RWS phoned this morning to ask if I could remove the HOur Bank charity’s website that I designed two years ago. Apparently, users have complained that when searching for said organisation, search engines are displaying pages on my webspace as the first dozen results.

Now, the only reason I left the site on my webspace was to demonstrate to those at HOur Bank how the website would work. But once I’d finished the site it just sat there for ages and nobody did anything with it. Then someone emailed out of the blue a year or so later saying that one of the contact details had changed.

Now to me, this sounded as if they were in fact using my site, but running it off of my long-winded NTL URL as opposed to their own server.

Anyway, during communications with RWS today, I learnt of the charity’s new policy disallowing a dedicated site. This is, quite frankly, an utterly stupid policy - especially considering they know that people are searching for them on the ‘net. And surely then, if my site is their only ‘official’ online presence, taking it down makes even less sense.

With my incredibly stressful first year of Racodac behind me, I felt it a good idea to form some conclusions:

• Eleven week terms are too long.
• Ball bags can stretch more than you may at first think.
• Buses are poo.
• There is no beating the system.
• Using proper film terminology in essays loses you marks.
• Read the project brief then do the opposite.
• Ask questions that you don’t want answered in the hope that they’ll tell you what you really did want to know.
• Printing out work is both a waste of time and a waste of print credits.
• There is absolutely no point in worrying about arriving late; chances are the tutors are running even later - if they turn up at all.
• Very few people will sit next to me on the bus.
• It pays to have your fingers in all the pies.
• Filling in lengthy forms for student benefits entitles me to nothing more than money off for a wig.
• Extra-strong condoms are great for anal sex.
• People who use unbelievably long words in conversation only use them because they themselves have only *just* found out what they mean.
• By the time I leave in 2007, I will have asked bus drivers “Are you going round to Bromley on the other side?” at least 165 times.
• When young lasses write their phone numbers on scraps of paper and pass them to you, get them to write their name on the piece of paper too.
• Always keep your ear to the ground.
• The first thing you do with a door handle is you do not look at it.
• “One billion” uses the same amount of characters when written as numbers as it does using letters.
• Painful giggle loop moments occur when observing funny walks, bits of fluff, spillages, loud clapping, countdowns, and bus doors closing on old ladies.
• Getting up early warrants an additional half-hour doze on the bedroom floor.
• People from your past always pop up again to haunt you. (Well, not so much “haunt” - it just sounds more dramatic.)
• My body is prone to nasty electric shocks.
• When changing metaphors, use a salami instead of an onion.

So there you have it - my invaluable knowledge from a year of invaluable nonsense. Use it wisely

My personal tutorial at Racodac was very disappointing today. Don’t get me wrong - my progress and grades are fine. I just didn’t come away feeling particularly happy about it.

Learning that the first two years of the course don’t actually account for anything (other than practice for the third, of course) really annoyed. I mean, I would’ve been far more experimental with my work and probably not lost quite so much sleep over it all had I known this from day one.

I’m moving out.

Much like last week, one of my sneezes a short moment ago sounded uncannily like a camera flash charging up. And I’m 95% sure that a sneeze of mine yesterday sounded like a Delorean starting up too.

In the wonderful absence of silly pieces of work, I’ve been hard at it in my bedroom today. Tidying, that is. It’s weird, actually, as I’ve noticed that every time I finish big pieces of work the first thing I do is tidy my room. Extraordinary.

Anyhow, in sorting through various boxes, I came across the 1983 Return of the Jedi storybook. Not a massive find by any means. But a) it brought back early childhood memories. And b) it has now clicked where I thought I’d seen the ending from.

Suture, there.

Today’s critique at Racodac went well. Very well.

My title sequence got big laughs in all the right places and on all three of the viewings too. I even got a second round of applause when the tutors finally found something to say: “Well, that’s perfect, isn’t it?”

Such a fine end to such a stressful first year. It really does feel as if another huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

At 6:30 AM this morning, I awoke from my slumber with another fine idea for the title sequence project that I spent all day working on yesterday. I’ve been implementing this idea since 7:00 AM and it really has made the piece seem all the more realistic.

Considering I was completely satisfied with yesterday’s finished outcome, I am oh so incredibly happy with what I’ve done to it today. (Now it fizzes and sizzles!)

I am perhaps most pleased with this project because I took a fairly simple brief and aimed for something really high - something quite ambitious. And because of this it’s probably the only Racodac project that I’ve actually enjoyed working on. All the other briefs have been far too restrictive. In fact, the only other project that comes close is the end credits sequence I mentioned a couple of weeks back because of the starscape background that I put together.

I’m of the mind where if you want to achieve something, you should just go for it. And the fact that a fairly complex idea I had a week or so ago has ended up on screen looking EXACTLY as I imagined it really is rewarding. Especially given I consciously didn’t worry about technically being able to achieve my desired effects. Truth be told, I didn’t know how to do it - any of it. I just didn’t stop working until it looked like what I wanted. I’ve always worked like this where I can. But it feels more rewarding on this occasion because of how depressing some of the other projects have been.

I just hope it gets the laughs in the critique tomorrow. Although saying that, I’ve a feeling that one of my tutors will completely slate it anyway.

Sod them, eh?

Nasty hayfever paining my eyes has seen me working from home today. And after fourteen hours of continuous work, I’ve got something ruddy good to show for myself.

As with other pieces of my work, I aim to get it up (ooer!) on the ‘net at some point soon. I’m just holding back at the moment until all of my work for the year has been properly graded. I don’t want to go jeopardising my grades in publishing pieces online now, do I? Exactly.

The critique for Young Musicianage lasted all day - mainly due to a compulsory screening of short films at noon, which included a thirty-five minute shot of a man’s face as he received fellatio.

Anyhow, my project was judged in the morning session and received pleasing feedback from all. There’s only so much you can say during crits yet “this is it” doesn’t quite cut it. So after explaining my designs, I babbled on about web standards and validation. I was surprisingly the only one to design the website within the standard BBC house style and for good reason, as I explained at the time.

The walk home in the afternoon was joyous. Not only because Young Musicianage was finished, but because the journey was shared with Jordan A, Steph G. and Elliot S. So laughs aplenty.

And now that Young Musicianage is finally over, I’ve been able to spend some quality time doing more important things.