Alex Harries's diary

It's another late night, so it must be time for another rambling blog entry about "what I've dun lately". If you read this, I can guarantee you'll be bored... ;o)

This is going to be a bumper blog entry of all the really really boring stuff I've done this week altogether, so you only have to "ignore" one thing instead of loads ;o) 

Pugwash, gatecrashed 

Yesterday, I gatecrashed the Pugwash graphic design team's weekly "social", where they get together to organise who's going to illustrate and lay out what article. Having spent a very busy hour accosting members of the team and asking them what they would change about Pugwash if they could, I've got some great ideas for improving the way the writers' and designers' time is organised, and some suggestions to improve the tools available to the Union's creative teams, e.g. Pugwash, Purple Wednesdays, and more.

One of these is actually something I lost sleep over last night while trying to figure out the maths in my head; in short, I'd like to invest a chunk of money on the Union's multimedia suite - which at the moment is home to a collection of PCs - to see them using industry-standard kit which should be good for the next four years and to provide a set of really good training and production tools for graphic design, video and audio editing. In other words, with a little investment, the Union could boast a really solid production suite for Pugwash, Pure:FM, and Purple Wednesdays, and also be available for use as a classroom for teaching students to use the various software packages the Union makes use of.

Aside from that though, I was impressed - again - by just how enthusiastic every Pugwash team member is about what they do; it's nice to see they're so self-motivated, and talking to Mike Cooter - the comms manager - about the team's development, it's obvious there are some real success stories to be told there. In terms of what I'd love to achieve with the Union, these success stories are as close to role models as I think I'm ever going to get, and I'm keen to see more of the same stuff happening with UPSU media throughout the next year.

No matter what happens in the elections, I really hope next year's MAPO realises just what an asset Pugwash is, and invests a good deal of time and money in the magazine!

"Vlogging"... Or not... 

I still haven't made any more progress with my video blog entry thingy I mentioned at the bottom of this post; that's mainly due to stage fright, laziness, and a chronic case of being not-at-all-photogenic ;o) I promise I'll try to do something by next week, even if it's just so you can laugh at me... :oP

Anyway, I'm not sure it's such a great idea until someone thinks up a better name than "vlog"ing - it sounds a bit too kinky for me... 

Housekeeping 

Before I lose my admin access to the site on Sun 11th (the campaigning period has been cut from two weeks to one - March 12th to 16th; good thing or bad thing?),  I've been setting up the UPSU and UPEL homepage adverts (pic on the right somewhere); we've got Captain (March 16th - elections night, straight after the results) and - much more importantly (I think!) - the MoS's Cut Up Boy...