Since my last post about getting into website building and design, it’s been a really slow process of getting things going.

As you know, or don’t know as I’ve told you next to nothing about it, Project BD is currently in it’s design phase. That and I’m still writing the content for it, although in truth the content won’t actually ever be finished due to the nature of the thing, but it needs a fair bit to begin with. Well I had a basic format set up by Thursday, and thought I’d start to have a crack at building some test pages. Trouble is, I started writing it, then kept changing my mind about how I wanted it to be. Subsequently, I’ve got little more than a crappy table layout done.

I had a bit of an offshoot idea. It’s nothing ground-breaking, but spurred on by Paul getting his new blog set up with WordPress, and Richard getting his own new homepage done, I thought I’d do something a little smaller, and hopefully a bit easier. This one I’m quite happy to talk about.

So my own new digital home is born. At least it’s born in my head anyway. Imagine a blog, mixed with a CV, and just about anything else that doesn’t quite fit into GBS. The idea is that I’ll be able to get some more work done on it this weekend, getting at least some images sorted out, logos, that kind of stuff. Never mind the content!

Now then, where did I leave photoshop?

It’s been going a bit funny for a couple of days now. Locking up here and there, but still managed to let me play a few games before doing it again. But this evening I got the dreaded 3 red lights of death. Again. On my second 360. Which was a replacement for the first one that I got on launch day. Shit.

So what do you do in this situation? You ring up Microsoft customer support! The heroes that supplied me with a new replacement console the last time this happened! Yay! I spoke to a lovely American lady, made her laugh and explained the situation. She took my details, saw on the system that I have indeed had a second console from them. Brilliant! The system works!

She also told me that the new console was 2 months out of its warranty and that I’ll have to pay £80 to get it fixed! Eighty bloody quid! 2 months out of warranty! Bollocks to that! I said to her that I may as well get rid of the whole lot and get a bloody PS3! “Sorry sir,there’s nothing I can do about it”.

That got me a little riled, I can tell you! So I explained a little harsher that this is the EXACTLY the same problem I had with the launch machine. Maybe Microsoft should sort out their QC department as it is TOTALLY unacceptable , and I absolutly refuse to pay £80 to have the bloody thing fixed. So then she puts me on hold. They really need to do something about the music they play while you’re waiting. It sounds something akin to what you would here on a 70’s porn film. Not that I’d know about that kind of thing.

*ahem*

Anyway, she comes back and tells me that she’s spoken to her supervisor, and extended the warranty, and that I can now have the console fixed for free! Woohoo! Yay! w00t! and so on! So now have to wait upto 48 hours for MS to send over a UPS label so I can send the console back to them. Then they’ll send me a replacement console. Last time it took them 2 bloody weeks to get a new one to me. *sigh*

Anyway, the moral of this story is, Microsoft may make great consoles. When they work. If you moan and whinge at them enough, they will eventually cave in and waive the £80 charge. This has been a Public Service Announcement from the GBS Consortium.

Beware Microsoft; this is the last straw. If this EVER happens again, I WILL be switching sides to the Sony camp and purchase a PS3. Roll on Xbox 360 number 3

You may notice that things are a litle quiet around here at the moment.  With Phil off on his business travels, Paul being completely swamped in real work, and me working on Project BD, posting on here has quietened down somewhat.

The only other thing that’s keeping me busy at home is Xbox Live, as I seem to have got back into Call of Duty 3 online again.  Despite the fact that last night was extremely frustrating as I spent most of my time either being dropped out of games by my crappy connection, or ending up in a room virtually empty or totally full, making tactical play a bloody nightmare.

I still can believe that people who host games on it don’t manage to change the map around.  Sure Eder Dam is a good map, but three plus times in a row!  I still say Fuel Plant is the most shite map available as well.

Maybe I should try Rainbow Six again?

I’m even now considering selling my Nintendo Wii, although my wife wasn’t happy at that thought as she enjoys a bit of Rayman Raving Rabbibs here and there.  However, apart from that, I haven’t played a game on the thing since about two months ago, and not much is drawing me back.  Maybe Paul wasn’t so mad for selling his after all!

Hopefully the next post will be less ’stream of concious’, and more having a point to it.  Why did I start typing this up anyway?

That’ll be me then!

Yup I’ve gone and taken the leap head first (and it literally is head first, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment) into the wonderful world of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and their associated web building brothers.

It’s something I’ve wanted to do for absolutely ages.  I even bought a book to teach myself at home, but seeing as my discipline with self-induced learning is almost non-existant, I gave up.  All I’d managed to learn is some basic tags, how to write the code…….that was in fact it.  Not one thing was built.

That was about 18 months ago.  Fast forward to last week, and I finished off a course taking me into HTML and CSS and how to use it properly.  All of which was done on works time, and works budget!

This wasn’t just a whim thing though.  Sadly my boss wouldn’t have let me do the course without a good business reason to do so.  That reason is redeveloping, which has in fact now turned into rewriting virtually from the ground up, the departments intranet information site.  Something dubbed the Knowledge Based System, or KBS for short.

Sounds cool right, I get a project to exercise my new found skills and keep learning more and more stuff as I go along.  It is, but that’s before you understand that this site, in it’s current state, totals over 100 individual pages, and has absolutely feck all filing structure within it’s directory meaning that it’s a nightmare to find anything.  The phrase, ‘trial by fire’ springs to mind.  Never mind I’ve got other interested parties from different functions within the business also interested in what I do to see if they could use a modified version!

Now see why I said head first?

Last week was the first full week I’ve been given on it, and I absolutely bloody loved it.  Not only did I learn one hell of a lot about actual page structure and more tags that hadn’t been covered during the course, but I managed to get ahead of my own schedule for completion during the week.  There’s still a ton of work to be done, mostly coding of physical pages to take the exisiting content we have.

Originally, I was going to make it a version 2.0 of the original KBs, but due to the amount of stuff I have to begin over with, it’s looking like being my first V 1.0 of anything!  Sadly, due to commitments in the job I’m actually employed to do (the coding is outside of my normal role by a long shot) I’ve not had chance to do anything on it yet.  I can’t even show you guys examples of what I’m doing as the information is confidential to the business.  Nothing critical, but it’s still not for general consumption.

Outside of work, I’ve already started basic design work on a personal website project, hereby known as Project BD.  Although I’m keeping everything under wraps for the moment, mainly because I think it’s a concept not widely done before, and for another reason that will be become clear soonish.  However, those of you who read this blog regularly, and more you guys that I know, will find this concept quite a large diversion from the norm of what I’m involved in.  Not even Paul and Phil know what I’m working on, but chaps, trust me, you’ll love the reason behind it!

Don’t ya just love teasers! ;p

Unlike my promise to keep the NY Diaries running, my journies into coding-land will be periodically i.e. when I have something to write about, covered right here on GBS.  Probably many of you reading this already have some experience in coding, but at least you can have a laugh at my expense for the no doubt huge amount of mistakes I’ll be making.  We all have to learn somehow!

The rest of you I hope will find it an interesting production diary of sorts,as I plan to incorporate Project BD into these updates as well.

I’m off tomorrow for a week in Africa. The capital city of Eritrea, called Asmara, to be exact. It’s almost completely devoid of any internet connection with the entire country being supplied by an 8mbit pipe. The internet during the day is worse that using a 9600bps modem.

My journey starts tomorrow at 3am, setting off from home to get to Heathrow. I then fly to Frankfurt Airport (+1hr GMT) where I have a two hour wait before leaving and heading off to Jeddah. Then at Jeddah I stay on the plane and fly off to Asmara. I arrive at about 9.45pm Eritrean time (+2hr GTM)

I’m really looking forward to it now. Flying is a fantastic experience and I love it. I’ll try and let you all know how I get on. Catchya later!

Ok, so maybe that’s a wee bit too dramatic, but I just wanted to say on behalf of all three of us here at GBS towers, thank you to all of you readers who took the time out to join us on Thursday night.

Thank you also to Andrew McCaskey of Slashdot Review for his plugging of the site and the Live Night event, much appreciated my friend!

To any of you who didn’t turn up, hopefully you’ll be able to make it to our next one.  This time though, we’ll try not to leave it two months before trying again, although it’ll be at least a couple of weeks as our Phil is off on his business travels again next week back to Africa.  As soon as he’s back in good ole Blighty, we’ll get some more dates set out for the next few months or so.

Have a good weekend everyone!

 

Just a short reminder for those of you interested, our second Live Night is this very evening at 8pm GMT.

If you fancy coming along for a bit of gaming and a natter, then just add one of us onto your Friend List on Live.  Our gamertags can be found just to the right hand side of these words.

Hope to see you there!