17. Today Is A Good Day (Positive)

Once again I leave my blog to fester in this little-known corner of the Internet. I weep for it.



However, with no fanbase to speak of, I can be as slow and procrastinating as I like. Heh. That's probably bad for me.

Anyway. University continues to move at a frightening pace. This irritates me, but it's nothing new. New things are:

-I'm doing more shirts. I have received my second commission and am working on two stencils for a friend. Something of a rush job, but I'm used to it and hoping to do it well. I have a week anyway. Or, actually, four days. But yay for doing things!

-I have my very first essay for university due two weeks from today. It must be within 10% either side of 1200 words, which is all the exactness I'd expect from the Computer Science faculty, in fairness to them. The problem is that I picked this course specifically to not do essays, and it has worked out fine 'til now, but I'm starting to see Arts students in a whole new light... Meh. It'll be grand. I can do essays; hell, I got an A1 in Leaving Cert English. I'm just lazy and unacquainted with the Harvard Referencing System we use here in UL. This is changing however. (Not the laziness, the other one.)

-I have an idea for a webcomic. Regrettably, I only ever get such ideas individually. As in, I get a brilliant plan for a single strip but know it'll go nowhere after that first punchline. Sigh. Ah well, perhaps I'll do it anyway.

-I have remembered again how easy blogging actually is.

-I have started conforming to one of Morse's pet peeves and deleting 'actually' from sentences that don't need it. Again. I keep leaving this and coming back to it.

-I feel the need to read Morse again.

-My dinner is ready.

16. Amnesia, Addiction, Etc. (Negative)

My mind continues to be exclusively prepared to remember things it wants to do, as opposed to things it knows it should.

As a result, I have yet again failed in my attempt to make a functional blog. But I carry on nonetheless...mainly because I told my mum I would (hi Mum) and you don't go back on that kind of casual remark.

Lately my cynicism levels have been remarkably high. I've been thinking about the human condition, or whatever you might call it, and I've realised that everyone has at least one vice. They might not all be obvious, but no-one is without their I-know-I-shouldn't-but habit. Mine is laziness. I don't do things when I should, and it's only under extreme duress that I study or practise something if I don't feel inclined to do so. I can resolve to improve all I like, but that's all that's possible - improvement. Perfection is a lie. It seems obvious and I had always accepted it before, but until you see it for yourself you don't believe it.

15. Returning (Positive)

It's been a long time since the last post, hasn't it.

Yeah, well, I was busy. And complaining won't get you anywhere because I'll remind you that had I posted in the interim, you would only have been reading more of my whining. So shut up.

Aaaaanyway. Few things to clear up.

1. We got an A1 for our website and our TA suggested we go into web design professionally! Which is epic.

2. We had tests, which went OK. Now I am officially finished one eigth of the modules in my course! I love this system.

3. I'm currently in the final two weeks of a REALLY LONG Christmas break. Man. It has been too long. Pretty soon I'll be doing a Ph.D thesis in my spare time or something. So I'm looking forward to university on the 25th.

4. I got a graphics tablet for Christmas and have been killing my self-esteem with it ever since. I enjoy drawing though. So it's worth the cringing.

5. I'm planning to start posting on the blog regularly-ish from now. In fairness I'm really only writing this bit because I'll read it at some later date, not to appease non-existent fans of this blog. So, future James, get blogging! In the future!

6. I've discovered I can blog in Courier. YAY!

14. Anticipation (Negative)

Interview is tomorrow. Slightly worried that I'll suddenly forget everything I know about HTML and CSS, but more sick of waiting than anything else.

I just want it to be over.

We got most of the pages to validate in the end, which was a pleasant surprise. Credit for that must go to Kelly, who spent ages slaving over the code without our knowledge, and then suddenly declared she had validated them.

Now we wait...

13. And now, the end is near... (Positive)

On Tuesday the four of us had a website meeting. For those of you who've just joined us, that's James W, Max, Kelly and I. Anyway, we discussed the site and it transpired that we were very pleased with it. We organised jobs for the final week and set an ideal time for our interview with the lecturer.

There were some more things to add though. I sorted out some CSS bugs that were irritating us, and added some new things to the CSS file. Then I drew a more accurate sitemap than the original one, and just minutes ago I added a very snazzy chat widget to the contacts page. It'll allow us to communicate about the site easily, with any luck.

Following that, it only remains to look at the site for a few days until we're so sick of it we'd rather fail, editing the tiniest things just to feel like we're still working on it.

But really, it's all done. So I'm very pleased.

12. If it isn't broken... (Negative)

This morning we had our final lecture in Computer Applications (for our new readers: that's the website-building module) and just for giggles the lecturer opened the group wiki to check how things were progressing.

It didn't go well.

Our group is still at the top of the list, and we're pretty happy with the site so far, but when he opened the page (in Internet Exploiter) there was nothing.

Completely blank page.

Embarrassing. Especially for me, 'cos there were only two people from my group there, and I've become the de facto project leader, *and* I was the last person I know of to be working on the damn thing.

Needless to say, I raced home (luckily it was a short lecture) and spent half an hour fixing the problem. The solution? Revert to a backup version of the page.

Sigh.

Project meeting tomorrow.

11. Getting it together (Positive)

Right. A week and a bit remains until our November 23 deadline for the website. Fun times, you might say. Or not. But they are kinda fun. We've been watching other people panic a bit about their websites and it's made us a little less worried and a little more pleased with the work we've done.

To be more specific, recently I mentioned that I'd been working on a feedback form for the site. That is uploaded now, and all that remains is to get it submitting feedback to somewhere. I'm pretty happy with it, basic as it is, because I got it to work. I really want to get the CGI working though, otherwise the whole thing is pointless. I have one or two ideas in that direction...