Do you ever have one of those days when everything's happening so fast it's impossible to take enough mental notes to remember something for later? I've been having one of those days weeks months, and things are showing little sign of slowing down any time in the near future.

This week, I have mainly been updating vast swathes of webpages on UPSU's democracy, get involved and media pages; trying to do some housework in the form of the mass mails, some code changes, and a couple of news articles; attending the UPSU AGM (where was everybody?); trying to convince a stack of people that they *really* need to be a bit more open and honest about a situation which might or might not be building into a bigger situation*; and hearing how another situation which might have become a *really* big situation has been peacefully resolved (until the next time it happens, of course).

Meanwhile, in pixel-land, my notes pages are rapidly filling up with "blog entries I must do" notes, and the UPSU bugs list seems to be getting longer at the same speed my ever-increasing to-do list does now thanks to an upgrade to our database, plus Mike Cooter and Fraggy have just about finished the last ever issue of Pugwash (for this year, of course).

In amongst all this I'm trying to find a flat for next year. I went to see a lovely place today which looks beeyoooteeful. It's a bit small, and my bedroom wouldn't be big enough to kiss a cat in, let alone swing one. There's also a table and chairs which look suspiciously like they've been "acquired" from the Union, but I'll deal with that if and when I move in.

Still, it's all good fun. I worked a total of 32 hours in the first two days of this week, and my arms didn't drop off, so at least what my mum always told me - something about hard work not killing me - wasn't a lie after all. Dread to think how much caffeine and nicotine I took in during that period, though.....

Hope you're all having fun out there, and don't have nightmares :o) 

* I'm considering creating a "Vague News" section for the news section which has no facts whatsoever. I reckon it would be very quickly filled since I seem to talk so much about so little... ;o) 

You know those days where you get comfy on the sofa and just, well, vegetate? I tend to do something similar at work - I just park up at the desk and start working through my Never Ending To Do List (TM). Ok, so it's not as relaxing, but I guess it helps to get things done.

Anyway, today started out with my first SAGA meeting. Not the over-50's holiday and insurance company, but the University's Students' Academic and General Affairs committee, which (according to the Uni website - I'm not claiming to know anything about anything here, naturally...) is the Board of Governors' main way of getting feedback on the matters that are affecting the students of Portsmouth, through the Union's Sabbatical officers.

SAGA also makes sure that the information fed back to them via. the Sabbs is properly listened to and actioned. To save me rambling even more than usual, you can find out more from this page on the interweb.

So why have I been annoying people then? Well, after coming back from SAGA with a long list of Really Important Things That I Must Do Right Now If Not Sooner, I had to go round trying to track down the various bits of information to complete these odd jobs.

Of course, pretty much everyone I asked was also up to their collective eyeballs in their own workloads, so I ended up feeling like I was going in circles and annoying people on the way, so my mantra for the next couple of days is going to have to be "stop being so bloody annoying", otherwise I think I may lose my kneecaps...

 

Today I have mainly...

• ... been to SAGA and learnt lots of new things (which I then promptly forgot),
• ... played about with exporting the AU Dinner video so we can put it on t'interweb,
• ... PDF'd 160 Union Council motions, amendments, agendas and meeting minutes from 2002 to 2007, ready to build a shiny new archive of Union Council goodness,
• ... bugged people to get the AGM agenda ready to go (it's on its way, and my annoyance tactics aren't helping it go any faster, so I'll try to stop pestering now!),
• ... bugged Jodie Austin for details of the AU Dinner awards (sorry!). They're online now, so panic over,
• ... finally put Elle's tenancy deposit news article online (only a month after I was asked to do it - sorry!),
• ... turned on the new Get Involved template (and I'll be polishing the Get Involved pages over the next few weeks),
• ... done some more bug fixing on the site to repair the RSS feeds after the upgrade to the database broke a few things (again, sorry, and a thankyou to hosting bod Clive Garder for helping fix it!
• ... tidied up the AGM pages and found out where the AGM agendas and minutes are kept so we can build an archive of that, too...
• ... and a load of other really boring, boring things no-one cares about, too.....

...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz /al ;o)

 

A quick festive Happy Christmas (or, if Christmas isn't something you celebrate, happy holidays) message from me. I'm sitting at the parents' house in Kent drinking tea and wandering around the vast expanse that is Flickrdotcom.

Of course, that means I'm bored. Very bored. I'm supposed to be off to a party in Essex later this evening, but having a shaved head and - rightly or wrongly - believing that my stubbly features could pass for "fashionable", I don't have any getting ready to do beyond the usual shower, brushing of teeth and selection of clean underkeks.

So, I've been playing about with UPSU.net, but now I'm running out of "little things" to do - I've already sent out a mass mail saying nothing more than Happy Xmas (but it's quite pretty anyway), I've re-jigged the URLs to peoples' profiles (e.g. "upsu.net/people/alexh") and squashed some bugs that have shown up from the fix, managed to separate the profile template from the forums template (when you viewed your profile, your page was using the same stylesheet as the forums, which was something I needed to change so I can start thinking about polishing up the user profiles pages soon), and posted some tumbleweed-attracting twaddle on the forums, also about me being bored. I think there's a common theme here...

I've got a couple of little tweaks ... ok, major changes, to make to the news system, including some magic with image handling and simplifying/tidying up the layouts, but for now I'm off to plan what toys I'm going to buy for the Nano I'm hoping Santa's dropped into the Apple store to collect for me (I'll be writing a furious letter if he hasn't...).

Hope you all have a ridiculously fattening Crimbo, and a great Noo Year. I'll probably write some more twaddle on here at some point, but if you're still around to read it, I'd really advise getting some more interesting things to do with your hols... ;o)

/al 

I've just spotted a fairly major bug in my code, which seems to be affecting certain URLs on UPSU.net.

I reckon I can have it fixed for 5am, but I'm not 100% sure...

Sorry!

---
Update: 05:39 - it's fixed, with knobs on. Panic over, normality returns to the streets of Portsmouth. Small babies smile again. The sun's out, birds sing in the trees.

Or not - y'know, whatever...

While I wait for my bedtime cup of hot chocolate to cool down (and yes, that really is the time), I just wanted to jot down a couple of little changes that almost no-one will notice, even fewer people will use, and that I'm fairly proud of regardless.

• Yesterday, I added social bookmarking links to the news and blog pages (as they're generated by the same chunks of code) to encourage a bit more user interactivity. No, it doesn't mean I'm expecting a gazillion people to descend on UPSU.net and declare it an amazing website, but it's definitely a start ;o)
  
  
• I also got round to turning on a redirection system which lets us create a news article as normal, but instead of showing a news page when people click on the article's link, they're sent automagically over to another page on UPSU.net. This is quite handy if we want to put up a short news story where the topic is already explained in more detail elsewhere on the site, which lets us cut down on maintaining information on the site. It also means we can start linking blog entries and forum posts into the news feeds, which means that people whose only contact through the site is via the RSS feeds can also be kept more up-to-date on changes on the site's non-news areas. Not that you lot out there in readerland will ever actually see the system in action until you click on something you think is news and get sent over to Fraggy's Sheep Worrying pages. Or something...
  
  
• Tonight, I've been tweaking the social bookmarking toys links (sorry) and adding in a bit more control over comments - now we can turn the commenting system off on a news article (and soon you'll be able to do the same in your blogs if you want to) to let us gracefully close any discussions that get a bit too heated, or just when we're reporting on factual news and don't want to give the impression that we're asking for comment. Comments also automagically turn themselves off a month after a news story was last updated, so yesterday's news doesn't start attracting comments that won't be seen by the majority of the readership. The third (and best) benefit of this is that it reduces the number of news articles which our new best mates the spam bots are posting on, which makes my day a little bit smoother ;o)

Goddamn I need to get me a life... Or take up knitting or something... ;o)

Buenos noches darlings! /al