Away

This weekend we’re away, seeing friends in Reading.

It’s a much needed break after the faffing of the last few weeks, which is also why we’re making a long weekend of it. We’re going to be staying at the new Malmaison hotel in Reading, which should be fun.

Anyway, it’s quite probable that there’ll be no updates this weekend. If so, I’ll be back on either Sunday night or Monday morning.


Grass Cutting

It seems like last weekend was grass-cutting time in the village where we live. And yes, we did ours too – it’s just that it wasn’t part of any planned activity.

But over the last two evenings while out walking Hound, I’ve noticed that the grass has been cut in a whole range of locations around the village – not just the gardens, but also the edges to the fields where we walk Hound, in front of the duck pond, the area around the main crossroads, it’s all been cut.

Most bizarre.


Live

Yes, yes, at last, the updated and redesigned site at work is live.

Halle-fucking-lujah.


Vindicated

Is it wrong to feel slightly smug?

Over the last six weeks, things have been going mental with the site redesign at work, and lots of hours have been put in. The preceding three months have involved me doing a lot of work on the back-end of the site, while others have been faffing with design, wireframes, ideas, and the like. One person in particular has been doing sod-all, but making out they’re the centre of all the work.

In the last six weeks, they’ve been banging on about how all their stuff is done – but it hasn’t been checked in to the version control system, so no-one else has been able to see what they’ve done. And during that time, all my work – and all the work that the other people on the team – has been checked in, visible to all, tested, and done way ahead of deadline. And all the way through, I’ve been saying that the person hasn’t done what they’ve said, and that things will go horribly wrong – each time to be told by others that I’m too cynical, that of course they’ve done what they said, and blah, blah, blah.

So on Friday and today, the day before everything goes live, they’ve been complaining that things ‘suddenly’ don’t work, and it’s turned out that the relevant sections done by this one person have gone horribly wrong, and aren’t actually anywhere even close to completed. In fact, it’s being questioned whether any valid work at all has been done. Everything has turned into a last-minute panic for those sections, and the person has been working all weekend to complete them – as well as working ’til very late tonight.

And it’s been acknowledged that actually, my cynicism was accurate.

So yes, I feel slightly smug. And really rather vindicated. It’s a good feeling.


Redesign? (Again)

I know I’ve blethered about it a bit before, but I’m beginning to think that D4D™ is about due (Ok, it’s way overdue) for a redesign, and a rethink.

It’s just that I really don’t have any bloody idea what I’m going to do with it.

I think I’m going to move it around a bit, so that the blog part – the bits that’re actually the main content of D4D™ – is at the root of the site, rather than where it is currently, under the /random folder. It’ll be a lot of work along the way, and making sure that everything moves over cleanly.

And then there’s the design itself.

It’s not going to be an overnight change, I’m sure. I need to think about it properly.


Bank Holiday

  1. Mowed the lawn
  2. Changed the wilderness at the far end into something that will one day be a chicken run, and then into another veg patch
  3. Dug up two full rows of potatoes, and one full row of carrots
  4. Moved a whole dollop of wood from the driveway to the woodpile – now it just needs to be cut up
  5. Did some shopping
  6. Visited the garden centre
  7. Put together two new compost bins
  8. Connected up the new water butt to the other two
  9. Tested the new site for work, that’s releasing on Wednesday

There’s probably a couple of other things as well, but I just can’t think what they are right now.


Bank Holiday Weekend

Well, we’ve now got the brushcutter, the water butt arrived, so did the compost bins.

Today we’ve been up to the Nene Valley Railway with Herself’s sister, brother, and brother-in-law.

Tomorrow’s going to be garden work – now there’s a shocker…