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23/04
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Apprenticeship and Degree

Again, it has been a while since posting – I have been very busy with college work as of late. All of my coursework has to be finished by this week, and preparation for my exams is starting.

Woo, finally gotten everything sorted for next year. I am going to be doing an apprenticeship working in web design, graphic design and teaching; as well as doing a Foundation Degree in ICT. I will also be doing a level 3 NVQ in ICT Professionalism, as well as CISCO qualifications. My job placement is now all sorted after my interview yesterday (on my birthday too, what a great time to have it), all ready to start later on this year.

Update: Job placement is all sorted and I have since started my job; my title is now ‘Digital Creative Designer’.

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25/03
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Myspace copying Facebook?

I went onto my Myspace profile today (first time in ages, I never use it anymore, it has turned into a load of crap), and I noticed a few updates. Why exactly has Myspace had to resort to copying Facebook in every way possible? Firstly, the MyspaceIM web bar thingy, which is a crappier, buggier version of the Facebook bar. And now they have added features such as ‘people you might know’ and allowing people to view past status updates – erm, hello Facebook? Not that this really bothers me in the slightest, I just can’t see why Myspace can’t come up with some ideas of its own, instead of blatantly trying to steal features; and hence attempt to steal their market share. Facebook is much better in every sense – no annoying profiles with flashing text, enough glittery images to sink a ship; no people with obscure and stupid names (such as xXxhotbabe51xXx). It is down to earth, just a simple clean interface allowing people to talk to each other. I think it is a much personal approach, and they handle privacy much better.

But to be fair, the latest Facebook GUI/layout update didn’t have a great reception; including myself, I think they have taken a step backwards personally.

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20/03
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Internet Explorer 8 Released

The new version of Internet Explorer has been released today. It now finally fully supports CSS 2.1 and some elements of CSS3 (how many years late?), meaning that web developers should have less trouble and less workarounds will be needed. Plus, I can now use :hover on all elements, woo. The GUI is much similar to IE7, with a slightly more polished design; but I find that it is somewhat all over the place by default. I have never been a large fan of the GUI in IE7, it is almost they are trying too hard. I haven’t noticed any improvements in page loading to be honest, and I found that opening new tabs to be somewhat slow (having to wait a few seconds before they became ready). I also encountered a problem with ‘squashed’ fonts in Explorer and other applications after installing IE8, which I managed to fix by disabling ‘Use ClearType for HTML’ and restarting my computer – a pain.

In summary, I don’t see a large improvement over the previous versions, and most of their ‘claim to fame’ features have been around in Firefox, Opera and Chrome for some time. The increase support for CSS is most helpful however, it is about time that they caught up instead of being stubborn about it.

Anyway, I am still sticking with Firefox, and will be doing for some time. What do you think of it?

Do you like IE8?

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11/03
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Is spring finally here?

The signs of spring are starting to peek through the cold wintry weather – the sun is finally coming out and the temperature is rising. Roll on summer, everyone is sick of the coldness.

On another note, the website is taking shape again. I have added a Twitter bar at the top (I started using Twitter a few days ago), which is pretty nifty. The template is starting to look more appealing and things are beginning to work properly (apart from multiple pages, I still need to fix them). I will be re-vamping all of the sub-pages in the next few days and sort out stray links; I have already updated my bio (including a not-so-great photo of myself). Plus, I need to fix Lightbox for my photos. Stay tuned anyway, shouldn’t be long now…

Please, if you have any comments of feedback regarding the new layout or any suggestions for improvement, please Contact Me.

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03/03
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New York

I am back from my trip to New York, and wow, it was fantastic. The whole atmosphere was incredible, nothing I have really experienced before (to be fair, I haven’t really been abroad much, apart from France). The flights, my god. I have never been on a long haul flight before (see above), and it was boring. Especially the fact we had to have a connecting flight too, so we went from Manchester to Gatwick, then Gatwick to JFK New York. 9 hours of flights, not including the hours sitting around doing nothing waiting to get on the damn things. I only had one hour sleep (if that) in the 24 hours on the way back, I was absolutely knackered.

We went for 5 days, but we pretty much saw everything you could see. We sent to all the traditional tourist ‘attractions’/locations, such as the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Times Square, all the museums, etc. Speaking of Times Square, it is crazy – especially on valentines day (which I had the misfortune of being on the other side of the world to my girlfriend). It was chaotic, you couldn’t move for people, it was actually like hell on earth. Other than that, it was a great place, it really was an example that the city ‘never sleeps’. We also went to Central Park, which I thought was a beautiful place (as beautiful as you can get in the middle of Febuary, with leafless trees). It was actually surprisingly quiet, even when it was so close to the hustle and bustle of the nearby streets.
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02/11
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Halloweeeeeen!

I know it is a few days late, but here are a few pictures from Halloween. Me and Laura decided to carve a pumkin and bake some ‘Halloweeny’ cakes (‘cus we’re cool like that). Go lookie:

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