invaluable and with the amount of forums around there is a wealth of knowledgeable people that are willing to give you pointers on what is and isn't working.

Thanks, we have both models of the easi-speak and they arent really working for the younger kids. The easi-speak pro has a really over complicated menu system and the normal model has 7 different statuses/modes which are shown by a single LED that blinks different colours and patterns (so fairly confusing for a 6 year old). I have found these though which I think might be a good solution. Micro-Speak Digital Voice Recorder - Record, Store and Play Multi Memo – 6 minutes recording - Speaking and Listening Skills (only has 6 minutes record time but that is perfectly fine for what we need). Lol my son has that Darth Vader one and the Iron man one . Think I have played with them more than he has though......

We have a number of "sound buttons" here were a child can simple press a button and record around 30 seconds of audio. Then when they switch it to play mode they press the button again and it plays it back. I have been asked to find something like this but with a longer recording duration, around 5 minutes would be ideal. They have tried the easi-speak microphones we have here but they are too complicated to use with lots of menu's, etc. I also looked at using the old iPod touches we have here but none of the bluetooth headsets I have tried will work. I have looked at Dictaphones but most of them seem to be about the same as what we have here (lots of options, menus and complications on them). So I need something that is really simple to record and playback, that will hold around 5 minutes of audio and doesn't cost too much. Any suggestions?

We have smart response "clickers". The software for them is constantly flooding the network with traffic even when it isn't being used.

Thanks everyone, will have a chat with SLT and see what they want to do, just wanted to get a bit of feedback from others before I did so I had a little knowledge on how others are doing it. Looking at the document it says: So for this "training" could just be the site manager making sure the ladder is set up correctly and supervising? I should also mention it is a proper A frame locking ladder with wide leg supports to stop it tipping sideways. SLT will most likely want me to get some sort of certification for it as a CYA process but I do think its a little wasteful to spend a few hundred on a course for something that will probably take less than an hour of time a year in total (though the flip side I suppose is it will cost them more if I fall and kill myself).

Quick question. We have a projector in the hall which is pretty high up (as most of you probably do ). I have been told though that I need to have a working at heights certificate to be able to use ladders to get to it for maintenance. I really don't want to do that if I can avoid it (costs a lot and I don't particularly like heights anyway) but I do need to sort the projector out. I thought that as long as you risk assess and your competent then you would be ok for short duration height work, is that right or wrong?

I agree 100% and with my own kids I encourage them to go climb the tree However if I was responsible for 500 kids that weren't mine and they were all trying to climb tree's (and most of them were falling and hurting themselves) I would definitely ban tree climbing. Especially if one if them falling could see legal action being taken against me and potentially ending my career.

Being one of the first aiders here I do kind of sympathise with the school a bit. There is not a lot of detail in the article and if they were getting a larger than normal amount of injuries happen then it makes sense to do something to stop that (either more staff which with a lot of budgets is unlikely or other methods such as restricting the activity that is causing the injuries). It's easy to say its H&S gone mad but if some kid manages to do themselves a serious injury I would not want to be the one who has to defend it by saying "I was just letting kids be kids". We had a spot here a little while ago were we had to stop 2 year groups from playing football for a couple of weeks. They where just being really stupid, there was a LOT of injuries and a lot of ripped uniforms. We banned all football for these 2 year groups for a couple of weeks (and had many a parent saying "jeez kids can't even play football at school now, what is the world coming too" but at the end of the day it stopped a lot of kids getting hurt on a daily basis and a lot of expenses for parents who had to buy new uniform. Also after we let them start playing again they behaved a lot better.

So we got my son an xbox one for his birthday a little while ago and after having it for less than a week it starts turning itself off. Sometimes it runs for hours, other times it turns off within 10 minutes. I went through all the standard trouble shooting (check power settings, not overheating, changed the socket it was plugged in, swapped the power pack to one I knew worked, etc, etc). Was still having problems so took it back and got a replacement. This one was having exactly the same issues, went through all the steps again and was about to take it back again when I came across a post of someone that had a similar issue with their xbox one. They had it in an entertainment cabinet with a plastic pane in the door which would sometimes build up a static charge and then this would turned the xbox on or off. My son has a sound reactive plasma lamp about 2 foot away from the xbox one so I unplugged this and low and behold the problem has now gone away. Seems that the plasma lamp was building up a big enough charge in the area around it to be able to active the touch sensitive "button" for the power on the xbox. I also remember once setting up a new wifi router for a friend. Set it all up, no problems and working great. Moved it 1ft from the floor to the table it was going on and it completely lost all wifi signal. Took me quite a long time of checking settings and trouble shooting to figure out exactly what was wrong with it before I figured out that the router was completely fine unless I put it in the small area of the (wooden) table which just completely killed its WiFi. Anyone else ever come across any really odd fixes or problems?

I've really wanted to get into playing tabletop games for ages (have a ton of Dark elf stuff for fantasy and Tau for 40k) but there seem to be very few places nearby me that people play and nobody I know has the slightest interested. Searching around online and all the local clubs I have come across seem to be completely inactive. There is a local gaming shop that seems to play Malifaux fairly often though so thinking of getting into that (plus the models look like they will be a lot of fun to paint).

Staff are on 300MB here and students are on 50MB (primary school). There are a lot of shared areas for both staff and students where they are supposed to store work. I have 2 staff members that are maxed out on storage space that I have offered to help move data around and clean up but had no response from so they will just have to work around it. Had 1 other staff member who maxed out their area and I increased it for them as they had a valid need (unlike the others that just have a ton of photos and stuff that should be in the shared areas). I need to clear/archive a load of really old data and also come up with a solution to add a bit more storage as we are getting fairly full now. Problem I have with that is that nobody wants to go through the list of files or sit with me for 30 mins to let me know what can go and what needs to stay. Also our main backup is done offsite and we pay for X amount storage space which I don't want to increase too much as its expensive. So adding more storage would mean also having to add in a whole new backup system for the data that goes on it.

The biggest issue with getting your own app's developed, especially multiplatform, high use stuff, is that of ongoing support. I used to be the technical director for a company that developed hardware and software for mobile devices (and some embedded stuff as well). With the speed that mobile OS's update and the sometimes vast (and oft undocumented) changes to available API's (I'm looking at you Apple) you may be having to do some major patch work every 6 months or so to keep things running. This isn't as bad as it used to be but still adds an ongoing cost to an already expensive solution. In a school I don't really see any need that justifies a completely custom solution given the costs involved and availability of off the shelf solutions for most school requirements where their on going development costs are spread among all their customers and there is a wider range of support available. Of course there is always the exception (some school with a special requirement where it would be easier/cheaper to develop their own solution) and maybe in larger educational environments, such as a uni, it may be worthwhile. Edit: I'm not surprised a lot of schools get their own custom app's written. This is mostly due to good sales teams in the software houses and poor technical knowledge on the people making the decisions in schools (just look at previous posts on here regarding costs paid for web sites as a similar example). Person in charge gets shown some shiny "solution" which they can say is built unique for their school and are blind or unaware of the fact they could get a better/cheaper solution off the shelf.

I have terrible luck with garages. Had an engine warning light come on and random lose in power at low revs. Local garage I took it too said it was a faulty CAT so close to £200 later new cat fitted. Still had exactly the same issue (and still do, cant afford a garage to try and figure it out), took it back and they said it was all fine but they would "take a look at it" (at around £60 an hour labor cost). Same garage also sold me a bulb that failed an MOT at another garage a couple of days later. Another local garage I used to go to as well also seemed very suspicious, put a car in for MOT there to be told I needed new tire as there was a massive nail in it. I hadn't noticed any nail in it (and I do check tyres fairly regularly) but said sure put new one on. Couple of weeks later my sister takes her car there for MOT and she got the same phone call from them. After asking about a bit a lot of people have said the same thing so either there are a TON of nails just scattered in the roads around here or something dodgy is going on. There are a couple of other local independents I have used around here over the years as well and they also where not great. One fitted new headlight units which they didn't adjust properly (they didn't connect up the electric adjusters either) and another just charge a fortune. I have to admit I have used halfords for my last 2 MOTS. I wouldn't say I entirely trust them but they seem to be the most honest garage I have used within a 20 mile radius of where I live so far I try to do as much on the car as I can myself now (replaced the alternator a couple of weeks ago and saved over £100 on what the garage quoted) but with limited tools and knowledge there is only so much I can do.