Ditto

Shed!? We know who to call! Looking at the beams, is it a Tudor style building

Funnily enough I checked that list on Friday - as expected definitely not on that list. Also, later that day, I got a phone call from the hospital where the relative died. I must have left a message before getting an answer on the second occasion. This conversation was much better than the first. Once I explained the picture, the member of the team said they can forward a form to complete. Once received, it's basically a guided subject access request on the deceased. The criteria for being able to make the request would normally be the executor of the estate, but we doubt there is one of those. But it does also include 'next of kin'. My mum isn't that, one step from, as we believe the niece/nephews are. We have contact details so will pass on the info. By chance, I played badminton the same evening who was a lead medical examiner and has deep experience in death certification scrutiny. It was a role developed at a local NHS trust as a result of some of the outcomes of the Shipman enquiry. Due to the badminton, we didn't really get a decent chat, but she said it is very difficult to get details. In truth, we don't really have an interest in the medical records. Family knowledge and death certificate tells us what we wanted to know and were not surprised to read. What would be more of interest is was he taken care of and had any friends in his last few years, did he want to leave any personal items to his estranged family. We suspect, but would lead to clarity if that could be confirmed. I'd expect there to be a social services file somewhere, but trying to complete that part of the life story looks a long way off. What does annoy me those is authorities lazily, and I suspect invalidly, hiding behind GDPR. A chat I had with one individual, I suggested GDPR doesn't apply to the deceased as it does to the living. It was argued no that's not true, but I think they were confusing GDPR with right to ask for identification and authentication from us.

Further update, probably the last. Armed with the death certificate, we approached the local gov bereavement team, to see if we can piece together the final hours/days/months and maybe years of the relatives life. Frankly they were not a lot of use, saying they know no more than what's on the death certificate. They could however provide us with the name of the crematorium where a small service took place, that a council appointed person was present but no one else as far as we know. I called the crematorium but no answer initially. I decided then to contact the hospital where the realtive died. The death certificate gave an employee name who registered the death. On speaking to, what I presume was a receptionist, I was cut off mid sentence and transferred to another team. That was downright disrespectful and rude. On speaking to the next team member, it got no better. Clearly disinterested, said the named person on the death certificate (NHS employee) and they could not divulge any information, which they might not have but clearly were not going to make any effort to find out. They quoted 'confidentiality reasons' for not being able comment further. FFS, whose confidentiality is being breached! Sure, id checking would be a reasonable request, but clearly there was no way forward with them, bar complaints route, which is not something I have any appetite for. Rang the crematorium again and then got to speak to a member of staff - the contrast compared with local GOV and NHS staff could not be more stark. They couldn't tell us much more either, but key, they were able to tell us the name of the undertakers that dealt with the cremation and said it was possible they held the ashes. They were as helpful as possible and took time to listen. I don't thing their are any laws around retention of ashes, but I do know the National Association of Funeral Directors published guidelines in 2012 proposing 5 years as a minimum. It's 12 years since death in this this case, so we don't know yet. A call to the undertakers brought the most helpful and respectful response. They took details, cross checked and said they think they have the ashes but will check and call back. They did within the hour. They confirmed they had the ashes and they could be collected. They gave further insight based on local knowledge. We learnt that the deceased's last address was almost certainly an assisted living location and said the relative probably had someone check in on his welfare. So as we suspected, the relative almost certainly died alone and the local authority dealt with matters from there. We don't really have any more details, as to whether he had any possessions, pension income, debt, friends, who or when his flat was cleared - nothing really. What I find really surprising is the enormous difficulty in trying to get this information. I would have though the local authority would have some of that somewhere. We are 100% certain there was no wealth, but speculatively, if here were a few grand of cash in the flat, or a bank account with savings, how do we know where that went! It's likely any money would have been absorbed by the local authority with good cause, for looking after his welfare, but there seems to be little accountability. We have been advised by the undertakers to contact a named member of the council team and copy them in. They said they would help with understanding the end story of the relatives life as much as hey could and if they could get info out of the hospital they would. We will update some other (closer?) relatives of what we have learnt and see if they wish to collect the ashes. Given multiple years of estrangement, who knows? It's possible they could be scattered at his parents grave or other close deceased relative. Overall, an interesting intro to genealogy, some ups and downs along the way, a tapestry of experiences with various services, mostly good, but some just plain rude. I think we are about as far as we can go and in some ways brought it to closure as far as my mum is concerned. One detail I might follow up on - we know the relative was a listed as previously a publican. I know you need to be registered as a publican, so maybe there are some records that give insight to years before retirement. Perhaps finding the pub he ran would lead to a visit and a commemorative pint!

On the law saying you need to keep for 7 years, could you point me in the direction of the legislative act that states that. The reason I ask, is because although I do not currently work in a school, we work with a lot of school data, but also have some overlap with medical data. We have a lot of special category, lots of very sensitive safe-guarding data. I've found it very hard to find clear guidance, especially linking back to legal requirements. Having that link would help. I would also add this should not an IT driven policy. It needs to be a school/trust leadership/DPO policy with governor sign off. IT are then the people who work to meet the policy requirements for digital records - remember most schools will have paper and other records and this should be dealt with under the same policy.

We are experimenting with the MS Teams transcribe feature. Our IT support team have once again not shown good knowledge here! I've learnt basic transcription service in include with our main licenses of M365 Apps for business. A small number of staff have the Premium version and this offers more, including one thing our Head of Trustees wants to use, which is AI enabled intelligent recap. From more corporate employers than my own, I have heard positive feedback on this. Q1. Anyone used transcribe and intelligent recap and what is your feedback Q2. As the premium product cost more pppm, have you looked at other AI apps that integrate with MS Teams - e.g. MeetGeek appears to be one, but I'm sure it is a fast moving feast to know what products are up to scratch?

Mrs Ditto just toasted a tea cake. As the lovely waft of toasted tea cakes filled the room, I brought the kids home from school. Younger son decides to pop a tea cake in the toaster too, and then boom! Al electrics go. RCD and RCBO trip. I reset the toaster and we re-tried. RCD only tripped this time. So, I decided to unplug and check the toaster out. On investigation I could see debris in the bottom of the toaster. I highlighted the issue to the younger son - "Ah, that burnt raisin is the problem". So of course, I said "No, it's a dodgy currant". Smirking from the older son who says "Actually that's quite good!". After that perfect pause from the younger son, I then get the massive roll-eyes and look of despair at me. I'm sure many of you understand the pure joy I get from such moments

In a new all-through freeschool, we were almost 100% Chromebook and serverless, located on site and not generally taken home. That lasted until about the start of Year 10s, when a Windows PC based lab was setup. The PC part wasn't under my remit, but I do recall the effort of maintenance increased quite a bit.

In a way yes! I wanted to see how long I could stall the thread - clearly not very long!

Pedagogist.

If I recall correctly, our mod's daughter is working in the US office for a UK company, so it might be a pragmatic arrangement at this stage of the interview. I'm as close to 100% as possible and again it's a pragmatic employer decision as they need the space for those they support. My wife's employer is now forcing staff to do at least 3 days a week in the office, and if you are pro-rata then tough, it's still a 3 day minimum. Quite a few staff were recruited during and post pandemic, so the new policy will lead to resignations. I'd rather work for an employer that can cope with a hybrid environment, that can trust it's staff and managers to do the work they are expected but take in to account individual circumstances and not resort to blanket unconditional policies.

There's been a mini-surge of votes for MS, leaving a dead heat at 28 each! Just wondering what the OPs thoughts are given all the feedback. @mikkydoos, any reflections at this stage?

It's quite interesting that removing the word 'observable' removes the issue. What it is trying to say, but slipping up on, is 10 to the power of 24!

Thank you. I'm going to do some further digging. Sadly, Workspace is just too big a mindset shift for our current leadership team - 5 years in I'm still fighting for them to move from a seriously weak Case Management System. On MS, I believe we are a mix of Microsoft 365 Business Premium (Nonprofit Staff Pricing) for most staff and for volunteers etc., we license Microsoft 365 Business Basic (Nonprofit Staff Pricing). In truth the number of staff needing full desktop apps is more limited than we acknowledge. I use VB objects in some Excel Workbooks, but I know I am very much an exception. The other thing is we have recently moved to Microsoft Defender for Business. We dropped another product (can't remember which). Our IT provider charge us for the transition, but after a number of months, we will be making a saving. Security, or the perception of security is very important to our leadership, including trying achieve some level of certification, so they'd except the £4-50 pppm fee for that. I do wonder if our IT support costs more than our licensing, but we don't have the level of internal expertise needed to be self sufficient.

Last night on Netflix The Six Triple Eight. It's an amazing and important story, but for me the movie didn't match the level of that. It's still good, very good, but something about it along the way didn't sit quite right - a feeling of woodenness and lack of depth, yet at other times very powerful. Reviews are mostly positive but then I came across the Huffington Post review and they nailed exactly my thoughts - see https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/the-six-triple-eight-netflix-tyler-perry_n_67634b9ee4b0f283a8092c0d. All that said, still very much worth a couple of hours of your time, especially on these cold nights!

A couple of images for you from the newly purchased Bambu A1 Lab. My younger son is going to build a garden bench table. He's done a lot of research and is going to construct it from recycled plastic wood - so called EcoWood. We just took delivery of the 'wood' from a company based in N. Wales, with delivery all the way to the Surrey Hills. I explained this was for a GCSE project. Initially the delivery cost was heading upwards of £150. But pre-cutting the longer lengths, we got it down to one pallet instead of 2. The company then offered to delivery for free and provided some free samples on top to practice working with. The company is www.plastecowood.com and I could not praise them enough - they have been truly outstanding, fantastically helpful and really engaged with a young chap tackling a practical project. Once the project is complete, I'm hoping to get a free ad run for them in a school newsletter. Back to the image, this is a 3D, 15% scale image of what is to be built. The table was printed table top down. My son used a new support structure, something I can only describe a a tree trunk with fractal like branching to the support point. The seat surfaces are a little rough, but the supports were so much easier to remove than previous support struts used. All in all, I was thoroughly impressed, as was the older sibling and that takes some doing

Your gonna have to share how you do that! I'm with a charity (i.e. Not for Profit) which is not always so different. My charity employer spends stacks on MS and then 3rd party support. Whilst I learnt we had NfP Workspace when I joined 5 years ago, it was in the hands of a control freak with no technical knowledge, so we get no value from it from my perspective! I've love to tell them how to reduce their expenditure, increase my pay and provide more front line services.

Unfortunately I am not in a position to summarise, but have a look at https://support.google.com/a/answer/9646351?hl=en

A result from a ChatGPT question in relation to a couple of points above It does go one to say "Additionally, while Google Workspace may have a larger number of users, Microsoft 365 often leads in revenue, suggesting a higher proportion of enterprise customers." I did ask ChatGPT to comment on the education sector, but it didn't really bring any greater insight. It did however highlight that Bath Spa University migrated from Google Workspace to M365. the article is at https://aspiracloud.com/insights/2024/04/16/google-workspace-vs-microsoft-365/. I'm sure the opposite story could be found, and I note the the AspiraCloud are very much a Microsoft shop!

The Shallows last night on BBC1 - a not too bad shark movie, with some stunning scenery of Lord Howe Island in the Tasman sea. If you like a shark movies and have little else to do, it is available on iPlayer currently.

Fortunately, Coronavirus number are relatively low. I wonder if the levels of colds (I have a stinking one right now), flu and other viruses is keeping the numbers down. I guess those viruses have had a lot longer to evolve. The flu numbers are really high, and with the charts below, it's clear why hospitals are struggling.

Oh yes, the reminds me, we had a stack of Apple kit for the music department - Sibelius and other such stuff. I stay well clear of that! Actually, my role was Data manager, but I became the default Google Admin Manager, but the heavyweight networking and Apple stuff I left to a part time NM, who had help/hindrance from a founding governor - and yes I know that shouldn'y have been, and it was way worse than just that!

Oh, I'm well aware of that, but the teachers that come in to the school often come with prior preferences. Largely, teachers are made to toe the line as there was SLT buy in to the Google platform, but in this instance, it led to a traditional IT suite of networked PCs and MS stack. Slightly off track, we had a new head of senior who would not learn Progresso - him being a SIMS dinosaur and a complete muppet. He lost that battle thank goodness. Progresso of course became EOL. Although I left over 5 years ago, I do know the went to Arbor, so that was a battle well fought!

I worked in a Free School which set it's stall out 100% Google and Chromebooks. It worked very well as the school grew, but once the school Oall-through) got to the point have about Year 9 pupils, M365 was added. I'd say the main reason was for the Computing curriculum. Ultimately, I think you have to accept the learning teaching requirements, not purely from an IT ease point of view. If you have Google (Workspace) and Chromebooks, not to manage the devices with a Google license is just daft. Personally I liked the Google Admin, and found it far simpler the MS. But, the demand for M365 grew with time. There was always some need at an admin level, for MS software - I think it is still the case some exams admin software, but it is very much the exception. Do I think a school can be Google/Chromebook only, all the way to 6th Form? Just about, but you need deep SLT commitment and the ability to find non-MS solutions for the teachers that have their favourite MS apps. I believe @rogerdnixon is in the school has got closest to that - but I think even there, there may be a little MS apps in place. Roger, perhaps you could enlighten this thread with your input? *** Fixed typo that gave Roger a new surname! ***

Brady.

Extremely positive feedback on the Bambu Lab A1. Delivery was good. Assembly was fine, the only issue was sliding back a base cover to secure some screws. It didn't 'just slide ', but required downward pressure at the far end to allow plastic patches to ease apart. Other than that very easy. Bench print was as good as I've seen. Build quality seems to be extremely good. Self levelling appeared to be 'press and go' . I didn't see that step as I was cooking for 10 whilst supervising construction and setup. What has impressed the most is print speed. It's so much quicker than our previous one. Which means it does need to sit on a sturdy table as the print head flies around. Overall, very impressed.