garethEds

Well Mrs E put a bluetooth Apple keyboard and a Magic Trackpad in my stocking and I have to say I am impressed with both. The keyboard seems a lot nicer to type on than my USB one whilst the trackpad is amazing. My mouse is already in the drawer and I am wizzing about the desktop with gestures. Much nicer than a mouse in my opinion. Anyone else get a Mac gift? Oh I also got Job's book. Regards Gareth

Good god - how to you guys think of these ideass. I'd be happy with any of those business cards. Personally I have no imagination. Gareth

aye. merry christmas from me and Mrs E. gareth

Merry Christmas to you @laserblazer. GJE

Yip - Swansea schools do not break up until Thursday. We have our XMas Concert on Tuesday night. School Christmas dinner during Wednesday lunch time and half day on Thursday (beer time). I also have a 'Coursework & Curry' night tomorrow night with Year 12 pupils who stay until 8pm to blitz some coursework and enjoy a curry. Good times :-) Gareth

Is it? I'd love to see it if you have one Gareth

Without sounding patronising - that's great stuff. More and more of that should be done in schools. As I said in my first post quite often it is the technicians that have the knowledge to do this. Yes us teachers can code but sometimes we have to be jack of all trades and masters of none. I can code VBA, Pascal and VB but to a level that suits just above my A-Level. Often I learn something off a pupil who may have streched their knowledge outside of school. The same for networking stuff. I'm often amazed at how many kids are interested but up until now we have not had the time to show them. Hopefully once some of our latger projects are out of the way maybe I will setup a lunchtime club to look at networking and setting up 2008R2 ADs etc. - Of course once again technicians have these skills - ask your school (if you are that way inclinded). Become a teacher for a lunch hour. I'm sure some of you will do better than some ICT teachers :-) (controversial). Gareth

For those interested in getting Computer Programming back into schools take some time to join the CAS Group - Computing at School :: Computing For the Next Generation ... and mailing list. Get involved - if you are a technician ask your Head of ICT if you can run a programming club. More often than not you guys are a lot more competent in coding than us teachers. Put that knowledge to good use and get some kids into it. Of course you won't get paid but you may see the reason we go into teaching - happy kids getting experiences. Go on - you know you want to. Gareth

Not at all. As purchasers we are all too quick to have a go at suppliers who do not cut the mustard. Makes a nice change to post something positive about a supplier. I've even supplied a Testimonial for their BETT guide. Gareth

Can I just chip in here and tell anyone who doesn't deal with ICT-Direct that they should. We have spent a fair wack with them over the past few months and have been very happy with the service. Any issues have been dealt with quickly and without fuss. Yes, the machines are refurbished but they are in top notch condition. Prices are good and you get two machines for the price of one new machine. In an age were funding is being cut in schools this was the best purchasing decision I've made. Just also pointing out that I am in no way getting paid for saying this :-) Gareth

Hi - The guy who wrote this stuff was in college with my Cuz. The latest one - is freaky. Other videos from this guy include Valentine's Day. Gareth

Could be worse - you could have a thought process like Salad Fingers - now that would be worrying. Gareth

When I enter this page: Our Advertisers I simply get a white screen. I've tried clearning the IE cache and history but nothing happens. Always white for me. I've tried clicking on the last post link - again white screen. Same in Firefox. Probably just me but thought I would report it anyway. Cheers Gareth

We have a Ford Kuga (2WD) and it struggled this week on the vast amount of hailstones that fel. I told my wife a the time that a Discovery 3 would have been a better opion but as she is the one driving it it's not what she wanted. Time to re-consider I think. Quite happy to have an older Disco 3 Gareth

Morning, I'm assuming the blog posts about Ugg boots are spam? So I thought I would report them here. Gareth

As a test how about building a totally fresh machine from CD. Download all the updates using WSUSOffline and burn them to CD or USB stick (at home maybe?) - this will let you setup a machine without connecting to the internet. Try and get an AV on there before connecting it to the network. Then connect it to the network and see what happens - does it still crash? Any virus shouldn't hit the machine as you are fully updated. Gareth

My last post on our Windows 7 development was back in March of 2010 - I didn't realise time had passed so quickly. Anyway - it has and so I thought I'd pop back into blog writing mode and bring this topic to an end. Much has changed since I started writing the Windows 7 blog posts. We have seen a change of technician and @rich_tech is now employed at the school. Since this time we have pushed the network forward with a complete migration to Windows 7 Enterprise and Office 2010. In the months leading up to the Summer holidays we picked up where I had initially left off (and taken a break). We made sure MDT2010 and WDS were all up to date and that WSUS was ready to download Windows 7 updates. Once this was done out came the MDT2010 books and websites - all of which are listed in this Edugeek post: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/o-s-deployment/76099-mdt-resources.html One room (my room) was migrated/upgraded and tested over the period of a month. It all went very . Printers were working and we prepared to push out to another two iCT rooms. No-one was complaining but there was plenty of excitement from the kids. We were a two OS school - XP/Office2003 and 7Ent/Office2010. So we broke up for the Summer. I was not too well in the months leading up to the holidays so had decided not to go in at all over the Summer. Usually I do but I needed the break. @rich_tech was in school for a few days/weeks so did some work. When I got back in the Summer most of the site was upgraded. I went on to offer training to which no member of staff turned up. A few weeks and the whole job was finished. Every machine (except one) was Windows 7. Did we have any issues? Yes - Sibelius 5 wouldn't play so we had to fund a Sibelius 7 upgrade. All good there. IE9 caused some issues - so we had to put in a script (found on here) that created some sort of 'low' directory which enabled web page printing. So there we are - a full term in and we are happy with the migration and ready to move on to our next group of projects. Thanks everyone for their help and advice on the WIndows 7/OS Deployment forums - it was invaluable. Gareth

Oi - get back to work ;-) Gareth

Any ideas how it can be done with Netsweeper? GJE

Did anyone come up with a solution to this? Cheers Gareth

Well I've not been for two years and once again the school will not let me out so it looks like I am coming up on the Saturday - possiblt with @rich_tech - I'm sure we can stand around on Saturday morning for a while. Gareth

When we purchased CS3 it was around £8K for the master suite on a 500 machine site license. It came with PC and Mac install disks. Take a look in the General forum here: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/86600-adobe-education-announcement-1-dec.html for some discussion. GJE

Evening All, I don't remember every posting in this thread so wanted to say well done to everyone who is working towards a fitness or weight loss goal. Here's where I am - Went to get some suit trousers in M&S over the October half term. They didn't fit. I'm a 36" waist in jeans etc but needed a 38" waist in fitted (suit) trousers. NO WAY was I having that. So I came home and started running - this was the 22nd of October. I dug out some running trainers which I bought two years ago (the intention has always been there) - and managed .79 of a mile - stopping three times. I was dying. Just over a month later (today in fact) - I've just completed a 3.38mile run. Weird thing is I am not losing any weight. I started at 209lbs and am now 207lbs. I have been told that it is because I am putting on leg muscle and my body is changing shape. I think I agree - my 36" jeans slide on now so I must be changing shape somehow. Onwards and upwards. Have registered for the St David's Day 5K in March (Cardiff) and the target is the London Marathon when I am 40. (4 years time). Well done everyone else. Keep track of my progress with the link in my sig. Gareth

My God - I've just started setting up Xibo today on Xampp. A 2003r2 server. This is all over my head but an interesting read. Gareth

Send him down to us in Swansea if you want : ) Gareth