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Mexican hangover-again, crap Spook Country, Wordpress and vBulletin

¦ dialling in from Sky Bunker ¦

11:02 GMT, Sunday 7th Feb 2010.  Cold grey misty light flooding into the sloping room through the glass canopy behind me.  Enigma’s first album is playing on the turntable below my desk; vinyl, I can hear the needle scratching through a groove that is 20 years old now.  

Had to turn it down a little, though.  My head’s feeling somewhat sensitive.

The Mexican vibe has continued from last weekend when Sharky was over here, visiting from Spain with his bottle of lethal Tequila.  Jo’s twin sister stayed with us last night, and we found we had some triple sec left… so made a quick trip to shops for another bottle of Tequila and lemon juice.  I crushed salt, coated the rim of broad glasses, and mixed up some margaritas.  Just as fatal as last weekend.  Within two sips I was gibbering and laughing along with my girlfriend and her twin.
        
Also cooked up a DAMN fine chilli.

They crashed before midnight.  I stayed up until 3 A.M. playing Mordern Warfare 2.  So I think today’s fluffy head is a combo of too much booze, too little sleep, and too much PS-Fekking-3.

It’s been an indulgent weekend.  Based purely doing only what I want to do.

DocToc stayed over Friday night after a city centre rendezvous with James Catholic Funboy.  Drove back home that night in rocket with hood down, DocToc grinning like a shark at a car load of girls that pulled up next to us as some lights.  I had my Russian tank gunner hat on, with floppy furry ears, and my handlebar moustache draped above my pout.  Lights turned green.  I floored it.  Can’t believe how quick this car is.

Saturday morning took DocToc back into town and had rendezvous with Nice Guy Tony.  Too much coffee and only a chocolate croissant for breakfast left me with the shakes.  I got home and failed to settle into a comfortable writing groove… only a few lines, and too much PS3 (perhaps).  But like I said, the weekend is about doing what I want to do, so I make no apologies for putting my life in front of my book.

It’s been an intense week at work: project echo.  Migrating a bunch of commercial / editorially driven websites from a disparate mix of platforms, onto one standard: Wordpress.  Spent many months doing requirements capture, then devs built up a vanilla version with tons of cool functionality, sans any branding; then reviewing with stakeholders and project board, getting sign-off.  Early January we took a copy of the vanilla code base and began applying it to the first in my list of sites to migrate (17 in total).  This means getting new designs (created by web design team, or print art editors going through a steep learning curve for web); skinning the vanilla version, migrating data, testing, and launching.  We’re also migrating away from phpBB forums to vBulletin; and have written a single sign-on plug-in, allowing users access to the forum, to comment on the site, and request newsletters, all with one registration form.  Some sites will be fresh vBulletin installs; others will require data migration.  Phew! We successfully launched the first site last Wednesday.  Almost flawless. Very pleased.

And each editorial team that gets given “the keys to the new cms” always seem to go gaga and fall in love with the simplicity, power and ease of adding content to their new site.  So, Wordpress works for me as a commercially viable platform.

That night Game Breaker Hagen (GBH) came round with a surprise for me.  A proper waffle pan from Norway.  Holyyyyyyy Shiiiiiiiit!  Fantastic.  We spent the night cooking up authentic Norwegian waffles, to the point where you could have rolled us out of the house and down the street. Ugh.  Too many.  But just divine.

So I bought “Spook Country” by William Gibson.  What a heap of crap.  What’s happened to William Gibson?  He used to be so good.  I had to re-read the first page about 6 times, and then struggled to get through the first chapter without yawning: in the end I thought, “life’s too short” and chucked it away.

I’ve still got my handlebar moustache.  Really liking it: I’ll post a picture when I find time.

Ooooh, the sun’s just poked its head out.  I might go for a spin in Rocket, hood down, clear the tequila fluff from my brain.