Alex I know everything's transient, but transient's ok. For now... (Heading home against the commuters' flow) 1 week ago
(Excuse the rare ramble not connected to the site, but I have new toys and am telling everybody who doesn't run away first… ;o) ).
Having received Final Scratch 2 yesterday (and nearly giving myself a black eye trying to unwrap it at the speed of light) – God bless student loans ;o) – I'm going to be trying it out in anger at FRFs in the Union's Lux tonight (well, unless DJ K Ray and chums get all upset at the extra cables in the DJ booth or it gets beered…).
So, an advance apology to anyone who might be in Lux around the start of the night and who catches me making a pig's ear of having a mix.
This of course assumes I can make the thing work and that the real DJs let me have a play…!
UPDATE 10.30pm: well, I'm standing in the DJ booth in Lux; only had a little mix so far but blimey, this thing's rather good. “But then, it damn well ought to be for the amount I paid for it” says the Northern part of my genes… ;o)
UPDATE 2: 12.30am: I've just played a few more tunes in Lux and dear God I can't believe I haven't bought this toy before now – having 5,000+ records at the end of a search (and a drag-and-drop), to play on vinyl… Blimey, it's all rather fun! If that's not geeky enough for you, here's what I played: The Beginnerz “Reckless Girl”, Benjamin Thieves “Texas”, Dave McCullen “B***h”, and Switch “A bit patchy”. Then I got chucked off the decks to make way for some more Kev Ray ;o)
Interestingly, Fabric are the only London club listed by Stanton as having FS2 installed – it's a shame really 'cos it's such a cool toy, but I guess most DJs would rather spend their hard-earned chasing down elusive white labels rather than put their faith in technology. Understandable, but if you're thinking about getting FS2 (and you can afford it), I'd definitely recommend you go for it. The software's very very easy to use and runs very fast – and is very stable – on my 1.8Ghz lappy. 9.5/10 (half a mark knocked off 'cos it costs
Posted by Alex on Fri 28th April 2006
The Union diaries – “blogs” – are still in the development stage where the end result won't necessarily look and act in the same way as it does at the moment, but we're keen to find out what you think about the system so far; does it seem easy enough to use? What would you change about how it works? What would you put on the diaries homepage? What extras would you like to add?
Speak now or forever grumble… ;o)
Posted by Alex on Thu 27th April 2006
A while back, one of the more technically-minded members of the UPSU team mentioned that there were people using MSN Messenger as a way of sending out advertisements. Naturally I assumed the worst and – choking on my instant coffee – decried it as a cheap way of spamming users of instant messenger programs, and another intrusion on peoples' privacy.
As usual, I slightly jumped the gun.
The way this works is this; say the Union wanted to send out “what's on” information through MSN Messenger. We would set up an MSN “bot”, which is simply a computer program with an MSN Messenger account that “talks” to people on it's MSN contacts list.
To join up to the service, I would simply add the bot's e-mail address to my MSN contacts list – e.g. sociallife@upsu.net. The bot would automagically accept my e-mail address into it's contacts list and send out a message through MSNM (assuming I'm online) saying something like,
“This is the UPSU.net Social:Life messenger bot. I send out what's on information every 24 hours.
To join up to this service and receive this information, please type 'join'. To cancel, please type 'cancel', or simply close this conversation window and delete me from your contacts list.
Remember you can cancel this service at any time simply by typing 'cancel'.”
Seems simple enough doesn't it?
The bot would then keep an eye out for you and when it sees you're online and you haven't been sent the latest updates for at least 24 hours, it sends out a mini-summary of what's on, e.g.
“Tonight at the Union – Mr. Scruff in Lux 9pm to 2am (dance music) – more info click here
Tomorrow at the Union – ….
Drinks offers – Bud 2-4-
Posted by Alex on Thu 27th April 2006
If you've ever used Outlook's calendar to organise your life/work/whatever, you might've worked out that it's a) pretty damned handy and b) a bit complicated (and, if you're tied to a desktop machine, c) stuck without it if you're away from your own PC).
Google have quietly introduced the Google calendar beta (“beta” of course meaning “we think it works, but we're not making any promises…”) – well worth a look, especially if you're fashionable enough to have a Google mail (aka Gmail, but apparently it's not called that any more) account too.
Why am I posting this? I'm just testing out some code changes I'm making behind the scenes. Don't mind me – I'm just being a geek… B-)
Posted by Alex on Wed 26th April 2006
BBC.co.uk's magazine today published an article on how home security is largely useless in the fight against burglaries, citing a study by the University of Portsmouth.
Depressing stuff, but there's plenty of information available online on securing your home, so don't have nightmares :o)
Posted by Alex on Wed 26th April 2006
If you hadn't noticed the great big purple box on the top right of every page on the site, have you gone blind?! ;o) We've finally started making use of Pure FM's RSS feed to show a real-time list of what shows are on the air – now all you have to do is click “tune in” to check out what's on the air.
I might shrink it a bit though – it's a bit tall…!
Posted by Alex on Fri 21st April 2006
I've had 163 e-mails today.
I think I've forgotten what the sun looks like…
;o)
Posted by Alex on Mon 3rd April 2006
Another amazingly dull post coming up… ;o)
I've been tweaking the code that decides what the URL is for the pages on the site. The changes aren't finished yet, but it should mean shorter, easier-to-remember URLs to find your way around the site, and Google & chums should be able to do a better job of indexing the site, which isn't too bad an idea either.
It also means we can override certain pages individually, so the Sociallife homepage, for example, is actually at upsu.net/sociallife and not some long, complicated address instead. All the old URLs still work, so you won't have to update your bookmarks, either.
The main reason for this is so we can get URLs for pages like the forums – which have URLs like http://www.upsu.net /component /option,com_simpleboard /func,view /Itemid,336 /catid,27 /id,549 /#549 – down to something like http://www.upsu.net/forums/v/549#549.
I've also been tweaking the search engine – the output is a lot easier to read, and you can bookmark your searches if you're that kinda person. Once I've done a bit more homework, I'll be re-jigging the way the search engine selects your search results, so (hopefully) the search results should be a lot more accurate.
Oh, and plans are now in motion for a new JobShop system which should be ready for the new academic year. The existing system is ok, but doesn't do everything we want it to. I'd like to see a system which is properly integrated into the site; Job Searches would be much easier – you'll be able to search for a job or job type, apply direct for some jobs through the site, and get further information and help with just a few mouse clicks.
We'll also be making it easier to get information and advice on searching for a job, and the jobs bulletin should be more accurate, contain more of the right information, and will (hopefully) also be customised to your preferences – more interested in admin work than customer service? Just tell us in your profile and we'll customise your bulletin e-mail before we send it out to you.
This, of course, is all assuming I don't decide to go and herd goats in the Andes over the summer instead…
Told you it was going to be another boring post… ;o)
Posted by Alex on Mon 3rd April 2006
Well, the joy that is waking up to find ketchup in your shoes, the kitchen's contents swapped with the bathroom, a stray poodle in your underwear drawer, the BBC claiming Tardisodes are the next big thing (what do you mean, they weren't a joke?), and TheRegister telling us that China's bought Google, has passed us by for another year.
A few weeks ago I started wondering what could be done to annoy people visiting UPSU.net. The results are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. One of those – UPSUuuuuugle, I liked enough to keep, and so google.upsu.net was born. It works just like the Google UK homepage, but it has an extra button – search UPSU.net. The results are exactly the same as a Google UK search, too – we don't insert any advertising, or mess with the output. It's just a good old-fashioned Google search.
So if you fancy switching to this page as your homepage, we won't mind; we'll ben keeping the page on the site from now on*. You might even like it!
Thankfully I managed to sleep right through the whole day. Still don't know what happened to that poodle though…
* Unless Google get all upset and tell us to pull it… ;o)
Update (01:20): looks like Google's clocks are a little behind ours – check out Google Dating , which (they reckon) offers a face-matching system to help match you to a date. Hmmmmkayyyy….
Posted by Alex on Sat 1st April 2006