Alex Harries's diary

Unashamedly geeky blog post-thing: Yahoo!'s pipes toy has been around for a while, and lets you do some very interesting things with data, one of them being combining RSS feeds. I discovered it today while avoiding doing real work...

I had a play about with it today and created this feed in a couple of minutes for our news bods to keep on screen in the office, which updates every 30 seconds with the latest UPSU, University, Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK and World headlines.

Cunning stuff... 

Woohoo - my new sub arrived. Bugger - it's been dropped in transit and totally ruined. How many stamps does a 30KG package need to get to Germany? >-( 

In the absense of any time to write more than a couple of sentences, and still not having got my dead hard drive resurrected, here's some pics taking roughly in the last week for you to look at. Or not... ;o)

Ties and scarves at the Copy Shop

Ooh, new clothing!

Ben and Laura in eco-friendly transport endorsement

Ben and Laura went out delivering newspapers. Thankyou both of you :o)

The Portsmouth Uni wall of debt

Students + student loans + interest = big debt. Last week saw a debate and campaigns on the issue.

Fruit & veg market comes to the Union

The Thinkfresh market arrives at the Union, and should be back next Wednesday, too. Awesome :o)

Fairtrade freebies

A very nice chap set up a stall at the Union giving away samples of Fairtrade fruit 'n nut bars and muffins. Yum :o)

Ooh, new toys!

... and it was broken before it even made it out of the box. Back to Germany then... :o(

Pretty...

... sunset. Apparently, there's a whole world out there. I'm doubtful... 

While I freely admit I am the maker of much of my own troubles, I don't think anyone can accuse me of being responsible for my laptop's hard drive crashing in spectacular style tonight. Now I have one very dead 'pooter with all of my work, music, e-mails, to-dos, projects, and assorted other vitally important work information on, and no way of getting to it unless I can find £500 down the back of the sofa.

Bugger.

Since I'm venting, I'd just like to extend my sincere thanks to Apple for their Time Machine backup software, which has been so completely useless in backing up my personal data - after it decided it couldn't back up my information due to an "Unknown error" - that I've now built it a shrine in my bedroom and called it Steve. Bloody cheers...

Still, on the plus side, I should get a lie in tomorrow (touch wood) :o)

Reading the comments left on the Daily Echo's coverage of the Top Up Fees protest in Bitterne, I had to laugh when I saw this mini-thread in the comments...

Commenter 1: "... I finally managed to escape living in the Bedford Place area last year after putting up with student noise from parties and abuse when asking them to quieten down..."

Commenter 2: "How do you know which ones are students and which ones are chavs fron the flowers estate?"

Commenter 1: " Easy - the students' tattoos are spelt properly"

Easy enough then, apparently... <grin>

p.s. Thanks go to the NUS for the mention on Officeronline about our Top Up Fees protest! :o)