So tomorrow night is the Grad Ball. Adrian and myself have about 26 hours to pick out some tuneage to entertain the crowds with after the Scratch Perverts play their set, 'cos apparently we're playing *after* the Perverts in CO2, and Pure:FM have the pleasure of doing the warm-up.

But, there's a problem - I'm being a bit of a worrier: frankly, this is scary - there could be 200 people in CO2. What if I don't play tunes people like? What if I suddenly can't mix (i.e. "mix worse than usual")? What happens if my laptop crashes during my set? What if my first tune blows so badly, I'm forcibly removed from the premises via a trap-door?

Ahh well, at least it can't make me pregnant, and I reckon it'll turn out fine - after all, most people are graduating, so I won't have to hide any shame from them next year (and years to come...) from making an ass of myself.

So, while I'm feeling the fear about how tomorrow night's going to turn out, I really hope that, if you're going to the ball, you have a great time. And if you're not, have fun whatever else you're doing :o) /al - pixel munki by day, popular music abuser by night... Maybe.

(Off-topic? You betcha...) Radio 1 are offering a few lucky folks the chance to escape the drudgery of day-to-day life and go on a kinda working holiday thing with them for a day or two to report back on what happens.

Choices include Newquay (surfer fun - cooool), Reading/Leeds (rockers - sweaty!), Global Gathering (hell yeah!), Wales (why?), Mallorca (aren't there about 30 different ways of spelling that?), and Ibiza (Oh. Hell. Yeah!).

So hands up who's not going to choose Ibiza? Now, put your hands down if you don't have a passport. Uh huh. Thought so - everybody's going to want to go to Ibiza, and who could blame 'em?!

Naturally, purely out of a spirit of noseyness, I've sent in a very random application. Since I reckon my odds of winning are hovering somewhere around the same odds as winning the lottery without buying a ticket, I reckon plan B's going to have to happen (that's the one where I go to Ibiza at the start of next season with a box of records, not the one involving three tonnes of sand, a bucket and spade, a lilo, and Portsmouth high street...).

I guess I really ought to get on with some work ... ;o)

(Small print thingy: neither UPSU.net, Portsmouth SU or myself are endorsing this competition, or Radio 1, or the BBC, or anything at all whatsoever, but that's not to say I don't think it's a rather cool competition though, so why not give it a go? Can't speak for my bosses or anyone else who works here of course...)

You would have thought web design would be a simple job - you tell a web browser what colour your text and background is going to be, and what size, and you're pretty much sorted, right?

Uhhm, no such luck.

I've just lost a couple of hours of my life trying to fix a problem with the menus right across UPSU.net which I caused when I switched the menu system over from a table-based layout (i.e. bad for screen readers) to a list-based layout (i.e. gooood for screen readers) - 99% of the viewing population won't ever notice this change, or at least that was the plan.

Unfortunately, Internet Explorer - God bless it - had other ideas, and promptly broke the menus across the whole site, leaving double-spaced gaps below every single menu item.

Cack.

So I've just been experimenting with box model hacks (apparently a bit of a bad idea without completely changing the way we import our stylesheets, as most box model hacks have nasty effects on NN), and have ended up modifying a bit of code from A List Apart's excellent Taming Lists tutorial.

Of course, I'm expecting something else on the site to break as a result now...

I think I'm going to start on a re-working of our whole CSS system shortly - while the CSS generator is working well (averaging a 30% cut in stylesheet size), the underlying CSS sheets need some tidying up - after a year of tweaking, extending and redesigning, they're all looking a little the worse for wear. Any requests? Or, even better, anyone fancy helping me tidy up the code?

Hooray! I can finally talk about the change of headline act for the Grad Ball!

We're no longer having Kubb, so instead, we thought we'd go not one, two, three or even thirty better, but no less than 9,145 times better, with Goldie Lookin Chain headlining the Grad Ball!

Official press release and news is coming tomorrow, but for the time being let me just say I'm chuffed to bits - it's going to be an awesome night now!!

:D /al

(Very off topic) Much is being made of the decision to publish the UK threat level for the nation's panic levels viewing pleasure. Personally, I couldn't care less about it, but for your information, here's a pic of the security services' new high-tech system...



(Yes, it's a Dad's Army reference...)

Today, I am mainly going to be drawing incomprehensible data-interaction diagrams on pieces of low-tech paper. I have no real idea why...