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.

Something wierd happened today. I actually managed to update my blog! But I digress…

Something else wierd happened today. I was talking to Phil about Star Trek: Legacy on the Xbox 360. What I thought of it and so on. I’ll let you guys know what I think when I get round to finishing it! I got home from work and decided to have a look at some Star Trekky stuff. You know, being the big geek that I am! So there I was trooping around the internets, and found a little thing called Star Trek: Of Gods And Men.

As you may or may not know, 2006 was the 40th anniversary of Star Trek. A group of fans had got together and decided to make a 3 part “webisode”. So a tootled along to the site and it turns out that it’s not quite finished yet. But there is a nice little trailer on there for you to have a look at. Tell you what, send yourself to www.startrekofgodsandmen.com and have a look for yourself.

I had a look at the trailer. And I was shocked to realise that I was absolutly glued to it. There are two reasons for this.

1: The CGI for the ships and effects are what comparable to what Paramount would have done for the series’ that they produced, ala DS9, The Next Generation etc.
2: The talent that they have for this film just pretty much blew me away! I’m not going to tell you who’s in it, but when you see it, your jaw will literally go *flobber flobber*.

To say that this is a film made by fans of the series, and to see the lengths that they have gone to, to actually make what seems to be a very well thought out film of sorts. I’m gobsmacked in more ways than one. I really am. I doff my hat to the guys that came up with this concept, and for them to have the bollocks to actually get the talent they have involved in this project.I really am looking forward to seeing the finished product.

Damn you to hell! You and your “lets get this product activated before you can use it properly”.

As you all know, I’m a geek. So much so, that I saw fit to buy a copy of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X. Ah, but not any old version. The Deluxe version! Woo! Major geekdom, here I come! I bought this on it’s day of release and was quite excited to get home and try it out. I even upgraded the graphics card and RAM beforehand (which, by the way, still runs like crap).

After installation, which took like an hour or so, I had to activate the product by connecting to the net and giving them an activation code. Done! I can now start flying! Yay! *makes flying noises*

But here’s my problem. The game came out in the middle of October and I’ve had no problem using the software. Unitl now. The games just decides completely out the blue, that my copy of FSX is validated no more. Yeah, what an absolute load of bollocks.

So now I have to remove the program from my PC, then re-install the bloody thing to see if that works. If it does, bonus. If not…

Well, I’m sure we’ll find out in about an hour or so…

—UPDATE—

It just ended up getting worse and worse. I tried to re-install FSX and it just messed up. Big time. As did everyother program I tried to run. So drastic measures were taken upon. Format the HDD and reinstall XP from scratch. Took all bloody night. And the number of updates? About 80! Seriously! 80 bloody updates for that bag of crap piece of software!

The good news is that FSX now works. For the moment.

Now all I need to do is find the drivers for the on-board sound card and DVD drive…

Thank God for the Mac!

This my friends, is the ultimate in Geekdom.

Yes, I like Transformers. Yes, I have all the series’ on DVD. Yes, I also have the move on DVD too. And yes, I’m actually looking forward to the live action movie next year!

One of the greatest franchises ever have been around in various guises, but they were all a bit shit compared to the original. Some people may disagree, but I reckon the majority of you will agree with me. My favorite TF? Dudes, Grimlock! He rocked the big one! Larger than life! The Daddy! “Me Grimlock kick your ass!” LOL!

*cough*

Anyway, I came across www.lilformers.com today., Have a look. You’ll be all like “Oh, gotta get me one of those!” Yeah, I even printed out the little standees that Matt Moylan (the artist) made available too!

That’s all really! Yes, I’m a geek. You’ll just have to get over it.

Carry on!