paulears

We had a harlequin floor that got a piece of sharp truss dragged over it creating a kind of furrow - they came out and fixed it. Wasn't cheap though.

We use painted 6mm MDF for our panto floors. Paint plus a final glaze. They wear really badly. At the end of panto - which is probably 80 odd shows, trucks have worn grooves in them, the edges are feathering away and odd boards develop pop ups in the centre. Repeated rescrewing is required and the stuff delaminates in thin layers. I didn't think MDF was made in layers just a mush that's compressed, but it does, you'll find the 6mm thickness splitting into a 3/3 or 2/4mm layer where the edges meet. Once the glaze is rubbed off, moisture from mopping also makes it swell. It's easy to paint, but has a limited life. Traditionally oil tempered hardboard does seem popular, but less nice to paint.

so many labels are the same, but in different locations, and I suppose for the clever computer folk - lcd label strips could work too. If the manufacturers only need you to have a PC and a dongle or other licence, it would be a very useful bit of kit off it could be developed properly. The only key feature nowadays seems to be touch screens, real faders and real buttons. The names are fighting counterfeits, and that's a sensible thing for them to do, but if you look at audio DAWs - there are loads and loads of cheap to mega priced physical work surfaces. It works for the audio people. Hardware controls are starting to be exclusive now, they're gradually cutting away the cheaper models, leaving the bulk now very expensive.

The little subdivisions of the industry as a whole have their little preferences, so I suppose if you wanted to be a "take any job" lighting person, then you'd need to be familiar with ETC, Avo, Chamsys and MA at the moment. If you take your packages into other places, and wish to integrate with other people's systems, then it's nice to have a brand in a rider, but of course it can't be met on a practical level by every venue. However, I'm not sure it matters that much as most people really familiar with their touring systems can pretty simply patch to house systems, and the only issue is the common one where they're using the systems fixture system to control the rare and massive range of heads on the market. I've noticed though, that many of the touring people are really good at building new files to enable control of these movers - one last week, coming into our venue just read off the attributes in our Magicq patch and within a few minutes had a basic one working in hers. A lighting tech nowadays needs to be excellent on their chosen control, and be competent on the other ones. Since Strand imploded and gave away their supremacy overnight, you can never be sure what's going to be in use, so learning the common ones makes sense. The trouble now is that ALL the popular controls are really expensive, so making the choice very hard, and probably personal. If you swap out your control for another, then what will you spend? five grand plus? If you choose to pick an MA, then what when you get to an ETC venue? The problem is just the same. One thing I discovered during the week. MA were in the press for really going after the Chinese counterfeiters. The controls they are targeting are now appearing here, and oddly, they've made no attempt to copy the internals, just the layout and look. Inside it's likely to run Windows 7 and have all the faders and buttons addressable via midi, so realistically, you could install any of the PC operating systems for the popular desks. I suspect the installation would be behind me, but if the Chinese sold these things under a generic title, make and design, they could be sold as a lighting controller, able to run ANY of the popular systems quite legally, and they'd sell lots. A console with a boot up option to run chamsys, Avo, MA and ETC software? I doubt it will happen - but people tour laptops that can do exactly this and then faff about with wings. Any lighting control purchase leaves you with interface issues if you tour in and out of venues - so swapping just changes the venue list of easy to operate ones!

The mixing station app is rather good and controls quite a few mixers, including the X-air devices - but if you have a 24" touchscreen this would be neat = but why limit it to just X-air products - the mixing station does Behringer/Midas. Allen and Heath Qu and GLD, plus Soundcraft Is, so that's a product already available and useful?

Well I just got home from running a show for 1100 elderly, disabled and near death people bussed in for their annual event. I thought I'd keep a tally of complaints. The stairs were too steep, and shouldn't have been there. There should have been a ramp (there was) The ramp was too steep, there should have been stairs The temperature was too hot turn the air-conditioning on (there isn't any) The temperature was too cold turn the air-conditioning off The sound was too loud the sound was too quiet The toilets were too far away I need an aisle seat, I have bad legs I had to keep getting up, people keep wanting to go past me My wheelchair is too heavy to push, my husband cannot push it up the ramp You can't push my wheelchair, only my husband can What do you mean you don't have hearing aid batteries, my local shop always has them! Why are the toilets not in the auditorium Why don't you put on the tickets that people should go before taking their seats. Will I get my walker back if you take it away - yes, that's why it has a ticket stubs and a number That's not my walker - my walker is green. Husband then says your walker is blue! Is the loop system on for my seat. Hang on - I'll go and check - yes J32 is on! Do you know where my seat is? No sorry, I don't. Could you find my husband please. What does he look like? Old and grey wearing a straw coloured hat - that seemed to be a uniform. probably missed a few. We also had a miracle and somebody left their wheelchair behind.

I'm not quite sure what the T&Cs you are talking about are? The relationship between a client and the subcontractor would need contracts to be watertight, and the T&Cs are just part of the contract. As far as my limited legal skills are aware, contract terms must be reasonable. If they want you to cover X event, that's in that contract. If they want Y event, that's separate, unless the contract specifically details each one, as in perhaps a series of dates you agree to cover. The tax man cares little about T&Cs, unless they are going down the dispute route between contractor and employee. If you are a real contractor, you read the terms of the contract and agree to accept or decline. You can of course negotiate. You and they have to determine as best you can your status. In most cases, they will suffer more than you will if HMRC determine they're an employer. Of course at the end of the day there's only one real question - do you want the money or not? Some clients can be negotiated with. others take it as an insult and would stop using you. I have one who has resisted any form of increase for 6 years. He's one of those types who would cut off his nose to spite his face - it's not the money but principle. He'd simply stop, rather than pay more. However - some people have included terms that I cannot agree to, and I simply cross them out, and send them back with my signature and they usually bluster and it still goes ahead. One thing that often sneaks in is titles, in emails I get referred to "our technical Manager" and I am not. I tried adding a line to an invoice once charging for Technical management and they soon put a stop to that, so negotiation can be fun. Are you getting unusual T&Cs? Mine are always very dull? I'm interested in 30 days payment terms, recovery in full for the cost of sundry items provided and stuff like that. I don't think time or hours or even finishing times are ever in mine? In fact, in my own documents I never actually say where my short day turns into normal day and then into long day, and I decide the cutoff point based on how hard I worked!

the thing with a real noose is that all the safety features work on the premise it is safe, not unsafe. Somebody trips, breaks the 'break-open' feature and panics, using the tube of extra strong glue they see (but left behind by the carpenter, not the props people). They put it back. They person chokes. Would that person then step forward and take the blame, or would the 'noose safety officer' catch the blame? lots of honest people, when faced with this would do the human thing, and shut up, leaving the fault with the person who declared it safe. I suspect we could all make a noose that would be safe - up to the point when something goes wrong. Look at stage illusionists. They prep, check, re-check and still the illusions go wrong with new and unexpected causes. I still do the occasional illusion job, and frankly, sticking people into boxes, shutting them in and then setting light to lighter fuel scares me witless. I really hate having big jars of lighter fluid that you can dunk things in. I hate flight cases with this stuff in, and I hate having a pocket full of lighters. I hate people throwing me flaming fire sticks to catch, and I hate every time one is shoved into a box containing a person. The paperwork is fine, but there is always a chance I messed up, somehow, or didn't notice the dancer inside had bumped into the container of lighter fluid and had dribbles down her top, just before the fire stick wafts past it. I don't mind every other risk we manage, but fire scares me. I have an extinguisher, but never want to use it!

Anyone care to have a look at this Thomann rig/ their web site This would just fit in my van with the rest of the gear, but I can't find any reviews apart from a crazily awful disco on youtube.

It also doesn't cover this either, as it is not a consumer transaction, but a business one. Interestingly the argument here is that often equipment is eminently for for purpose, but the people running it aren't. I really cannot see any judge determining that a sophisticated, expensive, professional quality installation is not fit for purpose because the opening staff are not competent? Why would anyone think that this kind of kit should be capable of running itself?

So sad that my experiences are exactly the same as James's and many others on the forum and elsewhere. Church installs often look simple and straightforward and never are. Just a huge list of problems, most amazingly obvious but a total surprise to the folk at the church. I've been doing a lot of recording work in churches this summer and the best installed sound that actually works for them seems to have a common theme. Old fashioned column speakers, with small drivers, mics on goosenecks in the traditional places and no radio mics seem by far the best and most stable. I've noticed denomination, size and budgets have no real impact, and the worst are the cobbled together ones with every element wrong, that have nasty radio mics on everyone, irrespective of them actually saying anything. One had the verger tip person - clearly the sort of person nobody said no to, wearing a radio mic and trying to stand next to the person speaking, who didn't have one. You'd never see systems this bad in anything other than a church.

Nobody ever mentions Dorman and Smith plugs and sockets. Horrible things and I remember at 17, spending hours removing them and fitting 13A or 15A, and then putting the things back for TV deliveries in the council house districts where the D&S plugs were still standard in the late 70s! Weird live pins that were fuses!

Oddly, I doubt very much that the CPC mics vs DPAs make any appreciable difference to the issues involved in these installations. The real problem is much more simple. Nobody really did any of the design stages properly. Technology has made it possible to do so much, but it is also expected to be magic. Churches rarely respond well to the traditional ringing out approach where the object is to maximise volume before feedback. great for some forms of production, where the volume is critical, and there is a very good engineer sitting there fingers on faders, waiting to detect those obvious too some indications the words is about to end. Church - as a descriptor means nothing. Are we talking about a 17th century parish church who simply wants the Christening to be audible to everyone, or are we talking about a church in a warehouses, with huge PA, screens cameras and cleverness? the little parish church lacks one essential feature - a human capable of looking after the kit. I'm avoiding one of these at the moment. They want me to specify and spend their money. I don't want to do it because I went to my grandson's christening there and all the things I'd already explained to them in an earlier visit had been ignored by everyone. The constant drop out of the radio mics (and frankly it's a small church and they really don't need radios) could have been helped by my advise, but no the TX pack is still in the vicars back pocket facing the receivers in the cupboard with door closed, 60 ft away. The lapel mic is still clipped on to his chest at breast bone height because the cable isn't long enough to go up the inside with it in the back pocket. He walks past the half a dozen Richer Sound speakers screwed to the wooden pews, near the aisle. three feedback squeals as he passes, every time. In this example, it's people wanting the system to work as soon as turned on, and working by magic. Clip a mic on anywhere and it should work. They knobbled me again in Tesco - I explained I was really busy at the moment, so sorry I couldn't help. The other end of the scale has digital this, digital that, cat 5 everywhere and expensive systems dangling from ceilings. The band are all miked up and have in-ears, yet it still works badly. The expensive line array was tuned by the installers, but overwritten when the local expert re-aligned everything to add in a minuscule delay to the further speakers because he'd been told on the net their feedback issues were due to the lack of time alignment. they sent the mixer file and I could not imagine why all the EQs visibly looked instantly wrong. The idea that any mic would need everything below 300Hz scooped out, and everything above 3.5K shelved away, with an extra peak at 2K apple;ied makes me wonder. Looking at all the inputs they all had amazingly odd EQ, but there was a graphic on the output and that had another mountain range. No wonder it was unstable, but their sound 'team' had all helped mess it up. The problems seem to be people based, not equipment based. The trouble with churches, especially well funded ones, is that technology is handled by a team of varying ability, but randomly allocated pips on their shoulders. A good op, a single pair of speakers could make services sound great. Somebody mixing from an inexperienced perspective on clever kit is doomed. Trouble is, they assume that their expensive kit is the problem. It rarely is. You only have to view some of the tutorials on youtube (mainly from the US) of total idiots explaining how to do things on their clever kit that so clearly they don't understand.

Yes - I thought there was an overlap, so activity next to, but not into our band is less worrying - phew!

I was about to delete this mail from OFCOM, till I suddenly realised this is one of the newer wireless bands, being opened up to new users. Not sure this is to be welcomed.

As I'm old, I vote that in reality nothing has changed. Undervalued and underpaid. However - as technology has advanced, we've started to compartmentalise, so general technicians only tend to be older, perhaps having gone through sound, Lx, set and now video departments over the years. new technicians straight from uni seem to be already set in a specific pathway. They know all about video walls and scalers and other video gizmos, but often little about the other disciplines. As a result, we now need more people to get cover for 'everything' and often the result is that nobody can build the set, or know how to cut legs to fit tiered steeldeck - really basic things from 30 years ago that now result in shrugs and blank faces. In my old fashioned and random world we now have more people on the house crew than previous years because the skill set is less wide. people are into their chosen discipline before they've tried everything. This I reckon is bad. Pay is terrible. the day rate for doing TV work is double what I can get for theatre, and TV has loads of people all waiting to do their particular work type. I cannot get pay up, and I personally haven't had a pay rise in years from 3 of the clients I work for regularly. I really want multi-talented people but they don't seem to exist in the people new to the business, who are still learning. I also find that much of the responsibility of FOH now falls to me. it really isn't my job getting rowdy audience members out of their seats to throw them out, or has happened to miss the start of Act 2 because I've got the police putting them in handcuffs. It's not my job to keep the audience safe, to usher people to seats. I do though. Looking around sometimes, I realise that if anyone got hurt, that would also be me as I'm the oldest and nobody sometimes would even have an expired First Aid certificate. It's not my job to arrange parking, or merchandising and it certainly isn't my job to unblock toilets but all these things are now common. To be fair, I now invoice the toilet job as an extra on the invoice, being creative with the description to get it approved - but I don't put marigolds on for free. Lots of my work has links to Equity rates, so these trickle up automatically, as does subsistence. Some of the jobs for supervisory technicians are still below twenty grand a year salary. That's just not money to have a family on is it? One of my friends was going to leave his salaried job, and go back freelance, but he's engaged and suddenly realised a salary would get him a mortgage, freelance work won't. They heard on the grapevine he was off, promoted him to Head of Sound and now he's happy with his new package. We're worth far more, but some of us are very highly skilled and others are incapable awkward people who don't do any of us any good. There just doesn'tseem to be a way to pay the good ones more than the idiots.

hire can be a real problem for education. They have a very odd funding culture - you have running costs, which used to cover books, paper, small items like the coomber audio devices and misc stuff, and then you have capital items. usually all the departments put in bids, and then a committee decide which is flavour of the month - a new catering kitchen, a recording studio, a new beauty sun tan suite etc etc. you ask for a figure, and then get allocated 90% of it. Crafty teachers build in items that can be removed and leave working systems, less on the ball staff ask for exactly what they want and cannot get a working end project. The really stupid thing is that schools and colleges can have a twenty grand project funded, yet cannot afford small things needed to get it going - like a forgotten hard drive, or fluid for a smoke machine - crazy! Very common. Moving light rigs with not money for lamps or servicing so three years later, nothing works. they buy AKG 414 mics and then the idiots drop it, and nobody can find the money to fix it! Funding for a drum studio - which got spent on drums and acoustic panels to make it nice to record in, but no money for soundproofing, so next door a class simply stops when somebody records! All real stuff from the college I worked at. Called in by the principal to sort a problem in another department. A brand new welding workshop kitted out really well. Right next to the library departments silent study areas, who share a plain clockwork wall. The welding people had their chipping station bolted to the wall. 9.01am on it's first day, the library staff rush in and say how long will you be doing that? Er, says the welding tutor, September? They needed some serious work to prevent structure borne noise getting in and out, and no money left. Hire as a problem solver is often impossible because the running budgets simply don't have that kind of money in them. You cannot bid for a hire charge in the future in a capital budget because accountancy wise, there is no asset to go on the register. Educational budgets just cannot deal with sensible business financial practice. I got called in once because I broke the accountancy package when I accidentally made a profit and when the budget became a positive rather than negative figure, it crashed. nobody has expected to be in credit! I was told to never do this again.

With LED, it seems you constantly have to keep watching them, One of my Chinese suppliers just produced a 250W COB LED mover - zoom, focus, 2 x gobo, prism etc. 250W means a big box again, but the brightness will be interesting to see. I thought brightness had levels out, but no, it's on the up again. I wonder if it's worth blowing a few hundred quid on a range of brand new random very cheap products and looking for the gems, and giving away the awful ones?

The killer is profiles. You can replace a par can fairly easily now. However the ability to throw a sharp standard gobo on the floor is a much more expensive product even from China, and is quite difficult to do. I've never been a fan of PCs but that puddle of light on the floor is what typically the LED washes do, and the lovely blendable pool of light from a Fresnel is not that simple to replicate. I suspect your shopping list can be done but it depends what you currently use to do the job. If you want to do even washes you an do it. If you want salts of light in the air with haze, you can do it, but if you want the actual look of the old lights then your budget falls down. You don't need profiles so that's OK, so if you want an even wide wash the multi source RGBWUA or RGBWUA+ units are good and the price range decent. One thing to remember. You're buying a package so you MUST buy more than you will need for decent lifespan. You won't be able to replace or add more in the next year because the next batch will be different. If you need ten, buy 12.

The other issue here is that without doubt, you are not privy to how the school spends money. behind the scenes there will be all sorts of documents and rules laid down for this and in many cases, the purchasing people ignore the teaching staff and treat this like any other purchase. loudspeakers probably mean the local hifi shop gets asked to recommend a system, or because computers have speakers, the IT people get to source the items. This is perfectly normal. It's also very common for students to believe they have a role such as yours, but the school quietly do their own thing and as you are on holiday soon, you may get back in September to a pair of cheap speakers provided by an educational supplier that are simply hopeless, and this is perfectly normal. a year after I left, I spotted a pair of very expensive recording studio monitors sitting on wall brackets in the sports hall with basket ball rips in the cones and the tweeters poked in. Somebody needed speakers. The course had finished so they were re-purposed. Did they know how much they were worth? I doubt it.

This topic got me thinking. Ignoring the problems sourcing the right equipment, it does strike me that decent sounding kit for this kind of thing is quite difficult. We have a budget - and often the people looking for kit may consider £500 a huge sum, or consider £10,000 small change, it varies so much. We don't have that many 'type' choices any longer. Going back years, we had the Bose 802s - small boxes that could be duplicated and stacked sitting on a decent enough sub. Panasonic's Ramsa brand had some very similar sized cabs for conference work mainly, which I quite liked, and there were also some Celestions. These all had to my ears a quite decent sound, assuming that you always used the Bose controller of course. They fell down in the volume department with reliability when pushed. We then had the EV300 plastic trapezoid boxes that managed to do quite a bit, quite well, and reasonably cheaply, then we had the plastic moulded boxes from almost every manufacturer doing the same kind of job. in similar box designs we had the HK Actors and others in their wooden box range and similar cube designs like the C7/B2, but all this lot are either cheap or expensive. There's not really much ion the middle bar the own brand products from Thomann in Germany which one of the local pa companies has a cube shaped rig, which does actually sound quite nice. Now we are also dealing with loads of line array systems, but these boxes often are a. expensive, and b. individually lower powered. OK with a big stack either side, but as reported recently, 4 a side turned up loud doesn't;t do much for the reliability. The usual culprits are mentioned in that other topic, but if somebody has a budget between 2 and 10 grand - there isn't a huge amount of kit to comment on or read reviews. At one of the shows I liked the sound of the Shermann systems and I nearly bought one of those, but despite leaving messages, they never got back to me. I bought a long time ago some EAW 325 speakers and they've had the odd repair but are still going. Space wise on the van, they are perfect but I cannot find anything the same size that is as good or better. I'm very happy to accept new makes and products, I don't follow trends or one-upmanship. I'm sure lots of people have PA speakers that work for them that are not d&b, or d&b prices - but we don't mention them. If we could highlight the few products we're using that really do work, but would probably never be on the A list, that could help folk like those in the other topic? Anyone using those Thomann bigger boxes? A system seems to be 3-6 grandish. Not throwaway money, but not silly prices, which frankly, some of the big brands now are.

With the current rules, a permanent outside stage could be quite simply, but at a cost, be fitted with some sockets for power that would be safe. The notion of running cables from building to building really is not acceptable any longer. This is the kind of that common sense cannot help. So - is the 10K an entire system with mics, stands, cables, amps, mixers and speakers, or is it something else? electricity could easily eat severely into your budget - but as it's a safety issue, then the school may have a separate budget for this kind of thing - not touching your 10K. Also - is it 10K +VAT, so really 12K? teachers often have no clue as to VAT, so if you are looking on-line, with consumer pricing, your budget may even be higher in real terms.

For 10k, your school or college will almost certainly have a proper process for this kind of project. Usually considered a capital item bid, and if it's approved then there will be probably three firms asked to quote. So the first step is to identify suitable and reliable suppliers WHO HAVE DONE IT BEFORE. You also need a proper specification, and after somebody recommended problematic by modern standards Bose 802s, which have been the Marmite of the audio world for a huge period of time (I'm actually a pro 802 sound person), be aware that anyone recommending a speaker only available second hand, is potty, and out of their depth in modern audio. Is the 10k for just the speakers, speakers and amps, speakers, amps and processing, speakers amps, processing and mixer, or even that lot with some monitors thrown in? Or do you look at the Bishopsound Big systems that for this kind of use could be spot on in terms of value for money - lots of big boxes, not bad performance for the type and cheap! There is also a risk to the teachers, not you. If they specify kit that turns out to be over or under specified, then the powers that be will consider them to have wasted what are normally public funds, and unavailable to other staff. If you get 10k and science or sports don't, and they see your 10K sitting in a store for 90% of the time, they will kick off, and your department have a tarnished reputation and this takes years to recover. Seen it so many times. There is always a barb in the "student technician" title. YOU could become the person who wasted 10K, the teacher who signed it off blaming you. This also happens. One Blue Room member I'm aware of specified a huge clever purchase that never worked. Their teacher had no clue at all - quite normal, and took their advice, and it went t*ts up badly. The big firm who supplied exactly what was asked for got flack because the system never worked, because assumptions were made that meant some of the kit just could not talk to each other. It got quite nasty. He still occasionally gets the comment when people meet him - "OH you were that Blue Room bloke' He is now 33! Ideally, you actually need a consultant who does NOT sell equipment. Real consultants don't - so they're unbiased. If you ask a firm to quote for a broad spec, you will get expensive kit that may be OTT, or disco kit that will sound awful, or the whole range between. You seem to want value for money, but will not be the person who knows what the kit is expected to do, because nobody there can write the spec it sounds. You need to find an outside person, unbiased and experienced. Maybe one of our members can advise in your area if they visit and have a chat with everyone.

Cheers guys - I actually caught a council official poking around and I chatted to him - he'd been sent to see which land it was and I think it was him who then went back and reported to the person I'm unable to speak to. My communications is very pro-forma. Copy and paste stuff, no real detail. I can re-open the case if I am unsatisfied, but this downgrades my complaint to stage 1 again, and it took a month to get to stage 2, which has now failed. I did copy in my new councillor - who didn't even respond. The amount is pretty small - £100, but the tree fell to about 45 degrees, hanging over the road and with no street lights any longer, I drove out of my drive straight into it - as I was turning right, and of course my headlights not pointing that way. the grass and the fallen tree were dealt with by the contractor both Councils use for maintaining parks and verges. Sorry for drifting away from my original question on outstanding invoices. on that subject, one thing does annoy me - this clients who clearly write the cheque they insist on still paying by, on the day they receive the invoice, then they post it 30 days on - and then it takes another week to get the money!

If this is for real, then expectations are pretty low, because your neighbours will go mad and complain. If it's a paperwork project, then we also need to know the level you're working at. There's little point us getting clever about on and off axis sound, beam angles, dispersion and then practical elements, if all it is doing is making announcements. If the idea is to be louder than the musicians, and amplify them accurately and balance the sound sources properly, then your budget will need to be substantial. If the idea is a few guitar amps and keys on a basic outdoor stage, then maybe all the PA needs to do is amplify the quiet things. tell us your cunning plan - what you think and then we'll find the positives - the things that will be great, but we'll also find many of the terrible and hopeless ideas. To be very honest - your 'title' worries me. Schools and colleges often bandy these titles around but very, very rarely does it indicate very much. Many teachers, low on the technical scale in vent these titles so that anytime they need sound or lights, they point at you and you sort it. You will find some teachers of theatre technical or music tech are really knowledgeable but others are simply terrible and have a very poor understanding of how our world is. Hopefully, yours is OK. I hate outside jobs like this because expectations rarely get met. You were thinking of quality - but outside the key physics is the inverse square law. no matter how loud you start, it dies away to a whisper at a distance. Same applies to Glastonbury as well as bog standard high school. In the expensive world, you use speaker systems that throw sound in a more controlled way. normally the sound disperses in width and height. Height is a bit pointless, nobody is upon there, so better systems funnel the wasted sound in a more useful direction - but cost lots. light breeze can throw your sound three miles away the wrong way and people on site can't hear it. 100W might be enough, but the next step up really is approaching 1000W to make real differences. this messes up the budget. So we need to know as much detail as you can manage. If it really is a real project we can then help. If it's a hypothetical bit of work, then the teacher who set it's questions are vital, not your rewording. Copy and paste it if you like, then we'll know the spin they've given you and perhaps any red herrings thrown in to fox you. I was a sneaky bugger and always set traps for my thicker students who I knew would use Google. Ask away!