Wasn't as bad as I thought it would be today. Infact I haven't done that much. The guy that said he had a lot of comments is too busy to speak to me so I've just done some little bits and pieces. The site isn't 100% finished due to the slackness of someone who only needed to give me 10 numbers, but hasn't. But apart from that I think it is done. I'm quite happy with it, (as long as they are really,) and they seem fairly impressed that this job that has been kicking around for 2 years or more has finally been done, and done well.
The only thing I did do today which was of mild interest was try out Mozilla for the first time to test the site (and mine!) Seems like it is very similar to Netscape to me (which seems right since Netscape and IE are both based on Mozilla in it's early days I believe.) It proved my coding prowess by not showing up a single problem on either site :-) I believe I officially rock.
Anyway, I've been hanging around all afternoon for no real reason and just want to go home. But I have to see out the day and go for a farewell drink (which I don't really want.) Never mind. Just have a swift one and be off. Someone else is leaving today, so hopefully we can all knock off soon...
Laters.

Went to the pub at lunch with the heads of advertising so now all is well with the world :-) Managed to take advantage of the slack GMTV disipline in order to have a 2 hour lunch, and get a little bit drunk. Now work is no problem! Anyway, I have been doing some more changes and its getting very close to finished.

Made a few little changes to the GMTV site. But really the news today is that they are definitely gonna be working me tomorrow. I still need to do some work on one or two pages and I am waiting for people to decide what they want to write on them. Knowing I'm going tomorrow they have decided to have a meeting for an hour or so tomorow at 12, thereby giving me the afternoon to make any changes to the site. Better not be anything major for their sake! I knew this would happen, (a final day panic) but I didn't expect them to plan it! ;-)

Yawn. What a slooooow day. I've had one page to make today from notes given to me yesturday afternoon. I specifically saved them so that I would have something to do this morning. Well, I was right but it hasn't helped much.

I noticed the tabs were not changing their backgrounds in Netscape, so after a little more research I found that the code I was using was indeed Explorer only. Its fixed now for any DOM compliant browser, so that is IE, Netscape and hopefully everything else too. Only older browsers should struggle, like NS4, which I also found out is now in use by less than 1%, so I think I'll be safe ;)
Plenty of work has come flooding in and most of the day has been converting the GMTV rate card into electronic copy and then the website. 2 other tiny tweaks too, so all is well for a while. The design is approved and I am now waiting on content for 5 pages, of which only 3 are important, and I have just been handed one of those. Although there may be some more Excel work thrown my way...
Looks like all will be done shortly :) Just as well... only 3 days now!

This was a bank holiday weekend, and in the best tradition I ever heard of, GMTV all knock off early on bank holiday Friday! Sweet. That means I'm not in my last week here and it'll only be for 4 days before holiday in Florida and then my new job.
I spent most of the weekend working on my room again. Very nearly finished. Once I have the last few bits I can probably do it in one more day / weekend, but it will have to wait until I get back probably.
Got a meeting in a min to see how they like the site now my boss is back off holiday. I can't do anything until then, and hopefully they will like it as is.

I've been asked to do some bloomin' Excel now! Some people really have no clue about technology or even what they want. I really think I could be useful around GMTV though, (since I have the skills to do things like this random Excel request,) but they aren't willing to wait for me to finish uni (which is all of like 9 months or something in a years time!) Oh well, their loss. I hope I have made a good impression here. Just 5 more days left.

Well... there is good news and bad news... Good news? I got the job ;) Bad news? It's 9 to 6 and takes longer to get there, so its gonna be a long ass day! Ahh well. Rough with the smooth, since the job looks pretty cool and it is paying about 15k. So thats my year sorted then! Excellent. Should have a nice well rounded CV by the end too! GMTV will be ending soon. I'm STILL waiting for some content from some people but I'm assured I'll get it. Probably the day before I leave! Never mind.
I'll have a week in Florida when I finish to chill before I start the new job. I'm gonna check out Full Sail while I'm out there, with my Bro, in case you didn't know. I'd still love to go out there and do it, but we'll have to see if it happens. Fifth Dimension have pretty much said there is a job there after I graduate too, so I guess time will tell.

No updates to the GMTV site on Wednesday since it was still in the middle of a big change. I was then off ill for Thursday and Friday, so its all been finished and updated today.

Over the weekend I was decorating my bedroom. Louise was helping me too. Got loads done actually. Laid the floor, made cabinets, put a bed in etc. and bought most of it that morning too. It's all coming together pretty quickly, so hopefully I can finish it of this weekend (what with that damned thing called work being in the way ;-) ).

Went to see American Pie 3: American Wedding last night. Pretty good laugh, nice end to the trilogy. If you like the others, you should probably go and see it.

Because I was ill on Thursday, my interview with Fifth Dimension will be on Tuesday now. Of all the placement interviews I have had and jobs I've been offered, this is the one I think I want for the year (apart from Special Moves :-( and GMTV :-) ). I'll update you as it breaks (or more likely, on Wednesday ;-) )

Made some more updates to the website. Also written some lovely documentation for anyone that will be updating it after I leave. Now there's a first ;) ! Don't forget, if you want to keep track of what I'm churning out for GMTV, try checking here!

After testing the site online, I noticed the back button does work properly. It was just the javascript / frames being funny offline, so that’s a bonus! Today I have just been converting content from the 'press pack' into a website. But I've done all that and I'm just sat waiting for some more to do. I could probably muck about with the layout of some of the text on some pages, but I don't see much point until I have it all so that I can keep it consistent. They also need to decide if they want all the text, but there isn't that much really. It'll probably just be a case of me adding different images to the sidebars of the pages to make them look a bit different and possibly splitting up any large pages into smaller ones (like programming into weekday and weekend.)
I'm not looking forward to putting the site through the Content Management System (from GOSS who are based in Plymouth coincidentally!) It'll probably be an absolute arse with the layout. Maybe they won't bother and be happy with it as is, since it really isn't going to be changed much. Unless it's just a case of putting the text in the CMS and leaving all the layout including images etc. in the HTML in which case it may be fine. Not sure how the stylesheet will cope... I would like to have a go with the CMS in any case since quite a few jobs ask for experience with them. Might be useful for the final year too.

Phew! Bit of a nightmare day today. Just when I thought I had everything sorted design wise and was adding in some more content, suddenly they want me to mock up one of my other demos into a website to compare! On top of that, they also decided that I should add in a whole new frame to the version I was working on, thereby mucking up the majority of the design on each page! All this just because they want to 'see.' Well, it's to be expected I suppose. Nevermind, they are done now, and the powers that be seem to prefer the design with the extra frame, so I spent the rest of the afternoon updating the old pages to the new format. The only problem I see is that the back button doesn't function as you would hope it would, but I could always fix that by making loads of framesets if they prefer, rather than my patented "JavaScript Variable Passer"-into-one-frameset method ;)

Still working on the GMTV site.

Changed the front page again. Added a frameset to move the scrollbar next to the content. Implemented a Javascript to keep the framesets needed down to just one file. Added to the stylesheet to change the scrollbar colours. Changed the background images on the pages since frames are now used. Should look fine in any 4:3 resolution, but mostly focused on 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768. Updated all the menus now, so each page should have its correct submenu, and it should be nicely sliced for optimisation. As far as I can tell, only the text (or whatever content) needs changing on all the pages now.

I was just eating my lunch in the park when some random bloke (A proper inbred, no mates type) that looked a bit like Peter Kay ('Ave it!) in an ill fitting outfit with a briefcase sat down right next to me (when there was loads of room about). He then starts talking to me...

"Hi. What are you eating?"

"Crisps"

"Oh right. And what are you reading?"

"The paper. The Metro."

"Oh I see. Current affairs and all that?"

"Yeah."

"So do you like current affairs?"

"I suppose so..."

(Than he suddenly blurts out) "I'm not really interested. Fancy a pint?"

(Errrrr! No!) "No thanks mate"

"Oh ok, some other time."

Then he stalks off and I notice a video camera in some bushes. A bloke runs over and tells me i'm going to be on a new gameshow on Bravo (so no one will watch) where contestants guess what people will say to this bloke (like, fancy a pint with me?) Apparantly they will send me a tape.

Working hard. Had a meeting yesturday with the 'bosses.' Had bashed out 11 example images (variations of about 5 websites) and they seemed to like the last site. Excellent news. Told me to carry on and make it and as I was opening NotePad, Dreamweaver MX finally arrived. So, combinging that and ImageReady I have been beavering away on some slight variations of the chosen design. Have another meeting sometime next week to see how its going. I'm a bit worried to be honest. I'm racing away with this and don't think it will take me anywhere near 5 weeks to complete. That could be seen as a good thing ("He's good, keep him on!") or a bad thing ("Cheers mate, see you later!") Really, the only things that are holding me up are the people that need to decide what content is going to be included or not. That, and when I come to integrate the site into their content management system with the web team (from the www.gm.tv site). So basically, other people.