Alex Harries's diary

(Excuse the rare ramble not connected to the site, but I have new toys and am telling everybody who doesn't run away first... ;o) ).

Having received Final Scratch 2 yesterday (and nearly giving myself a black eye trying to unwrap it at the speed of light) - God bless student loans ;o) - I'm going to be trying it out in anger at FRFs in the Union's Lux tonight (well, unless DJ K Ray and chums get all upset at the extra cables in the DJ booth or it gets beered...).

So, an advance apology to anyone who might be in Lux around the start of the night and who catches me making a pig's ear of having a mix.

This of course assumes I can make the thing work and that the real DJs let me have a play...!

UPDATE 10.30pm: well, I'm standing in the DJ booth in Lux; only had a little mix so far but blimey, this thing's rather good. "But then, it damn well ought to be for the amount I paid for it" says the Northern part of my genes... ;o)

UPDATE 2: 12.30am: I've just played a few more tunes in Lux and dear God I can't believe I haven't bought this toy before now - having 5,000+ records at the end of a search (and a drag-and-drop), to play on vinyl... Blimey, it's all rather fun! If that's not geeky enough for you, here's what I played: The Beginnerz "Reckless Girl", Benjamin Thieves "Texas", Dave McCullen "B***h", and Switch "A bit patchy". Then I got chucked off the decks to make way for some more Kev Ray ;o)

Interestingly, Fabric are the only London club listed by Stanton as having FS2 installed - it's a shame really 'cos it's such a cool toy, but I guess most DJs would rather spend their hard-earned chasing down elusive white labels rather than put their faith in technology. Understandable, but if you're thinking about getting FS2 (and you can afford it), I'd definitely recommend you go for it. The software's very very easy to use and runs very fast - and is very stable - on my 1.8Ghz lappy. 9.5/10 (half a mark knocked off 'cos it costs £500-ish beer tokens).

I wonder if I can get the program to send out the "what's playing now" info so we can get it on the Lux big screen...?

The Union diaries - "blogs" - are still in the development stage where the end result won't necessarily look and act in the same way as it does at the moment, but we're keen to find out what you think about the system so far; does it seem easy enough to use? What would you change about how it works? What would you put on the diaries homepage? What extras would you like to add?

Speak now or forever grumble... ;o)

A while back, one of the more technically-minded members of the UPSU team mentioned that there were people using MSN Messenger as a way of sending out advertisements. Naturally I assumed the worst and - choking on my instant coffee - decried it as a cheap way of spamming users of instant messenger programs, and another intrusion on peoples' privacy.

As usual, I slightly jumped the gun.

The way this works is this; say the Union wanted to send out "what's on" information through MSN Messenger. We would set up an MSN "bot", which is simply a computer program with an MSN Messenger account that "talks" to people on it's MSN contacts list.

To join up to the service, I would simply add the bot's e-mail address to my MSN contacts list - e.g. sociallife@upsu.net. The bot would automagically accept my e-mail address into it's contacts list and send out a message through MSNM (assuming I'm online) saying something like,

"This is the UPSU.net Social:Life messenger bot. I send out what's on information every 24 hours.

To join up to this service and receive this information, please type 'join'. To cancel, please type 'cancel', or simply close this conversation window and delete me from your contacts list.

Remember you can cancel this service at any time simply by typing 'cancel'."


Seems simple enough doesn't it?

The bot would then keep an eye out for you and when it sees you're online and you haven't been sent the latest updates for at least 24 hours, it sends out a mini-summary of what's on, e.g.

"Tonight at the Union - Mr. Scruff in Lux 9pm to 2am (dance music) - more info click here
Tomorrow at the Union - ....
Drinks offers - Bud 2-4-£3 - Carling £1.40 - ...
Food - the new summer menu is online. See it here..."

Two of the most important things about this service:
1. Your e-mail address won't be sold, harvested or whatever other horrible things they do to e-mail addresses these days. No spam - not ever; not from us or anyone else.
2. Anyone can sign up to the service, and your e-mail address won't be used for any other promotional purposes in or outside the Union - it's purely there because the IM services (e.g. MSNM, AIM, etc) need it to work.

The only e-mail you would ever get from this system (that I can think of) would be a confirmation that you'd signed up to the service, what it offers, and how to cancel (just in case a "mate" of yours signs you up when you're not looking).

So, would an instant messenger news bot be a good or a bad suggestion? You can add your comments below.

If you've ever used Outlook's calendar to organise your life/work/whatever, you might've worked out that it's a) pretty damned handy and b) a bit complicated (and, if you're tied to a desktop machine, c) stuck without it if you're away from your own PC).

Google have quietly introduced the Google calendar beta ("beta" of course meaning "we think it works, but we're not making any promises...") - well worth a look, especially if you're fashionable enough to have a Google mail (aka Gmail, but apparently it's not called that any more) account too.

Why am I posting this? I'm just testing out some code changes I'm making behind the scenes. Don't mind me - I'm just being a geek... B-)

BBC.co.uk's magazine today published an article on how home security is largely useless in the fight against burglaries, citing a study by the University of Portsmouth.

Depressing stuff, but there's plenty of information available online on securing your home, so don't have nightmares :o)