Losing your NUS card is a pain in the backside - it was probably in your wallet or purse when you lost it, along with a bundle of cash, bank cards, ID, the number of that random you pulled the other night, blah blah blah...

We can't make losing your wallet/purse/whatever any less of an annoyance, but at least you don't have to send an e-mail out to us now to get your card replaced - you just need to take some ID to the Union's reception desk and remember your e-mail address now. No more waiting a week for a reply, no more having to pay extra to get into the Union at night...

Yeah, it's boring, but I've spent most of this week under a car bonnet/playing with Windows Media Center/MediaPortal/generally avoiding work, so I don't have anything even remotely boring to write about.

Couple of other UPSU.net changes: check out the Via Lattea menu - tasty, and do you fancy some Black Tie action after Graduation?

Recent reading: Merde Actually (just started, looks good).
Recent movies watched: Sin City (crap), Behind Enemy Lines (excellent), South Park (awesome), American Dad (worryingly accurate)
Recent websites: make your own South Park character , Google's RSS feed reader - who needs Attensa anyway?

So what have you lot been up to then?

• ... The toaster can be considered an acceptable substitute for the ashtray.
• ... Texting incomprehensible b******s to the big screen in Lux is a Good Idea (TM).
• ... Your eyes are looking in four different directions at once.
• ... The neighbour's cat seems like a good person to strike up a conversation with.
• ... Westlife seem cool.
• ... curry/kebob/whatever highly unhealthy food seems like a good idea despite not physically having any more room inside yourself after the Nth pint of beer.
• ... A windchill of -3 degrees doesn't strike fear into your heart, despite only wearing the thinnest of t-shirts.
• ... "Have another pint!" is an acceptable answer to the statement "I don't feel so well".
• ... You whisper louder than most people shout.
• ... Everybody's food in the kitchen is fair game; nothing is safe when you're hungry and drunk.

Any others I've forgotten?

(I must learn to write more interesting less terminally dull post titles...)

Today I've been mainly pushing php around the forums: one thing about open source projects is that, when you dig around in the code a bit, you find lots of hidden "extras" that, for one reason or another (lack of time to document, security concerns, lazy developers ... ok the last one is plainly wrong since noone would bother writing open source code if they were *that* lazy) never made it into the released product, or at least weren't fully exploited.

One of these handy little gems (bear with me - this post is about to get a whole load more boring) is the way moderators can "hide" a post which they think might break the forum rules, without actually deleting it; say, for example, someone posts something which might help other members cheat in an exam; it's probably against the site rules, but the moderator who spots it wants to e-mail an admin and check. They hide the message, fire off an e-mail, and twiddle their thumbs for an hour or so. In the meantime, anyone who wanders past the post can see a post has been hidden, but not who posted it or what's in it, and aren't any the wiser.

Of course, the person who posted the message might be getting a bit cross about all this, but I'm hoping a combination of sensible moderators and sensible members will mean there's a bit of understanding if this has to happen. Maybe; maybe not...

An extension of this system is that we can also pre-moderate a member's messages; it's unlikely it'll ever need to happen, but we can flick a pixel-switch to make sure all posts by a user are moderated if, for example, they develop the habit of drunkenly posting nasty comments about the quality of their housemate's cooking when drunk.

Both bits of the system are designed, ultimately, to make the forums a) safer and b) less harshly moderated (since it's less likely a post will be deleted on the spot "just in case" it upsets someone). That said, anyone and everyone can  complain about any message (or comment, or - starting Tuesday, photo in the galleries) which they feel particularly strongly about. It's all about feedback - it's not possible to make a decent website which people want to come back to if no-one but the pixel-pushers feel like they have a say in how things are done.

Randomly, Angry Boss sent me a link to an Idiot's Guide to CSS positioning. I'm studying it as we speak. Maybe I'll learn something... I doubt much will go in though...

p.s. If anyone's at a loose end on Tuesday, come and see Flightplan in the Union. If I see you there, I promise I won't try and talk to you. And I'll make a concerted effort not to trip over your feet while trying to find somewhere to sit, too.

p.s. 2 - for my own reference, Things I Must Do Or I'll Be Sacked this week are:

• send Mothers' Day cards out to mum, extended family, women from down the road, some old lady I've never met but who sends me a card so I must know her, and ...
• Finish tidying up the forums code - "Thanks for posting your message" screen looks like Etch-A-Sketch gone baaad....
• Find a way to stop spamming the admins when a new post comes in
• Finish off the diaries side-bar, message layout and homepage - no-one wants to have to wade through my incessant waffling to get to their mate's diary. Oh, and find a way of allowing people to select a couple of different templates. And create a couple of different templates. Aaand....
  
  About 50 more words in this entry

Well, that's it; the Elections 2006 are over and done with. Six people have a job next year - no more tax dodging (at least for 12-ish months) while ten others have only the tattered remnants of their campaign trail to reflect on. Or at least an impending hangover given the results are announced in a perfect place to drown your sorrows for not-a-lot-of-money...

Anyhoo, congrats to the winners; I won't list them all - mainly 'cos I'm lazy, but also because I can't be bothered - and commiserats to the non-winners (is it still PC to use the term "losers"?).

I had the unique experience of trying to update the elections website while playing the music for the election candidates, trying to listen to the announcers (Rena & Chileya) and generally trying not to break anything I can't afford to... I must have looked like the world's biggest plonker running back and forward in the DJ booth during the elections announcements. Still, on the plus side, the elections homepage had just under 2,000 hits in 30 minutes during the announcements. Ker-ist!

One thing that struck me as I was putting the candidate manifestos online last week was just how differently things might become under different management; a large part of my work is involved with the Media & Communications officer, who was - and still is - Fraggy aka Adrian Fraguela. I'm lucky enough to have enough free reign over the site to be able to work on my own projects as well as doing his bidding (which, to be fair, is usually a case of "keep up the good work/let's try this/how about..." - in other words, a not-too-bad manager to have (and for me, that counts as a compliment - trust me ;o) ).

Reading the other chap's manifesto - Craig Fordham - I couldn't help wondering what he would have changed about the website. Would I have been out of a job? ("You obviously have no idea how to run a student website" - guilty as charged I reckon...) Would he have been the "boss from hell"? ("You can't write a blogging system for UPSU.net! Who'd bother reading it??!" - uhhm, me?) Would I have been relegated to fifty different layers of red tape? ("Go on, fight your way out of that, you pixel-abusing HTML-pervert" Err, too much speculation maybe...).

That's not to say that the next year is going to be anything other than bloody hard work. I'd love to be able to get all the work I've done on UPSU.net to count towards my degree qualification, although I doubt it will - so much has been done "on the fly" without a huge amount of documentation being made (yes, I know, very risky business - what happens if I get run over tomorrow? Uhhm, I get squashed, most probably...). Still, it's a nice dream. Wonder if anybody out there is actually reading UPSU.net...? It's a scary thought... <tumbleweed> ;o)

The RAG 2006 minisite is now online. It took a lot longer to put together than I'd hoped it would; sorry again to Tig and chums. I hope it's worth it though!! :o) Still got plenty more to be doing on it, so watch this space...

The Social:Life section of the site has seen some fairly hard work lately, although there's *loads* more to do, and it should all have been done last week, so I'm a bit scared at the prospect of cracking on with that. I'm sure it won't be too scary once I wake up tomorrow morning evening ... and go drinking... and then try and work drunk... and fall asleep dribbling into the keyboard...

Anyhoo, I must go - one of the DJ booths is a bit unwell, so I guess I ought to go prop it back up... Eep!