Yahoo! Pipes! Is! Very! … err, geeky. And useful…
Unashamedly geeky blog post-thing: Yahoo!'s pipes toy has been around for a while, and lets you do some very interesting things with data, one of them being combining RSS feeds. I discovered it today while avoiding doing real work…
I had a play about with it today and created this feed in a couple of minutes for our news bods to keep on screen in the office, which updates every 30 seconds with the latest UPSU, University, Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK and World headlines.
Cunning stuff…
Posted by Alex on Fri 29th February 2008
The week in pics…
Woohoo – my new sub arrived. Bugger – it's been dropped in transit and totally ruined. How many stamps does a 30KG package need to get to Germany? >-(
Posted by Alex on Thu 28th February 2008
The Stig’s on Facebook :o)
So it turns out even the world's most secretive person is on Facebook… ;o)
Posted by Alex on Sun 24th February 2008
This. Is. Not. Good. :o(
While I freely admit I am the maker of much of my own troubles, I don't think anyone can accuse me of being responsible for my laptop's hard drive crashing in spectacular style tonight. Now I have one very dead 'pooter with all of my work, music, e-mails, to-dos, projects, and assorted other vitally important work information on, and no way of getting to it unless I can find
Posted by Alex on Sat 23rd February 2008
How to tell a student from a “chav”
Reading the comments left on the Daily Echo's coverage of the Top Up Fees protest in Bitterne, I had to laugh when I saw this mini-thread in the comments…
Commenter 1: “… I finally managed to escape living in the Bedford Place area last year
after putting up with student noise from parties and abuse when asking
them to quieten down…”
Commenter 2: “How do you know which ones are students and which ones are chavs fron the flowers estate?”
Commenter 1: ”
Easy – the students' tattoos are spelt properly”
Easy enough then, apparently…
p.s. Thanks go to the NUS for the mention on Officeronline about our Top Up Fees protest! :o)
Posted by Alex on Fri 22nd February 2008
Have I scared everyone off?
Just a quick question – have I scared everyone off from running for my position or something?
There's only one candidate for Media & Publications Officer (“MAPO”) this year – last year there were 4, and the year before that there were two…
What gives?!
Posted by Alex on Fri 22nd February 2008
Here’s where we’re at…
The Union Council report of a Media & Publifications Numpty, aged 19 and 36/4…
This month, UPSU’s media bods have mainly been focusing their attention on…
Pure FM
- The 24-hour broadcast is looming – as February’s Union Council happens, the broadcast will be underway, with charity fund-raising eBay auctions taking place every hour throughout the day. Tune in! www.purefm.com
- The Pure FM Masterclass – with radio professionals including Radio 1’s BB Aled – is pretty much booked up now, and everyone’s getting ridiculously excited at the prospect of seeing Real Live Celebridees talking radio… ;o) Well done, Pure!
Pugwash magazine
- Issue 3 is out – well done to the team for working so hard on this issue, especially as the end-of-semester period is horribly packed with exams and coursework deadlines, so huuuuge thanks go to everyone who worked so hard. You can pick up a copy around campus now, visit www.pugwashmag.com to download it, or drop into the Union to get yours!
- Distribution of the magazine has been good again, although I think there is a general awareness that we can be more proactive in getting the magazine to a wider audience – watch this space!
- Thanks go to the Pugwash team for their extra hard work in re-jigging the magazine to take into account the change in space availability due to advertising.
Pugwash News & PWs newspaper
- Issues 9 and 10 came out on deadline (although issue 10 then went back in, had a think about it, took off its front cover and came out again…) and both issues received widespread distribution.
- Issue 9 was also a first as we had advertising for the first time – woohoo!
- Sadly, issue 9 fell victim to a very unfortunately-worded article, which resulted in us having to print a full apology and retraction to the University. Here’s what I had to say about this matter in my editorial in issue 10 of the newspaper:“You may have spotted that the front covers from the last issue were conspicuously absent. As you may also have spotted, this issue carries a sincere apology to the University from the Union, relating to the article printed in the last issue which we had to cut out. The last two weeks have been very stressful for a number of the newspaper team and Union staff, as we worked hard to put new systems in place to try to prevent any reoccurrences of the problems which beset that issue.
-
“As Media & Publications Officer I want to extend my thanks to all the staff and students involved with the Union, and the staff at the University, who have shown a great deal of patience and understanding while we worked to fix our mistakes, and I am happy that we can now move on with a lot more confidence problems like this one should be avoidable in the future.
“Once again, many thanks to everyone involved for working so hard this issue, and I hope you as our readership haven't lost any faith in the Union's youngest publication just yet.” - As a result, a new system for tracking content submissions has been put in place for both publications, and is mentioned below…
Contributor teams – features, news and reviews
- Pugwash and Pugwash News are both supplied by the same three teams of news, features and reviews bods. Due to the newspaper’s issue 9 problems, we have a funky new paper-based tracking system which has – understandably – caused a lot of headaches for the editorial teams as we work together to put theory into practice. However, despite having only three days’ warning and a lunatic sleep-deprived MAPO to guide them, everyone involved in issue 10 of Pugwash News managed to put out a great issue, and one which I intend to be one of our candidates for the media awards this year, so – again – a huge thank you to everyone who worked so hard :o)
UPSU.net and other online goodness
Nothing much to report here…
- We have a funky new “rotorvator” thing which does geeky pixellated magic on the homepage, the Social:Life section (upsu.net/sociallife) has had a revamp, the biggest-ever elections minisite (upsu.net/elections) is online, and we have a videos page (upsu.net/video and youtube.com/upsuportsmouth) which will be playing host to the bazillions of videos I’m hoping to be able to produce during elections and as we digitise the hundreds of hours of video footage we’ve accumulated over the last couple of years.
- Loads of photos of the Refreshers’ Fayre can be found on our new galleries – at upsu.net/galleries – and on our Flickr pages – at flickr.com/photos/upsuportsmouth
- … and a couple of videos of the Refreshers’ Fayre can be found on our videos page – at upsu.net/videos and at youtube.com/upsuportsmouth – enjoy!
- The Union also has a Facebook fan page, which you can find by typing in www.upsu.net/facebook – very bling…
- … and a similarly bling “I’m voting in the UPSU Elections 2008” Facebook badge application, which you can find on our Facebook page.
UPSU Media in general
- With elections fast approaching (as I type this, there seems to be veritable pile-up of people filling out candidate pack forms in the Sabb office), we have cautiously agreed to invest in a brace of highly-recommended hard-disk video cameras to capture reams of elections footage for the purpose of a) posterity, and b) candidates’ embarrassment. Of course we don’t want to embarrass candidates. But when they do funny things, I’m hoping to be there!
- I understand that we are in the envious position of being able to offer a number of advertising opportunities in our magazine and newspaper publications, so if you know of any businesses which offer a service of relevance to the student population, please encourage them to get in touch!
Some related UPSU Media things for your perusal…
- Upsu.net/facebook – our Facebook fan page
- Upsu.net/galleries – photo galleries galore
- Flickr.com/photos/upsuportsmouth – loads of photos
- Upsu.net/video – our YouTube videos on UPSU.net
- Youtube.com/upsuportsmouth – a few videos, and more to come
- Upsu.net/blogs – the UPSU blogs (including mine – a shameless plug, I know…)
p.s….: the things I completely forgot to mention in my official report…
- Elections! Candidates are now announced, and there are some surprises – the two most-popular positions from years past are uncontested this year, and the candidates are a wide-ranging group. The next four weeks will be interesting and fun, no doubt… ;o) upsu.net/elections
- Did I mention the shiny new video cameras? ;o)
Posted by Alex on Thu 21st February 2008
UPSU’s on YouTube!
As we gear up for a video-tastic Elections 2008, I've been polishing our YouTube homepage, which currently has a few videos on including the BBC coverage of the recent anti-fees lobby in Bitterne, and some breakdancing…
The design might get a little more tweaking as we get some feedback – hey, I'm no graphic designer by a long shot – but it's supposed to be all about the videos anyway ;o)
Check us out online at youtube.com/upsuportsmouth!
/al
Posted by Alex on Wed 20th February 2008
More random pics: Giant Jenga…
Random photos from a random Giant Jenga game in the UPSU Sabb office. Well, it was half 9 in the evening, and we were still at work…
9.30pm and still in the office? It must be Giant Jenga time…
Working a typically late Tuesday night. Suddenly, the Pure FM and Pugwash bods in the office discover Sarah B's Giant Jenga and it all gets a bit messy… ;o)
By the way, we don't normally have big kids' games in work – it's just that tomorrow's the Re-Freshers' Fayre, so there's a lot going on at the moment… :o)
Concentration…
Clearly, Ben can't handle the pressure and leaves as Gina goes for a tough shot with the Giant Jenga. It's ok though – her tactics paid off…
Caroline pops in to show off Gamel's latest creation
Gamel Oki, Pugwash mag designer and editor extraordinaire, made this with his eyes shut… Ok, he didn't have his eyes closed, but who cares – very eye-catching design based on the design of the Pugwash mag reviews pages.
If you're online or near the Union on the 21st/22nd Feb, tune in to Pure FM to hear their 24 hour eBay-tastic broadcast!
Now you've done it…
… and then Maz goes and makes a mess of it all. Maaaaaaaaaaz!!! ;o)
Posted by Alex on Tue 12th February 2008
Today, I have mainly been…
… taking random photos:
Indian Summer at the Union – woo, sunshine!!
Students enjoy the sunshine with a drink outside in the sun. Colder weather is forecast for tomorrow, though :o(
Ideas and photography
Jacob, news editor, drafts ideas for the reorganisation of our online news content.
On screen you can see Aperture displaying one of yesterday's photos of the CopyShop clothing range.
My desk is a busy place during the day…
New toys!
Ooh, new toys for Pure FM! The student radio station's brand new audio recorder arrives on my desk.
The speakers in the background are my desk set-up, running off a decommissioned 700W PA amp from the nightclub venue across the road
Posted by Alex on Tue 12th February 2008