alex’s blog

Data Portability work group has began. Join in for the future of a sustainable internet.

Dunno if you have heard about it, but it will be big.. Firefox 3 and Microsoft Vista are planning to support it in the near future..

I have kind of got it to work.. ish. I will work on it later I think.. doing my head in now..

EDIT: Got it working!! (Except for AJAX OpenID Commenting.. but its coming along)..

Design is a skill I am gradually learning, it’s a slow process and it doesn’t help much that I am immune to choosing nice colours usually, however I think that as I continue to read I am nudging myself in the right direction, finally.

In case you have been asleep recently and have missed Web 2.0 completely, the great buzzword that it is, then you will have noticed the now common idea of distributed, user-driven content. Content that is finally becoming personal, (Timothy’s idea is finally showing), and that is delivered on a users request and not when an administrator bothers to. This gives us great flexibility to do us what we want with the data, present it in any way we wish. Great you think, well yes and no. These sites work well because one of aspect in their design..

Simplicity, it’s visually appealing, they fit the purpose and much like Windows, it just works. They don’t annoy anyone by setting annoying quotas and silly little animations when you do something right, I applaud them because of this.

Anyway, with this revision of my site I tried to find a template to mould that followed some simple design principles, many will work anywhere, but it’s outside these principles that you can play with.

I read a riveting article today about text spacing and about how it affects a users experience on a website. Personally when you look at a page, what annoys you? Well, flash usually is a big one, large imagery and overly fancy sites also get up my nose, also this is why I cannot even contemplate using MySpace. So what you follow?

Well, 90% of the data on the web is in fact… Text. Strange that one, please bare this in mind. Make sure it is readable and most of all the focus of the web site, (unless you are running a picture/video site, which you can now ignore my comments), treat users with respect and make sure they are the focus of the site.

Enough rambling.

With my foray back into OSS recently, I was contacted by one Norman Markgraf, this guy I worked with last year for a few months on OpenDocumentPHP. He is a sound guy and he wanted to try and restart the project, he had noticed that in PHP5.2 there is now ZIP support by default, making our task one hell of a load easier. I was surprised to hear from him and I am now jumping back onto the band wagon when I can.

It’s going to be hard work bringing the OpenDocument Format to the Web, but heck we can try.

For anyone that cares, I have been working on snippets of Ubuntu now for around 3 months. It’s damn interesting, being able to see real-time large scale development. After reading countless wiki entries, trailing launchpad and even reading mailing list archives like a LUGRadio presenter, (which incidentally is a very funny podcast, seriously considering LUGRadio Live 07), I am finally getting to grips with how this process works.

It’s strange that I never really saw it going this way, basically a core team of developers are the only people who can really change the code, but below that it’s really a structured free for all with anyone being able to edit anything, the only boundary is your knowledge. This is really appealing to me, as I know a fair bit about computers in general and Linux now, but being able to learn and work and actually feel like the work I am putting in is actually worth it. Unlike other OSS projects I have worked on, I am not getting tangled in the web of bureaucracy, with administrators and moderators who think they are 10 times better than you because they started on the project years before you, thus it’s their right to live there forever.

But meh, it’s a great little distro, a solid community and one that I actually want to be a part of, one that’s dragging me in, not that I am fighting my way into.

Meh, stupid hosting companies. Whilst doing the updates I have managed to be without email and for the vast majority of the time without FTP access, quickly having to jump on and upload. Hopefully this should be fixed finally.

Thanks Chad.

For anyone that cares, I updated the blog a little. Enjoy.

Wow, August was a long time ago and strangely it does just seem like yesterday.

School I suppose should be at the top of the priorities, thus.. (Sorry Nat.)

The last couple of months have flown by, getting to the business I should have started a year back, I am just about on course for my January exams now, I am taking the grand total of 7 exams, comparing that to last year’s 1 at the same time its getting rather stressful. (Don’t worry the other 6 are retakes.)

September was certainly a turning point for me, I suddenly realised, “Heck! I’ve got 8 months now, that’s it..”, actually not becoming what your deepest aspirations are is certainly a great motivator. I guess I am lucky that I do know what I want to be and I have done since such an early age, this means that I have ‘worked’ towards it, well behind the computer desk away from the hellish confines of the school classroom. I am now doing about a chapter of maths work a week and will have to continue this if I have any hope of getting through the entire A-Level in a year, (I am currently doing Core Mathematics 1 & 2 as well as Mechanics 1, for January, then having to do Core Mathematics 3 & 4 as well as Mechanics 2, for June), and taking the places that I have been fortunate enough to be offered.

Brings me nicely on to University, I applied back in October, before I went off to India, (more of that to come actually), about a month later and I’ve now got 6 offers, does quite seem real though that even with my current results I have these, I mean everything is still way up in the air, but I suppose it’s great that they are there and that they are a serious mixture, I will list them purely for archival purposes:

1. Nottingham Trent - 240 Points (CCC)
2. Liverpool - 300 Points (BBB)
3. Loughborough - 280 Points (BBC)
4. Coventry - 240 Points (CCC)
5. Aston - BBC
6. Northumbria - 240 Points (CCC)

To me those offers aren’t half bad, achievable at that, I have already been to Nottingham Trent, Liverpool and Coventry. The inequality shows my feelings towards each; Liverpool < Trent > Coventry, thus I still have to go to Aston and Loughborough which I should hopefully be doing between now and March.

Suppose that’s about it on the whole Uni/school front, just have to keep on kicking my ass into doing the work for the rest of the year and I may have my foot in the door of my future.

Friends and stuff..

When I arrived back at school in September I noticed something. A few people have left. Going into the common room now is like a ghost town, no-one is there not even people that you know. Last year there was a solid gang of about 30 people that used to hang about most days simply because we could, I did a rough calculation a few weeks about that around half the darn year have got up and left, either that or have resat, moved or now do the social life killer known as Business Studies.

I suppose it’s not quite as bad as I make it out to be, I mean I still have a solid group of mates that I hang about with, people from my subjects that invariably trudge down to the common room at the same time as me, but its not like it was last year; constantly being talked at by Zain, felt up by Jamie and freaked out by Joe. But oh well. That’s life I guess.

Seems strange to say this but its been past a year now with me and Natalie, almost a year and a month now, we went and watched the rugby at Twickenham, (unfortunately England lost, but oh well, cant have everything), then we took the train to Waterloo and I tried to look manly going on the eye. I managed to fail spectacularly. But it was an experience going on it at night and if anyone that’s scared of it during the daytime, it doesn’t get much better at night, I promise you. We then meandered up to Leicester Square and had a meal in the basement of this rather nice Italian Restaurant, was great. Walked back through the streets of London to Waterloo and were back home. Was a good night.

That’s about it for now, I will add a bit more later..

Today I decided step away from the project I have been actively following and supporting for around a year, phpBB. I have a number of reasons for doing this, mainly time. I seem to spend large amounts of time each day checking a number of forums, reading newsgroups and rss feeds each of which eats into Work, or more likely now, money making time as I am trying to get off to India in October, which will cost £2000, thus alot of fundraising.

My involvement with OpenDocumentPHP is still there, however I feel like im already in the background in terms of this project as I already am pushed for time.

Ill put a few words that my Form Tutor said to me a few days back.

You can do anything you wish, you are not lazy, or unfocussed. But the focus isnt directed in the right place. Its on the future and not on the here and now.

To be honest, this is entirely correct and yes I do need to take a step back from the outside life and a step forward on the ol’ work. I really hope this isnt just another post made that in 6 months I’ll laugh at because I totally failed.

Anyway. Been fun guys, I will return some days. Alex