Bring on the Perverts!
So tomorrow night is the Grad Ball. Adrian and myself have about 26 hours to pick out some tuneage to entertain the crowds with after the Scratch Perverts play their set, 'cos apparently we're playing *after* the Perverts in CO2, and Pure:FM have the pleasure of doing the warm-up.
But, there's a problem - I'm being a bit of a worrier: frankly, this is scary - there could be 200 people in CO2. What if I don't play tunes people like? What if I suddenly can't mix (i.e. “mix worse than usual”)? What happens if my laptop crashes during my set? What if my first tune blows so badly, I'm forcibly removed from the premises via a trap-door?
Ahh well, at least it can't make me pregnant, and I reckon it'll turn out fine - after all, most people are graduating, so I won't have to hide any shame from them next year (and years to come…) from making an ass of myself.
So, while I'm feeling the fear about how tomorrow night's going to turn out, I really hope that, if you're going to the ball, you have a great time. And if you're not, have fun whatever else you're doing :o) /al - pixel munki by day, popular music abuser by night… Maybe.
Posted by Alex on Sat 22nd July 2006
Oooh, R1 offering a chance to escape it all
(Off-topic? You betcha…) Radio 1 are offering a few lucky folks the chance to escape the drudgery of day-to-day life and go on a kinda working holiday thing with them for a day or two to report back on what happens.
Choices include Newquay (surfer fun - cooool), Reading/Leeds (rockers - sweaty!), Global Gathering (hell yeah!), Wales (why?), Mallorca (aren't there about 30 different ways of spelling that?), and Ibiza (Oh. Hell. Yeah!).
So hands up who's not going to choose Ibiza? Now, put your hands down if you don't have a passport. Uh huh. Thought so - everybody's going to want to go to Ibiza, and who could blame 'em?!
Naturally, purely out of a spirit of noseyness, I've sent in a very random application. Since I reckon my odds of winning are hovering somewhere around the same odds as winning the lottery without buying a ticket, I reckon plan B's going to have to happen (that's the one where I go to Ibiza at the start of next season with a box of records, not the one involving three tonnes of sand, a bucket and spade, a lilo, and Portsmouth high street…).
I guess I really ought to get on with some work … ;o)
(Small print thingy: neither UPSU.net, Portsmouth SU or myself are endorsing this competition, or Radio 1, or the BBC, or anything at all whatsoever, but that's not to say I don't think it's a rather cool competition though, so why not give it a go? Can't speak for my bosses or anyone else who works here of course…)
Posted by Alex on Wed 19th July 2006
Oh CSS, why do you hate me so?
You would have thought web design would be a simple job - you tell a web browser what colour your text and background is going to be, and what size, and you're pretty much sorted, right?
Uhhm, no such luck.
I've just lost a couple of hours of my life trying to fix a problem with the menus right across UPSU.net which I caused when I switched the menu system over from a table-based layout (i.e. bad for screen readers) to a list-based layout (i.e. gooood for screen readers) - 99% of the viewing population won't ever notice this change, or at least that was the plan.
Unfortunately, Internet Explorer - God bless it - had other ideas, and promptly broke the menus across the whole site, leaving double-spaced gaps below every single menu item.
Cack.
So I've just been experimenting with box model hacks (apparently a bit of a bad idea without completely changing the way we import our stylesheets, as most box model hacks have nasty effects on NN), and have ended up modifying a bit of code from A List Apart's excellent Taming Lists tutorial.
Of course, I'm expecting something else on the site to break as a result now…
I think I'm going to start on a re-working of our whole CSS system shortly - while the CSS generator is working well (averaging a 30% cut in stylesheet size), the underlying CSS sheets need some tidying up - after a year of tweaking, extending and redesigning, they're all looking a little the worse for wear. Any requests? Or, even better, anyone fancy helping me tidy up the code?
Posted by Alex on Fri 14th July 2006
Kubb out, Goldie Looking Chain in - woohoo!
Hooray! I can finally talk about the change of headline act for the Grad Ball!
We're no longer having Kubb, so instead, we thought we'd go not one, two, three or even thirty better, but no less than 9,145 times better, with Goldie Lookin Chain headlining the Grad Ball!
Official press release and news is coming tomorrow, but for the time being let me just say I'm chuffed to bits - it's going to be an awesome night now!!
:D /al
Posted by Alex on Wed 12th July 2006
The UK threat level system pictured
(Very off topic) Much is being made of the decision to publish the UK threat level for the nation's panic levels viewing pleasure. Personally, I couldn't care less about it, but for your information, here's a pic of the security services' new high-tech system…
(Yes, it's a Dad's Army reference…)
Today, I am mainly going to be drawing incomprehensible data-interaction diagrams on pieces of low-tech paper. I have no real idea why…
Posted by Alex on Mon 10th July 2006
Welcome to the weekend…
(The tooth is out. I'll refrain from posting the picture of the remains since there's little point apart from the “ewww” factor which you could probably find easily enough elsewhere on the 'net…!)
It's Friday night. It's 6pm. Somewhere in the Balearics, Pete Tong is going out to the world live on air, playing - almost certainly - to an adoring crowd of sun-kissed Ibiza clubbers gearing up for possibly their biggest Friday night out of the year. It reminds me of something I wrote last summer, and I reckon it's almost time for me to pop my Ibiza cherry - anyone want to tag along? (I'll need someone to carry my records… ;o) ).
Meanwhile, back in reality (or at least, “Portsmouth-without-the-students”), I'm sitting in the Union preparing to babysit a sound system for The Listening Company (you may not know the name, but you've probably dealt with them on the 'phone at some point in your life, whether you like it or not…!) while six hundred-or-so Italian summer language school kids get fed and watered by our catering bods, upstairs in Lux.
Although I can't say I enjoy the music - apparently it's going to be a fairly rocky night - I do enjoy the babysitting work I do with UPSU Ents. Usually I work the Friday night babysit in Lux and CO2, which for the last year or so has also seen me on the decks for a brief spell most nights (my apologies to anyone unfortunate enough to have had to listen to me playing on abusing the soundsystem on a Friday night - who'dathunk I've been bedroom DJing since I was fifteen, a good 7 years ago. And yup, I'm really that old mature …. no, I definitely meant old).
Sadly, for me at least, I don't know whether I'll be able to play in the Union at all next year, as the line-up on most nights is being “tweaked” (as happens every year). I don't know if anything is changing or not, but the bosses will naturally be taking an ever closer look at how things are run on the nights to make sure things are at their best, and naturally having a relatively unknown person behind the decks like myself might not exactly thrill them to bits. I don't know; this is just speculation.
In any case, the whole point of this post is simply that October can't get here soon enough - Pompey's pretty dull during the summer, so short of me managing to escape the country and get out to Ibiza, or hooking up with some house music lovers, or even moving into Fabric London, I'm probably just going to have to become a workaholic to pass the time until the fun begins again (along with, of course, the small matter of my much-delayed final year of my degree needing attention then as well - argh, work!).
Ah… Boss has just informed me that TLC want a karaoke machine running tonight. So much for a quiet one…(!)
P.s. big thanks to a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, for the text last night - while I was doing some laundry - letting me know she and her friends had just blagged VIP guest list at Ibiza's Amnesia. I spent the rest of the night drafting plans for an escape tunnel from my house to the White Isle…
An update of sorts: (I call this one, “Tales from behind the speaker stack”) It's 10pm and my poor ears are being assaulted with the sounds of Batman's The Joker singing “Dizzy (I'm so dizzy)”. I don't think it's *the actual* Joker; it might (possibly) just be some random telesales exec. I'm not so sure, but Superwoman just walked past, and I can see Uma Thurman in Kill Bill outfit from here, too. My brain hurts…
Update #2: I just checked my maths. 15 years old plus 7 years does not equal my age. My physical age I mean; my mental age is hovering around the top of single digits… ;o) I should have put 9 years… Possibly even “almost 10″ to be reasonably accurate. I really need to graduate, before I'm too senile to be of any use to anyone…!
Posted by Alex on Fri 7th July 2006
Ouch, ouch, ouch-ouch-ouch-ouch!
(More off-topic rambling…)
Apparently, teeth have feelings of compassion…
In about an hour, I'm going to be making the short journey over to the School of Professionals Complementary to Dentistry (or, “The Dental School” for anybody not paid to answer their 'phones - how on earth their secretary can say that mouthful - pun intended - in under a second is anyone's guess…) for the purpose of having two wisdom teeth out. Ouch…
I was booked in to have these teeth out later this month, but one of them (which I managed to crack quite neatly in half chewing on un-popped popcorn a while ago) started hurting a lot a couple of days ago.
“No problem” I thought, dosing up on an unhealthy amount of ibuprofen (and ignoring the complaints of my vital organs). But then the wisdom tooth directly below the broken one started hurting through the painkillers. And for no apparent reason whatsoever. I kid you not, it's almost like the little enamelled gnasher had decided (in some spirit of brotherly compassion for it's injured sibling on my upper jaw, no doubt), “I'm going to cause you a lot of pain, just because you broke my friend.”
Gash.
So it's off to the dentist with me. I'm hoping to be able to come back to work afterwards and get on with work, but some how I suspect I might not be in any position to be getting on with anything other than curling up in a ball and crying like a baby as the anaesthetic wears off.
Of course, this means one of my main vices - endless tea and coffee drinking - is off the agenda for the time being, as well. Oh great…
(Abnormal service will be resumed shortly.)
Posted by Alex on Wed 5th July 2006
NUS cards, pathways and SEFs
I'm mainly working on the NUS registration system (which is the process you go through to sign up for an NUS card and/or account on UPSU.net) at the moment, but having fried my brain a bit last night working on endless far-from-standard user flow/interaction diagrams (and having had a visit from Portsmouth's enterprising social underclass to give me a sleepless night*), I decided to tie up a couple more loose-ends on the site today.
One thing that's been bugging me for a while has been the pathway - a “breadcrumb” trail of links which live on the left of the grey bar at the top of the screen - which should let you step backwards from where you are in the site towards the homepage. Because of the way we've organised the site, the pathway system has always missed off at least one or two links, making it fairly useless in finding out where you are.
Having a look around Cambridge Students' Union's new website last night (and I must say I'm impressed with how well-written and robust their system looks, although functionally it looks a bit young yet - not as many bells and whistles, but I'm sure that will come in time) and one of the very prominent features of the site is their bread-crumb navigation system. So, having seen that, it reminded me that our pathway needs a bit of a clean-up (no particular pun intended).
After today's work, we now have a link back to the top of the major section you're in; previously, you would normally find only a link to the page you're on and a link to the homepage.
The galleries, blogs, and forums also have a little more transparency in their taxonomy - the pathway includes more logical links now, and our custom SEF URL system is better represented - the page “www.upsu.net/getinvolved/clubs/netball” now shows “upsu.net >> get involved >> clubs >> netball home” in the pathway, instead of “home >> netball” as (I think) it did before.
In fact, the pathway work on the blogs is the most important part for me, and ties nicely in to my finishing off the SEF URL system for the blogs today, which means that the pathway is now a lot more indicative of where you are in the blogs system now, e.g. “upsu.net >> diaries >> alexh >> 2006 >> 06 >> 01″ - all of which are working links which actually work and everything…! (I think I'm getting a little over-enthusiastic about the little things here…).
Additionally, you can now type in, for example, www.upsu.net/blogs/joebloggs/2006/04/13 to see all entries on April 13th 2006 by member “joebloggs”, or www.upsu.net/blogs/joebloggs/2006/04 to see everything of his in April.
These two (badly-explained, and probably badly-coded) features are major strengths compared to many other blogging platforms and websites in general (although we weren't intending to beat anyone, particularly - I just wanted to make sure our system works as well as possible). I'll probably cover these changes more in the future once I have a chance to really bug-test it all (it's in, it works, it's bug tested and coded as well as I know how, but that's no guarantee of service now, is it? ;o) ).
I'm off to get some dinner - I'm the only one left in the Sabb office (everyone went home 3 hours ago) and I've been here since 8am. I need a shower and a pint!
* Yup, the username “project” on that website is one of my alter-egos, and as I mentioned on the right there –> I'm an occasional spanner monkey in my spare time ;o)
Posted by Alex on Tue 4th July 2006