DeGrimmy

There is so much scope and opportunity in the Mass Effect universe for more games, or TV shows and films. It's a shame it's been dormant for so long. I didn't even think Mass Effect: Andromeda was that bad - The gameplay was there, even if the animation and performance could be a little lacking at times.

A member of SLT who had finally managed to talk to someone on the other end of the phone dismissed our student, who was unable to sit the MAT on Thursday, about 15 minutes before the paper version was released. He was visibly not in the right place and mindset to complete the 2 & 1/2 hour test after 2 hours of waiting around while refreshing and hoping the test reconnects.

We have one student sitting the HAT today - We received an encrypted paper version to use in case of emergency and we expected to hear from them with a password at 9:45 if they were to sit the paper version instead of the online version. We haven't heard anything, so we're just waiting for 11am now... Hopefully we won't have the same issues as we had in the MAT yesterday!

Thanks for this. I downloaded and used it last night to set up my new SSD at home!

I'm just leaving Zen myself because Community Fibre arrived in our area, offering gigabit speeds for much less - However, we've not cancelled yet and I can't recommend them enough! I'll PM you the details.

Found and ordered a WD Blue 2TB SATA SSD for £70. Not as cheap as I'd hoped, but a reputable brand and reduced by 27%, apparently. There was also a good deal on a Samsung SATA SSD, but it was fractionally more expensive than the WD and ran at the same speeds, as far as I saw.

Unfortunately, my motherboard does that whole "If a second M2 drive is connected, you can't use SATA connections 5 & 6" thing, and I have quite a few SATA-connected things. It's probably easier to replace a SATA HDD with a SATA SSD than have to reconfigure everything. Thanks for the links, I'll check them out!

Subscribing to this thread in case a decent SATA SSD or two, preferably 2TB, are put on sale - I'm thinking I should probably replace my 10+ year old mechanical HDDs in my home PC sooner rather than later!

What do you mean by "locked to SSO"? We were about to try turning off SSO ourselves but we won't bother if there's no point.

Andor is a slow burn for the first few episodes, and then rapidly escalates. Once it does, it becomes one of the best, if not the best of the SW shows so far.

Lars Mikkelsen as live-action Thrawn confirmed! Absolute perfection. They really couldn't have had anyone else play Thrawn, Lars' performance as Thrawn's voice actor in Rebels is so iconic.

Monday is a test Of patience and energy. Rather be in bed

Rose like a phoenix, From the ashes of years past To bring peace once more

We had rain yesterday, the temperature dropped significantly and was much more comfortable overnight. Coming into work this morning was lovely - Windows open, no AC, nice breeze. It's sunny again now but it's only forecast to reach the mid-20s in temperature this week, which is much more my kind of weather!

It's always incredibly hot in the office, not necessarily because of IT equipment but just because this room traps heat so well and has south-facing windows. To make matters worse, we have to wear smart trousers and shirts for our uniform, and we're almost never able to wear shorts. The one time we've ever been dispensation to do so was in the 40-degree heatwave last year... We've been moving a delivery of new PCs from its temporary storage room to a more permanent one this morning, too. Can't wait to get home and have a cold shower! I can't bear 30+ degree heat (in the UK, at least)...

I had our exams officer forward the email to me, and then shortly after we were on the phone trying to work it out. She's not very IT savvy, but she knows how to use what she needs to use. Eventually, I explained that like when logging into other exam boards, she'll get a code in an email. Then, we tried it. The login page hung for at least a minute, Chrome kept flashing up "Page unresponsive" but eventually, it sent us the code. Thankfully, we were able to log in straight away after that. It's insanity to me that they would roll out something like this *just* before the exam season begins - Why couldn't they have waited, or done it at least a couple of weeks in advance so it has time to bed in?

I am partial to eating a two-finger KitKat as you would any other bar, instead of breaking apart the two fingers and eating them individually...

15+ mugs! Are you drinking decaf coffee?

The perfect cup of tea is actually coffee I don't drink tea myself, but if I was making one for someone else, I'd aim for 3. My brother, however, doesn't take milk in tea!

BBC news are reporting on the VM outage: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65042770

It has been a couple of years since I've been to BETT, and I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of it this year. I didn't bother trying the wifi as my phone data was good enough. I used the DLR on the way in on Wednesday, and got off at Prince Regent as I'd seen @elsiegee40's post about it on here. However, it was incredibly uncomfortable! The train was wobbling around and it felt like it was going to derail at one point. On the way back, I walked down to Custom House and used the Elizabeth line to get back to Central London instead, even though there were severe delays on another part of the line. It was busy, but so much faster and more comfortable than my usual route. It's definitely going to be my new route if I'm heading to BETT.

I spoke to someone at the Arbor stand who was more customer service facing. They had a live demo at 12pm yesterday, but I unfortunately missed that. Instead, I was shown a slideshow of gifs. I asked the same questions as I did at Bromcom but they didn't have the answers to my questions because it was "quite new to them as well". Still, from the gifs, it looks quite similar to Bromcom's AI offering, but instead of just posting the results in the chat box, it actually generates a proper report for you.

I've just had a demo at BETT - Interestingly, it's termed a "Personal Assistant" in Bromcom. It brings up a chat box on the right hand side and it gives you some suggestions or frequently asked questions. You can also type in your query at the bottom, like "Which staff members might retire soon" and it returns with a list of names who are retirement age and who will be in the next 2 years. The guy demoing it said that it uses ChatGPT - I asked if it's self-contained and doesn't send data anywhere (I'm afraid I'm not very clued up about AI and ChatGPT) and he said that it uses ChatGPT for the language model, but then kicks it back to the database to pull the information you need. Hopefully someone who is a bit hotter than me on this sort of thing can ask the right questions!

I've been watching this thread for some years now, and it's really interesting - It looks like the sort of thing we'd need in our eternally damp and humid 1st floor flat. We've got a couple of dehumidifiers and we're constantly emptying them. Trouble is, we don't have any ventilation without keeping the windows open. I think we'd first need to install an extractor fan in the bathroom before anything else to see if that makes a difference, but a PIV unit might do the job. I'll keep it in mind if the extractor fan isn't enough!

Chip's Challenge 1 is free on Steam, and Chip's Challenge 2 is discounted to £1.99 until 6pm today, when the Steam sale ends.