Uncategorized – Page 14

Best intro ever

Posted on August 17, 2010August 18, 2010 by John McLear

Just for fun..
Warning, strong geekery begins at 3:30

Episode++: yayQuery Lunch Spectacular from yayQuery on Vimeo.

Intro made with Gource

Stick it to the bully?

Posted on July 21, 2010December 31, 2010 by John McLear

UPDATE: I won my case. Thanks to PePiPoo.

I will do whatever the internets tells me to do.

Right now I’m suposed to be writing a bid that could bring £100k of new work into the city but because I’m in this pickle I’m not writing it.. This is why Bradford could fail in the future.

You are probably thinking, what pickle? Well it’s all a pickle created by the council, specifically Bradford Council Parking Services. This is all very petty but it shows just how the petty things in life when mismanaged can have serious consequences. Anyway, they are basically trying to bully me into a fine that I shouldn’t have to pay.

Here is the story so far

2007 – Jan – I received a £25 fine for not properly displaying ticket.

2007 – Feb – I showed proof of ticket and fine was cancelled.

2010 – May – I received a £25 fine for not properly displaying ticket. (Even though I personally showed the attendant the ticket)

2010 – May – I told them it was in error and showed proof of ticket.

2010 – May – Bradford Council Parking Services decided to still fine me

2010 – June – I appealed fine and informed council all documents would be released under Apache GPL2 license (for funsies and so they know to protect peoples identities should they choose to)

2010 – June – Appeal was rejected. <– wtf even with proof that I had paid and displayed!

2010 – June – Fine was increased to £75

2010 – July – I tried to re-appeal but was told there is no way to appeal

2010 – July – Bradford Council Parking Services threatened me with “registering debt at court” and bailiffs.

2010 – July – I threatened Bradford Council Parking Services with equally “registering debt at court”.

2010 – September – I appealed as I never received an NTO

2010 – September – I received a new NTO, I now need to through another appeal procedure.

To summarize

I received 2 parking fines in error. I proved they were both in error and now I am threatened with debt being registered at court.

Worth noting the company I own is awaiting about £50k of unpaid PO’s from Bradford Council which have been overdue by over a year, should I register them at court too?

The evidence

The proof I paid and displayed (Note this tickets start time is BEFORE the time/date of the fine so that isn’t an issue)

My Appeal being rejected (3 parts)

Correspondence after the appeal was rejected and to date. <– includes the threats by the council

Remote Access without Becta – Dual form authentication?

Posted on July 12, 2010September 21, 2011 by John McLear

Since the demise of Becta I have had lots more schools ask me if they can go ahead and remote directly into their school, bypassing our central security exchange.

The answer is still no. These are the reasons why…

1) Becta’s requirement for dual form authentication was a good idea and is a good idea. It’s not that we don’t trust you to not give out your username and/or password it’s that even the most seasoned of IT professional can make security errors and by having 2 forms of authentication it would take 2 catastrophic security errors to allow someone to access your schools data.

2) We are considering RSA or usb keys to remove one prompt for username/password

3) We want to try to encourage you to use more web based services and to remote into your data less. This will allow us to apply more granular security policies and hopefully encourage you to adopt a single sign on mechanism. Hosted web services should also increase the reliability of access to resources.

If you still want to go ahead and remote straight into your school then I would recommend you do a thorough risk assessment and that the decision is approved by the schools leadership team (I would recommend you do this anyway even if you have dual form authentication).

If you are a technical support manager/engineer trying to make your life easier be aware that if you open up school information to the outside world you may be charged under the data protection act.

Now BECTA has gone, do we NEED to have a VLE? Remote Desktop Services instead? (edugeek.net)

6.1 awesome things HDMI on a cell phone could bring to the classroom

Posted on July 11, 2010 by John McLear

With the notice that HDMI is probably being replaced with 5Play^TM just as mobile phones just beginning supporting it what could the potential uses be of HDMI in a classroom? HDMI is usually the cable that goes from a laptop to the projector. Essentially HDMI in a mobile phone means you can hook it up to a projector or large screen.

1. Share work from mobile with others via large classroom display

2. Truly turn the cell phone into a teaching tool by embedding it in the fabric of a classroom

3. A great presentation tool

4. An abundance of easy to access interactive apps/games

5. Unfiltered internet connectivity (This has its pros and cons)

*6. Charge phone via cable (HDBaseT can provide power)

Could this mean an RJ45 connector in every desk to charge pupils handheld devices and give them access to both network and media/presentation resources?

Check out the comparison chart below to see what is possible over HDBaseT

I reckon there will be a large market/demand in HDBaseT 1.0 to micro USB adapters mostly because the RJ-45 connector (seen right) is too chunky to fit into a phone.

If you know a company that makes a RJ45 -> Micro USB adapter for Network / Video connectivity then invest now.