Alex Harries's diary

Tomorrow afternoon, I'm hopping on to a flight to Ibiza for a couple of days of being "PR"'d by Making Waves, the PR company tasked with promoting the forthcoming Malibu Soundclash event at the Union on the 19th October.

The basic plan is to take a gaggle of student journalists over to the White Isle for a couple of nights. The first night is a mini (I think?) version of the Malibu Soundclash event, with us journos embarrassing ourselves on the decks doing some, err, "mixing" - followed by a responsible drinking lecture once we're all three sheets to the wind. After that, it's off to Café Mambo on the second night... I think that's something resembling the plan, anyway. Spice Girls anyone?

My job out there is to report back on how wonderful the night was, and to promise how wonderful the Malibu Soundclash event is going to be when it comes to Portsmouth.

The thing that's worrying me is that I don't do lying very well, so I can't exactly promise it'll be good. Disclaimer aside, I reckon it'll probably be a great time, with bells on, and going on last year's event, the Malibu Soundclash night at the Union should be awesome.

The whole principal of the PR industry is a bit of a strange concept to me; "surely, if a company's paying for me to go an lounge about on a hot, foreign island enjoying myself, there must be a catch or something questionable going on?" I've wondered out loud many times.

The reality here is that Malibu, being a heeyowge company, are very keen to see their University Soundclash tour promoted to within an inch of its life. The UK clubbing scene is cut-throat at the best of times, and Malibu simply don't want their night to sink into oblivion because the marketing (or the event) is half-arsed.

Ok, I can understand that.

This isn't the first time the Soundclash has come to Portsmouth, and last year saw former MAPO Fraggy being sent out to the White Isle for a 24 hour stint on the same PR tour. The Soundclash event was then held on a Wednesday night which, let's face it, needs no help to be a packed-out night; because it's being held on a Friday this year, it should be a great addition to the Union's Orange Fridays brand.

Here's the only thing that remains a bit of a worry for me: what I know about journalism could be written on the back of a postage stamp. With a blunt crayon. In a form of blind over-compensation, I've been out and bought myself a shiny new Red 'n Black notepad and a few biros (I lose or eat every pen I own eventually, so buying anything more expensive is just stupid), so at least I might look the part, even if I spend my time drawing doodles instead of writing journalist-y things. Wish me luck...!

One last thing: I've always wanted to go to Ibiza. Now I'm going, I'm hoping it won't be like meeting your hero and then realising (s)he has chronic dandruff, halitosis, and wears socks with sandals... You get the idea...

Anyway, I'll be back in a few days. While I'm gone, make sure the cat's fed & watered, and don't leave the gas on. If you don't hear from me by the weekend, I've either been refused entry ...

It's about half nine on Saturday 5th May. Portsmouth Guildhall is packed full of scrubbed, polished and groomed sports bods. Sports Sabb Jodie Austin is in charge of the mic, and up on stage, a little bald Spanish chap by the name of Fraggy is looking like he's about to have a heart attack as he prays - and prays, and prays, and prays - that the AU Dinner video, the result of two weeks' solid work* from him and Mike Cooter, works first time when he hits "play"...

This year's event was a first for many reasons: it was held in the (very plush) Portsmouth Guildhall, it sold out faster than ever before (and I think more people attended than ever before), I was there for the first time (ok ok, nobody cares about that), and instead of having a guest speaker we were treated to a video of the Union's sporting achievements this year, seasoned with a sprinkling of words by a few sporting bods.

For many people attending, the video was definitely the highlight of the evening's entertainment. As they appeared on the big screen, each club raised a deafening cheer, and the round of applause at the end of the video was testimony to the video's popularity.

I think this could be a really good sign of things to come - bigging-up the efforts put in by clubs and societies doesn't just have to happen through awards - everyone likes a bit of publicity, and if we can improve clubs' and societies' numbers and confidence by getting (good) videos of them played all over the place, and put online, then I'm all for it.

Of course, everyone at the dinner looked Fabulous, Darling, with only a couple of people getting blatantly wrecked (lightweights ;o), and the occasional evil glare between girls who'd worn the same dress. I don't understand that mentality, I'll be honest, but I'm sure someone will explain - with diagrams - why it's such a Bad Thing (TM).

A big well done to Fraggy and Mike for their efforts over the last couple of weeks (and a well done to everyone else who helped organise and run the night so well), and also a thankyou to Fraggy and Mike for opening up a new area of UPSU Media for me to play with/break/push forward. Apparently, I'll have to learn to do this next year: oh dear...

Randomly, during the evening I was once again asked - this time by Sam Wilson (one of my opposition candidates in the elections) - whether I was going to cancel Purple Wednesdays. In hindsight, I think I was lucky to escape with my legs intact when I thought it would be a good idea to wind him up for a bit, saying it was definitely being cancelled (it's not!) - the look on his face was, err, priceless. Sorry Sam!

p.s. The video was great. The Apple Mac it was playing on worked fine, and everyone lived happily ever after. Or something like that, anyway... :o)

* Yes, apparently, Fraggy actually does work. Shocking, but true... ;o)

(More non-news) In a random few moments of boredom yesterday, I've been trawling through a few blogs looking for more reading material. While the majority were dismissed without having to scroll down the page, a few stood out and I hacked through their archives yesterday evening...

• littleredboat.co.uk is a blog I've probably mentioned previously. It's written by occasional Grauniad contributor Anna Pickering, and is a brilliantly funny, off-beat look at ... Well, anything and everything. Check it out - go on, you know you want to...
• girlonatrain.blogspot.com is one I admit I haven't really read a lot of yet, but it looks like it might just be a worthwhile browse (just maybe).
• universalsoldieruk.blogspot.com is another blog I've been drawn into. It's no secret I like Andy McNab's writing style, like Bravo Two Zero, if only for the grim - but very very good - Army humour he writes with. Universal Soldier is a blog written in a similar style - again, it's more about the comedy than any gore - but you might still want to use a spot of judgement before clicking around it, just in case...

p.s. a big "hooray" to Fraggy who has finally updated his blog after months of neglect. Fraggy mate, if you've ever considered buying plants or a pet, please don't - they'd be dead for weeks before you missed them ;o)

More as a way of helping me remember wot I dun last week than trying to write anything interesting, this week I've mainly been...

• Working on the diaries side bar - the calendar system is up and working, along with "latest diary entries" and "latest comments" - now there's only a couple more things left to do before the diaries are ready to go.
• Working on the RSS system - it's not finished yet (I still have to finish the "comments on this article" and set of forums feeds first, but we're getting there, with the addition of a huge range of feeds - see upsu.net/rss/about for a mini-list).
• Working on the dynamic CSS system - since we began UPSU.net, it's never been 100% possible to tell how your web page is going to look because we typically use two CSS files - the local one, and a site-wide one. When you edit a web page, the WYSIWYG editor only pulls in the local template, so some of the site-wide settings - fonts, some colours, etc - don't show. As of today, each page has a single .css file which is generated by the site each time it's called, and includes the local and site-wide CSS code, as well as any user-inserted CSS (which they can simply type when they are editing their page to save the hassle of uploading a stylesheet). So far, everything seems to be working in hunky-dory fashion. Woot!

I've also been playing catch-up with a backlog of work the dimensions of a small mountain, so the next couple of days will be spent finally clearing that - joyous things like answering the "why doesn't the JobShop work?" e-mails (fixed now - my apologies - hosting co. moved server but I forgot to pencil it in the diary... Duh...) and "why don't you have anything about snowboarding/skating/whatever on the site?" (uhhm, 'cos ... actually I dunno...!).

Over the summer, we have a lot of work to be ploughing on with, but the main jobs over the summer include getting the sportos to update their homepages a lot more, and encouraging the societies, and the various Union departments, to do likewise.

Fraggy's been working on getting to grips with some of the harder aspects of the site - creating templates for the Netball club, for example - and I'm planning the rope him into getting some of the site's more neglected areas polished up over the summer, too.

I've also just finished a few different re-usable homepage layout thingies, the first - "violet" - finding it's way onto the Course Reps homepage. It's one of my first *almost* pure-CSS layouts - the code's still a bit messy, but it's certainly better than opening a dozen tables just to push something one pixel to the side...(!). You can see the other variations on the theme here. Unfortunately, one of my evening jobs is going to be pruning the CSS files down to a sensible size - the CSS for the tester page is 60K, which is bloody silly. Ah well, s'pose we can't all have social lives, eh? ;o)

There are quite a few other tweaks I've been making, but I'll save those for a really rainy/boring day...

Right, I'm off to hoover the house - Jade's moving in tonight 'cos I've got a spare room. Apparently she's "loud and lovely" - so says her profile thingy - but she's been a mate for years so I'm sure it'll all be cool. Or noisy. One or t'other...