Ian-S

The headsets we use for FPV flying (which are mostly DIY hacked together modified VR sets since nobody can afford £300 for a set of fatsharks) have foam around the areas that touch the skin, this foam doesn't like moisture at all and if it gets too wet you have to tear it off and apply more. I'd suspect they'll use hardenend off fabric on the ride making cleaning easier, I still think it'll be best to take a small pack of baby wipes with you.

By all accounts the headsets will be hard wired to the carriage to stop forgetful people like me walking off with them, so nope, don't think they'll have multiple sets per train running, plus there are only 32 wireless channels available unless you front up a very large amount of money, so doubt they'll be wireless either (that doesn't even consider the lag, battery and cross talk issues independent wireless units would have). Either that or they'll hand you a baby wipe in the staging area...

So they hobbled themselves? LOL

I don't get this restriction of 850m track length Thorpe has, is it to do with noise (which has no real world relevance since the shortest coaster in the park is one of the noisiest)? Somebody care to explain?

Isn't it the one that was there originally? Dragon something I think it was called.

You mean you like painting?

Well, going back on topic, I really hate it when your wife volunteers you to paint someone else's house, knowing full well there are very few things in life you hate more, than painting....

Just a causal observation but my nephew ended up in a cell overnight, with a later criminal conviction and community service order, for simply telling someone online to 'go drown yourself in the lake', to say the one flippent comment has ruined his life, is an understatement. Back in the good old day when we paid per letter for text and waiting 20 minutes for an image to load on a website, there were a few unofficial rules for online conduct: Pink text to indicate sarcasm or humour, Never say anything online that you wouldn't say to the person if they were standing in front of you. It seems a lot of people should be made aware of these old school rules, it might save an awful lot of trouble.

I'd hope the white is just grey primer, although I was always told never put primer on top of old paint, always rub the old paint off first....

I really wish the media would just take the press releases verbatim and make small adjustments than try and be original and get things wrong, which they seem to do more often than not, you'd think they'd remember Derren interrupting Matt Baker on the BBC to say 'let's get one thing clear now, this is not a rollercoaster so please don't call it one'.

If it's genuine then maybe someone made a 'mistake' with the embargo date....

Maybe that's how it looks in the vr headset?

LOL that was my thought too.

Bahh, coal and stone slabs rule.

Think it's safe to say it's only meaning is that the number 1 will follow tomorrow.

Biggest load of crap I've heard this week, thanks for the chuckles. If you had read properly what I wrote, you'd understand they recommended them so the children could submit their homework online, it had nothing to do with them saying the children need them to learn, which is utter claptrap, they're not even allowed to take the iPads into school anyway.

Bingo! When I went to school the most advanced item anybody had was a pen and ruler, some may have had solar powered calculators, but they were not allowed to be used in leasons, we also had this item called a Walkman, it was a musical item that played a cassette tape, that's a rectangle thing about the size of a modern day phone that stored music on a magnetic tape spooled around two gears, you had to 'record' on the tape in realtime (drag and drop was something you did to smaller kids), and if you were lucky, it also had an FM radio built in, they only started appearing in the final years, my secondary (same one my son goes to), had four computers in the whole school, one in the office and three BBC Micro machines in the computer room. The walkmans were banned in lessons, if you were caught listening to it, it was taken off you and returned at the end of the day, my form teacher (a wonderful French guy who sadly died a few years after I left outside the school in a road accident) used to let us listen to them in form, or he would play the top 40 recorded from the radio on low volume, but other than hat, no outside 'entertainment' was allowed. When we went in for the induction evening, I was amazed to find the old library had been converted into classrooms, the school has a library but it's tiny by comparison, and is most classrooms, nearly every desk has a computer of some description on it, all connected to the net, which the kids regularly use proxy servers to get around the school filters. The school didn't even have a payphone, we had to walk out to the one in town if we wanted to phone our parents, or beg to use the school office one, which they would only let you do in total emergencies, like your arm was hanging off or something. Mobile phones didn't exist, infact you were considered posh if you had a home phone, they were that rare. I'm sure iPads are very useful, but I won't be buying one, if the school want to, that's up to them, but I won't.

Yes another bugbear of mine, they said we recommend you purchase your children iPads so they can do their homework online, I said if you want to buy my son an iPad be my guest, but until then he'll either use my £50 android tablet or the 5 year old household PC. My reputation precedes me when it comes to the local schools, I'm not one of these that goes in and complains when liitleme is shouted at or given a detention by a teacher like some parents (oh boy, some parents are amazing), but I don't let them take the pisswhich they often do.

Detentions and confiscations are legal under the Education Act, but this does conflict with Article 6 of the European Human Rights Act which we are a signatory, it is quiet interesting the reaction you get when pointing it out to heads, they usually state that by sending your child to the school you agree to their rules. I personally think mobiles should be banned full stop in schools, if you had brain cancer and you were being operated on, you wouldn't dare allow the surgeon to do his job if he was playing candy crush on his phone while cutting out the tumour, so I don't see why the same principle can't be employed in everyday life when a person is supposed to be concentrating on the work they are doing, phones/tablets are a distraction, they have a time and a place, it drives me nuts when I'm trying to hold down a conversation with someone whose head is in their phone. Having said that I totally agree on Benn's view of schools, they are not there to educate, their sole purpose is to indoctrinate, but the law is the law, if you don't like it, home educate your child like my sister has done... it's funny that yesterday I had a similar conversation with my son's head over homework.... This is totally OT, maybe a mod should transfer these posts to another thread

I wish my sons school had that policy.

Aren't you allowed to use your phones between lessons? In my sons school more people get head injuries from walking into someone else while both are looking at their phones while travelling to their next lesson than collisions in pe lessons.

That figures lol I guess some people just like having a bit of power, someone stopped my son at chessie last year saying he was too short to go on the ride, so he showed him the wristband, to be told he still wasn't going on, eventually the ride op poked his head out the booth and told the op to stop being stupid as 'he's been on this more times than I can remember today'. According to another member here there's a ride op on the Smiler who's quiet well known for their power trip attitude too, some people just do things the hard way because they can.

Maybe it's because of the crap throughput, the ride is aimed at children as their first 'experience' of something like this, not really adults unless they're going on with their kid, we went on as a group but I suspected that had me or the wife tried to go on alone later in the day when the queue was 40 minutes, they wouldn't have been too pleased with us.

They should open it first day, it'll get the bad press out the way before the new version of Air opens.

Thanks got to clean my monitor now.