An athiest and sick of the perceived negative aspect of the word? Then check out this article for a bright idea.
Recently I was pleasantly surprised when I was contaced by a girl I knew while I attended Torpoint Comprehensive down in Cornwall, during 1985-88. Sharon is trying to organise a school reunion in a few months time and was wondering if I’d be able to make it.
Initially I was kind of wary, you know? it’s just that I used to take a lot of shit when I was at school – mostly name calling and stuff that I didn’t handle very well because I was a little sheltered when I was younger and just didn’t know how to cope. Somehow being called Jock and Haggis now wouldn’t bother me at all, but when I was in my early teens I let it tear me to pieces.
Hence the idea of being in a room for an evening in the company of the, admittedly few, folks who used to bait me with that kind of teasing didn’t initially appeal to me. Sharon replied to my concerns pointing out that there are a few others in the same boat, but she thinks it’ll be a good night all the same and any differences will be left in the past where they belong.
I’ve come to agree – I really hope I can make it in September. Aside from all the teenage angst I put myself through I did have a few good friends while I was at the school – most of whom I haven’t seen or heard of since I moved back to Scotland in ’88. Be nice to catch up again and talk about those glory days.
And I’ve been looking for a reason to travel back to Cornwall for quite a few years now – this could be the perfect excuse. :o)
The Glass Wall is the name of a research document compiled by the BBC when they were in the process of re-vamping their website a year or more ago (I forget the exact time). It presents the information they gathered on the user experience upon a visit to the BBC site, detailing the area of the home page they used or clicked first, and then the journey they took before leaving the site. Apparently the document took its name from a glass wall in the reception area of the BBC building in London, and it also represented making the site as transparent as possible to the user.
I believe they meant that folk should easily be able to see where they want to go, but with a big helping of pretentiousness it took on the more grand title of The Glass Wall.
Thus, it seems ironic for me that the glass wall I’m experiencing represents being able to see where I want to go in life, but finding that I’m just not able to get there. Like a glass ceiling only more vertical. Myself and a friend came up with this awesome analogy that was something to do with me having plenty of currency, except it was of the wrong type so although I was in the sweetie shop I was unable to buy anything or take part like all the other shoppers. With hindsight it sounded a lot more awesome when it came straight off the cuff!
Anyhoo, it means that I feel like I’m treading water at the moment – I can do what I’m doing no problem at all. Although I do get a challenge every now and again that means I have to do a bit of thinking, or work that much faster, the rest of this website making lark is pretty much the same as it has been for the last five years.
With the latest announcement by MicroSoft regarding their decision not to develop Internet Explorer any further (something Jeremy goes into better detail about), it makes it pretty obvious that the next three or four years of coding for the web are going to be just as frustrating as the last five years. Which basically entails hours of fiddling while various browsers spew your well formed code back at you in a variety of different forms because none of them is fully standards compliant or they have different ways of rendering the same code.