Fixing things with cut and paste alone.

OK we are not perfect. Today I was mostly fixing something that had not gone wrong... Indeed I ended the day at the clients site showing them how to use our content management system (CMS) - and discovered its imperfections - I think the client was pleased that I had taken the time although a bit bemused that it 'did not work' and there were a few problems - not all ours! but at the heart of it the cms had not integrated well with the sites cascading stle sheets (CSS).

On the surface the CMS was completely failing in its objectives, we established that the javascript was not operating well within IE. This is a technical issue beyond us and the client - fixed by installing firefox hoorah! Ruined by the fact that Firefox would not accept a paste from Word - although Firefox did explain what needed to be done I am not a PC king and I definately was not going to resolve that over the phone. After a while of struggling to explain key concepts I suggested I pop by. I am glad I did as I discovered a new way of cutting and pasting (I said key concepts!) that proved to be a way around the problems presented by Firefox (isnt Firefox supposed to be the best?) I used the nifty trick of right clicking and selecting paste - it really was that simple to overcome - (all on a PC - and I dont use PCs) - quite pleased with myself here.

Then when we had mastered cutting and pasting, although the content looked perfect when pasted from word to our 'what you see is what you get' (wysiwyg) CMS interface it just did not show properly on site - a sneaky peak at the site code revealed outrageously bloated code... Back to the CMS - if found an html code button '<>', pressing revealed the bloat - quick work around - cut and correction to

and that was that. Simple really.

but hey computers are confusing and some of the basic things can prove to be a nightmare - even today. Not sure what the lesson here is, apart from dont sell a wysiwig CMS to anyone that is based beyond atube stop! Next week I will be fixing the wysiwyg and the CSS and maybe it all work properly as expected...

I am truly sorry. Will try harder next time, please believe me. You do remember the days of wysiwyg, don't you, or am I just showing my age again...

First the Skis

So here it is the big action - shame we did not video my first fall - that was very eventful - all you could see was my legs waggling from a head first dive into the snow off the side of the kids slope!

I did manage the big one - the first time I suffered some serious stalling - it took me an hour, the second, I stalled, but for just 10 minutes. Absolutely loved the speed at the end - on the flat! It was a perfect time to leave and come home, exhilerating as it was...

skiing - for real!

Yup, it really is me on my first 'complete and unassisted' ski run! Thanks for the emails kind people, I know you were more amazed that I was away from computers for more than 6 days than anything else- a major achievement for me, probably the only time in the last 25 years! - So this is what I do with my non PC time - OK, I did cross country too, I walked across a frozen lake, cut a hole through 40cm of ice with a chain saw, spent a lot of time in a Sauna and got smashed with the inlaws... Is all good!

new sites, results and skis to chew on

HI there coalface blog readers. I have at last finished or at least finished the start of a few more web sites, semcasestudy.com and sembestpractice.com and started to update 3GSEM - 4GSEM anybody? I already own it, so no problem. Also I am in the middle of updating sembenchmark.com although I am tempted to donate that to IAB Europe.

Last weekend, I visited Jyvaskyla via Tampera Finland, flying Ryanair for less than a pound each way. Thank you Michael. I learned to Ski, not bad at 44! it was crazy, I completely stalled on my first downhill and did a little better on my last shot, but I could weave and I can Ski - well, I felt in control as the air whizzed by. I completed my cross country and classically, whilst saying hello and waving on my return to everyone, pleased and amazed that I had succeeded, I fell and bent my stick! Ho hum, the break was good - no computer for 6 days and my entire body ached!

Today I am at the Corporate Podcasting summit and am now using digg on the Weboptimiser site. I am pleased also that we are already achieving number 1,2,4,8 and 9 against the term search engine optimisation on google video. Web 2.0 - social search - anyone - hey we are not just talking about it - we are doing it - who knew!