Alex Harries's diary

... in one simple step: forget to connect up the centre channel on 5.1 surround sound.

The result? Since most of the vocals in a movie go through the centre channel, as well as most of the "on screen" sound, you get some strangely quiet actors.

Oops.

Fix, restart, apologise over the mic (I hate doing mic work - I sound like a cross between a dalek and a helium-abusing monkey, if you can imagine what that would sound like). As I type this, we're about half way through Wallace & Gromit's "The Curse of The Were Rabbit". We're packed to the rafters, too - almost 200 people in (compared to last week's 50-ish), which is nice. Shame the free popcorn ran out before I got there though...!

Fraggy's been snowed-under with PWs and hustings, so there's no PWs online this week (he's only just finished the printed version I hear), and I've been called in to do the film night at the last minute (hence why I was totally winging the it with the sound system and slightly came unstuck!) so I couldn't help out with it, so it's back to the printed version this week. It'll be online next week as usual, but I'm going to take this opportunity to get on with some of the updates to the Social Life section instead, tonight. Bring on the Bink!

(Title inspired by RobinB's rant about pancake-making...)

If you happened to stumble into the diaries section in the last 6 hours you might have spotted that pretty much everything didn't work at some point. That was my fault - yup, me over here. Kick me in the shins if you like...

This work hasn't actually changed the appearance of the diaries, but it's made a huge amount of difference to how they work. Y'see, you could only see a member's posts, OR search by a date (or month) - not both. I'm working on some calendar code which will sit happily at the top of the bar on the right there --> which will tell you what days diary entries have been posted on (and maybe even which days have lots of entries or entries with lots of comments, maybe by putting a * next to them or something...?).

Unfortunately, to do that, I had to kinda tear the guts out of the diary system and start again on the way it handles all it's links.

So if you were silly enough to bookmark anything in the diary pages before today, you might find that the links no longer work. Oops!

Well, I'm knackered. I've been working on this and other things since 12am today - at the Union, so I haven't even been able to crawl off and hide anywhere (all the good hiding spots have been taken by the elections candidates who have started to realise what they're letting themselves in for - potentially, in some cases, for a second time round...). I'm going to stick my head out the door of the control room (at the back of Lux) 'cos DJ Alec McG (or whatever he wants to call himself, silly chap) is shaking the walls with his own particular brand of death metal/punk/rock/alternative/ whateverthehelltehkidzcallitthesedays. I might even have a McMosh...

G'night!

I'm going to be re-jigging the URLs used by the diary system over the next few hours, so please bear with us if none of the links seem to work properly! Test edit

Whilst awaiting a steady but angry stream of complaint e-mails/phone calls/angry mobs after the débacle that was my sending of 3 e-mails all saying the same thing (the Social:Life update which Hotmail took a disliking to, and promptly broke for everybody who reads their mail at Hotmail.com), I've spent part of this evening developing a click-stream tracker for the site.

Well, I say "I" - I should really say "we", as I had a lot of help from our hosting co's head honcho, a chap who seems to spend more time at a PC working for other people than I do, and yet has time to actually hold conversations with anyone who asks nicely enough (albeit usually through MSN Messenger).

Anyhoo, I can hear the faint murmur of bored readers closing in about now, so I'll first try and explain what click-stream tracking is, and why it's a Good Thing and not a Bad Thing.

First of all, let me say this - it's totally, entirely, 100% anonymous. There, I said it.

Click-stream tracking is basically a way for us to work out whether parts of the site - especially the busiest areas like the homepage - are getting clicked as often as they could/should be. Imagine we spend hours crafting a beautiful picture to tell you about the latest new event/new feature on the site/tasty pancakes on Tuesday (Pancake Day! Woohoo!)/etc - if not-many-people click on it, either because it's not eye catching, it's not interesting to them, etc, then we've basically wasted our time and yours by putting it on a page where something more interesting/relevant/etc might get more attention.

Or we might be interested to know whether users are more likely to click on a picture of a beer bottle or a text link advertising that beer bottle - both go to the same page in the end, but how you get there - and as a result how we can better grab your attention - is important, especially on pages as crowded as the homepage.

So we create a system which makes a note of what link was clicked, and at what time, and every day/week/month we sort this information out and scratch our heads over what we think could work better.

In fact, if you clicked either of the links I put in this entry, above, your link will have been tracked. Don't feel like we've tricked you - those links are only there for me to find out (a) if people click the first link they can see to escape the hell that is my diary(!), and (b) to see if the offer of pancakes gets peoples' attention (I hope it does! Mmm, pancaaaakes...).

So, over the coming weeks I'll be working on converting some of the more important parts of the site to a click-tracking system, and we'll be thinking about ways of making the less-clicked links receive more interest. You might even spot something on here you never thought about investigating before, for example the Trampolining Club homepage! ;o)

Mass e-mails are always a bit of a contentious subject, and last night's e-mail (you can see it online here) to around 7,000 people has brought with it a few sharp responses from people whose responses made it quite clear that they didn't expect to receive them, and thought that we were simply "spamming" them without permission.

Personally, I hate unsolicited e-mails, and the Union goes to great lengths to make sure that we only send out what we say we're going to send out, and only to the people who agree to receive these e-mails.

We also do our best to make sure that the content of the e-mails is varied and interesting, but there's always room for improvement. If you would like to make a suggestion, you can e-mail us at webteam@upsu.net or add your comments below.

I'm also reviewing the criteria we use to select people for the lists; although we may end up sending out to fewer recipients, those who do receive the mailings should be the people who can actually benefit from the mailings.

You can change your subscription settings by going to your profile (you'll need to sign in first), then click "update my profile" and select the "preferences" and "JobShop" tabs to see your e-mail subscriptions. Don't forget to click the "Update" button at the bottom to save your new preferences.