This month, I have mainly been… (or, “the most boring 1,500 words you’ll ever read. Ever”)
Since the whole point of us Sabbs having a presence on the front page of UPSU.net is to let the students of Portsmouth know what we're up to, this is a (slightly edited) version of the report us Sabbs present to the Board of Trustees meeting, which takes place monthly at the Union and is used as a way of us all reporting on what's happening with the Union.
Although I'm sure not even the terminally bored would want to read this, here it is anyway. Enjoy! ;o)
Posted by Alex on Fri 31st August 2007
Getting fit, getting run over, work/life balance, and annoying everyone in the office (again)…
A few days ago I looked downwards and had to lean over my ever-growing
gut to see what shoes I had on (flip-flops, of course), so yesterday I
decided to make an effort to start getting fit. In all fairness, Ed
& Rep Sabb Andy Machin
was also starting his training regime, so I've really just stolen his
idea. Given how much I smoke, I decided cycling might be better than
running for my knees and pride (since collapsing in a crying heap
wheezing for breath before I get to the end of my road is … well,
rubbish).
So, yesterday was cycling day, and pelting off down the seafront for
a sprint/cruise/sprint session was going fine until My New Best Mate
decided to pull out right in front of me in his shiny new BMW while
following his mate (also in a BMW) out of a side road. Cue the only
perfectly-formed string of expletives I've ever shouted at anyone in my
life without a rehearsal; his face was a picture. So was mine, I
imagine….
Today was spent wheezing up and down the local swimming pool with
Andy, and since I was late (as always), he'd done 32(“-ish”) lengths by
the time I'd done 1. I managed 11 and decided to call it a day before I
drowned – something tells me I need a bit more commitment here…
Meanwhile, back at work, I've been getting more than a little
twitchy, thanks to a combination of some extra-potent filter coffee and
a backlog of e-mails and to-dos which I'll probably be working on until
midnight tonight. I've also been trying to tie up a number of loose
ends left over from last year's web work, and get some new projects
rolling, with the end result that I've been sending out literally
hundreds of e-mails to my unfortunate colleagues, several of whom have
now no doubt put me on their junk e-mail list, so this (from the BBC News Magazine) made me grin a bit today…
Anyway, there's no real point to all this rambling, but I guess I ought
to mention what I've been up to over the last couple of weeks, since
that is (so I'm told) the reason for this blog…
NUS Communication In Action training, Loughborough Uni
Interesting and good fun, and I think I picked up a load of very
good ideas. The last day included a debate over how much control the
Union's executive should exert over its media, i.e. should the Sabbs
have the right to, for example, veto something they don't like? How
about something they know is libellous? Illegal?
On the other hand, how much right should the Union's media – for
example, the student newspaper/magazine – have to say what it likes,
and to ignore the wishes of the exec?
This generated a lot of debate, but (imvho) I suspect in practise
that the media should be allowed to write whatever it likes – within
some bounds of reason I won't claim to know as intimately as our more
experienced staff do, but also that the Sabbs – who have been elected
by the whole student body to represent their views and needs – should
also have the ability to have items published as long as it's in the
student body's best interests.
As always, it's a bit of a balancing act…
Scouts' Jamboree, Essex
I was also shipped off to the Scouts' Centennial Jamboree by Making
Waves, a PR company who do a lot of work with students, to do a spot of
reporting on the event. Of course, not actually being
a journalist of any shape or flavour, I felt like a total fraud all
weekend, but managed to write copious pages of notes and will hopefully
be able to write My First Feature with the results.
While I was there I also met a lot of the Sabbs who are heading off to Ibiza to promote the Malibu Soundclash event coming to Portsmouth…
You might have spotted that I'm going abroad – to the White Isle no
less – apparently on work time, in exchange for an external promoter
coming to the Union to advertise their product, but what's the benefit
for students here?
In terms of value for money for the students, this isn't costing the Union anything, and the Malibu Soundclash is a rather good event indeed,
according to our Fraggy, who wrote about his experiences last year. I'm
all for having more diversity of music at the Union, and this is one
way of bringing in an interesting night which the Union might not
otherwise have the chance to host.
And, if that's not enough of a defence, it's also my birthday while
I'm in Ibiza, so what better way to celebrate than, err, working…?
;o)
Sabb tour
The last thing on my list I want to mention is the mini-tour of
Students' Unions us Sabbs went on last week. We stopped off at
Sheffield, Liverpool and Birmingham SUs, meeting some of the Sabbs and
stealing a lot of their publications.
I left for the tour not really knowing what to expect, but having
spoken to the Sabbs at other Students' Unions I think it's fair to say
that most of the stronger SUs in the country have a balance of
strengths and weaknesses; some have better buildings but have a smaller
range of clubs and societies than others, while others might have a
great range of club, pub and food venues, and even a supermarket, but
conversely might not have such a strong student media-orientated focus.
At Portsmouth, I don't think we have things quite as badly as we
sometimes seem to imply (or, “I whinge too much” might be better…),
but the one thing I'm putting on my Christmas list is the hope that
some of the Union's long-standing adversarial relationships might
become a bit more friendly. Well, I can hope…
Catching man-flu (i.e. a cold/cough) on the second day kinda restricted
me from sampling the nightlife of Sheffield, our second-day
destination, but I can definitely recommend a chap called “Dave” (I
think that's his name). Dave is a street poet in Liverpool who promises
to write about anything you name in return for a nominal financial
reward. Darby chose the subject, and while I won't actually name it, anyone who knows Darbs will probably be able to guess fairly quickly the subject of the resulting poetic creation… ;o)
I'm off to catch up on some Studio 60.
Tomorrow, I will mainly be upsetting Steve Baker and Mike Cooter with
another torrent of e-mails and stupid ideas. Again… Sorry…!
/al
Oh, p.s. “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana…”
Posted by Alex on Sat 25th August 2007
Ten Things To Learn
I've just come across these 10 tips – 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 are all thing I really wish I'd known at the start of this month… ;o)
/al
Posted by Alex on Sat 25th August 2007
Insect smokers upset by Rolling Stones, apparently…
What's an “ant smoking group”?
More info here on the Metro newspaper website.
Posted by Alex on Thu 23rd August 2007
Where are my marks?!
Once again, I'm complaining about the University – sorry to bang an old drum, but here goes…
For those of us who have had academic issues (or, if you're like me, you've just been a bit too lazy the last year) and have had to take resits during the summer before you can get your final degree mark, you probably already know the marks were decided at a board last Wednesday (or so I'm told).
Now, I'm not an impatient person when it comes to matters about the University – I learnt a long time ago that things just take a long time to happen there, but I don't think I'm being entirely unreasonable to ask that, 5 working days after my exam results were finalised (and weeks after my resits were marked), I still can't find out what mark I got, and whether I've passed my degree or not.
I appreciate the departmental offices are up to their eyeballs in admin work related to outgoing and incoming students, and the department's telephone operator I spoke to on the phone last Friday – who told me the resit results would be on our portals two days ago – sounded so harrassed I felt genuinely sorry for her.
I also understand that the long-awaited (and heavily delayed) move to the University's all-singing, all-dancing, silver bullet Jupiter records system is expected to be a cure-all for the problems surrounding the student portal, among other things.
Once again, it seems, the student portal is the weak link here as, despite being the University's “official”* method of communication with its students, the information it's presenting is the usual combination of out-of-date information and undecipherable anagrams (although I guess I ought to be grateful it's working at all, unlike – for example – this time, this time, this time, this time, and this time. Ahem…!). I mean, what's going on here?!
If you're in the same boat as me, please let me know in the comments thing below. If I hear anything from the University to explain what's going on here, I'll be more than happy to put their views forward as well.
Posted by Alex on Tue 21st August 2007
Imagini – like Facebook, but with pictures?
We all know what Facebook is and does (and if you don't, visit their site before you carry on here).
There's a new challenger to the social-networking-site-that-seems-to-read-my-mind crown – Imagini is a visually-led social networking site that suggests potential friend matches based on a kind of emotional response testing to a series of images.
How it works is this – you're presented with a few screens of pictures, and you're asked to pick out the one that you think is most appealing. For example, for “My idea of music…” I picked a DJ playing a turntable (predictably, I guess).
At the end of the questions, the site thinks for a few seconds while it calculates your “Visual DNA”, and then pops up with a personality analysis, a list of people with very similar responses to you, and a few other things as well.
My result is below – apparently, I'm a go-getter…
If nothing else, this site is a very intriguing tool for gauging peoples' emotional responses to a variety of images. The leap from there to coming up with a reasonably accurate personality analysis is a bit freaky, and very interesting, and I'm definitely going to have a play about with this site some more, even if it did just get a little bit panned by the BBC's Ouch disability blog.
If you try it out, let me know how you get on :o)
/al
p.s. For the record, I'm still not convinced my personality assessment
is entirely accurate, but it does tie into the images I responded to.
Posted by Alex on Tue 21st August 2007
This could have been much, much worse… (or, “did you mean to park that there?”)
Before I say anything else, I want to make it absolutely clear that no-one was injured in this incident. Oh, and this post is only work-related in as much as I was on my lunch break when it happened so, err, it's not work-related at all… Oh, and this is quite a non-event really, so don't read it expecting tales of heroics or great action, etc. ;o)
Something happened today which has left me absolutely fuming at three people who Should Know Better. Let me explain…
Posted by Alex on Mon 20th August 2007
The best test ride ever…?
Possibly the best test ride ever – video of Jamie Witham test-riding an R1 for TWO magazine
- Can't see the video? It's here on Youtube.
Posted by Alex on Mon 20th August 2007
Battle at Kruger YouTube video one of YouTube’s most popular ever
This is… unusual: an amateur video of a spectacular battle between a group of lions, a herd of buffalo and a crocodile, posted on YouTube, has received almost 10 million views in just over two months.
The video shows a herd of buffalo being attacked by the lions, who capture a buffalo calf. In the struggle, a crocodile also makes a bid for the calf.
Clearly less than impressed at losing one of their calves, the buffalo return en-masse, rescuing the calf:
Posted by Alex on Fri 10th August 2007
All change…
This evening's Adventures From The Bottom Of A Pint Glass/Wine Bottle marked the official goodbye to the 2006-2007 Sabbatical team, and the beginning of the 2007-2008 Sabbatical period.
I'm too tired (read: “not safe to drive”) after a day of training with the NUS's Jim Dickinson – a man so full of beans first thing in the morning, watching him is like trying to stare at the sun – to go into any grandiose pr
Posted by Alex on Wed 1st August 2007