I don't like Mondays

But don't worry I wont shoot the whole day down.

Mondays always tend to end up being a day where I am left wondering where they went. Today I have come in, sorted out the remaining bits of weekend email (some I do during the weekend) and then found that I need to upgrade the servers with security updates to try and keep them secure.

Also I have been involved in helping a friend out with one of his projects.

News for the day - our wonderful and not at all addled Prince has been offering grants to pubs to help them modernise, it does sound interesting, don't think it will help all the pubs that are closing though. I notice that the Black Swan mentioned in that article are not on our lists though! So I don't think they are making the most of the Internet, especially as it is free to add pubs to our listings.

Also comment of the day goes to Andrew Evans when letting us know about a closed pub. We leave the closed pubs on our lists so that old regulars may reminisce, so we don't mind people letting us know by posting pictures of what is left of the pub or comments that let us know.

Hopefully I will post more about pubs work tomorrow,

Conrad

Bugfix Friday

A day of bugfixes, we do just go through cleaning up bugs as we stumble across them and never mention them, a lot of them are the sort of thing that the casual user wont notice or worry about. Today I have dealt with:

• Logging of picture deletions - Recording picture deletions was inconsistent, if an admin deleted an image it was recorded that they had deleted their own picture, also other minor logging inconsistencies.
• Clean up the audit maps - When zooming in and out of the map the '+' & '-' buttons disappear and don't reappear in an inconsistent manner, this has now been cleaned up, buttons no longer disappear to not return.
• Fixed a security problem - An identified security issue related to parsing had to be removed.
• More pub activity fixes - Fixes to the new page I discussed in previous blogs, there were some issues relating to the ability to see pictures we have as hidden, they are now shown in the activity report as hidden.

And for my amusing site story of the day. We do try and keep an eye on the recommendations for pubs that come in to try and ensure that they are not too bad, but it does mean we spot the odd bit of humour. Todays is our new member Anthony Barnett, if you look at the pubs he has commented on he is keen for us to know that he is the author Without Reproach, in fact judging by the capitals it is the most important part of his recommendations. Reading the Amazon review it does sound quite pacy, think I will leave it for now not sure my heart is up to it these days, there is of course the temptation to leave a review for the book as Dave pointed out, and just leave at the end 'by Dave McNally webmaster of pubsgalore.co.uk'. I am not really sure what to make of that sort of recommendation to be honest, you are left wondering if he really cares about the recommendation, for now we will leave it alone, they are all positive recommendations and it does no harm to our site. Just in case anyone thinks I am being a little nasty naming and shaming here, look on the bright side, I have placed a link to the book here so the publicity has served its purpose!

Hope you have a good weekend, I am off to see if there are any new guest beers down at the Bunch of Grapes, if not I will stick with the trusty Otter.

Oh how I love page design

Well the major part of today has been simply designing the page which will show all the pub activity. I will never understand where designers get their patience from, I find this part of the job hugely tedious. Not helped by the fact that I am not good at HTML. Goodness knows it is terrible for anyone nearby as well, Dave has had to put up with me moving a button 1 millimetre across the screen and asking him if he thinks it looks better or worse, poor blighter must be wondering if he is having an eye test.

The page I have actually been working on shows all the member activity on a pub, so when a picture was submitted, when it was approved and all that sort of information. Hopefully users will get a bit more confidence in how quickly the site is worked on these days, and also get a better idea of how up to date things like pictures are. Just making it so that this makes sense and looks tidy is a horrendous job for me, and on top of that the silliest thing can throw a spanner in the works, in this case, how should the page be linked to from the pub page? How visible should the link be, do I think it is an important feature and should always be visible, and where would it make most sense to appear? Hopefully when the new design gets released people will understand it.

No other real news today for me to post in any amusing headlines, but I will just mention Peter Crosby who is busily posting loads of pictures of pub signs at the moment, this is fantastic, I used to love walking past all the pub signs on the way home in Bath when I was at school. Sadly they seem to be less ornate these days, and there are obviously less pubs, so any record that can be kept of them is brilliant.

Conrad

Day 2

Well today has been a slow one, I think I have now completed the auditing code, sadly there is a list of bugs as long as my arm (well alright 4 A4 pages in my notebook really) still to do, most of them found when I was putting in all this auditing code. Hopefully the work should go a little faster now though as all the bug fixes are a little more interesting. The auditing code has just been a slog really.

It is an annoying piece of code and I doubt whether most of the Pubs Galore members will really care about the fact that it is there, but I think it is needed to give the system more credibility, and also to allow us to better track what is happening as users are taking more and more control of the listings.

As posted earlier I notice that Alistair Darling is being banned from pubs after his latest budget. Made me smile, the tax seems a little high given the reports that beer prices are going to skyrocket anyway. I hope that it doesn't come to pass, or the whole site may be about pubs that have closed.

Just heard this on the radio

Campaign to ban Alistair Darling from all pubs.

First entry

Hi all,

I have been meaning to try and write a blog for a while to try and note more of what I am doing with my time. Not sure how it will go or even what I will write, but lets let rip and see what happens. I have been doing a lot of admin today, loads of emails over the Easter weekend and the like. But have managed to do a little of the auditing code that has been dragging me down for weeks now. I am hoping that this is nearly over.

Sad news for the day is that we have heard that the Saltersgate Inn is now closed. This is not a pub I have ever visited, and is most memorable to me as when it was added we had a prolonged debate with the submitter about whether it was the Saltersgate or Saltergate Inn (he was right it wasn't the same spelling as the village. Both the original poster and the person who let us know about it originally pointed out that it used to be named the Legendary Saltersgate Inn as the fire had allegedly been kept burning for over 175 years. I hate hearing stories like this, this is the type of pub that I love hearing about on the site.

Still that is my news for the day,
more soon (hopefully)

Conrad