There is only a week to go until this year’s Joust at Berkeley Castle. We will probably be going on the Saturday 22nd July. We are looking forward to seeing the Mediaeval Baebes sing again; we’ll try to catch both performances this time, the kids were too tied to see the second one last year.
Changes to child car seat law
On 18th September, a new law is due to come into force. This will mean that children under the age of 12 and under 1.5m (about 5′) will have to use a child seat or booster seat. Currently the majority of children over the age of about 6 no longer use a car seat or booster seat and just use the adult seat belt.
Bedfordshire retains 3 tier school system
After the public consulation which was in favour of retaining the current 3 tier education system, the consultants recommendation to the council was to change to a 2 tier system.
However, this afternoon the County Council voted to retain the existing three tier system and impliment an action plan to improve standards.
Posted in General, Watling Lower School
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Thunder storm
Wow, what a thunder storm today on the way home from work. I’ve never driven in weather like it!
There was lightning striking either side, ahead and behind. I kept expecting to see something struck and go up in flames. It was so close there was practically no time between the strikes and the thunder
Posted in General
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School Summer Fayre
Went to the summer fayre at Watling Lower School today. The fayre was from 11am to 2pm and the weather was really hot.
We all had a great time. There were gocarts, a large 6 person trampoline, bouncy castle as well as the standard stalls. The kids made tie-dye t-shirts, threw paint filled ballons at the sheets on the fence (of course it was easier for the ballons to bounce than break), had ice creams and generally had a good time.
Pirate Pete from Funshine Entertainments was there to entertain the kids in the hall in a session that lasted about 45 minutes.
Posted in General, Watling Lower School
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Voice over Internet Protocol phone
Since my trial of VoIP a couple of weeks ago, I have purchased a Linksys SPA-3000 from BroadbandBuyer.
I have configured this using the wizards at Voxilla to get me started, and then adjusted the dialing plan and added additional gateways for the alternate VoIP services that I have subscribed to. I have added a local area incoming number to my VoIPCheap account and this gives me outgoing caller id on all calls using VoIPCheap. Incoming calls also have caller id, better than paying for it with my existing phone provider.
I also came across a brilliant utility to monitor the SPA-3000 adapter. This is a free piece of software called Sipura 3000 System Tray Monitor. This will monitor the adapter to ensure that the VOIP service is registered and working and will also pop up a message with the caller id of incoming calls.
I rang Lyall today on this new setup and got a really clear line. Last time it was a cheap call; this time it was free. A 40 minute call to New Zealand for nothing!
My dial plan for anyone that is interested is currently:
(999S0<:@gw0>|<9,:>xx.<:@gw0>|<:00441582>[4-8]xxxxx<:@gw2>|
<01:00441>xxxxxxxxx<:@gw2>|<02:00442>xxxxxxxxx<:@gw2>|
<07:00447>xxxxxxxxx<:@gw2>|*xx.<:@gw2>|xxx.<:@gw2>)
This basically means that:
- 999 goes immediately via gateway 0 (my PSTN line)
- I dial a 9 to get connected to my PSTN line
- All local numbers get prefixed with the full dialing code and sent out
via gateway 2 (VoipCheap) - 01xxx ,02xxx and 07xxx (mobile) numbers get prefixed with the full
dialing code and sent out via gateway 2 - Any other calls get sent out via gateway 2
If VoipCheap calls become more expensive than one of the other services I can adjust the plan accordingly.
(edited to make dialing plan wrap around)
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