BLUES ‘n’ NEWS

The European sojourn is at an end, a nasty bout of lurgee has been surmounted, the grey drudgery of work has begun, and just as I finally get my assets untangled and thrust them into the scary world of investing, the whole financial shithouse comes tumbling down. Nice one!

On the bright side I can now reveal that the Eiffel Tower has turned blue. See, here’s a photo I took a couple of weeks ago to prove it.

That’s just a taster for the wondrous pixelated effluvium from my Nikon D50 soon to be splattered over the pages of ardle.net - can’t wait, huh?

Talking of ardle.net, that cyber temple to all things me, it’s getting a major makeover. Two years I also gave it a major makeover, but I looked at it critically one day and thought, “Nah!”

So I took the opportunity provided by my recent infirmity to plan out and execute (by firing squad) the New Look Site – slick, simple and all CSS. No more frowns over frames nor troubles with tables, it’s all narrow-gauge minimal ergonomics from here on in!

So far I’m about half way through the laborious process of transferring everything over, so it’ll be a couple of weeks before the grand opening, but by Jove will you be impressed when the plastic wraps are pulled of and the champagne bottle bursts against the gleaming frontage of the new edifice!

Making pointless new shiny things – a great way to take the mind of the fast-approaching Four Skinmen of the Financial Apolloclips.

A CUP OF JAVA

As part of the ongoing renovation of ardle.net I’ve polished up me Java Script skills (read: copied something out of a book) and completely revamped the ‘Photograpy’ section. Now you get to see a splendid slideshow of more than thirty of me best pics, this time with accompanying commentary. Wow! Click here to have a peek:

All sections have been recoded and jazzed up with the exception of the music stuff, which will be done once I can decide whether just to update it to XHTML and CSS standards or to redo it entirely.

Then will come the turn of the ever elusive wargaming section, planned an age ago, created in rough form last year, but still not released to the expectant masses.

Bet you can’t wait, eh?

SUMMERTIME BLUES

For us grunts manning the frontline trenches of the English Teaching Front: Far Eastern Sector, June marks the onset of the most unpleasant time of the year. A little over half way through the term, and as the interest and enthusiasm of our charges wanes, so too does our own friendly classroom demeanour give way to prickly bad-temperedness and the ensuing ejaculation of the kind of phrases we ourselves were subjected to at school, and vowed never to inflict on others. Oh, history does indeed repeat itself!

To compound this educational ennui comes the Great Time of No National Holidays, a barren stretch of no release which does not let up until late July, and if this wasn’t enough, the elements too begin to conspire against us poor pale big-nosed barbarians. By now temperatures have soared into the high 20’s C, and sticky humidity is being stockpiled prior to the imminent launch of the rainy season, home to foul-smelling gaijin armpits, clinging warm damp under garments and a perpetual classroom battle with students over who gets to control the air conditioning. That’s if we’re lucky enough to be in establishments who deem it even necessary to switch on said machinery.

Still, there is much to look forward to this summer. Late July should
see us up in Tokyo for a spell, that enchanting 40 C of the capital
easilly offset by the pleasure of being an anonymous dot in an
earthquake-prone concrete jungle.

Early September and the Missus and I are off to Prague to see what the
rich Americans and rampaging mobs of EasyJet lager louts have done to
it in the twelve years since my last visit.

September 18th should see brother Matt arrive for a two-week stay, and
so of course a few days up in Kyoto are a must, and always a great
pleasure.

Meanwhile, whole teams of overall-clad geeks are working round the clock to bring http://www.ardle.net into the 21st century. Yes, the site is getting a complete overhaul. In anticipation of the future move from HTML to XML, I’m redoing every page in the transitional form XHTML, together those sexy Style Sheets that I have only now come to grips with. Most pages will look the same, but some are being redesigned graphically, too (look at that groovy new main portal, for example!). You never know, even the mythical computer wargaming section may materialise this summer…