Blog: A Day In The Life
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Wednesday, 30 September 2009
So Much To Do, So Little Time...
There was a time in my life, while I was at sixth form, where almost every day of the week was full of me being busy. Literally from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night I would have no time to spare on some days. For instance every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in my final year would go like this:Tuesday
8:30 - 4:00 - school
4:30 - 8:30 - parkour training
8:30 - late - bus home then revision / computer / websites / etc. (cramming)
Wednesday
8:30 - 3:00 - school
3:00 - 5:30 - go home then revision / computer / websites / etc. (cramming)
5:30 - 9:00 - scouts
9:00 - late - go home then revision / computer / websites / etc. (cramming)
Thursday
8:30 - 3:00 - school
4:00 - 7:00 - work
7:30 - 10:00 - venture scouts
10:00 - late - go home then revision / computer / websites / etc. (cramming)
I had so many commitments when I lived in Sheffield - I was an Assistant Scout Leader at a younger group (11-14), I helped run the activities & organise things at the venture scout unit (14-18), I ran the venture scout unit's website (and still do haha), I had a job as a pool lifeguard, I had parkour training, I ran canoe classes for the scouts at the swimming pool and lifeguarded the swimming session for them as a volunteer, I had my A-levels to prepare for, and on top of that I was a bit of a geek and needed to spend time on the internet doing what I used to describe as random but necessary internet tasks (things like sending and replying to emails, checking forums, social networking, reading bits of news, finding out about new technology and such, and blogging, of course...) - I can't look back on these things as a waste of time because I wouldn't know half the amount of stuff I know about computers, the internet, websites or random articles I read up on on wikipedia!
At one point I was doing maybe four parkour training sessions every week - and with three evenings with scouts, two or three shifts at work and trying to fit everything else in - it was manic. All of these things were important to me and the more I got involved, the more committed I became.
I've realised I'm at a stage now where I'm going to be in a very similar situation here in Manchester. I've just started by second year at university (this year's marks count towards my degree classification, it's a lot harder, I have more units and I'm now living in the South Manchester suburban area of Withington, near Stockport, which is a lot further out than I lived in halls last year!), I'm in a more demanding and responsible role on the committee of canoe club (of which I also run the website), I'm trying to train harder in parkour, and I'm also trying to learn more programming languages in my own time - as well as doing freelance web design alongside everything. I got my timetable for uni last week and that's what reminded me of my situation of my last two years back in Sheffield - I have some days when I'll finish at 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening (ugh!) and other days when I finish at 1:00 in the afternoon - the three days I finish early are the three days I need to be in town (where uni is) in the evenings, so I either waste time getting the bus home and back again (accumulating an extra hour to my travel time), or I find something to do in uni, in town or with friends in town - like today I finished at 1:00 and had to meet up with the canoe club committee for a meeting, then we went into the Union office to sort some admin stuff and fill forms out, then met with another committee member to discuss the upcoming pool sessions and weekend river trips, then had some food before going to meet the parkour guys for training at 6:00, trained till 9:30, got home at 10:00, made tea, caught up on some house stuff with my housemates then replied to the day's emails, checked the canoe club forum, did some stuff on facebook (canoe club stuff and catching up with friends) and then ended up writing this blog post in the early hours - and I've got to be up early for a 9:00 lecture! So I either have the choice of staying out all day (leaving at 8ish getting home some 14 or so hours later) or wasting time by coming home and going back again. The weekends are hardly a break either - I'm either parkour training, running river trips for canoe club or occasionally visiting my family or something.
There's so much to do and so little time, and I find myself trying to be better at everything I do all the time - which makes it even harder to do it all! I want to train harder at parkour, I want to practise and coach kayaking, I want to do well at uni, I want to make new friends and spend time with the old ones, I want to visit friends in different places, I want to do freelance web design, I want to learn new programming languages, I want to spend time with my family, I want to watch films I've never watched, I want to spend time on the internet, I want to blog about things, I want to learn more maths, I want to do the Rubik's cube, I want to learn about things that interest me on wikipedia, I want to spend time with my housemates, I want to read all the books I've been meaning to read for ages (and re-read the ones I love) - and I just do what I think is best at any one time (like I'm writing this blog post now when I really ought to be sleeping).
Labels: Computers, Internet, Parkour, Programming, Scouting, University, Web Design
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 03:52 
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Version 3 & Problems with IE
I decided I needed a new website template so I made one. Much better, don't you think?It's compliant with W3C Web Standards (XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.1) and I'm even using PHP to render it using Server Side Includes, as well as a PHP email form on the contact page. I've learned so much these last few months; a great resource for web developers (beginner/intermediate/expert) is W3Schools - it gives you all the information you need about every single tag, every single CSS style, how each browser renders each element, and which tags and attributes are permitted under each of the levels of markup (HTML/XHTML and Frameset/Transitional/Strict).
Version 3:
Versions 1 & 2:
(N.B. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the international standards organization for the World Wide Web, founded and headed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA who invented the internet at CERN and is now a professor at MIT, probably the best institute for technology in the world)
Of all the people who converted to Firefox from Internet Explorer (IE), most of them know it's better but they don't really know why. One of the main reasons it's better is that IE does not comply with official W3C standards - it literally just ignores how things are supposed to work, and does it its own way. Firefox, Chrome and the other browsers all comply which means that when someone designs a website following the proper standards, as they're supposed to, it will look fine in Firefox, Chrome, or whatever they're using, but then they open it in IE, some of the elements will be displayed differently - something small like the spacing following a set of a bullet points - in the good browsers there will be a reasonable space immediately after a set of bullets, but in IE there will be no space. This can be resolved by adding the space manually using CSS, but that will double the space shown in the good browsers - and why should they suffer because of IE's incompetence? It should also be noted that if a website's code is valid, it will generally load faster, run smoother on all browsers and systems, and (along with other factors) increase a site's search engine optimisation.
One of the more famous bugs in IE is known as the Internet Explorer box model bug. This is a problem with the way IE interprets the markup and style differently to the W3C standards; when you set the width of an element, and then apply a margin, some padding and a border, IE will subtract the width of the border and padding and the content width will be whatever is left, whereas the W3C way is to declare the width, then add the padding, border and margin to it. IE's way means that if the sum of the margin, border and padding is greater than half of the width (half because it counts on both sides so can be doubled) then you are left with a negative width, which is impossible, so it just disappears! The diagram below should explain this clearer:
It's things like this that make web design much harder than it should be, because although everyone should use good browsers like Chrome or Firefox (or even Safari), unfortunately the web browser market is clearly dominated by IE with 66% because most people know no other way because they are trapped in Microsoft land. That will change, eventually, I hope.
Labels: Computers, Featured, Firefox, Google, Internet, Web Design
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 19:00
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
Happy New Year 2009
People say there's no point making resolutions because only 2% of them happen, but if you're doomed to failure and willing to accept it like that then you're not going to get very far. I never set amyself any of those silly spontaneous resolutions people think of in ten seconds like 'I'm going to go running every day' or 'I'm going to lose weight', but I tend just to have a good hard think about the previous year; take stock of my life, where I'm going and where I want to be, and make a decision about how I can get there, and set a goal to take a certain angle on life in order to do so. It's not a measureable way of doing things, like I'll know when I've acheieved it and can sit back and relax when it's over, but more of a kaizen philosophy (continuous improvement).It's always easy to look at each avenue of my life and think 'I want to work harder at this' for each one - because of all the things I do, I know I can do better at them, but how do I work harder at everything I do? Surely putting more pressure one one will put less pressure on another? It depends. What needs to be done is an analysis of the things that take up time and are not useful, and maybe reduce or eliminate them, which is always a tough call.
I've decided I don't like this site template anymore. I'm going to write a new one from scratch in the next month or so. I've recently been doing quite a bit of web design for various things; I've made a website for the university canoe club, of which I am on the committee, this was the first website I have made form scratch since I started learning HTML - I just opened up Notepad++ and started typing and I'm really pleased with it because the code is so clean; I've redesigned the Woodseats Venture Unit website which I think is a great improvement; and I've also taken up my first paid web design job - my friend's Bouncy Castle business, and he's really pleased with what I've done for him so far because the guy he had to do it before took months and he wasn't interested in the content, just what it looked like and he spent ages making pointless flash animations.
- MMU Canoe Club
- Woodseats Venture Unit
- Bonkers Bouncy Castles (EDIT: Now completed and launched)
I'm looking to do more web design this year; I've seen what some people pay for crap websites, and I know I can do better and won't charge anywhere near as much.
I had an awesome week in Wales with The Unit between Christmas and New Year; unfortuately there was no water (the water levels in the rivers was really low) so couldn't do much in the way of canoeing, but went biking which was great (I haven't been on a bike for years and we did a pretty hardcore mountain bike track) and led a scramble up Tryfan, which is a mountain in Snowdonia, not quite as high as Snowdon but much more exciting to do, as it's rocky as opposed to hilly, and it's not as touristy.
See more photos here
One of the Scout leaders at my group - John Hall, who was with us in Wales - was in the Queen's new year's honours list and has been made an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) which is a great achievement and wonderful recognition for all his work. He is 70 years old now and has been volunteering as a Scout leader since he was 18, giving young people opportunities to go mountaineering, kayaking, to travel, to do things they never dreamed of, and make the most of their lives, and it's all down to the time John has given up to do it all. He's still doing it today, he was with us in Wales this week, he was with us in the Pyrenees in the summer, and the last few years he's taken the group to Slovakia and Slovenia.
Labels: Computers, Featured, Internet, Kayaking, Scouting, Web Design
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 15:13
