Alex Harries's diary

Following the latest on bank charges is becoming a tiny bit of a hobby for me now as - in common with millions of other customers - my bank takes more and more of my money in penalty charges to cover their "costs".

If you've read much of my blog, you might have spotted that a lot of my charges come from one charge taking me over my overdraft limit, with more charges piled on top to add insult to injury. Again, this is a common problem for lots of bank customers.

In the news today, I spotted this story about Lloyds TSB being accused by a judge of timewasting behaviour - not the first time such tactics have been used by the banks according to the BBC's article - and another story involving my personal favourite bank, the Alliance & Leicester (not that I ever write about their poor service or anything... ahem) tacitly admitting their charges should only be around the £4.50 mark at the most.

Not that being relieved of my money by a faceless and rude company of questionable competence irks me at all - I'm a Zen-like centre of calm and love today. Ok, I'm lying again... ;o)

Have a good weekend! /al - skyving coursework. Again.

(This is another really, *really* boring blog entry. Why not Google for "noodle mining" instead of reading it?) 

I've just made my first bit of Ajax - I feel so proud! Ok, it's sad and geeky, but I'm happy 'cos I just (a) learnt something new, and (b) it worked.

When I tried to get onto the UPSU homepage earlier this evening, it wouldn't load. It was working fine for everyone else, so I figured it had something to do with a piece of code I was loading for myself, meaning the only suspect was the weather box, which only loads for me (as I'm still testing its reliability).

To fix this, we need to have a way of preventing content which relies on other servers or websites, or which is either bulky, not critically important to UPSU.net (or both) from slowing down page loads. Lots of websites use JavaScript to load content into a DIV after the rest of the page has loaded, for example the BBC news homepage (which loads the "Your local news, weather and sport here" box after the rest of the page has loaded). This means that the non-essential content can be as badly behaved as it likes without breaking the rest of the page, even if it never loads. Google Ads also works on this basis to prevent their adverts from slowing down the loading times of the pages displaying the adverts.

Not really having a clue where to start though, I went off on a Google wander and found DynamicDrive.com's excellent cut-out-and-keep guide which does exactly what I was looking for. So, one quick modification (to let me load the EuroWeather module outside of Mambo - it's not a core component and certainly poses no security risks) and we're up and running.

I'll also be using this technique to load in BBC News headlines onto the homepage in the near future, and I'm already trying to think of other ways we can make use of this. An ideal application would be to use it to load additional homepage content, for example my original but not-very-evil plan of converting the hero advert (the big 450x200 box) into a tabbed area which can show either the hero advert, or two or three other boxes of content - "my forum discussions", "my blah blah...", or "my settings" - etc. While it opens the way for us to put a lot of new toys on the homepage we haven't been able to because of size and space restrictions, I'm going to have to be careful not to fall into the trap of piling crap on top of crap just "because it's nice" ;o)

Over on the SUSU forums, I spotted this discussion claiming that SUSU is the best students' union website in the country. Not sure I agree with that, but it's certainly a good site (as I've mentioned before).

I want to see UPSU.net kicking everyone's backsides as a student website - we need to focus hard on improving the content, features, usability, usefulness and looks (in that order), and since we have a potential base of 16,000 students, that's a lot of different needs and levels of computer ability.

I reckon we also need to start taking a much greater interest in what people would like to see. To that end, tell me!

• What do you think?
• What does UPSU.net need?
• What would you like to see on the site?
• What would keep you coming back to the site?

Answers in the boxes below. Thanks! /al

This is awesome - a brilliant way of bringing different communities and groups of people together, pioneered by a group of Parisians. It's also exactly what I'd love to see on UPSU.net with Portsmouth's student population (and why stop there? Why not make it all-inclusive?).

(Or maybe the whole social groups thing on t'internet is just a manifestation of us web geeks' collective desire to find non-threatening ways of making new friends? Where's a psychology student when you need one? ;o) ).

/al - bedtime 

(Off-topic. This isn't an endorsement or recommendation by UPSU - I just happen to think it's rather cool. And yes, I'm a gadget freak... ;o)

I've just seen this mentioned on BBC news.

It's hand-held gadget that lets you home in on a postage stamp-sized tag which you can stick on to anything (or anyone) valuable. Handy for finding lost keys, laptops, kids, cars, and I'm sure there's at least one stalker and/or private detective out there who'll want fifty of these...

£99 gets you the gadget, 1 panic homing tag (which is the tag that sets the Loc8tor's alarm off if it goes outside a certain range) and 3 mini homing tags.

Think I'll get one for the Macbook :D

/al

With an eerie sense of timing, just as Alexander Litvinenko - the former Russian spy with an outspoken hatred of Russia's spying tactics - finds himself in the news after his apparent poisoning, this month's issue of Pugwash carries a story on the subject of the similarities between Russia's long-standing spying culture, and Britain's apparent move towards such a culture in the name of fighting terrorism.

Alexander Litvinenko claims his poisoning attempt - which has resulted in serious illness, and appears to have been caused by a poison formerly used as a rodenticide until its use was banned due to health fears - was the work of his former KGB employers, who are apparently somewhat underwhelmed by his criticisms of the Russian government.

You can read Agnes Smedley's "Under Surveillance" in this month's Pugwash online, or grab a copy of the magazine from the Union.

UPDATE: According to BBC News, Litvinenko has died of a suspected heart attack shortly after 9pm, Thursday 23rd November. Doctors believe he may have been poisoned with radioactive Thallium. Not a nice way to go!