Duranis

Sorry it's not answering your question but I would be sending them this: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/alert-targeted-ransomware-attacks-on-uk-education-sector And pointing out that this part includes Flash. I stopped supporting Flash for pretty much everything used here quite awhile ago and said that from the end of the year what little support I gave to it will be ending (to give them plenty of chance to find alternatives). There was some push back from some teaching staff but thankfully in this case I had support from SLT. Data protection trumps the ability to use outdated software.

I'm not fat, I'm just generating power for my bike! I love the "inspiration" I have no idea what this means... Looking at the explanation video it looks like they are saying that the springs are compressed and as they spin round they decompress and add force the wheel rotation. But surely the springs compressing in the first place is removing that force from the wheel in the first place? The demo shows them pushing down on the bike wheel while it is static, then lifting it up and seeing the wheel move a little bit. Like that somehow proves it all works. €400 a pop...... I'm really in the wrong job.

Christmas is going to be really hard as we always have a massive family Christmas, normally with 20+ people round for Christmas dinner then more on Boxing day and New Years. This year it will just be the 5 of us and my Mum who we have been in a bubble with from the start. My Mrs is going to particularly struggle as she has never had a Christmas without her Mum there. Best thing we can do though is not put those we love at risk. Would rather miss one Christmas with the whole family then potentially miss all Christmases with one of them. I had to go for a test Saturday. Every winter my chest always gets messed up and I develop a cough that hangs around until March/April time. It started kicking in Thursday/Friday, I knew what it was but my oldest has OCD and was freaking out. Also while I was pretty sure I was ok I'm no doctor so better safe than sorry, etc. Anyway test comes back Sunday as negative, but I learnt that I have a much stronger gag reflex then I thought I did and also managed to give myself a nose bleed.

Best tips I can give are: Use a wet pallete and thin your paints. A wet pallete is easy to make, get a plate or shallow container, put some kitchen roll on it and pour on water so its slightly flooded, put some grease proof paper on top. I have a small take away container I use and with the lid on I have had paints stay usable for days. It also aids thinning paints. You can thin you paints with water, acrylic medium or a mix of both. There is no right answer and what works best can depend on what you are looking to do. Using water will give very thin coats that dry super quick. This is good for glazing techniques. I tend to use this a lot more as I tend to use glazing instead of wet blending. Using acrylic medium will give slightly thicker coats that takes longer to dry. This is good for wet blending techniques. You don't need tiny brushes. You need ones with good tips. A larger brush can work out better as it holds more paint and will give a better flow. Look on ebay for a bunch of cheap models. Use these only for testing paint schemes and practicing. I got a box of goblins (probably about 40 of them) for a couple of quid and they work great. Enough detail to be useful for testing different things but small/simple enough that I can finish them off quickly. Works great to see how different colours work against each other or to try out something new. Because they are cheap and I have no other use for them I never have the worry of "I don't want to try that because I might mess it up". That's also the reason I love Gaslands, toy cars can be bought for pennies and any mistakes are easy to "fix" with "battle damage". Washes are amazing. They don't have to just be chucked on right out the pot all over the model (though sometimes that can work too). Dilute them down to use for shading or changing tones, use with a detail brush to pick out panel lines, use them after your first base coat to help show where to put shadows. A good use of washes can make an OK looking model look outstanding. If you struggle to figure out where you should be shading and highlighting do a two part primer. Prime the whole model in black or grey, wait for it to dry then do a VERY light coat of white primer from directly above. This pre shades/highlights the model for you. It is possible from this point to just use glazes to finish the model and all your shading is already done as the glazes will allow the shade/highlight spots to show through. Even if you don't use that technique take a couple of photos and you have a guide for where to highlight/shade that specific model. Get a decent light and set your workspace up so your hands are supported by a solid surface. I have seen so many people trying to paint tiny details while hold both the model and their painting hand in the air. Both hands are moving around and shaking and you will never get clean results. Attach your model to something you can grip properly (I use a small spice jar with blutack on top), rest both hands on your work surface. Get a book and write down what colours/mixes and techniques you used for a particular style/model. You might remember exactly how you did it now but in 3 months time when you get another model to add to that unit you wont remember. Particularly good if your like me and sometimes goes a year or more between painting anything. Over time you build up quite a nice "recipe book" of colours and techniques which is a brilliant resource.

I think the misunderstanding is that both figures are somewhat true. The phase 3 clinical trial started July 27 and has enrolled 43,538 participants. I believe the "62" people figure comes from the most recent trials/test which I believe are part of the FDA regulations were a "minimum" of 62 cases (normally its 32). The actual cases ended up being 94 which I believe is split between actual doses and placebos. So yes the most recent trials were on double digit numbers but it has been in testing and trials for months, on thousands of people from diverse backgrounds, before it got to that stage. The Government really needs to get on top of information control here ASAP. I have seen a TON of people saying they don't want to have an untested vaccine. It has very much been presented as something which has only just been made and only tested on a small group of people. If the information isn't put out in easy to understand terms, right now, then by the time it's available the amount of misunderstanding and misinformation around it is going to greatly reduce the effectiveness as people will have had months of Facebook and social media junk telling them that it is unsafe or doesn't work.

We have been watching Van Helsing https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80121349?source=35 on netflix. If your into the whole vampire/zombie Apocalypse thing and you have nothing else to watch it might be worth checking out. We are well into season 2 and it's pretty much just "meh". We also stopped watching "Dark" about mid way through season 3 as we just completely lost interest in it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_(TV_series) ). The first season was brilliant, really interesting, well put together time travelling sci-fi. The English voice dubbing was a bit annoying but it had enough interesting concepts to keep you hook. 2nd season kind of lost a lot of what made the first season so good and the third season felt like an entirely different program and was full of plot holes and was generally just boring.

Apparently the regulations are fairly lax. We had a case here before half term and the head said if they could guarantee that the pupils hadn't been moving around they were allowed to only isolate the kid with the positive test and those sitting directly next to them (within 2m I think it was). Thankfully they decide to isolate the entire class but that class was still mixing with the other class in that yeargroup. It was also doing activities in a room that the year above had to move through all the time to get to class.

Yeah we had started playing D&D but obviously can't meet up at the moment for it. I tried DM'ing at home and my youngest loved it but oldest one lost interest as he didn't find it as fun with just the 3 of us. Been thinking trying to find somewhere online to join and play but not even sure where to start with that. In the mean time I have made about 30 characters that I'm probably never going to use and have enough material for a homebrew campaign setting to take people up to about level 15 (which I'm also probably never going to use).

Possibly should go in the annoying things thread and is a bit of a rant/vent but just been chatting to my 75 year old mum while I was at lunch and she tells me that my sister has been telling her she needs to "get out more, go take a walk around the town"! Apparently "she knows some people are going to die but everyone needs to just get on with it or we will never develop an immunity". This is edugeek so I won't put my response here. Needless to say I'm more than slightly annoyed that my sister is telling our "at risk" Mum to be taking buses/taxis to "have a browse 'round town" during a flipping pandemic/lockdown. Meanwhile me and my other sister do everything we can to avoid contact with other people so we aren't needlessly putting others at risk. It's absolutely breaking my heart that I wont even take my kid to the park and my stupid sister is going to have a browse around friggin' poundland just to kill a bit of time. (Sorry for the rant)

You said he has a Creality printer, do you know the model and if he has added any aftermarket mods to it? If its for example a stock Ender of any model there are probably a ton of mods and addon's you could get. The two problems you just mentioned can be reduced/solved with mods. For example: https://www.amazon.co.uk/ANTCLABS-BLTouch-Leveling-Premium-Extension/dp/B076PQG1FF/?tag=howchoo06-21 Takes some set up and firmware changes but will auto level the bed which removes one of the biggest headaches. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=filament+Dryer&ref=nb_sb_noss Another common issue with filament printing is that the filament gets "wet" which causes problems with misfeeds, layer adhesion issues and general print quality problems. Lots of people will using some form of dehydrator to dry the filament before using it. A normal food dehydrator can work fine but will need to be modified to fit the spools in. A glass print bed (if it doesn't already have one) is also a fairly cheap but significant upgrade. Print nozzles should probably be considered a consumable and are pretty cheap so could make a useful "make up" present. There is also a laser engraver mod available that might be fun to play with and isnt too expensive. Make sure you get some decent eye protection to go along with this though. https://www.creality3dofficial.com/products/creality-blue-violet-light

It is absolute insanity. I'm STILL seeing people spouting off how "it's no worse than flu". Even saw someone the other day saying "well I'm not scared of getting it so don't need to wear a mask". They had no comprehension that wearing a mask was to protect everyone else. You would think by now the basic facts of how this stuff works should be commonsense knowledge. Then again working in IT we all know how much commonsense most people have...

Hope it comes back negative and your little 'un feels better soon.

Yeah that's one thing that puts me off 40K. You need a ton of expensive books before you even start on collecting an army and they change regularly. Both my sons are interested in it but we are looking at hundreds for us to be able to play 3 different factions. That's why we are going for games like Gaslands, Malifaux, frostgrave, etc.

Also agree that coat is brilliant! Going to save that as a reference for worn leather in the future. I've been doing a lot of digital stuff recently so decided to take a bit of a break from that and use some of the parts I had been working on to whip out another Gaslands conversation. A Morris Minor might not be the first car you think of for "post apocalyptic battle car" but it came out pretty good. Original car and the conversion. Cut out the bonnet and part of the rear, built in a platform and added gubbins. The wheels, rear bumper and engine aren't my own designs but the rest of the 3D printed stuff is what I made. And with a bit of a paint job. And the rest of the sponsors "team":

That's pretty cool. To think of the knowledge and expertise that went into doing something like this somewhat restores my faith in humanity, a little bit. Don't forget NASA has an announcement about the Moon on Monday 26th 5PM GMT. It's likely "just" going to be confirmation of the presence of near surface water ice (which is actually pretty awesome) but fingers crossed for aliens.

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah I personally would prefer to lease just so there is a good reason to replace the thing once it has been hammered for 3 to 5 years and is on its last legs. Looks like my input isn't required now though so will see what we end up with.

@Katy That sounds more like what I would expect. Could you tell me which company that is through?

We currently lease our printers from Konica Minolta but are potentially looking to change (though I would be happy staying with them). As we have recently become part of an academy it is all being done centrally and their preference is to buy outright and have some service agreement to cover repairs/consumables. What they have sent me to have a look at seems excessive. £500 for a "pre-owned" KM 3100. This is a 6 year old model which is an older model than we already have, and second hand, so is likely physically older then what we already have too. The next option they sent was a Bizhub C3300i for £1250, from a very quick search I found one place selling them for just under £600 and another for £720. The problem is I don't know how legit these companies are. Still seems a lot of money though. I don't know what the cost of the service agreement is but apparently it was pretty high. Would love to hear what everyone else is doing for printers.

That's only if compatibility is built into the game though isn't it?

It's not always about performance to everyone. There is a lot more you can do on a PC than on any of the consoles. Even if you can get a game on both formats I personally would still prefer to play on the PC even if it means playing on lower settings. The mod options for most games just blow consoles out of the water. Depending on what type of games you play the PC gives a better experience as well. The ability to switch between mouse and keyboard or controller for one makes a ton of games way more playable. Most the games I play are a lot better with Mouse and keyboard which is why I would never want to switch out to a console, no matter how much more pretty the graphics might look. My PC is old as dirt and probably comparable to a £600 new PC but there hasn't been a game I couldn't play on it yet. I would never swap it for a console.

£100 more but ebuyer has this: https://www.ebuyer.com/989647-medion-erazer-x30-core-i5-9th-gen-8gb-ram-1tb-hdd-128gb-10023317 Not the best in the world and you could get better if building yourself. However at that price range for a pre-built system I don't think your going to get a lot better. Overclockers have similar builds for the same price: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/pc-systems/gaming-pc?ckMin=49999&ckMax=63749&ckTab=0&sSort=2 Looks like £600 is about as low as you can get and still get a dedicated graphics card. Most seem to be using the GTX 1650 which isn't too bad.

Me and the Mrs have watched Venom and Justice League over the least couple of nights. Not the most amazing of films but not as bad as I was expecting either. Also you cant really complain too much when you get Jason Momoa, Henry Cavil and Gal Godot on the screen at the same time.

My oldest really loves the monster hunter games and has already decided he hates this film From what I can gather it is only very loosely tied to the actual monster hunter lore/premise. Having not played I have no idea but my boy is pretty vocal about it

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that I actually had any faith in their plan or try to portray that it was in any way, shape or form effective RE: Flu Jab's. My school actually offered them for the first time this year so I managed to get mine. My daughter got hers done at the Dr's because she is 3 but my Mrs and 2 older boys had their appointments cancelled because there was not enough vaccine. Tried to book in literally everywhere within 40 miles of us but no available appointments until November. My MIL who is at risk, older, and has COPD is also struggling to get an appointment. Initially she was told she wasn't eligible, despite having COPD and other health complications.

This was pretty much their plan at the beginning and what I feel they have been working their way back to. They kept the lockdown in place just long enough for people to get fed up with it so then people would be more willing to take the more risky options. Doesn't take a genius to see how quickly the figures went up once they opened everything up again. Worst case scenario for peoples health but best case for the economy. Having said that though it's easy for me to say "keep everything shut" when it's not my business or livelihood on the line. Edit: Interesting on that poster that pumping gas is a lot lower risk then I thought it was (still going to be using a disposable glove and pay at pump though). Also interesting that going to the pub is one of the highest risk factors but also one of the things the UK Government seems most concerned about keeping going.