Alex Harries's diary

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... 

If there's one thing that's truly awesome about Facebook's new(-ish) fan pages, its our ability to combine them with the huge amounts of visual content we make available through RSS syndication from UPSU.net.

(Total disclosure: many ideas used on our UPSU FB page stolen wholesale from the UoP Facebook page. Ah well, they say there are no original ideas anymore...) 

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)

I've just had a quick chat with Carl, Pure:FM's resident web guru, and he's beginning work on a brilliant little pop-up Pure:FM player.

This will mean no more having to hunt around Purefmdotcom to find out how to listen to their shows; you'll just have to click a link on any UPSU page (in the "now and next" box - pic somewhere on the right there) and away you go.

Naturally there'll be some things that have to be tackled first; a lot of computers have either one type of media player progam - e.g. Windows Media Player - or the other - Real Player. Some don't have either, for example a number of the University PCs, so we need to make sure that the end result is able to work on the widest range of systems possible.

With a little bit of luck, and a not-inconsiderable amount of work on Carl's part, I'm confident we'll be able to get this up and running in time for the elections. Fingers x'd then!

Alex is the UPSU.net web monkey, and loves adding new toys to the site. He's also running in the UPSU Elections for Media & Publications officer, and trying to finish off his degree as well. He's also half Welsh, but please don't hold that against him...

I've just found that Facebook lets me keep a feed from this blog on my profile. Blogtastic! (Sorry... I get a bit Smashey & Nicey sometimes... ;o) ).

Does this mean I'm going to have to make an effort to write about interesting things now...?