[Dave Rice]

Ed, it’s one lead out of the graphics card to power 2 monitors.

AFAIK displayport is the only way to do it as it allows you to daisy chain.

[Dave Rice]

Jason, could be a high risk category as pretty much all I get from E-Bay is MS licences.

But the very first time I was offered the option (July 16) was for a £16 NEW Genuine DELL Latitude E4300 Laptop UK Keyboard PN C441C / 0C441C
Item Number 221287997878

The seller was itparts4you (3505) 100% positive Feedback http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/itparts4you

Doesn’t seem that risky.

On clothing it’s always worth keeping an eye open for Dickies sales. OK some of the trousers are clearly “workwear” due to the plethora of pockets. But everything else could pass for “normal” clothing. The £9 polo shirts are better than anything else I’ve got at three times the price. I wear my really comfortable Storm Safety Hiker Trainer outside of work too, and it’s VAT free at £28.50. No-one can tell it’s steel toe cap until you kick them in the nuts.

[Dave Rice]

Jason, yes it was E-Bay.

Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Professional 32/64bit Digital License Download Key
Item Number 152396384450

My winter coat cost me £40 in the Dickies sale back in September Industry300 Winter Jacket  Proper water and windproof and top quality.

[Dave Rice]

Are you sure Jason?

Dear Dave Rice,

We’re processing the payment for your xyz purchase.

We’ve requested £ GBP from your bank to cover the purchase you made from on 4 February 2017.

You chose to pay after delivery, so the payment was scheduled for today.

If we don’t receive the money from your bank account, we’ll request the money from your backup funding source – your Visa/Delta/Electron xxxx.

After you’ve made a Pay After Delivery payment, it automatically becomes the default way to pay when it’s available. You can switch it off at any time by visiting the Settings section in your PayPal account.

If the item doesn’t arrive or it’s significantly not as described, you’ve got 180 days from the date you placed the order to report a problem in the Resolution Centre.

[Dave Rice]

Forums > Forum Index.

Below each forum is the button add a topic.

[Dave Rice]

Click on this icon in the toolbar.

[Dave Rice]

Good point about the cameras Ed.

I also have a small switch in the loft which currently only has the UAP plugged in. If I wanted another camera I’d take the cabling upwards hidden behind the downpipe (that’s how it’s hidden at the front of the house).

I know what you mean about a rats nest. Here’s what I did about it.

I didn’t need to use a patch panel but it was a good excuse to practice some punch down. But it does make the whole thing neater and easier to label. I’ve used it in a different way in that the switch is permanently patched to the panel and devices are patched to that (a trick I learned from work). The last 4 ports on the right are wired into the PoE ports of the DVR.

The small white candy bar is the controller for the UAP. Again not necessary but used for me to practice different scenarios with a second UAP (used for field surveys). Sat on top is the HP microserver that I wrote about recently and my cheapy cheap Synology NAS. The HP is the main server for the house, the Synology is more of a test box for the things I do for businesses.

The cabinet could easily be wall mounted but I have plenty of worktop so it just sits on the end. It’ll cost just over £100 for the cabinet http://tinyurl.com/je649t6 installer bundle (Patch Panel, Cables & PDU) http://tinyurl.com/jveaomv and Krone punch down tool http://tinyurl.com/hnm57sh

[Dave Rice]

I remember hearing about the “insecure” blank DVDs and the stationery catalogue from the Navy guys.

Having worked in the defence industry (not the MOD, but I was involved in the Carrier project) for some years I well understand the need to restrict “leakage” of data but there are ways to do it and it’s easy to audit it all. The difference between the MOD and industry is that the MOD take Corporate idiocy to the extreme and just ban things. Industry takes a more pragmatic view and controls it tightly without compromising genuine need. One of my jobs was to produce regular reports detailing exactly what files were copied when and by who to an external device.

[Dave Rice]

I own a “new” house (actually 15 years old, but well within the time frame of getting serious about energy usage) and all the radiators are under a window where there is one.

[Dave Rice]

I did some work for the RAF and they said it was easier to get a sidearm from the armoury than a USB stick from IT.

So the CCTV DVR had to have a DVD drive to get footage off because they could get them. The Navy could only get DVD +r, not -r.

[Dave Rice]

Here’s a live shot from the UAPs controller

Looks like my daughter’s (1+) watching cat videos again. Desktop-M1699rc7 is the office network, the TP-Link AP spoofs the name of a PC (dunno why). The Kodi has been turned off. You can see where my T420 backed up to the server.

EDIT – BL, streaming is no bigge. 1080P video is about 4.5Mbps.

[Dave Rice]

My workshop is cabled up, that’s where the router and server live too.

Everything else (including Sky, kodi, 3 phones, 3 PCs / laptops – currently all are on and Sky is downloading catch up, kodi streaming the golf)  is wireless through a £60 Ubiquiti UniFi UAP http://tinyurl.com/jy6jm9f mounted on the top landing ceiling. That is wired back to the workshop with Cat 5.

I’ve done a good dozen now and no complaints. Most are 4 bed+ houses where the ISP router won’t reach everywhere. We do use the £86 “long range” ones in very large houses and one L shaped converted farmhouse needed 2 (they work together seamlessly).

300N has proven fine for me, but there is a £98 Simultaneous Dual-Band 1300AC http://tinyurl.com/gpca6jv and even a £150 Indoor/Outdoor, Simultaneous Dual-Band (1750Mbps AC) http://tinyurl.com/he2yunw

So no, I wouldn’t do any cabling other than 1 from the loft to the router (we go outside), there just is no need.

If you do get a UAP get one with the cloud controller and Broadbandbuyer will set it all up for you. All you do is nail it to the ceiling ?It doesn’t actually need the cloud controller to function. Once it’s set up it’ll hold those setting forever.

EDIT this is my network, published previously but now the homeplugs have gone.

[Dave Rice]

There are other extenders out there with greater range (and expense) but our cable runs are relatively short. One screen is on the other side of the wall from the cabinet so that will have straight HDMI. The other two are 20 metres max, probably less. It’s not in the residential blocks it’s in the reception areas with lovely false ceilings  :good: but there are some walls to go through too.

HMP couldn’t do this themselves. We pick up this sort of work as we charge a fair price, but getting on the books is the hardest bit. We got this one as the head of dept was at the presentation we did for the Prison TV project and did a bit of lateral thinking.

[Dave Rice]

Thanks guys.

This  morning I thought I’d use the stress tester Heavy Load to max out the GPU as well as the CPU, result is the same temps. This afternoon I’ve been running Red Dwarf episodes in a loop to simulate something a bit more real world. Result is – 40C. So the difference between idle, real world and flat out is in practical terms sod all.

The HDMI extenders are being dealt with by my business partner, but I suspect they’ll be these

[Dave Rice]

Don’t agree with the towel (ladder type) radiator. Our two give off fearsome heat when they’re on.

No way could you keep your hand on them when they’re going full tilt.

Radiators are all about external surface area, the shape doesn’t matter that much.

What they are made of does – anyone remember the huge cast iron jobs in school? Probably took the whole of December to get hot and the whole of March to cool down. Sit on them after a wet walk to school and you’d steam, if you could sit on them for more than 30 seconds.

[Dave Rice]

This is starting to point to the HDD in some way. The issues with scannow stopping and being unable to create anything in temp could be down to file permissions.

Or of course they could be a failing hard disk. That’s easy to check, preferably with the disk manufacturers own diagnostics but a scandisk at the very least.

If it’s file permissions I’ve seen that happen before. Never did get to the bottom of it and a reformat and reinstall is the quickest way to get back to a working system.

[Dave Rice]

It’s not a laptop, it’s a Lenovo desktop. However it’s the quad J1900 so only has 2 SATA ports and nowhere to mount an extra HDD in the case any way.

It’s no so much about getting it working, Graham has outlined that, it’s what it does afterwards.

Since 8, Windows really thinks it’s in control of everything and has been known to start “fixing” things on the 7 partition.

Dual booting is now a yesterday thing. If you want to run multiple o/ses on 1 box you use a VM.

[Dave Rice]

Thanks Tippon, that’s exactly what I was struggling to say.

Richard, we keep the doors of all the rooms open even if they’re not used much. They’re mostly bedrooms and so on the top floor and with heat rising from below I can’t remember when their radiators actually turned on (there is the new recommended amount of insulation in the loft and walls). That’s pretty much true of the living room on the middle floor too. The radiators in the kitchen and hall pretty much do the work for the whole house.

As for timers, when the weather gets cold enough the heating goes on and stays on 24 / 7. The thermostat in the hall is set at about 18C. It works for us.

[Dave Rice]

All the Corporate bollocks I put up with for 30 years makes me shudder.

You realise it’s a load of crap whilst you’re there and may even indulge in a bit of “if you can’t beat them join them” until you realise you’ve gone as far up the greasy pole as you’re going to. Then you just wish they’d leave you alone until the inevitable mid 50’s thank you now bugger off “reorganisation”.

The Annual Review was always a total waste of time and designed to keep your pay down whilst pretending to offer you “improvement opportunities” with implausible targets and non-existent training courses.

I approached redundancy with dread, I now think it’s probably the best thing that could have happened. A view I find shared by a lot of people.

[Dave Rice]

Don’t do it.

Why do you want to keep running 7 any way?

[Author]

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