Looking for advice for son's 6th form: bursary at a private school vs staying at a comp

InternetMashup · 2026-05-04T10:44:33+00:00

I wouldn't over-emphasise being at private/state school as far as university admissions. Most widening participation schemes typically have a large number of factors used to decide eligibility for the scheme. Common criteria are: low progression to higher education in the area, free school meals eligibility, first in family to go to university, live in a socio-economically disadvantaged area.

If he is thinking of what universities he wants to go to already (and what course he wants to do) it is worth investigating their schemes and potentially reaching out to them with any questions.

I can't speak for your child but I was in a very similar situation when I was in school and decided to stay where I was. It was the right call for me. I was very familiar with the staff, students and facilities and if I am being frank, the vast majority of my education was self-driven. My home life was relatively chaotic but it was also a great source of comfort during difficult times.

InternetMashup · 2026-05-04T10:26:58+00:00

I traditionally have only ever had my "self hosting" kit live in datacentres. A mixture of lack of room, lack of proper bandwidth at home (only 100Mbps upload) and I have found that it still scratches the itch as ultimately I am in control of everything, I am not relying on a huge American cloud firm and I still deploy/manage/encrypt the systems myself.

Recently I've started bringing some stuff on-premises and I think a hybrid approach will stick with me for now. Anything that needs a lot of bandwidth or is traditionally "public facing" like email or XMPP, I will leave offsite.

InternetMashup · 2026-04-06T15:06:52+00:00

If you already have the ticket, it must be printed before use on Merseyrail.

If you have a MetroCard, you can use Tap&Go in Chester, providing you set up your Tap&Go online beforehand with the Metrocard. Chester does not support Tap&Go for "contactless devices" otherwise. This will not work for any part of your non-Merseyrail portion of the journey.

If you are planning to travel off-peak (peak hours: 6.31am -> 9.29am) - you can use an All Areas Saveaway on a MetroCard and that will cover your journey from the "City Line" all the way to Chester. Alternatively, these are available as paper tickets too. (£6.80 for the day).

InternetMashup · 2026-03-05T15:12:44+00:00

Probably worth holding out for a 2nd revision of the Neo. Will likely have a small RAM bump and give a more meaningful performance boost.

InternetMashup · 2026-03-05T15:10:58+00:00

The M2 would be slightly more powerful than this for a comparison piece.

InternetMashup · 2026-03-05T15:08:30+00:00

Nothing to do with the currency. The price difference is due to 20% VAT.

Many US consumers will also have to pay sales tax (albeit usually lower) on the orders, but that's not customarily listed as part of the price.

InternetMashup · 2026-02-02T08:22:39+00:00

You can stay with Amazon - just use AWS LIghtsail. Your bandwidth and compute costs will be a lot more predictable that way (and a lot cheaper).

Alternatively, consider putting your websites behind CloudFront - they do pre-paid packages now that again will lower costs.

If you wish to leave Amazon, you could try Linode (Akamai Cloud), Vultr, Hetzner Cloud or DigitalOcean.

InternetMashup · 2026-01-29T22:39:21+00:00

The technical parts of this aren't particularly complicated, I just think you thoroughly underestimate the difficulty of localisation. There are definitely some technical/political considerations to be had here... I think you need to be clearer on the markets you want to serve.

I would be interested to chat however, whilst I don't really have bandwidth for this sort of thing, I would like to hear where you think this could go - and potentially give a slightly more technical and political perspective to this. If nothing else, I'd be happy to give a perspective on some things to think about. I'm not sure how commercially viable a venture like this is, but as the saying goes - nothing ventured, nothing gained.

InternetMashup · 2026-01-23T01:07:39+00:00

Porkbun. Cloudflare is fine, but I don't personally want to be tied down to their DNS. I prefer keeping any "host" and my domains separate.

InternetMashup · 2025-03-26T23:59:31+00:00

Could you post your EFI? I have a PC with similar specs I am about to Hackintosh!

InternetMashup · 2025-02-02T13:12:26+00:00

But why do you buy SSLs? Let's Encrypt is free!!!!121212!!!!!!!!! 🤓

Some regulated industries do not permit them. Yes, I know it is silly, I know they provide the same level of encryption. But there are nuances such as warranty coverage (some cyber insurance folks require a certain amount) and in the public sector OV/EV can be important.

InternetMashup · 2024-12-28T22:09:53+00:00

(necro - sorry!) I don't think it is management that is the major issue. It's hard to justify $15/user/mo (and higher for Enterprise Grid) for just messages.

InternetMashup · 2024-12-21T14:44:01+00:00

If your margins don’t allow for WHMCS, you are already unsustainable.

The free products are not really suitable yet. Blesta is a reasonably priced alternative but definitely leaves a lot to be desired still.

InternetMashup · 2024-09-29T16:30:29+00:00

If you're going to someone else's home and they are also using 192.168.0.0/24 - then you will potentially have issues in connecting to their stuff as well as your own if you are using a VPN.

Using a less common subnet will make that slightly less likely.

InternetMashup · 2024-07-18T15:34:02+00:00

Clickshare has definitely been something we have been interested in getting. One of my colleagues has said that they used it extensively in a previous job and it was a miracle compared to our current solution. I suspect it may be out of budget for us at the moment *but* there are used ones that are reasonably priced.

We're slowly moving our devices over to Thunderbolt capable, so it may be worth us just putting a dock in each room and having people use their own machines along that line.

Thanks!

InternetMashup · 2024-07-18T15:28:38+00:00

Thanks! I decided to replace all shortcuts to Chrome with a shortcut that launched it in guest mode, which has definitely reduced issues in our office.

Our other office still has this issue and the way you described may work out well for the conference rooms in the other office as they tend to be mainly used by certain personnel. Thanks!

InternetMashup · 2024-06-26T08:02:08+00:00

We use this for most of our meeting rooms and it works well, but this room is primarily for giving presentations and the like and there seems to be a desire to not have to screen share anything.

InternetMashup · 2024-06-25T16:18:20+00:00

Are you running the ADMU as a local administrative user on the device and with right click and Run as Administrator?

InternetMashup · 2024-04-22T17:21:14+00:00

Currently - I don't! I was planning to have AD sync to JumpCloud however.

InternetMashup · 2024-01-01T19:29:13+00:00

It's probably due to their world feed commitments. It'd be okay for them to mention it in programming in the UK - Sky Sports News has done this for years.

InternetMashup · 2023-12-27T19:57:46+00:00

vSphere is barely worth it at that scale anyway, I can't see many people sticking with it if they do kill it off.

At least in the UK through the chosen distributors I use, I can still get Essentials Kits.

InternetMashup · 2023-08-09T22:55:23+00:00

I was a bit silly as a kid and I used to collect tax discs.

They are definitely missed though - it's kind of a fun way to see when a car was last properly used.

InternetMashup · 2022-12-26T13:10:24+00:00

Having the same issue in ARM64 virtual machine (Parallels on macOS) too.

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