Ditto

I can't see the drain plug, but presume it's there. I guess the electrical socket is there to help it drain the water quickly by increasing the current

Yes, UK services. BT including BT now to access Sky subscribed services. I have a Firestick too, but access can be achieved (at home) to the via the app in the BT front end. *** Edit *** - I even wondered about leaving my home PC fully/workstation on and Quick assisting (or similar) in to it!

Would anyone recommend a VPN (or other solution) which will allow internet TV access overseas?

Different devices?

All deaths I presume, not just covid related? An image from https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiYmUwNmFhMjYtNGZhYS00NDk2LWFlMTAtOTg0OGNhNmFiNGM0IiwidCI6ImVlNGUxNDk5LTRhMzUtNGIyZS1hZDQ3LTVmM2NmOWRlODY2NiIsImMiOjh9 This is England only, but gives a clear graphical insight in to excess deaths now, when compared to early in the pandemic. I do feel focussing on deaths alone is not entirely helpful. Looking at current hospitalisation rates, and staff absence, those are having a serious impact and shows we are still a long way from what we regard as normality. It does make me question whether now is a reasonable point to cease free LFTs. I guess we will rely on ONS studies for case trends and monitor the hospital data for an insight to the current state of things.

Re washing - I think we can tell which of us doesn't have smelly teenagers that play football/rugby etc.

Wordle in two, nerdle in three - I'm on :flame:today!

Is today's the nastiest one ever?!

I've just learnt my kids school are going to use cyberexplorers.co.uk for there Computer Science GCSE tuition. Has anyone any experience of it? It appears it's linked to QA in relation to an initiative is led by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

This is the biggest concern and factor in lag from infection to hospitalisation, with current rates it could get uncomfortable in 2-3 weeks, which coincides with LFT's being chargeable. That doesn't feel like a good mix. What I haven't recently checked is how the death rates are tracking in comparison to cases rate and hospitalisation rate growth. TBH, hospitalisation rate growth alone is a sufficient concern. The small possible positive, is the current case rate of growth seems to be slowing, but it's too early to really say if it's reliably doing so. You have to wonder how much waning immunity is part of the story. More choppy waters ahead by the looks of things.

Good to hear the improvement. My 80+ Mum tested positive two days ago. But of a shock and worry but mild cold-like symptoms so far.

I've just heard about a new variant. Apparently it's got very different symptoms, is much less infectious and generally thought to be non-fatal. It's believed to pre-date Covid. They're still working on an scientific name, but currently it is being called Greenergrass Syndrome.

Do you think you will stay with them or look at other options?

Just had my EDF price increase. Estimated annual increase £1500 - right off to negotiate a pay rise.

I did - an interesting set of photos... Do my eyes deceive me? Is one a picture of a meerkat in a hi-viz jacket?

If you don't have GSuite/Gmail, this may not be relevant, but I always used YAMM (Yet another MailMerge). It has the big advantage of offering some tracking info on top and very easy to get up and running. There used to be limits on number per day for the free version, but it wasn't really a problem. https://yamm.com/ if interested. Is there a free MS app equivalent?

Out of interest, would you need Edulink if you were (I presume) leaving SIMS? For the homework function, I can see that's an issue. Do you know if SIMS, Bromcom, Arbor have this? Migration of SIMS docs - I'm surprised they didn't offer a solution here. If I recall correctly, you can use SSRS with iSAMS, so even if it was a sizeable task, you'd think they could build dedicate reports for anything not adequately covered in standard reporting.

I looked at iSAMS about 3 or 4 years ago for a state school that modelled itself on independent school sector. It was a broad product which we felt we could use, but it was way out of our price requirements and we stayed with progresso. I see they label themselves as fully cloud. I'd be interested to know how fully cloud it really is.

Techradar are doing an affiliate link to iDrive offering 10TB, the cloud storage the recommend as #1. Cost $4 year 1, then nearer $80. I expect it is more appropriate to domestic use, but I think there was an old post where someone was using iDrive in school. I've been considering cloud storage for personal backups and with fttp 900MB now, I believe it's more viable. Is anyone using iDrive? What do you think of them and the offer?

Interesting point on storage. Any idea what sort of range of current storage figures are for established Google Workspace Education users. 100TB used to be an enormous amount of space. With my DP hat on, perhaps there are benefits to restricting total storage. I think there is a tendency with limitless storage to just keep everything for ever, which sort of makes retention policy enforcement trickier.

I have posted on a similar topic recently, slightly different to your situation, but thought I'd reference the link (perhaps mods want to merge?) I thought I'd mention my use of browser download settings to achieve my goal. Whether that's of interest might depend on when/where you are downloading from.

Not quite the solution I was looking for, but I have found I could change the download location in Chrome browser to the OneDrive and it works. I'd still be interested to hear more about my question above. As an aside, although I don't use Edge hardly ever, I checked their too. They location looks to be changed too as it appears to reference OneDrive, yet when I click change, it still refences the the local drive. However, a test download indeed shows it does indeed download to the OneDrive.

I've checked out a couple of threads, but none quite capture my scenario. On a work laptop, I want re-direct my local downloads folder so that things go straight in to my OneDrive. The reason is our IT provide causes a fair few Windows reboot update when I have a whole stack load of Excel workbooks open, and recovering from that for local files is a right PITA. OneDrive locate files are fine and we have versioning on. I have been to properties of the folder, selected location tab and selected my OneDrive (putting aside some confusion about a OneDrive on SharePoint and one on my account). What effect should this have? I note after a download (via Chrome Browser) if I select, Show in Folder, it looks as though it is still in local download folder. Oddly, when I did change the location to start with, all my files synched across to OneDrive, so it has had some impact. Also, when I go to the local downloads folder, under properties, the location tab is on longer present - if I want to back out of the change - how do I do that? For now, I want to do this on my work PC only and not through group policies. The reason is our IT Service provider is just saying it isn't possible, but I know that's not true, so looking for a local solution short term. As we are currently re-tendering our service provider, I don't want to pursue this vigorously with them currently, but in due course I would be willing to understand how to achieve a company wide implementation of this, whether via group policies or by other means.

I'd be a much better gamer with it ... oh, and make my boys green with envy.... mwahahaha!

That reminds me of the time an IT director asked the software development team if we could foresee any saw any unforeseen problems. I guess experience suggest the answer is yes, even if we didn't know what they'd be!