Lamas Web Design

The Blog has been quiet recently but that is because Lamas Design is branching out.  

Adding Web development to the list of services.

That is development, not necessarily design.  I may have an Art O’level and be able to draw decent enough stick men, but that is about it.

It’s all about the coding.    And the learning at the moment.

In fact this weekend I learned that Bootstrap (that’s the thing that makes a website look pretty on a full size monitor and then makes it look just as good on a mobile) even though they have Bootstrap 4 out in Alpha, it does not always do the job right or in my case - at all.  

So I am better off sticking with 3.thing.whatever it is for the time being.  

This little exercise of learning took me an hour and a half of head scratching.  Also this weekend I learned (again the hard way) that when using Bootstrap 3.thing.whatever, it only works when you type in the correct name for the classes.  There is a difference between cm-sm-12 and col-sm-12 in that the one starting cm does not exist!

Another lesson, learned over the course of the last couple of weeks is that <form> and <from> are not interchangeable and I need to (a) learn to type and (b) learn to spell.

And I am reworking the Lamas Design website to incorporate the development side of things.  When I say rework I may have understated it a little.  The website is currently sitting on the 1&1 web hosting server designed with the 1&1 templates. Well not for much longer.  I will be putting up a new site soon.  All my own work coded by my own fair hands.  

Windows 10 Parental Controls now called Family Safety

The final PC was upgraded to Windows 10 a couple of weeks ago.  Initially I wanted to have just one PC on Windows 7 to help with troubleshooting, but Windows 10 seems to be ok with this now.

I changed the existing Hard Drive to a an SSD first.  This procedure went smoothly.  There was a small problem with boot on the new drive but that was not unexpected and was quickly resolved.

Once I knew that this was working properly, I set the update to run.  It did this a lot quicker that the rest because it has the most powerful processor and has an "adequate" amount of RAM.

This is the PC that the junior Lamas use to do homework and play their online games so I wanted to be sure that they were not going to find something on the internet that was unsuitable for little eyes.

In Windows 7 it was simple, set the age range and block out the time the account was allowed to use the PC.

In Windows 10 you have to go through the Family Safety and each person signs in with a Microsoft account.  That is all very well, but my kids don't have their own emails let alone a Microsoft Account.
Even the Network Manager has escaped so far without a Microsoft Account.  I have one and have had it since the Tech Previews of 10 started appearing.

The local accounts that the kids have used up to now are not longer relevant as they are now just standard user accounts and have no indication that they are for a child.

Each child needed a MS account created before I could add them to the Family.  Then I had to "add" them to the family.  Then they had to verify that they were happy to "join the Family" by verifying the email received.  This was all actually done by me, as I mentioned before, they do not actually have their own email!  So once this had been done and I had 2 Children attached to the account, I had to set up the times when they were allowed to use the PC and for how long each day they could spend on it.

All Done.  The Network Managers account was changed to be included in the "family" and we were good to go. 

They have been using the PC now for a week or so and it has been working well.  In my opinion, that is!  The Junior Lamas have commented that they have less time on the PC than before.   Nevermind!

It is a overly complicated procedure to set up but I am getting weekly reports on their online activities.