Matthew1471's ASP BlogX

I read something quite funny today on Steve's blog, I won't take away his thunder, but I advise you to check this out and have a good chuckle :
http://www.ragan.com/stevesblog/ViewItem.asp?Entry=22

As a Conservative list member for quite some time now, I have to voice my opinions on just how corny they are..

I've had everything through my mailbox from "Michael Howard promises to relax taxes", "Michael Howard is tough on crime", "Michael Howard relaxes laws on businesses", "Michael Howard brings back family values" to "Conservative plans for childcare".. I know never trust a politician, it's a known fact, but does that mean they have to just blatantly lie to us? I'm sick of getting these "Michael Howard puts an end to world hunger" type e-mails, by all means hype up the party and what you stand for (Which fundamentally I agree with) but please please please can someone tell them to just stop finding out what people want and then getting some mailing list manager drinking his coffee somewhere to slap out some half assed e-mail about how Michael Howard will fix it..

I can imagine it as a phonecall

<Bill (Party Member)> Yo Steve what's happening?
<Steve (Webmaster)> ah nothing just keeping it real
<Bill> sure sure... hey Steve I need you to do me a favor, we're gonna need you to hack up some mailing list e-mail to our members
<Steve (Webmaster)> Already? Sure! what's getting on peoples tits?
<Bill> Childcare
<Steve> "Michael Howard has released a dynamic package of plans designed to help parents cope with the rising costs of childcare"?
<Bill> Sounds great, any crap like that
<Steve> Sure thing
*Hangs up*

btw "You are subscribed to 'michaelhoward'" why do I read that as some form of slavery? It just reads wrong to me like i've signed my life away to him or something, it just must be me

Well well well, what a night, where can we start?

4:00 - Heard a "Hi" across the street after picking up a batch full of newspapers, looked across to see Steph offering to walk on the paper-round with me... "Ok" I said, on the walk we walked and talked and near the end she complained that I never have shown her my house, well what else was there to do? So a Jen styled "ok I will show you my house" and we were sat down playing Sonic (Courtesy of "Gens" the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive emulator) she didn't like the game much and after yet another loss it was time to pick another game "Ren & Stimpy" it was. I kept looking at the clock and could not get over how fabulous we were doing for time, I thought "oh here we go first chance of me being home early enough to be more than ready and I’m suddenly in demand which will end up making me late" but a glance at the clock told me the party wasn't for another 3 hours, how fantastic is that? It kinda fell upon us that Steff wanted to go, so (keeping to her promise I walked her home) "Teas ready" my mum shouts as I’m coming down the stairs "2 minutes.." I call, so a quick 2-minute speed walk to her house and back and a quick tuck into my tea and I found myself clock glancing again.

6:00 - "1 hour and 30 minutes" till the party "opens" I rushed my tea, jumped in the shower and had 1 hour to play with, so I went downstairs and my mum informed me she was going to IKEA so I said "I’ll come with you" she asked me what time I was going to get there, 8:00 she said would be best, she stated in an advisory tone that you don't want to get there for 7:30 because you'd be waiting for people and feel time drag, walking in at 8 did seem a good option. So we went to IKEA and that kind of dragged, storage boxes don't quite rattle my cage I’m afraid (or should that be rattle my box ).

7:38 - Left IKEA, I was becomming a bit more anxious that we should make a move. "ASDA's now" my mother informed me, I protested and said "I'll wait in the car" in a "Don't be long" tone, 08ish she returned, "bought you a jacket" she says, I was probably more grateful she was only 20 minutes in ASDAs (but thanked her for the jacket I'll love it to bits later, but what mattered most at the moment was that I got to the party at the time I planned)

08:10ish - Arrived at the party, I saw Kong-Wai & Ashleigh Downey wondering how to get in to the party, I joined them in their quest for entrance, although I don't particularly know them or could refer to them as friends, they've never said a bad thing about me and I’ve never said a bad thing about them so joining the search party wasn’t all that uncomfortable. I rang Ben and he came to the door and met me.

I met the group already inside and met DJ Dan who pulled me in and shown me the ropes of his fantastic CDM2 he offered to let me give it a spin so guided me towards maxing the volume to Deck B, hitting the play button on Deck B at the right time and nullifying Deck A's volume, he also explained the Cue channels (1, 2, 3), 2 & 3 were for the two decks (A, B respectively) and unusually channel 1 was for the Mike "if your sad enough to want to hear your own voice" he explained, I suspect channel 1 is the CUE channel for external inputs. "Some people use this instead to mix the tracks" (he pointed to the Deck A to B mixer slider), "but I always do it this way (mimics raising deck A's volume and lowering Deck B) "just like OtsDj" I asked "yeah you got it! just like Ots!"

I drifted back and for the DJ stand a few times and mingled with the others, "are you ok?” "(Snidely) oh are you missing your year 12's" after getting slightly worried I was coming across as not enjoying myself I drifted back to the DJ stand and helped Dan think of some songs to play "Don't Stop Me Now - Queen" "Logical Song - Scooter" "Night Fever - Bee Gees" "Zombie Nation - Kernkraft 4000"

He also played the Locomotion - Little Eva which I didn't know the moves to but that kept the dancing alive too. As the night kicked on Ellen eventually found me and screamed "OH MY GOD YOU CAME OUT" (I had to laugh at that, She really does have me down as living in front of my computer, even though enough people have seen me out and about by now for her to maybe know that I do tend to go out a bit too). We hugged and carried on dancing and she was like "OH MY GOD YOUR DANCING TOO!" I was like "yeah full of surprises me" anyway she rather amused me, we went over to her group and there was Emily Madge I think (I have kinda forgotten her name, but I remembered it at the time) and she was really off her head drunk and said "We have the same driving instructor" I couldn't help but smile, I wasn't completely sure on what else I could add to that so I just smiled sweetly

I left by about 11:30 (Although most were staying till 12/1/2) so on my way out I said bye to Ellen and Dan, Hugged Sarah and went on my merry way home.

That concludes my narration for this evening, hopefully by tomorrow I should regain my ability to hear!

Photee's are below, Apoligies for the poor quality, I didn't want to annoy everyone by taking a camera with a flash and didn't feel up to being a right nerd and taking my Digital Video Camcorder.. But you oh so lucky lucky people get to try out my "Picture Viewer" I created

Pictures :

Went to the cinema with Dan on Friday, Dan thought he'd get out of being scared by watching "The Grudge" instead of the exorcist.. haha not a hope in hell my friend "It's got Sarah Michelle Gellar in it"... unfortunately she's a little clichéd for me but all the same "It's a horror" he assured me...

By the end of it Dan warned me sternly, any usage of sound effects or quotes from that film would entail me walking home and invalidating a lift with him... So just wait till Monday boys and girls

Today was a very very "non working " day, I don't know what came over me, I just physically couldnt bring myself to work... So as I was discussing a few ideas on what might be "the killer idea" for the Sixth Form Year book, I noticed my sloppy code on the OPI System and so spent a few hours reprogramming that (It's kinda hard demonstrating something when it's screwed)

Basically here is the idea I had, maybe putting in the year book a unique username / Id for each person, so then in 20 odd years time (provided I havnt screwed something up) fellow pupils can login and pull all the current info about that certain username... The flaw... I cant think of a way to create all these users without someone being able to hack into them nor can I get every single one of a few hundred people to sign up to the service (all asking questions lazily on route)... It'd kinda be a friends reunited database, only I wouldn't charge �10 for a lousy e-mail address... The OPI system was programmed before BlogX even was (Just by looking at how sloppy and poorly programmed it was gave that away, that and the fact I had to do 2 hours "tidying") and ok so it looks ugly, and maybe the Windows Client shouldnt assume you have internet when you power up your PC (Lukcy NTL Cable users like myself do, but I should really make it ISDN compatible) I can't see demand for people rushing to OPI though, just like people dont rush to backup their data till after a failure, people wont want to rush to OPI to find friends till their lost... Still the year book might be a good implementation and is open to discussion, i'll pass the idea to the powers that be (Depending on how passionate I feel about the idea on the day) and we'll see where that goes..

Jen started blogging http://theteenforum.co.uk/wonderfuljen/ because I was getting rather concerned that only about 75% of users are downloading, trying out my blog and using it, which means there's definitily room for improvement, so she gave it a spin and became BlogX fluent in minutes only asking one question, to prevent that one question being asked ever again I included a mini tutorial entry in the database explaining the first thing people overlook "What's my username/password" naturally it's in the readme, but who ever reads them? I just make the readme for the fun of it, It's not like I expect anyone to actually read it or even that that's the first place they should even look when they don't know the password..

The first thing Jen commented on was the style of BlogX, she just didn't think it was hip or fashionable (I think she was trying to say it's too formal), true to life I agree with her, My lack of style isnt even debated.. however once she actually started blogging herself and I pointed her in the direction of the templates she practically convinced herself that there were 2 templates she really loved... (Sarah's Template and Dan's Palm tree one) see that alone made me feel democratic, the fact i've asked several people for ideas on themese and carried them out.. Of course BLogX downloaders are welcome to make their own themes and based on the "Who Uses BlogX" I've seen complete hacks of BlogX to fit it in with their own obscure sexy sleek site design, through to the NAV on the left instead of the right (hey whatever tickles your fancy) to minor cosmetic changes. Even if people hate the design of it, it's such a (in my opinion of course) comprehensive Blog package that it's impossible to program something better from scratch without a lot of time on your hands (BlogX will celebrate it's 1 year aniversary on Janurary 21st 2005).

So a few changes have been made which I hope are welcomed, a demonstration BlogX entry explaining how to use it.. and all my theme templates added to the ZIP file (Pushing up the file size a little bit, but I'm hoping people will thank me in the long run)

The next big developments will maybe be a "Emoticon Image Library" (RadicalPuppy4's idea) and then something from my personal wishlist, a Palm entry creator (i'm swinging more towards records being stored on the Palm, Hotsync'd then being read and uploaded on the host pc rather than submission via GPRS/WAP now... purely out of the fact I can be more bothered to HotSync than link up my phone constantly, but eventually both will be appreciated).. Somepoint in the near future it would be an idea to actually maintain a BlogX checker for the "Who Uses BlogX" page as I can't maintain the links manually anymore, so just a simple check for a status code other than 404 when asking for the "Application.asp" page should be substancial...

I've had running the background for the past 4 hours, each of the Dance Dance Revolution MEGAMIX 's, I know mad lil old me.. some songs I hear though and I just have to skip them but other than that it's been quite a Japanese/Korean DDR evening

Tomorrow im hoping to see Hannah when she comes back from doing her odds and ends, but I don't think it'll happen somehow... so I suppose tomorrow I really will start my work.