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!