[Glastonbury] Glad Tidings !

[Martin Wheeler]

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

> What "stuff" do they have, and how is their connectivity arranged -
> any obvious problems with say, booting into Knoppix on their machines?

Pretty much what we had at the school -- in the main teaching room a dozen 
machines (top spec a few years ago when the centre was brand spanking 
new), each with a 1.44Mb drive + CD drive (but no DVD), 17" monitor and 
individual earphones, with 2Mb/s connection to the internet.  [Via that 
ludicrous piece of spy software in County Hall guaranteed to barf on 
'Scunthorpe' and 'virgin.net'.]  CPU, memory and hard-drive specs unknown 
-- this is a 'techie' question the staff can't answer [remember -- the 
centre is set up to teach adult learners which buttons to press to get 
specific results from specific bits of software -- underlying systems 
knowledge is of absolutely no usefulness or importance to them].

As it's County kit, they are *total* Bill Gates worshippers, and 
so anything else is considered inferior spotty teenage "hacker" stuff.  It 
also goes without saying that (and especially since the unfortunate 
episode of the member of staff arrested and done for downloading 
terabits of child pornography) they are also *totally* parano about what 
the machines are used for.  So all machines are equipped with this useful 
bit of software called 'DeepFreeze' which re-sets the machine to its 
original state at the end of every session of use.  (This of course 
includes any MS updates you may have installed.  :)

So we are *NOT* allowed to run Linux from hard-drive.

Machines boot beautifully from default settings of Ubuntu 5.04, giving 
immediate access to the net.  Haven't tried Knoppix, Gnoppix etc. etc. as 
yet.  Please bring your favourite live CD disks to the Jan. meeting, and 
we'll try them all out; and generally work out what we can, and can't, do 
with the kit.

LCD projector is a Philips, and tested out perfectly OK from my laptop.

No 'write-board'.  (But we never got round to driving the one at St. 
Dunstan's in any case.)

B&W and colour printing available.  (Can't remember now whether I saw a 
scanner or not.)

Machines are disposed around the edges of the room for individual work, 
and there are tables grouped together in the centre for more 'focussed' 
speaker-led sessions.

Outside, in the corridor/vestibule, are three further 'drop-in access' 
machines for those who might wish to engage in private work unconnected 
with the subject of the main meeting.

Tea and coffee making facilities are available.

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'Borrowing' Centre staff's stuff is just NOT ON.


What we lack which the school provided us with is storage space; and 
Physics Lab kit.  (Cables; meters; general work-bench repair stuff.)

Maybe someone can come up with a creative idea of how/where to store books 
and disks and hardware?  (E.g. why not leave them where they are at the 
moment?  Steve?)

And as for cabling -- we never really needed it much at the school -- but 
it was handy to know that it was there, just in case.  I always travel 
around with a straight-through and a crossover cable in my laptop bag -- 
plus odd cables and tools -- maybe if we all do the same we can cover any 
work-bench 'repair' situation we may encounter.

That's about as much as I can think of at the moment.

Cheers,
-- 
Martin Wheeler   -   StarTEXT / AVALONIX - Glastonbury - BA6 9PH - England
mwheeler at startext.co.uk                http://www.startext.co.uk/mwheeler/
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