Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Things I forgot to do so far this week:

1. Do an update yesterday. I had this vague plan to see if I could do a whole week of blog entries in list format, though somehow I forgot to write one yesterday. Didn’t even cross my mind. Oh well. I can’t imagine anyone will be adversely affected by this oversight. If you feel you are affected by this issue, please construct an elaborate fantasy about why this should lead you to receiving compensation, and then leave it in the comments section. Compensation requests will be ignored.

2. Check the car oil. The other day, the car oil light came on while I was driving, for about a second. This has never, ever happened before. I only noticed it because I was looking at the Dashboard thinking “Hey, what the fuck is that blue light?” Given the recent problems as the car starts to feel its gradually advancing age, on Sunday I intended to stick some oil in the bastard, prior to the MOT. Amidst Sunday’s chaotic visitations of people, I somehow managed to miss this out.

3. Buy Bin Bags. It’s a pretty mundane task. Tom and I had resorted to using a cereal box, which was becoming pretty full. This isn’t our usual behaviour, but when you’re used to 6 people thinking about bin bags and it’s suddenly reduced to 2, it’s hard to get into the rhythm. Luckily, Ian come home and we went to Tescos, where the aforementioned forgetment of garbage receptacles occured. When we got back, Ian found a spare one which kept us going for today. I guess tomorrow one of us will have to actually go to Tescos and buy a pack. Each time I buy a pack of something, I wonder just how close it is to being the final time I’ll buy that particular item for this house. Will I need any more washing up liquid? Toilet paper? Is this cooking oil the last ever cooking oil I’ll need to buy in Oxford? It’s making me various shades of queasy, thinking about how close we are to being turfed out of here (once the contract runs out) despite the fact we’ve got no place sorted out for afterwards.

And speaking of bin bags, because as you can tell they’re causing me some grief at the moment, today Ian and I finally took action against the horrible bushes/giant weeds that were obstructing us in removing the bins each week. These plants have been growing since we moved in and this summer, they finally expanded to the point where we couldn’t walk past them on the pavement. Ian and I just took a couple of knives to them, and with our best ninja-style slices, pruned the fuckers back into totally stripped bare twigs, mere shadows of their former rampant selves. The pavement is now traversable and hopefully, taking out the bins next week will be a far less horrible experience.

On a side note, today a second person came round to check out our “room to rent,” which is great, except we don’t have one. As far as we can gather, the landlord is advertising a room here, but hasn’t told us. I can unequivocally say that there is not a room available for rent here, because even though David and Rhys have vacated theirs, neither has handed in the key. We think the house owning man might be telling people there’s a room with the intention of allowing them to move in during August, once we’re gone, but you’d think he’d actually tell them that instead of sending them to our door.

Well, I guess that kind of degenerated into some misdirected whinging about the current state of the house situation. To be pretty honest, I chose a bad topic to do a list about. I don’t forget things that often. Well, I probably do, but perhaps I forget when I’ve forgotten things. Either way, it’s not leading me towards the wight light of inspiration, and is instead pushing me towards the black light of blogger’s block.

Yesterday I started reading Intimacy, by Sartre. I don’t normally go for existentialist literature, but…well, okay, before I continue, that’s a half-truth. I’ve only ever tried reading Kerouac and I can’t stand the bastard, and from what I can tell this book isn’t even overtly existentialist, if at all. Maybe too early. What I’m trying to say is, I wouldn’t normally be reading Sartre, but I figured I should grasp on to my final amounts of studenthood by reading some of the stereotypical authors, and also that Tom rarely seems to recommend books and films to people, so if he does it must have something going for it. So, yesterday I started reading it. After this, it’s my loose intention to read that goddamn book, the Catcher in the Rye, since it’s, christ, 5 years now since I last had a read. That seems like an utter epoch, I can remember taking it to school as if it were yesterday. Must be all this changing location that makes it seem like a long time.

Things accomplished today:

1. CD/Comics posted for eBay buyers. In a rare moment of panic, I decided that to supplement my failing monetary situation I should put some stuff on eBay. In order to do this, I had to pay off £10.41 of eBay fees. I listed a few comics, and a CD, and sold some of it. After paying the old eBay fees, the fees for the current items, and the cost of envelopes and postage, I’ve just about broken even. What a businessman. Still, this means anything else I sell will be 95% PROFIT. “Haunted Can of Vimto”, anyone?

2. Door Frame Fixed. When the robber kicked down our door, it had the unwanted side effect of splitting open the doorframe and catapaulting the metal locking plate which was attached to the doorframe across the room. I brought some tools from home yesterday, and earlier I hammered some nails into the fuckers and reattached the plate with screws. Our door now shuts properly again, in that, it doesn’t need a doorstop to prevent the wind from blowing it open. I admit, it’s not exactly a professional job. I’m hoping that the door will remain the semblance of operability until some point after we leave, anyway. Long enough to get our deposit money back. I still think is should be Isis’ responsibility to fix the door, but whatever, if they won’t do it I’m not going to lose money out of the deal.

3. Computer Desk Fixed. Of course, while I’ve got the tools here… Well, first, some backstory. A few years ago, at least 4, I was leaning on the slidey-keyboard shelf thing on my computer desk, and the strut which holds the rail on it detached from the desk. In retrospect, it wasn’t designed to hold the weight of me leaning on it, and that’s why it broke. Anyway. This leaves the keyboard tilted at about a 30 degree angle pointing towards the floor. I tried to fix this once a few weeks ago by using woodglue but it just didn’t work, so earlier today I used a spare wood screw to reattach the support beam with the rail on, to the top of the desk. It seems to have worked, it’s remaining in place with some light weight on, and it now feels like I’m typing at a strange angle since I’m not used to it begin this flat. Another score for James.

4. That’s it. Pretty sad, I know. 3 things of worth to talk about from a while day. I went shopping and was pleased to discover King Edward’s on the shelf, leading to a good evening meal. Tom and I watched Fahrenheit 911 with dinner, because we both like laughing at right wing Americans. It’s about as you’d expect from Micheal Moore, to be honest. It’s weighted in opinion, apparantly convinced with making the facts appear to fit the conecture, and some of it is pretty wildly conjectured. It’s also structured a little oddly; it jumps from what evil businesses stand to gain from a war to examining the reasons people join the army in the first place, but it was all pretty relevant to the overall picture. I don’t think it can hurt to have this kind of information being presented to the public though, more for the questions its wide distribution should raise than for the answers it tries to give.

I’ve recently learnt that knowing 2 people in one hospital brings unbridled convenience to a hospital trip. At the moment, I can drop Nikki off to see her mum and go and see Nan just upstairs from her in a single journey. I’ve become quite familiar with hospitals these last few weeks, as I’m sure Nikki and Jo have too. Let me consider some of the finer points of them.

1. They stink of death. Hospitals are filled with a tepid, dry, air. It’s not so much sterile as stagnant. Hospitals smell like I expect someone’s last breath would.

2. Healthcare professionals are generally just guessing. I’m not quite sure where the impression medicine was an exact science came from, but as I can see if you’re ill, they generally just sit you down, go “Hmm.” and then pull into some kind of “diagnosis tombola” and give you pills until something happens. Whether it’s sending Nikki’s Mum home because her aneurysm was a migraine or giving Nan insulin because they can’t really think what else might be up, they’re actions do not fill me with an all-encompassing confidence.

3. They are incredibly boring. I don’t know what I expected of hospitals. Not like, a games room or anything, but something. Magazines published this side of the ice-age perhaps? Books? Today’s newspapers?! My experiences have lead me to the conclusion that hospital “entertainment” consists of TVs which can’t be turned on lest they upset or disturb the patients and a shop which is either closed or not stocking your desired foodstuff.

Insightful, I’m sure.

This afternoon we were due to go to Dad’s pub for a meal, but he wasn’t really in the mood, and no-one else was too bothered, so Rob and I got a KFC between us. It was alright, but it wasn’t a Sunday Dinner. This led to further problems for me when Dad came to the hospital having got nan a beef sandwich from the pub, as she requested. I realised I should’ve asked for one too, but she needed it more than I so I even stayed my tongue from asking for a bite. Dammit. I’m going to have to use tomorrow to create some kind of extra-brilliant “Monday Dinner” to compensate.

When I got back to Oxford, I discovered that Rachel had deposited the Oriel plate she got me through the letterbox. It is most excellent. I will place it with my legendary St. John’s placemat and eat off it whenever the occasion warrants a feeling of academic excellence. I bet students who have actually attended the colleges come away with less.

I’ve got to admit, I’ve spent the last couple of days being lazy, even by my standards. On wednesday, I completed Mario 1 because I was at a loss for stuff to do. This lead, naturally, into the completion of the Japanese Mario 2 (aka “The Lost Levels”) which spanned wednesday night and thursday morning. Then, because even after all this gaming, nothing had presented itself, I just decided to keep on going, and completed the US/UK Mario 2 and Mario 3. I haven’t decided if I’ll bother with Mario World because I’ve done it quite recently, and to be honest, I should have better things to be doing.

With that in mind, earlier I signed up for a couple of job seeking websites and updated my CV for inclusion. It’s kind of like applying to apply for jobs. An extra level of application just to get you in the mood. I’m kind of stuck at what I actually want to do with my “career” such as it is, at the moment. Web design and/or development would be ideal, but my design skills aren’t exactly great and I don’t have any experience with ASP, which a lot of people want. I could do more games QA, but it’s pretty brain numbing stuff sometimes, I’m unsure as to how much I could take. QA could lead to level and game design which would be like some kind of wonderful dream, but I’m not sure how much of my post-uni life I’d enjoy spending in gamestesting purgatory.

These kind of thought processes consume some significant time right now. I walked up to the comic shop this afternoon and bought the week’s issues, including Joss Whedon’s second. He’s a damn good writer, but part of me reckons I could do better with the X-Men - but then that’s what being a fan is really about. It’s good stuff, it’s just not, well, new. After Grant Morrison, a return to the traditionals is a decent bet, since it’d be impossible to top the previous run on its own terms, but there’s still a feeling that while it’s better done than in a long time, it’s still nothing innovative. I wonder if maybe it wasn’t supposed to be, it’s selling better thanany other x-book ever, maybe the trick is to write brilliantly but safely in order to ease people in to the line. The storylines aren’t exactly great, but the characters are acting more like themselves in years, I guess that’s where Joss’ strength lies. I’ll take excellent middle of the road than horrendously shite soap opera that a lot of other X-Men comics display.

In other news, I am cooking dinner, so I’ll leave you all with the images of roasting chickens and potatoes, and soforth. Not literally, of course, I meant mental images.

Well, I suppose that yesterday was three years in the making. My final exam, or At least, what I hope was my final exam. I’m still percolated by this nauseous feeling that, well, nothing is certain until I’ve got results. It’s possible, not especially likely, but nonetheless possible that I could still fail. It’d really help the formation of my stomach ulcers if I had the faintest idea of how my dissertation did. Tom, Ian and I had a nice undermining of confidence session where we all asessed the likelihood we had totally fucked everything up, until we decided to stop the conversation on the grounds it was going to make us all weep for our wasted years, only to fail on a technicality of not having passed. 12th of July. 12th of July. Then I can put the guesswork behind me.

The exam wasn’t anything special, a load of nonsense about software project management. The sole glory of the modular system is that you only get examined on the recent work, so you can forget it instantly once the exam is done don’t have to revise everything for the finals. It was a totally uneventful exam, which I felt was adequately done. I occasionally like to underestimate my performance, but in this instance it was pretty shakey. It doesn’t matter, though, I’m way past caring about exams. Next up: Getting a job, getting a mortgage, then death. I seem to remember being pretty enthusiastic about getting into this stuff a few months ago, but now it’s time to get going the phrase “paralysing fear” wouldn’t be erroneously employed at this juncture.

On the plus side, if all has gone well, I’ve finally got a degree. Again, it’s not final, but it’s so close I can taste the sweet sweet letters-after-my-name goodness. Not that anyone cares if they’ve got BSc after their name, but I’ll probably break it out on certain occasions when I was trying to be sarcastic or satirical. You know me (unless you don’t.)

I had a pretty bad start to the week, really, what with the ass falling out of the car, decidedly running out of money, nan going into hospital, and an exam looming. I don’t tend to let stress and anxiety affect me, but I admit I was having some experience of both emotions. It helps that Nikki’s been around most of this week, and during that period the problems have more or less been beaten down. The car is fixed, the exam is done (for better or worse) and, although I’m still a bit scarce on cash, it’s less terminal than before. So my mental state is vastly improved from, say, Sunday morning, where I was walking around constantly with the feeling one gets when they are expecting Jeremy Beadle to suddenly appear and reveal how he has engineered the destruction of your life for the amusement of many braindead ITV viewers.

Nan is still in hospital, but I can’t do anything about that except hope it’s not “time”. I haven’t actually had to deal with any close relatives dying yet, and I’m not sure I even have any as close as my Dad’s parents. I am, however, acutely aware that at some point it’s going to happen. Maybe not today, maybe not for ten years, but it’s something that looms ever-closer. I’ve accepted that. Death is a part of life, and soforth. It never feels so acutely close as when one of them ends up in hospital though. As ever, I hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

I have resolved to spend more of tomorrow on my website. There’s no excuse now. I have the design, the framework, and I just need content. It’ll take a day or two to write it all, but it’ll never get done if I don’t at least get started. I really want to try doing something a bit different for the images on the site, by which I mean, make them rather than nick them from existing sources, only, er, I don’t have any artistic skill. I may just head off into Oxford with a digital camera, and see if I can make things look half decent through repeated application of photoshop filters. There’s always the lens flare if I need that touch of class. Failing that, I’ve got 3 years of university-level doodling to provide inspiration, and maybe I’ll just redraw some of those in a more computer-friendly format. I haven’t decided really.

Ah well. Hopefully that didn’t all come across as depressive, I’m pretty upbeat at the moment. Like I said, most of my problems are gone, and uni is likely done with. Just felt like bit of catharsis might be beneficial. I may have a few more concerns than usual, but that hasn’t stopped me devoting a good 5 hours of today to playing through Mario and listening to the Pixies. Also, I am currently marvelling at what a good idea Relly’s friend Stu has had on his autoblography. He’s having a “summer festival” where his friends write blog entries on his. Entertaining stuff, and yet one more way to make every other blogger in the land feel hideously inadequate about their uninventive daily record of banality. Luckily I’m not like that at all.

Finally, some measure of relief. In an attempt to reduce my mounting worries systematically, I went into town today and converted my account into a final year student account, by informing the bank that I was now in my last year having dropped the sandwich option many months ago. I also declined the vegetarian option. This allowed me to spin the usual web of sympathy and lies to ensure that I got an overdraft extension which should last me well into the next few weeks, assuming my rent comes from somewhere. So, once I’ve sorted out the exam tomorrow, I guess I’ll look for a job.

I went into town with Nikki, of course. We went up to Starbucks and had a drink with Rachel, before I absconded for the above grovelling. With this complete, Nikki, Rachel, and her boyfriend Seb arrived to congratulate me on scamming the bank out of its cold hard cash, and we went to the comic shop. I spoke briefly with Seb about a comics as we perused the racks, but to be honest it was just getting us laughed at by our respective partners. I did suggest Rachel bought the new TMCM issue though, which I finally got around to finishing reading earlier. It’s good, etc. Nikki and I walked back home in the rain, and then I met Ian and George returning from their exam to go to Tescos, where once again I forgot to buy ice cream. Tomorrow, I’ll remember. Probably.

I set up a g-mail account this morning, after Nikki procured an invite. I initially wasn’t bothered about one so I left it a bit later than I could’ve, but then I changed my mind and figured I should probably get in as close to the ground floor as possible, and set one up. It’s an exclusive ever-growing bunch of geeks who enjoy to pat each other on the back and talk about how great things are with their new toy. Not entirely unlike iPods, really, though they cost a ludicrous amount of money for a glorified walkman, so I feel my integrity can remain. I do have a mild concern with G-Mail. Google will check each e-mail and offer targeted adverts when it is being read based on the contents - if you send a short e-mail about going on holiday, whoever reads it would be linked to travel agents, if you read a mail about a new album perhaps, the reader would be linked to CD shops, and, I’m assuming, if you were to attempt to organise the use of drugs, bombs or guns, the FBI would kick down your door and shoot you in the forehead. Still, that aside for the moment, if anyone wants a g-mail account, then I guess you can request one here. I don’t have any invites yet, but to my knowledge, I’ll be getting at least one in due course. My friends will get preference but I’ll consider any of my faithful readers for the g-mail treatment.

Also, to round this off, I was alerted to this interesting story about the Knight Frank website, which isn’t normally something that would interest the teeming masses reading this blog, but I’m quite amused by it; I can’t say why. You can probably tell if you’re on the ball though.

On Saturday, I left Oxford around midday, bound for Leamington. It was the beginning of a journey that, over the weekend, would take many tolls on me. At the time, I had little idea what was in store. I drove down in a pretty uneventful manner, listening to my recently created Pixies tape. I say “uneventful”, there was a particularly bad torrent of rain towards the end, with a kind of 3-yard visibility motif, but that’s pretty easy to deal with, and quite fun in an extreme sports way. When I got in, Nikki and I went to Leamington for a while, after father’s day presents and similar things. It wasn’t until the end of this trip that I had a nagging doubt about the sound the car was making, I could hear a low growl that wasn’t there before. When you drive a car a lot, things like this tend to stick out. I took Nikki and Jo to Warwick hospital, where their mother is now admitted, and continued on to Paul’s house.

By this point, it seemed obvious to me that the car was sounding strange. I went up to Josh’s for a bit, we got Nikki and Jo, and then went to a traditional carvery, remembering this time to ask for Pepsi rather than coke - it’s a running theme, that when you ask for Coke in a Toby Carvery, they say “It’s Pepsi, is that alright?” in a move presumably forced by their evil pepsi distributors. In all the time we’ve been, this is the first time we’ve remembered it’s Pepsi before being told. But anyway. On the way back, I was certain the noise was bad and we speculated as to what it might be. Of the 5 of us, Nikki came out with the working theory that the silencer/muffler/exhaust noise reduction gear had broken, and that become the operating thoery. I resolved to get Dad to look at it, and see what the situation was. I knew not at the time, but it was a resolution I was doomed to be unable to fill.

The following morning, I took Jo to choir. The car sounded even worse than ever and I was getting strange looks from people who heard me growling down the road. I sonded not unlike some kind of racing enthusiast with a souped up fiesta, and if I had added a spoiler I might’ve gotten away with it. We went to ASDA and, as wit last week, bought up their stock of cheap-ass Vimto cans. 16p each! The car loaded, we bagan the drive back to warwick, but just as we approached Castle Lane, a horrible noise began. It was a kind of dragging, tearing noise, and I was convinced the ehaust pipe had just dropped off altogether.

False alarm, though. At least, some kind of misdirection, for the problem was actually that one of my tyres had burst. Entirely split, in fact. I had been considering that I needed new tyres to pass this MOT, but it didn’t occur to me that the previous ones would be so badly worn. The front right tyre was my only original one remaining, and it was apparantly pretty illegal to be driving with it. I admit I hadn’t checked the tyres since before Easter, though I can’t imagine it wasn’t obviously unacceptable then if it wasn’t today, which makes me assume I just didn’t have a clue what it was considered unacceptable in tyres. Guess I should make sure it doesn’t get that bad again. We changed the tyre with some help from Nikki’s dad, and in the process discovered that I have a car jack hidden in the boot which had gone untouched ever since I got the car. I know it’s there now though.

Still, with the tyre replaced, I dropped Nikki off, and headed up to Dad’s. On this journey, in addition to the awful din of engine, I could hear the clanging of metal. We considered, at first, it was the vimto cans in the back, but it later turned out the middle exhaust had become totally disconnected from the rear section and the clanging of metal ‘pon metal was actually those two bits colliding. Dad was udnerstandably nonplussed about the prospect of paying for repairs, but he did do it, and for that I am grateful. After dinner, we took the car up to Kwik Fit, left it there for a few minutes and wandered up into Leamington, where he checked out some coats in Millets which cost roughly the same as my food budget for a term, and then went to Waterstones and got a walking-themed OS map of Snowdonia, since it turns out his walking hobby is at least partially centred around climbing the three highest peaks in the UK, and he’d already done the other two. No small ambition, but to be honest, that’s probably his style.

The car is now driving nicely. I feel much better about going places when I’m not drawing attention to myself, and to be honest I’m still wondering who to thank for the fact that the tyre burst at 20mph in Warwick centre and not 85mph down the M40. The bonus upshot of this is that once I get some new wiper blades, it should (fingers crossed) pass the MOT, though who knows what problems might arise. Cars can, apparantly, be fickle beasts. I got my wheels balanced though, so it can’t be that. To be honest, I always assumed that was some kind of scam term so that mechanics could claim to have done extra work, but Kwik Fit charged at a flat rate, so I dunno. I’ll be intrigued to hear if the MOT guys in a few weeks claim to have done it.

After all was done, I picked Nikki up and we dropped in to see if nan was back form the hospital, since she was ill earlier. Pad arrived home just as Nikki and I got out of the car, so we sat with him for a bit and he told us that Nan was more or less in again for the same reason she was this time, last year. I’m quite glad, since I’m at Uni, that once she’s back in Warwick, Nikki will be able to drop in and see her when she goes to see her Mum. Worked out pretty convenient, in the end. Having spent half an hour or so there, we left my grandparent’s house and made out swift way back to Oxford. When I arrived, the car sounded as it had when I left - totally normal. Petrol consuption seems to be down a bit too.

So, that was my weekend told through the medium of car problems. I understand this may hav ebeen incredibly boring for those of you who don’t own cars, and for those of you that do. I personally can’t stand talking about cars, which now I think about it, is probably what lead to these problems as it was. Ah well. I’ll consider this a learning experience.

This morning Ian and I mosied on down to the comic shop in order to buy some stuff. I somehow managed to not go in the last few weeks, but there were issues to pick up today, and lack of money or not, I need my comics. Yesterdya, I had been looking on the Too Much Coffee Man website and wondering when a new issue would be out. Well, I discovered when I was at the shop: Last week. I got myself a copy, but I haven’t read it yet, I’m saving it to read in the hospital tomorrow.

I did some half-arsed revision, but I’m just going to cram it all in on Monday, I think. Then it’s a mere three weeks or so until I find out how I did in all my stuff. Not that it matter much at this point. I’ve been looking for jobs to apply for, but it’s a difficult task. I’m not so sure online is the best place to do it. Of course, I’m also considering finding temporary work in Oxford until I move out, since I’m pretty lean on cash at present. Still, Wednesday morning’s the time to really start worrying about that.

It’s always the end of term when I wake up and discover I have no money. Barclays informed me today that Tescos debitted £9.33 from my account on the 21st of June, which is 3 days from now. It seems my spending habits have exceeded linear time’s ability to catch up with them.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m going back home, as is mostly usual, and getting a few more comics from Stratford. Then we’re going to the hospital, then to the carvery with Josh, Paul and Sam, and then knowing the usual order of things, back to Josh’s for a bit. On Sunday it’s father’s day, which involves the unenviable task of trying to buy my excessively monied and minimalist* father something he can use. Right now, Rob and I have it narrowed down to: A new sponge for washing his car. I’m sure I’ll come up with something though. I was going to trick him into expressing want for a DVD the other week, but I forgot and I suspect he’d have just told me he wasn’t that interested in films anyway, which to be fair, he isn’t. There was always the comedy option of buying him the James Hunt F1 greats DVD, but the time has passed for that. Maybe his birthday, though.

*I mean lifestyle wise. The TV thing the other day was a rare excess. He does have a few hobbies but they’re hard to buy for.

Anyway, on Sunday I’ll be dragging Nikki back here, so part of my aim before bed is to make sure the place is presentable. I’ve no doubt it is anyway, but it can’t hurt to be sure. I don’t like to seem undomesticated. Speaking of which, today I put a half load of washing on, erroneously believing it would take half the time. Well, it just uses half the water. Of course, it’s probably more like two-thirds of the water, which makes me wonder just what the hell it’s even for in the first place. Another lesson learned.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed that interlude. I had intended to do more web design updates, but things kept getting in the way. I don’t even remember what I talked about in the last one. I did kind of sort out the column division problem in the last one, but in the end tables remained the only way to keep IE and Moz looking the same, so I’m just going to have to live with it. It’s been almost 2 months since I tackled that design issue.

In the mean time, I’ve coded some PHP to do certain jobs around the place, to insert images and do things like ensure the right page has the right background. I also used it to create a dynamically spaced out header. This feature, I believe, does exist in CSS2, which has not been implemented by anyone on the planet as near as I can see. I wrote a function which takes any string and adds in the given number of spaces between words, just for the header design element. I had to write it twice because my first one was broken in such a way that it was add trailing spaces which were making things off-centre, and despite my excellent code I just rewrote the damn thing from scratch in a much simpler way, rather than try and hack the correct shite into the current version.

I decided to colour code the various sections of my site. Something I’ve been conscious of is that the trends in site design moved from grey, to black, to white, and people are currently big on pastels and muted tones, in the vein of newsaskew. I’m not quite that muted, but I thought it’d be a nice challenge for me to try and fit some bloody colour around at some point. A good tip, though, is that staring at a red screen for extended periods of time just makes your eyes go strange. I rejected the bright red section. I used the CSS file to create colour classes that can apply the relevant colour background to the parent, which works good. I’m quite pleased with the colour coding, it hopefully won’t be too distracting, and it allowed me to take some ideas further. One problem I was having was that the menu at the bottom looked a bit rubbish, so I added a small bar of colour to each button - it was an inspiration that came to me just as I was going to sleep one night and I had to quickly draw it out in case I forgot - and it’s worked out exactly as planned. So much so, that my second problem - that having a menu at the bottom of the page - was easily rectified by duplicating the colour bars at the top of the page, without text, for a quick menu. I’m undecided as to whether I’ll just leave it as tooltips to indicate link functionality or create a mouseover-activated label, but that’s a future concern. The colour bars on the bottom menu were created using a repeated background gif, one pixel high, 10 long, with a fixed palette of one colour. the resultant files are mere bytes long. I don’t like using too many images, but this way, the image file for the colour bar is occasionally smaller in bytes than the word associated with it would be. That’s what I consider to be conservative use of images.

With that, of course, the design is finalised. I duplicated the pages and applied the colours to create a working mockup, and then I get out the hatchet and wood glue and began the always hilarious task of making B2’s blog code work with the new design, and more importantly, integrating the elements into the CSS file. I remember, a year and a half ago when I installed B2, I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing with the CSS file and code, but since then I’ve taken huge strides in both areas. PHP: tamed, CSS: my new bitch. Okay, I admit, mybe I’ve still got stuff to learn, but it wasn’t half the task it was the first time I tried to change the layout of my blog. I did encounter the ever-annoying problem of an erroneously closed div tag, it was causing deviant behaviour in Mozilla. Didn’t take long to track down. For the blog page, I created a much more streamlined system, since I was getting a little concerned that the giant chunks on the current menu bar were perhaps a bit much. It’s all a lot more understated now, and it’s my favourite blog iteration yet. I briefly toyed with changing the name, since part of the plan for this new site is to, in part, make a site I can refer employers to, but I feel sentimental attachment to this one, it’s been in use for many years, in many forms. If people don’t want an aspiring sociopath working for them, well, best they find out sooner rather than later. Oh, I’ve decided to be generous too. Much in the same manner thatn “new improved recipe” usually means “cheaper, much worse recipe” I am aware some people might not like the new design, and thus I’ll be offering legacy integration and keeping this design available seperately too. Do you not feel my infinite benevolence?

Well, that about brings the last two days of development up to speed. I didn’t actually do any today, because I felt I’d rather wait a bit instead of risking becoming bord with things. If I can keep up the page, I’ll be done in a week or two at the utter most, but then, that’s what I always say with this kind of thing. The problem now is that having finished the deisng, I have to start adding content. I’ve got some ideas, a few of which involve redrafting some former blog entries, but the really fun stuff is going to be all-new. I hope to keep some of the older sections online though.

As an aside, I’m thinking of doing away with my mini-sites. Haven’t confirmed it yet, but there’s a strong case against them. I can’t really afford the extra hosting required for them at the moment, and I haven’t updated them in a while. I contributed all my rare easyworld stuff to the Straight to Radio CD, which Renegadechic Nicky organised, so it’s not like that stuff isn’t out there, and the bestofafe hasn’t been updated in many moons, and probably won’t ever be at this point. I’d hate to see ‘em go forever, but I’ll at least indicate I’m not going to be updating either in any forseeable amount of time. I guess, if she wants, Nikki could transfer them to her hosting and do something with them. I hate consigning any material to be forgotten, so I’d make them available somehow, I think it’s probably just honest to make sure people know there aren’t any updates coming. I think I’d probably do better if I made the content of the site secondary to the technologies - a bestofafe/easyworld song database done in SQL and PHP might just hold my interest in a way these outdated sites don’t. In fact, I have been looking to attempt some perl…

Ah, the plot may yet thicken. Later on, though, I’ve got my hands full with this page as it is.

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Image how I wept with joy when I went to make this code XML compliant, and hot damn if it wasn’t already.