Celebrations. Ish

Well, I can’t help but celebrate to learn that Paul Sykes, the biggest contributor to the UK Independence Party has donated his last. Slightly more worrying (and potentially listed under “Death, Kiss of”) is that he’s switched his allegiance to the Tory party.

Mr Sykes told the Today programme the Conservatives were the only Eurosceptic party capable of forming a government.

Damning with faint praise, methinks.

High-Rise

In a rare event, today the office where I work will be allowing access to the roof of the tower – although only in small groups. It’s one of the highest buildings in the area (15ish floors, and then higher still by virtue of being on top of a hill anyway) so the views should be interesting, to say the least.

The camera’s going up with me, anyway – as is the UV filter. We’ll just have to see what I manage to get…

Communication

This week we’re due to start testing the new version of the website. It’s (supposedly) got an IP address that the consultancy company can use to load-test the site. (which is really just the Web equivalent of “smack it with a hammer – hard – and see if anything breaks. Then keep on doing it.”)

Now, none of that should be difficult. However, it occurred to me that this one IP address is going to be getting hit hard over the next week while they try to break it, so it might be worth checking that the company firewall to make sure it’s not going to sound the various alarms that say “Help! I’m being attacked by hackers!”. Of course, no-one had actually thought of doing that – the joys of corporate communications.

As it turned out, it was lucky I did speculate about it, because the numpty twadge who’d set up the IP address hadn’t informed the firewall team at all, so it wasn’t actually working at all.

There’s an air of despair around my desk today. Roll on December 23rd.

Double-checking

I know I’ve posted about this before, but it still drives me bananas. What IS the point of sending an email, then calling up to say “Have you received the email I’ve just sent you“?

Wedding Train

There’s a nice little story on the BBC’s website today about a couple getting married on a train. OK, it’s slightly bobble-hatty, but at least they’re train-workers rather than train-spotters!

Maybe I’m just feeling slightly mellow today, but I do think that – regardless of how it wouldn’t suit me – it’s quite a nice way to do it, and acknowledging a joint interest.

Updating Bloggery

I’ve been thinking for a while about a redesign/revamp of d4d – it’s slowly happening, but there’s still a way to go. Simply put, part of the problem (well, part of the reason it’s taken so long) is that there’s one hell of a lot of stuff within d4d as a site now, although a fair bit of it hasn’t been updated in quite a while.

I haven’t updated the thoughts and rants in the best part of a year, and the blog has become the main part, along with photos etc. So – do I get rid of the rants and so on, and leave the site primarily as the blog and photos for now? And work on altering the old pages to fit into the new style as and when I get round to it?

It’s possible for me to do it that way – the new navigation I’ve worked on is a dynamic “include” file, so I know I can have a small selection at first, and then change the navigation when/if I update the older sections. This section of d4d will migrate over to WordPress (assuming I ever suss it out properly – I’m currently thinking of just reinstalling the basic template and working from there) along with the new style-sheet etc., and then it’s just decisions about the future of the other sections.

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is effectively running two blogs within d4d, one standard, and one “photoblog”. However, I’m still in two minds about this, as I don’t come up with enough photographic stuff as yet to justify a daily-update photographic blog. Still, it’s all stuff to be thought about for the future.

So – what are your thoughts on keeping the older sections etc.? Should I bother – does anyone ever really go back and read the rants or thoughts, for example?

De-focussed

RIP Richard Avedon, who died today aged 81.